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Charlie Kirk and Pastor Gary Hamrick Discuss Loudoun County Awakening and Local Christian Activism
Charlie Kirk sits down with Pastor Gary Hamrick from Cornerstone Chapel in Virginia to unpack how evangelical Christians mobilized in Loudoun County and changed the political landscape. Hamrick shares how his church became ground zero for parents fighting school board overreach, collecting recall petitions, and ultimately helping elect Glenn Youngkin as governor. Kirk also addresses the Scottsdale Unified School District controversy and his recent conversations with Kyle Rittenhouse, connecting these stories to the biblical mandate for Christians to engage in their communities.
Freedom Square's Year of Impact
Charlie Kirk opened the final Freedom Square event of 2021 at Dream City Church by reflecting on a remarkable year of local mobilization. What began as an idea over lunch has transformed into a gathering that inspired dozens to run for school board and city council positions across Arizona. Kirk noted how the event created a community where Christians no longer feel alone in standing for their values.
Kirk acknowledged the competing priority that evening—the Scottsdale Unified School District board meeting—where hundreds of concerned parents were simultaneously fighting for accountability in their local schools.
The Scottsdale School Board Scandal
Kirk detailed the shocking revelations from Scottsdale Unified School District, where school board president Jann Michael Greenberg was discovered maintaining secret dossiers on 47 parents who spoke at board meetings. The files contained divorce records, social security numbers, vacation home addresses, mortgage data, traffic tickets, family member information, and photographs of eight-year-olds.
The discovery came when Greenberg himself sent parents a Google Drive link, apparently attempting to prove them wrong about school policies. Once parents accessed the drive, they found extensive surveillance files compiled on taxpayers exercising their right to public comment.
While Greenberg has been removed as board president, he remains a board member. Kirk emphasized the importance of recall efforts and continued pressure from citizens who refuse to accept this behavior from elected officials. The Scottsdale Police Department and Arizona Attorney General's office are investigating the matter.
Kyle Rittenhouse and Biblical Self-Defense
Kirk shared his personal experience spending time with Kyle Rittenhouse following his acquittal. He described Rittenhouse as an 18-year-old who dropped out of high school as a sophomore to support his single mother working three jobs, then graduated online in nine months and enrolled at Arizona State University.
Kirk framed the Rittenhouse verdict as a rare moment when justice prevailed because normal people—jurors with no agenda—examined the facts soberly and reached the right conclusion. He connected this to the broader theme that hope lies in ordinary citizens engaging in civic processes, whether as jurors, school board attendees, or voters.
From a biblical perspective, Kirk distinguished between murder and killing, noting that the commandment in Hebrew prohibits murder specifically. Self-defense, he argued, is consistently defended throughout scripture as a moral right and even duty.
Introducing Pastor Gary Hamrick
Kirk introduced Pastor Gary Hamrick of Cornerstone Chapel in Loudoun County, Virginia, as leading what he called "the most influential church in Virginia." Hamrick's church became central to the political and cultural transformation that saw Virginia elect Republican Glenn Youngkin as governor after 12 years of Democratic control of statewide offices.
The transformation began not with political strategy but with parents responding to school board overreach on transgender policies, critical race theory, and the cover-up of sexual assaults in school bathrooms.
Tanner Cross and the Transgender Policy Fight
Hamrick explained how the Loudoun County awakening started when Tanner Cross, a physical education teacher at his church, was placed on administrative leave for stating at a school board meeting that he could not, as a Christian, deny God's design of biological gender by affirming whatever gender identity a student claimed.
Alliance Defending Freedom, led by ADF President Mike Farris (who serves as an elder at Hamrick's church), took the case and won in circuit court, forcing Cross's reinstatement. This became a catalyst for broader parent engagement.
At the same meeting where Cross spoke, the school board proposed a transgender policy requiring teachers to use students' preferred pronouns and allowing students to use bathrooms matching their gender identity rather than biological sex.
The Sexual Assault Cover-Up
Hamrick detailed how a father was arrested at a subsequent school board meeting for becoming outraged when the board cut off public input. It later emerged through FOIA requests that this father's daughter had been sexually assaulted in a school bathroom by a young man wearing a skirt who took advantage of transgender bathroom policies.
Emails revealed the school board knew about the assault and covered it up, transferring the offender to another school where he committed a second sexual assault against another female student. This cover-up became a major factor in parent mobilization and anger toward school officials.
The Church's Role in Political Transformation
When parents organizing recall petitions asked if they could collect signatures at Cornerstone Chapel, Hamrick initially hesitated. But after the Tanner Cross incident, he invited Cross and his wife Angela onto the stage, prayed for them publicly, and announced the church would serve as a collection point for recall petitions.
The Loudoun County Democratic Party issued a press release demanding Hamrick recant his statements that God created male and female. Hamrick refused, and the controversy only strengthened resolve among church members and community members who weren't even Christians but recognized traditional American family values were eroding.
Hamrick's church ultimately helped recall one school board member who resigned rather than face the vote, though another member they were recalling tragically died during the process.
Election Integrity and Church Mobilization
Virginia's election laws created a 45-day voting period where individuals could request absentee ballots without being absent. Hamrick discovered that churches could legally serve as ballot collection points, witnessing absentee ballots and delivering them to county election offices.
When Hamrick's church began collecting ballots and delivering them en masse, election officials initially claimed it was illegal. But after calling Richmond, they confirmed it was completely legal. This mobilization effort helped drive evangelical turnout that proved decisive in the gubernatorial election.
The Pastoral Calling to Engage Culture
Hamrick addressed the common concern that pastors should avoid politics. He explained his transformation began in 2008 when historian David Barton introduced him to election sermons—a practice where pastors for the first two centuries of American history would preach about candidates and directly tell congregations who to vote for based on biblical principles.
The 1954 Johnson Amendment made it illegal for 501(c)(3) organizations to officially endorse candidates, but Hamrick argued this doesn't prevent pastors from educating congregations about policies and biblical principles that should guide voting decisions.
Hamrick distinguished between pastoral negligence—failing to equip people for citizenship—and pastoral ignorance—not knowing churches have freedom to speak about these issues. He noted that the separation of church and state, found not in the Constitution but in Thomas Jefferson's 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Convention, was meant to protect churches from government intrusion, not keep Christians out of government.
Proclamation and Refutation
Hamrick shared that his pastoral philosophy centers on two words: proclamation and refutation. Churches must proclaim the gospel and the path to salvation through Jesus Christ, but they must also refute the lies and false ideologies infiltrating culture.
If pastors only proclaim, believers won't know how to apply faith to daily life. If pastors only refute, churches become angry communities of complainers rather than centers of redemption. The balance between these two creates congregations that are both grounded in truth and equipped to be salt and light in their communities.
Terry McAuliffe's Fatal Mistake
The Virginia gubernatorial race turned on a statement by Democrat Terry McAuliffe that "parents should not have a say in what their teachers are teaching." Republican Glenn Youngkin made this quote central to his campaign, and it resonated with parents who felt increasingly shut out of their children's education.
Hamrick noted that evangelical churches across Virginia mobilized in unprecedented ways. After 12 years without a Republican winning statewide office, Youngkin's victory demonstrated what happens when normal citizens engage in political processes. Hamrick gave the opening prayer at Youngkin's victory celebration.
Isaiah 5 and Our Upside-Down World
Hamrick referenced Isaiah 5, which warns against those who "call good evil and evil good, who substitute light for darkness and darkness for light." He argued America is living through an Isaiah 5 moment where behaviors that were universally condemned a few decades ago are now celebrated, and traditional virtues are increasingly called hateful or discriminatory.
He also referenced the period of the Judges in the Old Testament, when "there was no king and everybody did what was right in his own eyes"—a time of moral relativism similar to our current cultural moment where people believe they can determine truth for themselves rather than accepting God's definition of truth.
The Non-Political Christians Are Political
When accused of being too political, Hamrick responds that he hasn't changed positions—he's maintained the same biblical standards for decades. What changed is that culture moved in a progressive direction, making his unchanging positions appear political by contrast.
He noted the irony that people who once agreed with traditional Christian teachings now accuse pastors of being political simply because culture has shifted. Hamrick insists he's not being political; he's being biblical. When culture calls what God calls sin acceptable or even good, pastors have a responsibility to speak clearly.
Why Churches Grow When Pastors Speak Truth
Kirk asked whether speaking on controversial issues hurt church attendance. Hamrick responded that while some families leave when offended, approximately three families join for every one that leaves. People are hungry for someone to tell them the truth without playing word games.
A pharmaceutical company president emailed Hamrick saying that he and his wife and four daughters love attending Cornerstone Chapel because "it helps me and my wife know we're not going crazy." In a world where narratives are constantly manipulated, people need a place to get centered both vertically with God and horizontally with fellow believers.
The Book of Psalms in Chaotic Times
When asked his favorite book of the Bible, Hamrick chose Psalms. He explained that in a chaotic world where it's easy to become frenzied, hurried, and worried, Psalms soothes the soul. He noted that David wrote three-fourths of the Psalms during intense periods of warfare, persecution, and personal failure.
David was a warrior but wasn't afraid to show emotion and vulnerability. The Psalms contain both prayers for God to destroy enemies and intimate expressions of weeping alone at night. This combination of strength and tenderness makes Psalms relevant to all aspects of life.
For new believers, Hamrick recommends starting with the Gospel of John, though he shared a humorous story about a family coming to church for the first time when he was teaching through Leviticus—and they got saved anyway, proving that God's word will not return void.
Perseverance in the Christian Life
Hamrick addressed believers struggling with discouragement by emphasizing that the Christian life is a marathon, not a sprint. What matters isn't the quality of your start but how well you finish. There will be painful moments in the race, but God rewards perseverance.
He cautioned against the expectation that everything will be wonderful once someone becomes a Christian. Earth is not heaven—it's enemy-occupied territory, as C.S. Lewis described it. Christians should expect valleys and mountains, ups and downs, but God's promise is "I will never leave you nor forsake you."
Paul wrote, "I consider my present sufferings not worth comparing to the glory that awaits me in Christ Jesus." Keeping an eternal perspective helps believers endure temporary hardships. Like an athlete in training, the pain and difficulty are worth the reward at the finish line.
Tolerance of the Intolerant
During the Q&A session, a young attendee asked about a friend who stopped playing with him because of political differences. Hamrick noted the tragic irony that "people who talk about tolerance the most are the least tolerant."
Kirk emphasized that 99% of the time, it's those on the political left who cut off relationships over disagreements, while conservatives typically maintain friendships across political divides. He encouraged the young person to keep trying to be a good friend and not fall into the habit of siloing off from people with different views—it's not a healthy way to live.
Running for Office as a Christian
When asked how to maintain Christian values while running for school board without tearing people down, Hamrick emphasized that it's not just what you say but how you say it. Truth must be seasoned with grace. Let the love of Jesus come through while never compromising on truth.
Kirk added that running for office is a spiritual decision to play offense in a domain dominated by enemy forces, according to scripture. This requires spiritual preparation through prayer, fasting, church attendance, fellowship with other believers, and asking God for wisdom. Christians entering politics must understand they're launching what C.S. Lewis called "a sabotage campaign in enemy-occupied territory."
Those who proclaim righteousness and refuse to conform to the world's patterns will face arrows and attacks. Self-assessment becomes critical: Was I Christ-like in that situation? Did I tolerate evil? Balancing grace with truth, proclamation with refutation, is the ongoing challenge for Christian political engagement.
AmericaFest and Freedom Square's Future
Kirk announced that Freedom Square would resume in the new year after taking December off for Dream City Church's Christmas productions. He also promoted Turning Point USA's AmericaFest, coming December 18-21, 2021, to the Phoenix Convention Center, featuring speakers including Tucker Carlson, Kaleigh McEnany, Jesse Watters, Greg Gutfeld, Candace Owens, Madison Cawthorn, and 12 members of Congress.
Kirk offered Freedom Square attendees a discount with promo code FREEDOMSQUARE, while also emphasizing that the Dream City Christmas celebration should be everyone's top priority.
Video Transcript
it's now my pleasure to introduce our speaker tonight recently i was watching one of the most watched television programs and they were getting ready to interview charlie kirk and the speaker said this young man is probably the most important voice in america for freedom and conservative values in america i want you to give him the biggest welcome that he's ever had in his life come on let's welcome charlie kirk you gotta do that more often thank you everybody thank you boy it's great to be here and you know it's we have a lot of competition tonight um for everyone's attention happening right now and it's a perfectly understandable excuse if um people are filtering in from there or they had to be there instead the scottsdale unified school district has a board school board meeting tonight so i think that's the reason why some of my favorite faces are um they're doing something that's i think more important you know they could catch it on the live stream back but all all kidding aside i got hundreds of emails from moms that said charlie i'm going to the scottsdale unified school district board meeting tonight i'm going to talk about that in a second because um and it ties perfectly into my really good friend that we're going to be introducing in just a second because what's happening at the scottsdale unified school district feels very similar to what we just saw in loudoun county just a couple weeks ago and so we're gonna be talking about that but first i just want to thank you guys what a year this has been this a year ago freedom square did not exist a year ago this was just an idea and we went out to you know the barnettes and i we went out to lunch at the henry and i said what if all of a sudden we could organize thousands of people in this local area christians and believers around what it takes to actually influence our local community and you know pastor luke and angel immediately said we've wanted to do something like this and just credit to dream city and dream city church for stepping into action and for hosting this let's just let's let's just remember in may we kicked this off as just a total kind of an unknown idea how is this going to work out we went through the the dog days of summer here in arizona we heard from jack kibbs we had rob mccoy we had eric mataxis which was wild as you guys remember um and what was so amazing i just want to share with you some of the success stories that have come out of this gathering we have dozens of people that are now running for local office for school board for city council inspired from this gathering you might remember a couple months ago we had jack hibbs up here and i was getting pretty worked up when i was hearing story after story of young nurses that were going to be losing their jobs because they did not want to take the vaccine well i'm happy to say that some of those young ladies that shared those stories because of freedom square have found employment in other places because people say i'll hire you not to mention the hundreds if not thousands of stories of people that have said charlie now i know i'm not alone now i know that we can talk about the issues that matter most as christians and as believers and so this is the last freedom square of the year um for many different reasons dream city as many of you may or may not know um kind of changes into a broadway musical act i guess you could say so half of my conversation the last 20 minutes was trying to understand how elephants used to come on the stage i don't under i'm still not quite understanding that i'm told there it will be pretty miraculous though so you can see you are everything's already getting ready for christmas here and so i said you know what and by the way and i do want to make sure i mention this we have a pretty big month too at turning point usa in december we have america fest coming up and that's coming at the phoenix convention center in just a couple weeks december 18 19 2021 i don't know if we have a graphic or not i probably probably forgot doing too many things at once but uh if any of you guys register and use promo code freedom square you guys um get a significant discount there we have tucker carlson coming we have kaylee mcinanny coming in fact let me read all the speakers coming out um here in phoenix and we want to make sure we bless you guys um so that you guys are able to come it's it's incredible when you see the amount of kind of talent that we've been able to have jesse waters greg gutfeld tucker carlson candace owens madison cawthorne 12 members of congress uh kaylee mcinerney many others so if you guys want to come it's tpusa.com amfest you can't miss it for promo code freedom square but more importantly than that everyone should come to the dream city christmas celebration okay that's that's more important than what we're doing but this is the last freedom square of the year and we're going to kick it back off in a hurry in the new year um and i could say this that this gathering um has really put people in an active posture to do what it says that we need to do in jeremiah 29 7. which is to demand the welfare of the city that i've put you in because your welfare is directly tied to your nations or your city's welfare we as christians are called to care about the city that we are in uh my wife and i got married back in may and i said this is our home i'm not gonna sit idly by and just kind of you know be a spectator as this entire thing falls apart so i wanna share uh two things i to talk about the scottsdale unified school district and then i want to talk about um an experience i had in last 72 hours of someone i had an opportunity to hang out with um and kind of learn from and you don't always get to learn from people that are significantly younger than you um well i guess some of you might i don't know that may or may not be true uh at least for me that's not always true but the last couple days were were pretty impactful so let me start with the scottsdale unified school district um for those of you that have sent emails showed up at meetings and had prayer and concern about this thank you thank you thank you some of you might not even know what's happening at the scottsdale unified school district so what a couple weeks ago because of the persistence of parents one of the school board members a man by the name of jan michael greenberg emailed a google drive link to some of the parents uh kind of in outrage and disgust saying basically trying to prove them wrong now i'm by no means a technology expert my team will make fun of me i kind of have boomer knowledge when it comes to technology no offense okay we're all in it together by the way i'm transgenerational okay i get to choose what generation i'm in i disavow the millennials okay um so i i don't know technology that well but there was this google drive link that then the parents logged into and what they discovered soon made national news and was met with outrage for many people in this room that one of the school board members likely in concert in collusion with the superintendent was collecting dossiers private information hiring private investigators around moms and dads you that might have showed up showed up at school board meetings what was found in this document was school board meetings that were less concerned about the fact that scottsdale unified school district enrollment is going down less concerned about how math and test scores are going down less concerned that unfortunately teachers at chaparral are sexually assaulting special needs kids don't know if you saw that story recently but that teacher just got arrested no no the concern of the scottsdale unified school district was creating dossiers creating watch lists for you the taxpayers and so i'll read just some of the information 47 parents had in in-depth research papers done on them divorce records social security numbers vacation homes pictures of them coming in and out of their cars this is what your school board is doing locally here in scottsdale mortgage data traffic tickets family members and included pictures of multiple pictures of eight-year-olds now the scottsdale police department and the arizona attorney general's office is investigating thankfully i don't know if this breaks any laws i can't imagine that this is in perfect compliance with the law it should be um thankfully uh the one step in the right direction has been taken uh where the rest of the school board with one descent decided to vote jan michael greenberg by the way was the president of the school board this wasn't he was the president he is no longer president of the scottsdale unified school district board which is great and he is still a member of the school board okay still a member of the school board but um right now i know a lot of people are at that meeting and they are going to stand there until midnight to make sure their voice is heard and we have to we have to demand the full and total resignation of this individual uh this is beyond uncalled for my experience with this and all of you have this experience if we've discovered this it's probably worse than that right that there's probably even worse behavior happening and occurring and we unfortunately learned from loudoun county which we're going to unpack tonight that the depths that these school board members are willing to go to target parents and to almost criminalize parents who by the way you are the stakeholders of your kids education make no mistake is is really remarkable and so i do know that there are some recall petition efforts underway um and if you live in scottsdale and you have not yet signed those petitions please go find the people that are responsible for that i was told they were going to be mingling around i don't know if they're outside or not but it's incredibly important that we as citizens let our voice be heard and speak out in this local area i know i'm not going to put up with it in fact i tried everything i possibly could to speak there tonight and be here but i said you know what we're still trying to figure out the two places that you know at once thing um but and then it's come out in other details we know this all the other nonsense happening in scottsdale unified school districts but i just want to encourage all of you you have a voice on it keep the pressure on if emails are read by these people any sort of chatter you can create and say this is unacceptable i'm a taxpayer i'm not going to put up with this whether you have kids or not in the district uh think about the kids who are your fellow citizen who are your fellow countrymen that have to be subjected to this sort of behavior and nonsense so that's the first thing the second thing um that i just want to share from a personal perspective of the last couple days which actually was a rare kind of victory in the news cycle and i'm sure some people have differing opinions about this but i think we can all agree uh on the general conclusion uh that kyle rittenhouse did not deserve to go to jail for the rest of his life i think we can all agree and and so i had the opportunity to have dinner with him saturday night um and i had the opportunity to spend all yesterday with him and we have a whole episode discussion out with him that you guys can listen to i encourage you to do that and you know so the question is why should we as christians care about what happened there well it says in the bible very clearly let me just read a couple verses which proverbs 21 15 when justice is done it is a joy to the righteous but a terror to evildoers boy does that explain the new cycle the last 10 days you had the right people cheering and the wrong people all of a sudden saying no the federal government needs to investigate this young boy and i used that word boy intentionally he was 17 years old when this entire thing happened i'm going to tell you a little bit about kyle i got to know him he dropped out of high school as a sophomore to support his single mom with three jobs to try to supple to supplement income graduated high school online in nine months then enrolled at arizona state university by the way i'll get to that in a second i don't know if you've been following that whole circus but that's a whole different saga that i'll get to in a second um he was he lived in antioch illinois northern illinois a lot of you might know that uh traveled to kenosha often that's where his father lived and many of his friends lived of course none of this should have should have happened we know that if the national guard would have been called and we didn't have the open destruction of our cities then all of a sudden you don't have 17 year olds getting tangled in places they shouldn't be kyle admitted he shouldn't have been there he said i wish i wouldn't have gone that's not the point you don't put people in jail for not going places they shouldn't be right half of the scottsdale you know kids would be that's not the point i'm so tired of hearing people well he shouldn't have been there police okay enough of them the point is this is he was walking down a street and we all saw that video very clearly he was attacked multiple times by a mob and his life was put in jail of guns being drawn on him and he had a choice he had a decision am i going to defend my life which is a moral it's a moral necessity to defend your life when it is imminently posed against and kyle did defend himself and how has he met this is the amazing part of the story is he ran to the police after that happened i want you to think about that is this a criminal he runs the police and tells him hey i this just happened and you know what they say go home kid he was arrested a couple days later in antioch illinois where he spent 87 days in jail 87 days in jail um eventually he was released in shower for three weeks you guys heard a lot of these stories and all of a sudden then he was met with the full force of two merely unstoppable forces the criminal justice system and the activist media he was called the white supremacist with no evidence by our now president he was smeared non-stop on cable news as being a militia member he doesn't know what a militia is he doesn't i asked him i said what's a militia he says i don't know what a militia i've never 18 year old kid and he had a decision to make either he was going to fight for what was right fight for himself against lies it says in romans hate what is evil love what is good or he's just going to kind of roll over he made a decision to fight and we all saw that trial i think a lot of people in this room might have been a little skeptical at first like what is this i was told he's a terrible person and all of a sudden we saw what very well could have been some people in this room could have been you your son your daughter your kid or grandkid someone wrongly accused that got in a tough situation that decided to defend himself and despite all of that you heard of the arguments like well it's not self-defense if you bring the gun to the situation all these ridiculous things and in a rare moment all of a sudden we saw wow we saw you know justice actually be served in a very rare moment we said you know what and and here's the lesson and i'll close with this the lesson is why did they come to that decision that decision was made because it involved normal people i want you to think about this this is the takeaway that so many people i think on television have been missing you had people with no agenda that looked at things as they were that had no motive other than to do with what was right and that that gave me hope in some sense i said man as broken as you might think this country is as backwards as we think it is you get a fair and prudent and sober hearing of facts all of a sudden it doesn't matter what msnbc says doesn't matter they're trying to threaten the jury it doesn't matter by that you slow it down and all of a sudden i think that the american people the normal people i'm talking outside of the activist press and the people that run the cia and facebook and all that no just the normal person says you know what i don't think it's right to all of a sudden destroy someone's life for self-defense and isn't that a common theme the common theme of what's actually moving america back to a place of righteousness it's the moms and dads showing up school boards that are doing it right now in scottsdale that did it in loudoun county it's the regular people that spoke out at the jury and said you know what no i'm not going to put up with this you know i i don't think that we should lock someone up in jail just because they defended themselves the point is this the hope is in the people it's the hope the hope isn't of course in the lord obviously but the hope as far as what we're talking about of how we are going to get our country back on track it involves every single one of you and there's not there's no better example than that of another story that i want to mention and i think a lot of you enjoyed going to bed at 2 30 in the morning with a smile on your face where all of a sudden you were like man it feels good to be an american you say in let's just say a very left-wing state otherwise known as virginia all of a sudden you stayed up late and you saw out of nowhere a total reversal of what was supposed to happen in virginia now let me tell you about that the untold story of virginia is our guest tonight it is the church in the county that actually flipped virginia now i don't even mean flipped politically because tonight's not even i'm not even talking about politics i'm talking about spiritually i'm talking about culturally i'm talking about morally a church that stood for righteousness that had dozens of people run for school board in the critical loudoun county virginia i'm talking about the man who gave the opening prayer at the celebration victory for the now next governor of virginia mr yunkan and so it is with great uh pleasure and an honor to have my friend here tonight the man who runs in my opinion the most influential church in virginia who i think could tell us a lot here in arizona like what you do in virginia maybe we can implement it here in arizona he's a wonderful person and has a lot of courage when he received a lot of different backlash for standing for what was right but please join me in welcoming pastor gary hamrick [Music] thank you that was thank you who said that that was a little uh over the top you know i i i'm i'm reminded of winston churchill when he was given a great introduction and uh they they asked him weren't you flattered by that and he said not really because i know if i were being hanged there would be twice as many people here that's funny um not really the guy was yeah process that but um i don't i don't know how many people would show up actually probably more people show up to my hanging on that uplifting note gary um thank you for being here and uh welcome to arizona thank you it's a joy and i have been a long time admirer of pastor tommy barnett his son luke love your church love you pastor barnett thank you and so you guys have had a pretty exciting month in virginia a little bit not much is going on in virginia what what's up so just walk us through it let's start this last spring talk about at your church locally you started hearing rumblings about local school boards yeah just talk about how all of a sudden that started to develop started to unfold and and where your church started to get involved in that yeah do we remember the days when you didn't really care who was running for the school board and now you want to know every local election national election i'm like we're our people are much more engaged today and we've had to become that way because of the nonsense that is happening and it's gotten to the place where people are just basically saying i'm sick and tired of being sick and tired and the way that it first started for us is i'm watching our local news which ended up going national when this pe teacher in loudoun county public schools tanner cross stood up at a public school board meeting which was called for the giving public input on what was the proposed transgender policy the transgender policy would allow children to decide of course whatever gender they wanted to be and then the teachers were forced to honor the language that that student wanted and the classmates had to honor it too so tanner cross p teacher gets up at a public school board meeting that was inviting public comment and says hey as a christian this is against my faith i can't deny god's beautiful design of a child's biological gender by deferring to whatever they want i can't do it it's against my faith it's against god and it's and it's it's doing a disservice to children i'm kind of paraphrasing what he said and um for that he was put on administrative leave and then in in that week i found that he went to my church i didn't even know that he and his wife angela went to our church and so i i met with them and my wife terry and i who's here by the way too my wife terry on the front row so terry and i met with tanner and angela and we we prayed for them and walked them through all that but um yeah he was put on administrative leave alliance defending freedom came to his defense yeah praise god for them so mike ferris who's the president and ceo of adf goes to my church he's one of my elders actually so they took up the case they won in circuit court and so tanner had to be reinstated but what happened was at the same time people who were not even a part of our church who just were part of the community and we're sick and tired of you know what i found charlie was that people who didn't even say they were christians were realizing that the traditional american family values were eroding and so they started you know being upset by all this so i got contacted at the same time that tanner cross was going through all this i got contacted by some people in our community saying we want to recall school board members will you allow signatures to be gathered in your church and at first i was a little reluctant because i thought you know as pastors we have to pick and choose our battles which ones are important enough for us to engage in and not and so when this happened with tanner i stood up in front of our congregation we invited tanner and angela up on the stage to pray for him and then i said guess what my decision is about recalling school board members we're going to be taking signatures in the back of the sanctuary today and uh and so yeah that's how we got engaged that's how it all started so so then all of a sudden there was more and more activity talk about how on a certain may school board meeting a father shows up and gets arrested at that meeting that made national news and what was he complaining about and what was the kind of underlying story behind that so what happened was at another school board hearing to allow public input the school board was very controlling about public input they wouldn't even allow people to applaud you had to do these jazz hands it was just like it's ridiculous yeah i'm not kidding yeah you could only go to the school board meeting if you like something and do jazz hands like what is that it's interesting i got in trouble once at a college campus for clapping i kid you not defensive to the hearing uh disabled exactly right so you have to do this um i i guess that would be offensive to the blind yeah i don't know i i i could i identify as a clapper so i want to be able to clap but anyway so but what happened well you do too but what happened so what happened is they decided after after these parents were justifiably outraged about stuff that was happening transgender policies crt all the stuff different stuff that was being introduced into the school system and by the way also sexually explicit material pornographic stuff that was that was approved a part of reading and so these parents were outraged and they were you know they were justifiably upset well so the school board cut down public and cut off public input no more because the parents were so outraged well one of the dads who then didn't get to to give public input was outraged because come to find out later it hit national news his daughter had been sexually assaulted in a restroom by a young man wearing a skirt who took advantage of transgender identity to be able to go into the girl's bathroom identifying as a female sexually assaulted her we've come to find out since because of foia with emails that the school board knew that that happened and they covered it up because they sent the student to another school where he repeated a sexual assault on another female student so these parents are coming unglued and and and for good reason yeah and so it started to kind of become ground zero yeah the school board um drama yeah that's right and then you add into the mix a seemingly unwise arrogance from virginia political leaders that were like oh by the way parents you think you're in charge you're not talk a little bit about that because that wasn't really smart on their behalf no and you know what what they even did because i prayed for tanner and angela and i just as a pastor said listen genesis 1 27 says god created male and female in his image there aren't 70 genders there are two okay and so now but at the same time look you know as a pastor i i have compassion for people who struggle with gender identity and so we there's counseling but you do a disservice to people by pretending that it's it it's not an issue that needs to be treated and then just embrace it and celebrate their confusion that's doing a horrible disservice to people so when i prayed for tanner and angela and i don't know if i can it's kind of unpolitically correct i suppose but the loudoun democratic party put out a press release against me asking me to recall to recant my statements my statements that god created male and female that's what they wanted me to recant so i said i can't recant this but in the meantime then of course the justice department starts to get in and they're labeling parents as domestic terrorists and and the ag just you know had to kind of backtrack some of that but um yeah so these parents have been labeled as domestic terrorists they're just fighting for their children they're fighting for their children what better cause than to fight for young children and it's such an important point because they kept repeating terry mcauliffe when he was then running yeah he said look i don't know who gets this idea of the parents being in charge of the i'm paraphrasing but it was this it was as if like who do you think you are yeah type thing no he actually said i don't think because because glenn younkin loved the sound bite and made it all part of his ad campaigns you know but because terry mcauliffe actually said parents should not have a say in what their teachers are teaching and that went viral and so it it you know so again that became a huge issue that was a turning n no pun intended that was a turning point perfect it was a turning point in the commonwealth of virginia that was my next question what was the turning point you're on that turning point that's right so then let's let's connect a couple dots then yeah because all this school board energy is happening your church kind of becomes this incubator is that fair to say kind of a a place where a lot of this activity yeah uh from a righteousness perspective was allowed a platform is that right yeah sure because there's a few different issues happening so you have the school board all of this stuff happening you have there's a gubernatorial election and um and you have um see i'm over 50 now so now i'm what was the other thing you have going on oh you have election a new election laws in the commonwealth of virginia which check this out and you know remember the day it used to be you had to show up on election day show an id and vote in in a precinct at your local precinct in the commonwealth of virginia i don't know what it is here in arizona but in the commonwealth of virginia it's a mess yeah okay it became a 45-day voting spree it's not that bad here okay 45 days and here's the deal but we capitalized on it because churches could serve to collect balance so a an individual could uh ask for a an absentee ballot even if you weren't absent it used to be you could only get absolutely ballot if you're like overseas or something no no if you just don't want to go to the polls i can be an absentee voter so you get an absentee ballot to your home and then they could bring it to the church we could witness it receive their ballot and deliver it to the county election office so i stood up in front of our congregation i said guess what we're handing out ballots and you go home and you vote and come back we'll witness it and we're going to collect mass about oh you talk about people we're so outraged you're like this is illegal we're like no we went to the state board of elections and we said here are a bunch of ballots from our church they're like you can't do this this is not legal they had to call richmond and richmond said no it's legal you can take them and so we we were engaging our people in voting and the recalling school board members love it and and so yeah it was a great experience and so your church uh talk a little bit about your church you know when was it founded you're right in loudoun county yeah you're right there we're 30 miles west of washington dc so we're you know the land of politics uh that's two greek words poly meaning many and uh ticks meaning bloodsuckers but anyway uh so that's we're in the we're in the shadow of the nation's capital we're a suburb community bedroom community a lot of commuters into dc and uh our church we we started it 30 years ago my wife and i with 18 people and it has like six seven thousand now if you're ever in dc it's the most incredible church wonderful people we had a great event yeah we did similar to this yeah and uh it was a lot of fun now i get to ask you questions all right um and so the but also over the summer there was not a lot of chatter about who was gonna be the next governor it was kind of assumed terry mcauliffe's going to win this is a left-wing state okay that's very cute moms and dads in loudoun county enough yeah talk about all of a sudden this turned into an annoyance to the ruling class to all of a sudden to a legitimate political challenge yeah well not not to be partisan but just as a factual statement um there had been no republican elected a statewide office in virginia last 12 years and so and terry mcauliffe and the clinton machine you know they were running a lot of stuff and and in fact on election night we kept wondering some ballots are going to show up in a trunk somewhere at 3am you know well i was so upset at gary and that whole team i wanted to go i was up to like 3 45 i was like okay it's 1am call it and the paranoia was impressive i have to say yeah we've been through this before yeah they're about nope we're not doing 2020 again i get it but i mean yes you guys waited for like every single we did we waited for a long time but terry mcauliffe had been governor before and and you can't have successive um uh terms so you have to at least take a term off and so he was running again so people already knew what they were going to get with him but there was just this rising discontent and it's very similar across the nation a rising discontent for a lack of righteousness and even if somebody's not a christian to know what that term means a lack now of good american family values and and that rising to the surface people were tired of it and so they came out in droves and i and i really believe that the evangelical church turned the tide and you gave me a little too much credit but i really it's not our church really the evangelical church in the commonwealth of virginia turned the tide and went with a man who professed christ glenn younkin makes a very um direct public profession of faith and and i i knew him personally because we both served on the board of the museum of the bible and so um and in fact when he told me hey gary i'm going to run for governor inside i was like okay i'm going to run for president whatever uh are you gary no i'm not no no no no no no no um but uh but you know the lord just had his hand in it and i think really the evangelical community came out and turned the tide for that election i'll i'll give you the credit because i know you you won't receive it publicly what i saw at gary's church was a motivated engaged church so similar to this and it was in uh talk a little bit about and again we want to be careful not to make this you know explicitly political for many different reasons but talk about how in virginia there was a feeling you were outnumbered talk about that where some people i'm sure you heard some form of the incantation gary it's over yeah virginia's the new california stop it yeah do you hear that a little bit like yeah it's over what's the point well when you look on a map of virginia the the suburbs around washington dc are extremely progressive i never know what that term means like what are you progressing to but anyway you know yeah yeah that's true um and did they hear that on your mic i don't know said hell yeah yeah um and so but progressive ideology i mean listen what i've tried to say to our people when they think you're getting too political you're getting too political this is what i say i have i have just stayed true to where i've been for decades when people start to veer in this progressive direction then they look at me and they're like why are you being so political i'm not being political i'm staying true to god's word right where i've been for decades the only difference the only difference is that now i have to be more vocal about these issues because everybody in our congregation is dealing with these kind of issues and if we stay silent where are they going to hear truth and so and so as as i start saying hey listen this is what god's word says you know we we love everybody but we unders we need to understand what is right what is wrong listen isaiah chapter 5 talks about what are those who call good evil and evil good who substitute light for darkness and darkness for light and sweet for bitter and bitter for sweet we're living in the days of isaiah 5. because we're now living an upside down world where things that used to be called wrong a few decades ago are now called right and celebrated and vice versa and it also reminds me of the period of the judges where it says it was the time when there was no king and everybody did what was right in his own eyes and we have a very relative world right now where people think they can determine what truth is listen god determines what truth is and so when people say when people say well you're just getting too political no i'm just getting very biblical i'm just talk i'm just talking about right and wrong issues as god lays it out and when the culture starts veering in a different direction then it looks like we're becoming so super political no we're just being very biblical and i'm so glad you mentioned that so so let's talk about a component of that where some people say well i'm a pastor if i speak out on this it's going to destroy my church since you've spoken out on these issues or you've always has your church grown very much now what i say to people is for every family that leaves probably three families come because when somebody gets offended you know it there's there's always somebody else who's looking for just somebody tell me the truth you know i will have people come to our church they may not necessarily agree with me at first but they're hungry for somebody just tell me the truth i just want to hear a straight talker just somebody who's not going to be playing games with words just give me the truth let me tell you where it really started for me charlie in 2008 um because i bought into you know i drank the kool-aid about pastors shouldn't be political you know separation of church and state all that nonsense where people think that that's actually in the constitution or the declaration it's nowhere in our founding documents at all a letter that thomas jefferson wrote in 1802 that's another story but here's the deal i just thought that that's where the churches should be non-political okay 2008 i had david barton come to my church it was an awesome guy president founder of wall builders it was an election year in 2008. he and his wife cheryl took me and my wife terry out for dinner we're at outback outback steakhouse and he says to me do you ever preach election sermons i said i don't even know what an election sermon is he says yeah do you know that for the first like a couple hundred years of american history and in fact he turned me onto a two-volume set called american political sermons of the founding era from like 1730 until like the mid-1800s and i had the volumes in my in my library at home where pastors would get up and preach election sermons and call out the candidates and even say things like this candidate is standing for truth this one isn't now you know who to vote for don't vote for this guy vote for this guy you know i'm being very direct well what has happened since is see 1954 you have the johnson amendment when at the time you know senator then lbj lyndon baines johnson convinced the senate and the whole congress and it was signed into law that a 501 c 3 organization cannot officially endorse a candidate so that's one thing that stands you know if pastors then are intimidated by that and then and then you have the separation of church and state clause and so again pastors become intimidated like i can't i can't wade into this fray but the reality is and the reason why jefferson wrote that letter in 1802 to the danbury baptist convention was because the baptists were asking a question about their freedom as their religious freedom and he wrote in his letter and he used that phrase that there's a wall of separation between church and state but in the context he was reassuring the baptist at the convention that the first amendment was to protect the church against government intrusion it was to keep government out of the church not the church out of government and look what we're living through today yeah that the government is coming into churches and shut them down that's right same fear it's the same fear and so what i say to pastors because i was in the boat of what i would say was ignorance there's it's either negligence of your pastoral duty to engage people in the political process because it's part of being salt and light i truly believe that every aspect of life we are to have an impact and influence that's salt and light that's what we're called to why all of a sudden do people say well don't just don't take it into the political arena no that's part of it so so it's either negligence that we're not pastorally doing what we're supposed to do or it's ignorance we don't know that we have the freedom to do this and so um yeah so i was up in the camp of ignorance and then in 2008 david barton you know challenged me and so in 2008 12 16 and 20 i've preached election sermons and i've gotten a little more direct with each passing election cycle and in 2012 i had our us congressman frank wolf he served one of the longest-serving congressmen in in congressional history like 36 years and he called me up in my office he was still in office he called me up at the church and he introduced himself congressman frank wolfen which i knew he was my congressman and but i didn't know him personally and he said somebody gave me a copy of your election sermon and i want to know how you got away with it and i thought i was in trouble i felt like he's he's he's but he's a good guy he loves the lord i mean i knew that much about him like why is he challenging me like this and i'm like well and i kind of explained you know just some of the things i've already shared and then he pauses and he goes well i just think it's great keep it up so i mean he was just he just emboldened me and ever since i've just continued to just try to help people understand here are the policies listen you can even strip the word politics out of it for the purpose of under and equipping the body of christ just talk about the policies what do the different parties stand for in terms of policies because politics shapes policies policies shape a nation and there goes your family with it so it's important that we are educated equipped informed engaged because the voice of the evangelical church should be loud and strong in the united states of america and so as a pastor i'll talk about how as you stand for righteousness and stand for these issues you say there's only two genders for example which is considered to be a thought crime in america today it actually helps you win people for christ though that it's the galatians 3 model that the law is a school teacher to christ do you is that your experience at your church that it actually it fastens and strengthens your congregation because they come to you then and the scriptures for guidance not tick tick-tock or whatever yeah right uh i'll answer that question with an email that i got i got an email from a guy who's president of a pharmaceutical company in in roslyn and he emailed me and he and he said that he and his wife and their four daughters have been coming to cornerstone for a few years and he said it this way he said gary we love coming to cornerstone because it helps me and my wife know we're not going crazy that's what he said and i read that email and i thought you know what if for no other reason that people who are who are now so confused listen don't allow the culture to steal the narrative like we know what is right what is wrong we know what's up and down we know what's true and false we can't allow the culture to shape the narrative we have that narrative we own that because it's based on god's word so god defines all that and so what i was encouraged by the email about was just the idea of just being truthful it helps people to know hey i'm not going crazy you know when when you hear all these nonsensical ideas that are floating around out there and then i come to church and i can get centered i can get centered vertically right and i can get centered horizontally with one another and so i can leave knowing i'm not going crazy and so it has emboldened our congregation and in a way that is you know and i and i try to tell people look you know let this passion um bring you to a place where you are going to be more useful to the lord for the sake of the kingdom don't let it make you so angry that that all you want to do is go turn over tables you know and so if you just become a table turning christian you're probably not going to be very influential in the world but if you but if you retain the zeal and you and you and you filter that in a godly way then we can have a great impact to change the culture rather than the cult culture changing the church i think that's i mean it's well said so let's there's some there's some people in this room that are new believers or people that aren't believers um you've been a pastor for a while now uh talk about um talk about how you got into this talk about also the need for everybody to give their life to christ yeah um and to live for christ and what does that mean in today's america with all this nonsense happening around us so a few months ago as i was just praying through how to navigate some of the craziness there were two words that came to my heart one is proclamation and one is one is refutation that as a pastor i have to still be focused on the proclamation of the gospel because it is the word of god and a relationship with jesus that will change people's lives but i also have to recognize that there are some things worth refuting in our culture so that people know that the some things are not right now if if i become only proclamation this is how you get saved and it's about a relationship with jesus and that that is my passion to see people come to faith but if that's all that i talk about then somebody might get saved but not know really how to apply it in day-to-day life i'm talking about how do you live out your faith how do how are you salt and light in a relationship with jesus to influence your world if i only talk about refutation you know we're going to refute this we're going to we're mad about this we're angry about this i'll create a congregation of remember those two old guys who would sit up in the balcony on the muppets and all they'd ever do is complain and they're griping and they're angry i don't want a church like that either right so i don't want to be known for just this angry chur you're refuting every you're against everything so we have to be for we have to be for jesus right we have to be proclaiming the gospel we have to also balance that with refuting the nonsense and the lies that are out there and helping people to apply the gospel in their daily walk with christ to real life and so yeah i mean i would encourage you if you don't know christ as your savior i mean you heard pastor tommy before we came up here just encouraging you to you know take that take that leap of faith and trust him as your savior i'll say this just to add to it when we started taking signatures when i said okay we're going to allow recall petitions to be signed for the school board members which by the way we recalled one she we had enough votes and she decided to quit tragically another member that we were recalling died in the middle of that i don't celebrate that at all i'm just saying you know so we've removed two and we're still um you know trying to remove others but here's what happened we had non-christian non-church-going people who again just love america and love their kids come to the church because we were having the petition signed in the atrium and they would stay and they'd come into the church service and and those people have been getting saved and they have come into a relationship with jesus so um wonderful things that god is doing and and that's the most important thing is coming to faith in jesus christ so i have uh i have a question for you i should ask this of every speaker what's your favorite book of the bible my favorite book personally is the book of psalms so it's the longest book not for that reason but because it is the longest book of the bible but i find it um in a chaotic world where i can easily go to bad places being frenzied and hurried and worried and and all caught up in the craziness i find psalms just soothes my soul talk about the context of how psalms was written what was david doing was he living the high life for yeah right so david i mean david wrote like three-fourths of the psalms but you know he was a man after god's heart he had great victories and he had very low points too you know we you know he's the shepherd boy who kills goliath but he's the man who falls into adultery and uh and by the way he was not a young man when he fell into adultery when you look at the at the chronology of his life he was about 50 years old when he fell into adultery with bathsheba but he was a man who was a war what i love about david was he was a man's man because he was a warrior but he wasn't afraid to cry and to show emotion so you see through the psalms the strength of a warrior who at some times he's saying lord kill my enemies and at other times he's saying lord you see me when i lie on my bed and weep at night and so i just love just the the raw genuine um you know just the tough and the tender guy of david and how the psalms i think appeal to all aspects of our lives for new believers what what one or two books do you really recommend them not leviticus no not although i although i'm gonna tell a leviticus story but i'm gonna answer your question i have a leviticus story too okay the answer to the question is typically we say the gospel of john it's a great book to start to read first if you're a new believer but so one of our sons played t-ball with a buddy and his parents um said to me one time i was so so terri and i were sitting in the stands or watching austin playing ball and this wonderful family not church goers not believers came and said hey we heard you pastor cornerstone we need to start coming to your church and i'm like okay great now we if you are familiar with calvary chapel we are affiliated with calvary chapel so chuck smith uh was my pastor until he passed away several years ago and one of the things that calvary chapel churches do well jack hibbs he's another good friend of mine and what mccoy yeah we teach straight through the bible we go genesis to revelation then we start over yeah and so when the when the flint and family said we're going to come to your church i was in the book of leviticus and i'm like no right i'm like you're going to come you're going to hear about mold and mildew and diseases and pus and ah this is not you've been wanting to come to church and now you're going to come to leviticus and i was like whining and then and then my lord like convicted me and like my word will not return void i'm like oh great you know and so so god nailed me on that so the first sunday that they came i'm talking about like levitical rights and the feasts disposing of bodies i mean it was almost that bad right they got saved that first sunday in the book of leviticus so god's word will not return void what's your leviticus story well my leviticus story is how i knew the founding fathers were awesome because they put leviticus on the liberty bell i mean that means they really knew their bible that is true i mean they could have put like genesis or yeah that's true yeah they put leviticus leviticus 25 yeah proclaimed liberty of which the land you are in um i also i also just love learning about the founding fathers i mean john adams spoke fluent hebrew every founding father knew their bible yeah they knew the implications of it um but yeah the i always joke around with dennis prager i say when's your bible commentary on leviticus going to come up yeah it's it's it it it it's a tough one i mean he jokes around the 25 000 words he's dedicated just on the verse on homosexuality just on that verse wow so it's a heady one okay um one or two more questions that will open it up for the audience yeah that's okay sure um just talk more broadly about someone out here that might be struggling a believer that gave their life to the lord and they're going through a tough time right now um you know i'm getting a lot of emails like this i have a pretty good sense of kind of kind of where people are politically but not just politically though just kind of where people are people are run down right now there's this thing called the great resignation like people are just kind of looking for purpose young people in particular what's your word of encouragement if there's someone who's a believer like okay pastor gary i i did the altar call thing what now yeah you know um what i try to tell people is the christian life is not a sprint it's a marathon and and and that it doesn't matter what kind of a start you got what matters is how well you finish and that there's going to be times in the course of running a marathon where it's going to be painful and you're going to feel like giving up but one of the things that god rewards is perseverance and sometimes when we become christians we want everything to just be wonderful what i try to remind people is this is not heaven this is this is earth our citizenship is in heaven we're looking forward to a day when we're going to be there this is why paul said i consider my present sufferings not worth comparing to the glory that awaits me in christ jesus because we can't lose sight of the fact that there will be valleys and there will be mountains in this life there's going to be ups there's going to be downs there's going to be times where we feel discouraged but that doesn't mean that god has left you or forsaken you because i will never leave you nor forsake you is what he says but we have to run the race with perseverance so that we can receive the crown which he has provided for us and that perseverance is sometimes hard it is hard but everything that is worth the victory is worth the endurance to get there you know ask any athlete anybody's gone into training it hurts it's painful it's difficult but the reward is worth it in the end and so that's what we have to keep our eyes on jesus the author and finisher of our faith who for the joy that before him endured the cross and and suffered for our sakes so that we might enjoy that eternal life with him we've got to keep that eternal perspective you could be a pastor i try to be i try to be honest you ever get that before once in a while it's just like jerry jones over there yeah yeah yeah jerry jackson season tickets by the way [Laughter] it's so funny i i we're we're catching up backstage and he showed me his card because the dream conference at the bottom it said jerry jones and i looked at him i was like are you actually jerry jo i was like look so much like jerry jones um so let's get ready for some questions here um and if we can the best way to do this students get priority let's please just keep it to questions not public proclamations or public announcements or gatherings you're having in the next i really want to get to as many as we possibly can but as we're kind of getting in into line here anything else on your heart gary you want to share with this audience before we open it up to i just appreciate how engaged i can tell you already are that's why you're here so thank you for being here i'll try not to be as corny as eric and taxis though i saw when you were because we're friends too and eric was a real he's a real problem i've had him speak at my church twice and every time i'm scared what is going to come out of his mouth and the way he dresses is just yeah ridiculous yeah he's going to the beach or something okay um you my young friend you are up let's hold on we got to turn on the mic one second and by the way let's give it up for our the amazing av team that's helped us throughout the last six months they've been amazing all right oh one more it's okay you got two you got two rehearsals can we try that one we will get to i promise is it on nope we'll try over here nope no luck that's okay i think we might have to turn them on i think you uh praised the av team a little too early no that's what i'm thinking i was trying to buy them some time yeah yeah i know you were i know you were it's called a film and they are deserving a v team has a lot of power you have just two chats answer them all right one of the two i think that might be working nope here no okay well we're to get it figured out um do you want to you have do you have a loud voice yeah you can come on up we have the elephant tre you know things so you might as well come on up so yeah i'm going to take this yeah that's fine oh perfect we know that mic works hi my name is micah stevens and i wanted to ask your opinion on how the biden fraud and how there was this secret thing where they counted the balance over again and they were actually trump and he won by a landslide you don't watch cnn do you so tell smart um are you chris cuomo yeah exactly no he's been suspended indefinitely so definitely yeah that's right um look so to answer your question there was so much shenanigans back in 2020 we need to make in my own personal opinion it needs to be a priority to find out what happened and fix 2020. it needs to be priority number one um i can go into great detail about it we have the footage from what happened in atlanta of the ballots magically being discovered under the table but the most thorough reference that is irrefutable and is very well researched of a woman that i really respect molly hemingway her latest book called rigged is incredible i encourage everyone to check it out if you have family friends that are skeptical like oh why are you still talking about 2020 go read that book it it will go through all of this it'll go through the late night ballot dump so it'll go through the signature verification issues it'll go through zuckerberg putting in 420 million dollars for the center for technology and civic life and she's done a terrific job and she's a legitimate journalist she's very fair i'm sure you've seen her on television a lot she's not a sensationalist she's not going above and beyond um but i i do hope that there's going to be some continued investigations into this um especially here in arizona because there's a lot of open questions still here in arizona gary you want to comment on that at all no plead the fifth okay god bless you thank you for being here tonight okay [Applause] okay my name is jamie peek i'm my question is so my friend is not republican he's democrat and so he's been in his house for a while for a long time he's been online for my school and he finally comes back and he doesn't play with me and i just want to know do you have any tips on it yeah first of all you guys are 10 so tell them to cut it out i mean it's ridiculous um seriously and your parents should the parents should get involved and be like we can hate each other our kids are 10 okay um but what you're highlighting is not surprising it's tragic um when i was 10 i didn't know what a republican or a democrat was okay let alone what my friends and this this is a this is a real thing and gary i want your thoughts on this that if you think the nastiness that you see is only going to be between 50 and 60 year olds no no that river goes all the way down to 10 year olds it is destroying lives of every single american citizen and you said something very interesting you would like to play with him wouldn't you yeah but he doesn't want to play with you it's interesting how that works right it's that unfortunately 99 of the time on the left and maybe one percent on the right i'm sure all of you have this friends that stop talking to you family members that stop talking to you it seems as if it's in the operating system in the programming on the left that if there's an idea or there's a world view that they disagree with immediate dismissal that is where cancer culture came from by the way and i want to broaden this to the whole audience if friends leave you you know blessed subtraction right but you shouldn't leave friends over politics you shouldn't you should not leave friends and don't do this if they leave you whatever like you can you don't fight for that you know like whatever have a nice day okay i've done that plenty but you shouldn't allow something as a difference of you know world view of how you think things should operate as be like i'm never going to talk to you because of this instead especially as christians were not called to do that gary do you have any thoughts on that well one of the things that struck me was that you said your friend is democrat and stays in his house all the time is your friend joe biden that's what that's the first thing that i thought the second you wouldn't be ten gary that's debatable but anyway i'm going to get over to see i get to leave yes i get to clean up your mess i did this at your church i'm not going to have you back because you'll repeat but but seriously though um what i find so tragic is that the people who talk about tolerance the most or the least tolerant and why is that it's so sad it really is sad but i would just encourage you you know you do your part to love your friend and be a good friend and you know pray for your friend but so we can't control our friends uh and so all you can do is try to be a good friend yourself yeah and the last piece of advice i'll give you is try to mend it try to keep friends regardless of political differences don't fall into that habit at a young age it's not a good way to live it isn't you end up siloing yourself off there will be people that leave your life but especially for 10 year olds i don't want to live in that type of country god bless you thank you for being here tonight thank you hi my name is sandra christensen and we're going through some school board shenanigans paradise valley unified school district pornography in the skulls and things of that nature there's a governing board meeting on thursday so my question is um as a person who's going to be running for governing board next year how can i keep my christian values and fight the good fight without having to tear people down because they're trying to tear us down yeah that's a great question um you know jesus said blessed are you when people persecute you and say all manner of evil against you um they did the same thing to the prophets right but great is your reward and i would just say as long as you are truthful and season it with grace and and you know you know a lot of times um especially married men have heard this before you're newly married have you ever have you ever heard this charlie it's not what you say it's how you say it have you ever heard that once or twice once or twice okay i've heard it once or twice myself too and so i would encourage you it's not always what you say you might be factual but it's it's how you say it and and just you know let let the love of the lord jesus come through but don't compromise the truth and god god will honor you for that and and this is something that's important now if you get into the business of principalities and you get into the business of politics you are now making a spiritual decision to play offense in a domain that according to paul and according to jesus is dominated by the enemy this is a theological position that christians don't like talking about openly but it's what the scriptures said right gary it's that you're now playing you're not you're now going to play offense in satan sandbox right so that means you have to understand and be equipped with the spiritual tools and weaponry to know what you're getting into what does that mean praying fasting going to church being around fellow christians right asking god for wisdom and he'll give it to you abundantly james 1 5. um always self-assessing like was i was i christ like in that situation at the same time did i tolerate evil in that situation right that's a balance isn't it as you say proclamation refutation um and look it's important to remember that and c.s lewis said it best where he said we need to launch a sabotage campaign an enemy occupied territory because we're living in enemy occupied territory and so when you're getting into that fight some christians don't realize that different than almost anything else if you're going to run for office you're going to come under arrows and attacks and backlash and so you have to then come into that posture it's like okay especially if you're going to proclaim righteousness and be disagreeable with the ways of the world as it says in romans 12 2 do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind so you might be able to see god's perfect and good will the second part of the verse on paraphrase that's the essence of it and the point is that the do not conform comes with a promise but that's hard and that comes the total transformation of it so i just want to encourage you and commend you and keep on showing up the freedom square if you can because you have a whole room of people here that are going to want to support you um but also understand it comes with a price but a price worth paying so god bless you thank you for being here hi my name is maverick and a great name thank you um i have someone that i deeply care about who thinks that uh kyle rindhouse should still be charged with something they haven't told me what but with the killing of those people um and i've seen the trial at least a good portion part portion of it sorry um where i didn't see anything wrong um and i was wondering if you have anything to say about it yeah i mean boy do they try to lock them up for something uh weapons charge got thrown out let me try to tie this in biblically you know someone said charlie as a christian it says thou shall not kill now interesting if you go into the hebrew it says thou shall not murder it's a very big difference and kyle did not have the intent to take life that night but self-defense is time and time again articulated and defended in in the bible and gary do you want to talk about that that's exactly right that there's a distinction in the ten commandments between murder and killing because some people have asked me law enforcement military hey i've had to kill people in the line of duty you're in you're an arm of the government you are doing something that is not murder sometimes there's killing but that's different from murder so yeah especially so you take the military example our rules of engagement are supposed to be almost all a self-defense posture right but let's just talk about kyle rittenhouse right what on earth and the criminal code can they
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