Charlie Kirk on Church Persecution, Civil Society, and Fighting for Truth in a Broken America

so charlie what do we need to talk about what's the most important thing i don't think much is happening so yeah there's not much going on yeah you know it's it's a slow news cycle as they might say look it's it's a very interesting time i've actually done a lot of traveling in the last few weeks um which is a very you must really hate yourself if you do that you have to wear the mask the entire time and it's you know not exactly fun but um been to michigan florida i was in new york uh all across the country is in dc yesterday in arizona this morning and here i am with you i feel that it's more more urgent than ever to be able to get truth out in front of people and and i think that right now we we as a country are seeing what happens when good people decide to do nothing and when certain good people such as yourself jack and your congregation start to stand up for truth so look i i'm processing this in real time like all of you and i'm starting to realize a couple things the first of which is this what's happening tonight in the churches across america this is going to be the salvation of our country it really will the church is the key to the moral order of a civil society and there's a reason why they want to keep the churches closed there's a reason why they don't want you to be able to congregate it's because as soon as all of you start to attend and you listen to the greatest most important book ever to exist in the history of the world when you start to understand the teachings of jesus christ when you start to understand that our rights are natural that come from god not from government all of a sudden gavin newsom means a lot less in your world all of a sudden and maybe maybe it also opens and liberates conversation maybe all of a sudden you realize that it's going to be free people in a free society that are going to come across to the best solutions not these bureaucratic top-down orders that have just so much harm and pain and suffering on people across the country that i've seen jack and i'll tell you this that as the churches start to reopen i'm starting to see it pastors are starting to follow because it takes leaders like jack to pay the price and he goes forward and people start to follow and we're starting to see in my opinion a tonal shift in our country in the last couple weeks even the last couple days i can feel it all of a sudden people are and i i felt the holy spirit here tonight i think you do as well where all of a sudden look this the forces of darkness are going to strike their hardest right before truth is really going to spread and win that is when the forces of darkness are going to be their full frontal offensive and boy have we seen that in the last couple weeks in the last couple months and what i'm telling you i am bringing you i believe very good news that we are close to something that is so righteous and good and true i think we're gonna have a revival in our country the likes of which we have never found i truly believe that i do believe that yeah charlie you said something on one of your recent podcast i think it was with eric texas you made mention of the fact that which was fantastic that the writing the pillaging the protesting that's going on in the streets in the correlation between that and the church is being sequestered yeah i mean it's it's a really puzzling thing for me while why some people are confused about this they say why is it that so many people are angry and looking for meaning i say well it's because you closed the churches down man i mean it's yeah church is more than just flipping on your tv at 10 30 in your pajamas in the living room church is the ecclesia the gathering of believers it's it's you turning to your friend and saying hi how you doing and they say honestly i'm not doing well i need you and i needed that message today and what we have been led to believe is now church is nothing more than a digital consumption exercise where church is a 24 7 365 institution where it's brothers helping believers helping sisters helping people in need and so then we removed that and i asked jack this today and i said on average how many people come to christ on easter sunday and he says anywhere probably between 100 to 150 maybe even more on an easter sunday the most important day that we celebrate as christians for good reason they stole that from us and we let them they stole easter sunday from us so i think to myself my goodness how many millions of lost souls out there would have become bible-believing christians on easter sunday if the churches would have remained open how many people would have dropped down their idolatry of fake witness and said jesus come into my life and yet the secular humanist status said keep your church closed because i told you so and then all of a sudden we wonder why in late may we see a destruction of civil society because oh my gosh we forgot that it was the church that built civil society that's right and when civil society starts to crumble and you don't have the singular thing that founded that very civil society it should be a rather logical thing maybe you should open the institution that gives people meaning and gives them an understanding what responsibility is and a connection to the almighty and the sacraments of communion and so there's a direct connection there and i think there's a reason for it it's because the statists under understand and the people that want to control you because that's what this is about is about power they want government to become god they want white fragility to become the bible they want the 1619 project to be more well versed in the teachings of matthew if you think i'm joking just step into a public school in la unified school district and you'll see exactly what i mean they know that if they can hurt the church they can weaken the church then all of a sudden they will replace man's search for meaning yes with government becoming that deity with nicole hannah jones from the new york times becoming the next philosophical leader where she just spouts garbage and nonsense professionally every single day and so we have to understand very clearly and you've done such a great job of this jack and i'm inspired by you and you're a hero for this which is we are not going to allow tyranny and our country to exist any longer whether it be gavin newsom whether it be the the little micro tyranny and here's a really important point is that we should protest and recall gavin newsom and he's a coward he's not what are you gonna do i mean come on i mean he really is a very weak person and no i mean this and i and we i pray i truly do genuinely pray for him and where he prioritizes planned parenthood abortion clinics and marijuana dispensaries over the body and blood of jesus christ yes and he argues the church is not essential but and i think that's actually a wrong phrasing by the way i think a better way to phrase it and ask is salvation essential it's not just essential it's like the only important thing right i mean it's the idea of essential is somehow there's a hierarchy of something more important than salvation and so look gavin newsom he says well i might arrest people i said you'll be the first christian to pay a price for what is good and what is right and what is true and so if they come arrest jack come arrest me alongside a jack because i'll tell you what about time christians start standing for something in this country and [Applause] and i and here's the one thing is make no mistake this is a social conditioning exercise where they're trying to see how far they can push us right right they're trying to see oh wow the christians won't speak if we take easter and palm sunday from them they won't speak out if we take pentecost from them they won't speak out if month after month after month all of a sudden the physical institution of the church and the gathering necklace of believers mean nothing but the moment that someone like jack hibs or rob mccoy says oh no come arrest us they're like oh yeah just kidding sorry um and by the way they might storm through this right now like mao's red guard with their little red book and the praetorian guard and guess what jack and i will say fine the part of the doctrine of civil disobedience is we will pay the price but you are going to have a couple thousand very angry local people that are not going to like their voters and they vote and they pay taxes and the silent majority won't be silent much longer and they are betting that our decency translates into apathy and i can tell you this there is a lot of green space between us being decent and us being indecent and i'm telling you i will never think we should get to indecent but that doesn't mean we have to be quiet it's a very important thing it's an incredibly important distinction because and i truly believe that some christian pastors have been emailing me privately said charlie what do i do and i say in some ways why don't you surrender anything that is earthly for the divine truth to be able to bring people to jesus christ they say i might lose my church and i say well first of all you probably won't probably but even if you do if you fight for what is right for what is good and what is true isn't that what we are called to do every single day every day and so and what the great irony of this entire thing and it kind of reminds me of some of the people in the republican party where i've tried to find to see if they have a spine and i can't quite figure out if they do or not which is the great irony and i'll do the connection in a second is that this church has never flourished like it has now it has ever grown because people right now in times of chaos are looking for order they're looking for truth churches that actually stand have record attendance record tithing record conversions record salvation record amounts of people that are looking for that meaning and so i'll tell you what as ernest hemingway said this is going to happen gradually then suddenly the bad guys are going to be on the run very quickly as soon as reasonable and decent people stop being the silent majority and the vocal majority it's going to happen very very quickly charlie we've got a radical civil unrest in many of the west coast cities the key cities uh just the other day jerry nadler when asked when asked about the pillaging and the rioting of portland oregon nadler said that antifa and that action is a myth it's not happening you know it's so incredibly orwellian what's happening right now and i'll if you don't know if you haven't read 1984 or animal farm i encourage you to do it it's like reading the l.a times it's happening in real time um and let me explain to you how how orwellian how orwellian thinking works is written by george orwell in the 1950s orwell was a socialist until he wasn't because he actually realized what that nonsense backwards worldview actually believed his most famous quote was socialism i just love it so perfect orwell said socialism is much more about hating the rich than helping the poor i said that is just perfect and so orwell wrote 1984 and in it he talks about that even worse than a lie there's something that can be called doublethink or doublespeak or newspeak so here's how it works and this is what's happening with jerry nadler on the left where there it's much worse than them lying to us so let's pretend jack is eating some cookies here and i go up to jack i say jack how many cookies have you eaten and he says i've only eaten three he really ate ten that would be a lie right here's how double speak works i go up to jack and i say jack how many how many cookies have you eaten and he's got crumbs all over his face and cookies and he says i haven't eaten any cookies you have no no trust me i've eaten no cookies i'm i promise no cookies no you've eaten all the cookies in fact you're also a racist like what no i'm not like no i promise he's like shut up and take a knee i've never eaten cookies you're also a bad person and your country is awful like no i promise i haven't eaten cookies you start to think yourself what kind of bizarre thing and that's double speaking it's 1984 dystopianism and he prophesied it perfectly and looked it's really in first timothy what's the exact verse to live quiet and peaceable god tells us that he wants us to pray for the king and those that are over us in authority that we why what's the reason that we might live a quiet and peaceable life so not portland basically not portland not seattle not l.a i was reading that the other day i said my goodness he was telling us to live lives like whatever's not happening in downtown seattle and the former country that used to be called chaz or chop or whatever that wonderful experiment was which really interests me because you know i i i visit college campuses so you don't have to and and i and i i deal with these people right and it's it's it's a it's a very sinister combination between remarkable arrogance and resentment and totally uninformed opinion right so they're they're so cons they're so committed to being correct they're constantly wrong but they're never in doubt it's an incredible combination right that's well so i'll never forget once one of these one of these rocket scientist philosophers came up to me he was 20 and he took in a philosophy course so he knew everything about philosophy and university of minnesota and i i think i saw him on television the other day burning down a building or something i was like that's the guy i knew he was destined for great things and so it was a couple years ago at university of minnesota and he said charlie you don't understand once we get rid of police and private property that's when human beings can go back to their normative state the primitive state and everything will go back into a utopian place and and for this is this is a this is an idea that was theorized by the french fool if you want to know where most bad ideas from just go to france i mean it's my gosh it's just jean-jacques rousseau i mean the guy was a hypocritical privileged brat who basically we got a lot of our bad ideas in the west from him but he argued very very bluntly that we should have the primitive over the civilized the infant over the adults the passionate lover over the calm spouse i mean basically everything your child learns in college can be originated back to this clueless you know let's say let's stop there a guy from france by jean-jacques rousseau so so this this idea of we just get rid of society that's the problem it's not us no you're actually awesome you are perfect you don't have original sin it's societal sin that's what you have to understand that the difference is right now right so this this this philosopher from university of minnesota who just took uh frenchmen and the freshman inter introductory class of how to hate america right and so he was telling me charlie you don't understand it's this great thing and i'll never forget this conversation because i said one day you're gonna get what you want and it's not going to end well and i said one day you guys are going to get so bold and you might actually form your own little communal country and write me a memo on how that goes and he said i can't wait it'll be brilliant the revolution is coming and this is a couple years ago and actually ended up acting on these foolish ideas and so they founded chaz or chop or whatever which in a very interesting way i was always i was perplexed by this at turning point usa we sent journalists into chas and we infiltrated it and they had borders it was really bizarre it was like guarded that was the first card and they they had they had id checks i'm like well now we can have voter id everywhere now right because in order to get into chaz you had to check your identification um and so they also so you go in there and they have no police and all this and incredibly bad things continued to happen and tragically two people died and one african-american black kid died who was a teenager murdered and it's this amazing thing jack when you get rid of police people still do bad things it's almost as if original sin actually exists in our world and that the bible is completely correct that we're broken so unbelievably depraved by nature that we are in need of a savior that only a loving god could deliver to us that it's actually what is in our book is true and right and so but this is what's really what we're up against and i want to just frame this for you because you say who could possibly defund the police who could want that they come from a world view that's right that we are actually awesome human beings that we by nature are good this is what we're up against right what's happening right now and this is what really frustrates me with a lot of the republican parties just how myopic they get in their conversation they're like well maybe we can pass a police reform bill maybe you can maybe you can't but you're missing the broader point we have just introduced a national conversation on human nature and you think this is about police reform this is a beautiful opportunity to be able to defend something that through 5000 years of history and this incredible book that tells us that is ultimate truth that human beings are broken by nature and we we know this and the left doesn't believe this they actually are so incredibly confident in their own ubers in their own philosopher king world i can fix human beings all we have to do is get rid of the police and then give a little health care and no borders and of course it's a bunch of rubbish and nonsense in balderdash but but what's i got all sorts of words that are non-swear words to say describe the left by the way i being a being a podcaster that has pg-rated audience i it's the incredible of words i can use to describe the american left is limitless so that's a fun sidebar so um so yeah jerry i guess the point was about jerry and adler and that's i mean that's to kind of complete the point was was this they they truly believe the radical left absolutely and completely believes that society is a mistake that the what the systems we have around us are systems of oppression that must be dismantled undone and deconstructed because they have the better idea to be implemented and then we can actually be harmonious people in utopia which literally means nowhere if you look at actually what utopia means that's what they believe so right now we're in a discussion on human nature we should win that conversation we should win that argument do you think there's any court i think you just answered this actually but just to highlight it do you think there's any correlation to the fact that two of the least churched cities in america happened to be portland in seattle of course there's almost no president of church witness and it would be nice to hear a republican say that once wouldn't it i mean but look here here's and i say this is we we we have an amazing opportunity to be able to defend right now something that is true and paul says it defend whatsoever is true i mean we are called to christians to call out things that are not correct not factual not true in every single part of our life because everything that you encounter matters we're told as we're told that as christians anytime that something that gets told that is rooted in a lie that is a tool used by the evil one to try to deceive us and bring us into confusion and chaos so when people say something like everything is actually wonderful in portland you don't understand 56 days of riot and anarchy this is actually it's a some it's a summer of love actually is what it is yes yeah and and and it's summer of love until they start protesting outside of the mayor's office right which is what they do and and so yes there's a direct correlation and we have to understand that this country that was founded it wasn't an accident and that's a really important thing that we have to teach our kids unlike other kind of civilization toppling and just just the the constant cycle if you will we are going to control this piece of land and we're going to put it over with our tradition our country is so different than that we don't teach our young people this was a deliberative process of reading reflecting praying and fasting of what do we want to create and this was founded this wasn't something that we backed into like oh my gosh what if we just i have this free speech thing i came up with it and everyone can say whatever they want everyone's going to own guns and like ben franklin like this country's going to be lit right like this is going to be great right no no there's a reason for all of this right this wasn't some sort of juvenile experiment in trying to have people indulge themselves this was a study of mesopotamia and athens and greece and rome and aristotle and plato and aquinas and descartes hume and luck and and you said okay here's what they got wrong here's what they got right and the enlightenment understood this and locke theorized very simply that yes we have natural law and from natural law we have natural rights and then they said well what if the theocracy said that won't work because in your state-run religion actually make people less likely to go to church so let's have ideas that are actually built upon that of christianity the bible the greatest book ever to exist in the history of the world we like that and everyone in our population is basically understands it's the moral order but we want to have a pluralistic society and the freedom of speech because good ideas must be defended not be to shove down people's throats because we just say this is what it is people are going to find a way to disconnect from it because that's human nature they want to challenge and question we know that from the enlightenment and we know that from basically the problems that the catholic church had with trying to have state-run religion the founders didn't want that but they still wanted the moral order and that's why in our birth certificate the declaration of independence is the laws of nature and nature's god very explicitly where it said you know what king george this whole tyranny and autocracy thing not so fast my friend we have a better idea from ideas that are derived from the law of abraham and moses and the tradition of the bible that was fulfilled by the covenant of jesus christ we're going to try out freedom of speech protect our family rights to privacy states rights and guess what if we get something wrong we can course correct it because we don't have to worry about your tyranny one size fits all centralized control we have a republic if we can keep it let's see what happens this was the biggest risk in human history that's right i want you to understand there was no there was no precedent to this it wasn't they didn't they did they had very lit they had very little to no civilization precedent they took this risk and they said we actually trust our people who were freedom-seeking pilgrims who brought everything across the atlantic ocean many of them died even more of them paid a huge price in more ways than one go forth try out this liberty thing and oh my goodness it's spread like wildfire every country that has civil society they should say thanks america we owe you we started it we rebelled against tyranny for a reason for a moral good and a moral government and we should be proud of that every single day and for the societal deconstructionists and the arsonists that try to say this bitter lie they say well america was founded on slavery and if i made uh jack go into this you're quoting now who is that nicole hannah jones yes she has a very perplexing i just wanted to make sure we give credit she has red hair i just don't quite yeah sorry go ahead yeah no no i mean yeah i want to give credit where credit is due when when complete rubbish gets spewed from the paper of record i want to make sure i get it right unlike them because they don't get it right um so nicole hannah jones she is on a pathological campaign to make sure your kids hate america and so nicole hannah jones red hair see her on tv always talking about how awful white people are and how awful our country is she's a bitter racist i actually call her racist because i think racism is hatred of anyone of any skin color at any time i think it is sinful and hateful and awful and it is a sin that simple okay so she says that our country was founded in 1619 the first year that slaves came to our country this is not correct it's not so if you actually look at the founding of our country 1776 this great leap forward 2 000 years forward derived of course from the teachings of athens and the combination of jerusalem aristotle plato descartes aquinas lock all the best practices put into one authored by who thomas jefferson very important i'll get back to him in a second who says laws of nature and nature's god what happens in 1777 first state ever to abolish slavery vermont says that's it we're done why we're inspired by this document they abolished slavery we were inspired on the abolition of slavery when they were putting together the constitution never it was never a conversation ever don't let the people the new york times or nicole hannah jones to tell you any different there was never a question of whether or not we would have slavery it was how we were going to get rid of this sinful practice it was around for thousands of years it was around before christ it was around after christ it is a sin so our country was founded constitutional convention 1787 in 1787 george washington says no new slaves at all no slavery in the northwest territories so anything explored no slavery at all they won't teach your kids that then moving forward in the constitution you can read it yourself 20-year moratorium on the slave trade you got 20 years southern states then it is coming to an end reappears thomas jefferson actually introduced a bill in the early 1790s in the virginia house of commons who said that slavery was an awful practice i want to get rid of it now mind you it was probably one of the most perplexing pieces of hypocrisy in history because he himself was a slave owner but he still was arguing for a moral good societally failed in the virginia house eventually it eventually of course it succeeded we saw in the 1790s almost every single northern state abolished slavery by the time 1807 happened thomas jefferson had his time to shine thomas jefferson third president united states of our country that 20 years tick tick tick tick tick and the constitution right they did that as a bargain in the several southern states thomas jefferson on the first day he was legally able to abolish the incoming of any new slaves into the united states of america 20 years into our founding that is something we should be proud of we were founded from the moment that we started that said that this was wrong and this is evil now mind you it wasn't a perfect history went through decades of ups and downs and we went through a bloody civil war but show me another country that sacrificed so much brother against brother and father against son to accomplish something that what the churches were screaming and the pews and the pulpits and thaddeus stevens was inspired by a pastor to go to congress and say slavery is anti-american our founders said it thaddeus stevens said it we fought this bitter civil war and abraham lincoln kept the republic together on this union-ist idea that i think americans best america's best day can be ahead of us where all men are equal and free fast forward all the way to frederick douglass where he says that we need to abolish slavery why because i'm so inspired by the declaration of independence he was an abolitionist a black republican who understood it go all the way fast forward to the great martin luther king jr who himself lived a very let's say he had questionable moral decisions but he was arguing for what a moral good why do i keep on saying this because people can act sinfully personally but argue for something righteously publicly and they should be remembered for what they did good publicly not for what they did less than desirably privately it's a very important thing people say well we got to get rid of all these people but dare you forget what they sacrificed for our country and martin luther king said in that beautiful speech i come here to cash in the check of the promissory note of the declaration of independence he didn't say that this document was racist he didn't say we got to shred it from its roots he says this document says all men are created equal and i'm telling you congress to pass the civil rights act from that moment that we started this country to the civil rights act of the 1960s it was a constant theme a margin of progression to be better and isn't that what we do every single day in our own life to try to be better today than we were yesterday we cannot forget our history we should be proud of it no other country has pursued a moral good like the united states of america be proud of this country charlie are we not though now reaping 50 60 years of university uh what's the word uh indoctrination indoctrination and i was going to say a detox from truth regarding the teaching of wrong history teaching of of absolute craziness where now these kids are adults and now they're in congress or now they're running they're whatever they are and they hate this nation they don't even know it they don't even know they don't a bit of what you just said have we not made these kids in our universities in our public school system absolutely and look this is this is going to be a very difficult thing for us to societally unpack as a culture in the next couple of years but we have to admit that we were much more afraid of offs losing societal status then our kids possibly being trade trained to not believe in god and hate america and we sent our kids to these universities for decades and then they all of a sudden become bitter resentful activists in the streets and we said where did i go wrong well you sent the indoctrination camp might have played a very big role in that and it's a mass media campaign and understand i'm actually very optimistic about this because i think that in some ways i do believe that well first of all we're going to win because we've already won and so it's real in some ways the the bad battle was already done by jesus christ our lord and savior so in some ways all of this is kind of just let's bring as many people along let's do the best we can and all that so i i have a cheerfulness to me when i'm able to fight this stuff where don't you do you realize we're up against very bitter resentful and arrogant people do you notice that and they're bitter in some ways because they a lot of them have not yet come to christ they don't believe in god they're resentful for not very good reason but they've been taught in gratitude right so here's the divide that's happened in america right now is that we have one side of our country that is incredibly angry incredibly angry that they live in america the other side is incredibly thankful that they live in america you see the bible in the new testament talks about this quite a lot and you could cite the scriptures far better than i can pastor jack the importance of gratitude the importance of saying thanks and i think that we have an entire day that's uniquely american thanksgiving around that idea of saying thanks it's a uniquely christian thing actually when you think about it because how could an atheist say things who are they thinking right i mean seriously who are they saying thank you to themselves i mean that's like really maybe that's incredibly not narcissistic maybe they are explains a lot um but you're thankful that a creator was able to give you this gift you're thankful for a family thankful you're breathing you're thankful for all these different things i think i think that gratitude is the fruit that makes all the things taste sweet i think that if you're not you're not if you don't have gratitude especially for a country that you live in then why wouldn't you rip that country apart and then why wouldn't you destroy it well gratitude comes from an understanding of the passage and the journey that your country has had so you remove the history you by definition and remove the gratitude and it's very it's very diabolical and incredibly pathological because the people that are purveying it and communicating to our kids they're actually themselves very very resentful people you will not find a thankful person teaching gratitude to another person it's almost never and gratitude is passed from one ungrateful person to another almost always right and so you have an ungrateful person passing upon their in great their ingratitude and this happens because one of the few ways that they can psychologically cope with the nihilism that sets in when you don't believe in an ultimate creator you don't believe in the type of ecclesia that we're able to gather the only way you can cope and find meaning is be able to get other people to be miserable alongside you it's that old adage we say it a lot miserably love misery loves company my goodness is that true and so i ask myself the question a couple things young men in particular because there's a crisis with young men in our country we got to get really serious about it it's a very serious thing and people say you're not allowed to talk about it so that means i talk about it a lot extra because there's a real crisis here and and there's a crisis with young women too but it's different the the male crisis actually i think is in some ways much much more urgent because young men come to me and say charlie what am i supposed to live for so find something that you could take responsibility for don't just indulge yourself all the time they say well what does that mean responsibility means that if you're not there someone else fails that's what responsibility that's right you're not there your kid doesn't get picked up from school you're not there your small group falls apart you're not there your job is less effective that is responsibility go find some and put as much on your shoulders you could possibly bear and it's gonna get awful and tough and go do it because that's actually what's going to give you meaning and we don't teach our kids this instead instead we teach our men in particular we teach our men in particular you're awful okay i got that no you're really awful okay thanks go go become a woman what no i don't want to do that and in fact we tell them there's something so incredibly awful we teach them we teach them we break them down so much that we wonder why youth suicide is going up so dramatically when you wonder why drug usage and social isolation it's like well maybe you shouldn't have spent the first 15 years of that young man's life saying they're the worst thing on the planet maybe instead you should have said go pick yourself up stop acting like a punk don't swear stop doing drugs get up earlier and find some meaning in your life and that means responsibility and that's how you got to talk to young men because it's different than young women and it's talked about in proverbs right if you don't work you don't eat and i think there's actually a deeper psychological truth to that actually which is if you don't work you don't find responsibility you're not going to be able to keep going right what is the what is the metaphorical truth behind eating it's that i can keep doing what i want to do to the next day right and so for our crisis with young people that's happening see what colleges do and what they should do but they don't we'll kind of talk about it what colleges should do let's start there colleges should say my goodness what an awful broken chaotic world that we have i'm going to try to make you stronger so you can endure the suffering better that you can straighten out your path that you can have stronger shoulders that you can bear the burden and then you'll be more prepared for the forest for the swamp for the for the demons for the people that will stab you in the back because you're gonna suffer but i'm gonna help you make sure that you can endure it a little bit better so your life will be a little less miserable that's basically what we should teach them in college instead instead we teach them this if anything scares you tell me and i'm going to remove it seriously this is what we do in college if anything dares challenge you yes scream with your hands up and say microaggression trigger warning safe space i don't like the way that sounds remove it from the conversation and we wonder why we have an entire generation mostly of kids that are afraid to leave their own shadow are free afraid to even to have their own meaning it's because we have infantilized these children at the most important time of their life when we're supposed to be able to say you're not the most important thing in the world stop indulging yourself you're actually a coward for looking at that stuff on your phone at 2am you're actually not doing something heroic by drinking more than your the friend next to you no one cares how many social media likes that you have how about you go be loyal to a singular human being get married find a job act with meaning have a bunch of kids and then go to church that's going to make your life better not limitlessly indulging in the next chemical substance that might be on the table college does the exact opposite charlie you mentioned something earlier about um suicide yeah and i've lost many friends to suicide and go ahead you know regarding the age in which we're in right now uh there's various ways to commit suicide and one of the ways to commit suicide almost always is the way of losing hope when hope is gone it's great you're done there's a lot that can go on in your life that doesn't lead to suicide but when you lose hope and hope is very very i believe and separately connected to purpose when you have hopelessness you're done and that means you're done by either the rope or a gun you're done when you lose hope you're dead and here's the thing a lot of young people today are in the basement in their pajamas at two o'clock in the afternoon and they're actually committing suicide they're in route to losing hope if they stay on that path it may take a longer time satan doesn't care as long as he gets you there somebody could lose hope in a matter of moment because their dreams were dashed and the experiment blew up and it didn't work or they lost all their money in the stock market in five seconds and they lose hope and they bite a bullet but the same terminus the enemy targets for any young man or young woman who sits in their house and rots without a purpose satan just licks his chops well yeah and i i want to i've lost dear friends to suicide a friend of mine from high school eddie committed suicide one of the hardest things that i had to process and for those who lost friends to suicide it really does a torturous thing to the people around it's it's not an easy thing it's not and a lot of prayer a lot of reflection and still i struggle with it because my goodness you know what what were the steps that were taken it's a very serious thing and and our politicians refuse to engage on this topic they just absolutely do and and this is a cultural crisis and it's happening at an increasingly alarming rate and there's a couple things that i think that actually have contributed to this and there's not one sole piece of this but part of it is that we have taught young children and young people in particular self-esteem not self-control and it's a very important thing and dennis prager talks about it a lot and he's phenomenal where if you actually teach people as in the halls of harvard it's this beautiful quote and they're going to remove it i'm sure because it makes far too much sense it says the law are the wise restraints that keep men free and what that really is saying that if you do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it you're actually going to be a slave to whatever those things are and when christ said we are going to liberate you from sin he actually he literally means that when you are free from the addiction and free from the sinful pattern and behavior that you have but much more materially as we have this in our country about suicide and self-worth i think that in a lot of different ways we have not been so as blunt and as honest we should about the reality of the world that we live in i think that we try to tell young people that we somehow can create a better more comfortable world for you if we are just able to shut up a couple more voices and do all this when we really should be talking about creating stronger tougher people that can endure the incredible persecution and suffering that is inevitable in life because life is absolutely a tragic exercise and suffering i mean the bible tells us any sort of life experience tells us we know that and so once you are able to communicate that clearly and young people say wow that sounds awful but here's what you can do about it here's here's how you can actually get through it and that's where we we get this wrong completely and totally where the conversation when it comes around meaning what is going to keep you going from one day to the other we are not in your pajamas at two o'clock in the next day is actually a doctrine of connectedness and we don't talk about this where that a lot of times people need to know that other people are relying on you and that's the idea of responsibility right is that of course you have a responsibility for yourself but why be responsible for yourself it's because another person is going to make want to make sure they see you at 7am because you actually have something to offer this bitter and broken world that you actually might have something deep within the bowels of your depraved existence that matters that you might have something that you can contribute for the betterment of the kingdom and when i talk about responsibility to young men and young people they they light up they say oh my goodness that's that's really something that's i i've never heard of that i've just heard about how everything around me is wrong and is awful and we talk about the responsibility of christians right there's so much responsibility put on our shoulders every single day and there's a greater microscope and persecution around that but suicide is nothing to be trivialized it's a very serious thing and there's many contributing factors to it a lot and some of it i think stems from in a lot of different ways um how we how and a lot i think social media plays a huge role in it i can go into a more practical sense of that i think those little smartphones that we all have have done incredible damage to social status of young people and i think we have to have the real conversation around that in our country but from a more a more serious sense that i have this is that there's someone listening to this inevitability inevitably by the law of averages and all i have to say is if you're thinking any form of self-harm all i have to say is you know what you're right life is really really hard it is awful but there's something that you have to offer that actually might make somebody else's life a little less awful and that's a reason to keep going and if that just if just one person needs to hear that today then this visit was worth it so charlie i want to i want to change it up with a in a strange way to come into the conversation so why why is it that the physicians i know physicians that attend this church they tell me uh jack the biggest thing to fear out there right now medically outside of cancers and outside of of other things diabetes and all the biggest thing to fear out there right now and i'm sorry i can't say the name of the but there's there's two flus that are out there that's been up there for a long time there's two flus running around that that are very fatal very dangerous but covet is way down on the list but you wouldn't get that by the media you wouldn't get that by the press covet is for real we get it but it's not the most lethal thing that's out there right now what's going on yeah i'm gonna i i want us i won't be able to comment on that in particular but i will say look i lost a dear friend yesterday to the virus and it's really hard to to to talk about and still um wrestling through that and reconciling it the original mentor and person that believed in me at turning point usa and uh he was he was 80 years old and internally optimistic person he was just he i mean honestly so if your life has been touched by anything i've ever said or turning point usa you can thank this man bill montgomery for that because he was he was a 72 year old eternal optimist who grabbed me when i was 18 years old and i was i was lost and this is a great lesson for any for anyone out there who are saying what can i contribute to the world we'll find a young person and do exactly what he did to me and he said charlie i was i wasn't really sure what i wanted to do with my life and i didn't get into west point college just wasn't speaking to me it just wasn't what i wanted to do and out of nowhere like the holy spirit filled him and came to me in an event after i spoke out when i was 18 years old in high school this man came up to me bill and he said charlie don't go to college what is what are you talking about don't go what are you talking about who are you and like i i'm in suburban america i have good grades you know i'm eagle scout like what don't go to college like and he had the smile that could light up an entire room and he said uh don't go to college he said i think that there's something in store for you the likes of which you could never imagine this was a 72 year old right and um geez so it was it was a very amazing journey and i ended up not going to college and starting turning point in june of 2012 and he was the original mentor and traveled the country with me and i wanted to give up uh six months into it and he he knew how to talk to me i'll tell you that much and it's a really important thing right now know how to talk to people when who you're talking to he said he said no he said charlie you know what if you give up i'll be very disappointed in you and that's exactly what i needed to hear right that's exactly like okay that was it not getting angry and all that and i kept going and you know i was an 18 year old and and uh boy if i had if i had a list of everyone that said i was not going to succeed go back to college do all these things but this guy in in the most idealistic sense he just said press on press on he was with me and it was more than just a urging he was the for everything from the uber driver you can't rent cars in your 18 right so when i was traveling he helped rent cars i couldn't check into a hotel and he checked into hotels for me and handed me the keys and and he was there and the tough moments and the tense moment tense moments our operating budget was literally you know eight thousand dollars for the entire year and and he he believed in me and like a prism i kind of look at this as a prism theory his single beam of light this this guy that was living a life where he was just looking for someone to connect to found an 18 year old that was looking for that and we we've impacted millions of people at turning point usa we're on 2000 high school in college and it's a and i i i apologize jack i know it's a deviation from what you said but it has to it has i really need to say this and it's a um [Music] if anyone's been touched by turning point or anyone if you've been touched by anyone that's ever come to the ranks of turning point or spoke or the impact we've had for years it can come back to that single piece of light believing in a singular high schooler and you know tragically he passed away yesterday and and that's a real that's a real hard thing for me to wrestle with and so look um i just want to make sure i commit that to you know that i i live out his legacy every single day and what we're doing and um he would have told me to speak tonight i know that and that's why i'm here so the impact of a strong male a strong male a strong male a a a a biblically based masculinity yes is a very powerful life in shaping and and look he he was yeah and it's exactly right and so now i look at how all of a sudden you know i'm speaking to 2 000 people tonight and we're talking to tens of thousands on the live stream i very easily could have been a lost cause i mean that yeah i don't believe in the inevitability of my journey i don't that's right people say oh charlie would have come back i said that's not true at all i know people far more talented than i that lost their path and and so just one final thought on that is he happened to find me at the right time i happen to be ready to listen it's a great thing for a young person out there i happen to be ready to listen to it and take a crazy bold path and step and and god works in very mysterious ways i can tell you and um i could the final point i'll say is this is that um we look at our country and we look at how some of us are wondering when are things going to rise up it's that which is seen and unseen there are things happening in our country that we don't even recognize and realize of people that are being converted every single day when people are dropping the shackles of leftism and liberalism that are coming around there and you know you kind of look at these prisms of light that exist right and that should be a lesson everyone in this room is there a young person is there a person in general that needs to hear something that you have to say that can spread goodness further and further further in the world and i'm a living extension of one person who did that so anyway i believe that yep that's awesome charlie i believe that's a i believe that's an awesome argument to the reality of the bible and the existence of god our human capacity longs for opportunity like that we long for when when you're little when you're when you're so impressionable you're looking you don't even realize you're looking for a strong or good word to come to you but you know you're you you want it you're not sure what you want until somebody says it and then someone says you know what you can do this or whatever it might be that's why that's why i organized team sports i'm a big fan of organized team sports i'm not against you being a tennis pro that's fantastic or a golfer that's great but there's something about team and when that is exchanged which is an argument for us being created in the image of god we don't do well and we're not supposed to do well with being torn down but the moment somebody says you know what i think you can actually do that it's it's that old saying that spring that hope springs eternal amen and and you thank god for america or america is thankful for you and having him speak into your life and you are the result of one man's encouragement and it's the multiplier effect and and it just shows amazing you spread truth to one person who could spread it to millions who can spread it to millions and maybe they'll spread it to millions and all of a sudden you have people that are organically communicating with each other that both have world views that were informed by the millions of ripples that no one even knew and maybe those people end up implicating you know millions of words and it can happen like that and it will and i know that and i've seen it happen and and just to show you that that's why i'm an eternal optimist with these things because i and i say this quite honestly jack people people say well the left they control hollywood you bet big tech absolutely they control most of government the deep state the schools they control the civil service all that yeah charlie how can be optimistic it's like let them have all of that just just give me the truth and let them have that because that's the one thing they do not have they don't have they don't have it and they can have all of that my experience is this one sentence of truth can deflate a lifetime of lies one sentence that's right and i get messages every single day on our podcast and what we are doing from you know with people and they say charlie you said one thing that really resonated with me i i sometimes laugh because sometimes it's not the most wise thing that i thought i could have possibly said like you said this one sentence and it put me on a path to the red pill and like you know the whole morpheus analogy is working very well right and so and sometimes it's something as simple as if socialism was so good why did the caravan go to america not venezuela and they said once you said that it all kind of came together like that's what did it did you guys all get that he said that so fast did y'all get that is so if socialism was so great why does the k why did the caravan come north for america not south for venezuela why does the movement of human beings always come to come towards societies that are rooted in individual initiative and liberty not in tyranny and collectivize control i mean human beings will gravitate towards what is actually prosperous good and true and so there's a lot of there's actually a tremendous amount of truth behind it i'm not trying to trivialize it so no prager just recently said that um during the 300 and some odd years of slave trading that 304 000 slaves were captured by muslim uh slave traders in north africa and then put on the market and sold to the united states 304 000 during those centuries but in the last 15 years there's been 2.5 million north africans immigrate to the united states by choice the united states is still the number one place by the way we we receive more immigrant applications than any other nation on earth still and the united states is the only country that people break into they want to come here remember what we're being told we are so bad we are so terrible yet yeah it's a perplexing thing it's we're the only country in the history of the world where even those who say they hate it refuse to leave [Laughter] they even promised us that they would leave that that that's how you know you live in actually an awesome country is i hate this place i hate this place let's go to colin kaepernick you're now worth 50 million that's how you actually know you live in an awesome country where you can get so rich at hating that country i mean it's incredible it was a cottage industry only in america can you two become worth 50 million dollars saying that you live in an awful place um and there's a lot there's there's a tremendous amount of truth with that and it's almost become fashionable to hate everything around you right and and it's actually it takes more wisdom more restraint more maturity to actually say no there's actually been generations of sacrifice to create all the institutions around us but it's actually the actions of a petulant child yes that would act that way because there's no gratitude for what preceded them yep um time is flying um we can do questions or do we whatever you i mean we'll just keep going but remember 8 30 people if you've got kids 8 30. no i'm i'm you can bring your kids back in the sanctuary i'm not i'm not leaving the stage at 8 30. i want to keep yeah bring your you can get your little ones and you can bring your little ones in from the children's ministry but listen um so let's talk about let's talk about this upcoming election sure let's talk about truth let's talk about what's at stake let's talk about the fact let's be honest and i know you and i know this really well is the fact that uh donald trump being in the presidency no matter how or what you think about him remember the night that the election started he was down by 20 points he wasn't supposed to win yeah he not only he not only he not only became the president but he became the president the president in spite of the republican party and in cnn and a lot of people on fox and in the democrat party and like a whole listen here's the deal um here's the thing what's with christians who can't vote why what are they doing well yeah let's dive into that but first you know the guy who came down the golden escalator defeated 16 other republicans called out how both parties have betrayed the american middle class beat the media beat the clintons beat the bushes beat voter fraud deep state and big tech gets spied on becomes president they launch a fake russian mueller probe we end up moving the embassy deleting the iran deal killing kassam solomoni baghdadi eliminating isis most pro-life president american history say it again most pro-life president most pro-life president american history you got gorsuch you got kavanaugh you got over 200 circuit court judges more regulations cut than any other president since abraham lincoln believe it or not we have the best economy in american history they throw a virus at us however you believe it came here we can dive into that but whatever you're going to hear more soon and we lock down our country then we decide that we're an awful country we want to burn it down to the ground race riots oh and they impeached him back in january we thought we were going to go to war with iran did you think it was going to be easy when a disrupter became president did you think that all of a sudden that this was going to be a seamless entry into all of a sudden putting the power back to the people away from the kingdom of washington dc no this actually makes a lot of sense this makes sense that the man that is there he is a vessel for each and every one of you that believes that the ruling class in our country has not been serving your best interest one other thought on that jack he is you know people say well i don't like his tone i don't like his tweets i don't like all that well that's fine i think that's a a separate topic in some ways look he is he's the bodyguard to civil society he's guarding the door it's that simple when you hire a bodyguard to defend your family when riots are outside do you go and tap them on the shoulder when the bullets are flying and they're coming closer hey um man can i can i look at your tweets like and he's like you understand the mob's like right there right and i i'll take care of it just make sure i stay here and i don't leave the door because civil society is right there like i gotta stay right here in front of this door and i'm gonna make sure i hold them back can you can you fix your tone a little bit it's like did i not just mention the mob is literally right there that wants to burn everything down so i kind of think i kind of think it's a clumsy argument to be honest with you because we are we're not are we are not electing a human being get that out of your mind the united states presidency is electing a worldview it's electing an entire infrastructure of a philosophy of ideals ideas and how you want the government and the country to go donald trump is merely a representation of civil society donald trump is merely a placeholder for what is moral and what is good and my goodness i'll tell you what i kind of like the fact that he punches back a little bit i like the fact that he fights you know i i think that what is not defended ends up decaying that what is not put forward with truth ends up be getting robbed by what is evil and dark and people say well charlie i i just think that he uh he's had a very checkered and troubled past they said well if i could be as good as you one day please give me the instruction manual for that that's that's that's the big deal there people will say always well you know he's got a checkered past every single one of you have got a checkered past amen we all do here's the thing he's not the guy that he used to be you know we're america we're supposed to be so forgiving and so kind and so prone to give people a second chance but we turn around and we we go after this guy and here's here's what i'd like to put out before you look how his kids speak and treat and their relationship with each other did you know where were we we were somewhere not too long ago where the trump kids did you know the trump kids get a call from him every day no matter where he is in the world he calls his kids every day look how they speak about their dad and here's the cool thing that dude's got way more stuff vested in this nation than we do the guy owns an empire and he's responsible for tens of thousands of employees but his biggest treasure is his grandkids he's got a lot going on if i had his billions i would not be president right your church would be a little bigger think about it you would you would why would you be 74 years old and take on that job and here's and i'll and i'll be quiet with this if you have any doubt about him getting the job done or who or what he stands for look at who his enemies are yeah that's exactly right and so there's a lot of christians that say well i'm not going to and it's there's certain publications that have done this and they you know them better than i do christian publications and they say well i'm not going to tolerate donald trump and his all of his shenanigans and all this sort of stuff i say man you must be really okay with a million abortions a year to have that kind of snobbish elitist attitude and i'm not willing to go in front of my creator with that kind of cockiness my friend i am not willing to face judgment and say you know the million abortion a year thing i decided to stay silent on that because i didn't like a guy's tone i i i'm not i'm not prepared to make that argument i'm not and nor am i saying you should make an excuse that's that's not what i'm saying instead what i'm saying is my goodness you have a vessel for the first time you had a president speak at the march for life in our country george w bush and speaker that's right that's right and so then you know let's talk about this and people say well charlie i really i love george w bush that's fine he's a very nice person he's a christian and all of that but you have john roberts thanks to george w bush john roberts just ruled that churches are not essential that salvation is not essential and the calvary chapel in las vegas closed and now you're seeing persecution of christians across the country george w bush but guess what the two justices that donald trump put on the court gorsuch and kavanaugh said clearly and emphatically church is essential and churches should remain open but hold on a second christian post hold on a second ivory tower christians in the southern baptist convention since you're better human beings than i am explain to me very clearly the christian george w bush put john roberts on the court and the three times married twice divorced once cover of the playboy magazine person that you think is vulgar and awful he's defending christianity more than the person that you say is more fit to be president so don't give me that nonsense for any second whatsoever because i have so clearly right now and and boy my goodness it is this ivory tower i'm better than you are snobbish style christianity that's right that i have my patience is zero done nothing with it okay and and it is that's right it is and i i see some of that i watch some of their speeches i read some of their writings and they say they're so unacceptable in this and decline of a nation and all that i say my goodness i just i cannot get to a place where i am perfectly acceptable and okay with the united states supreme court saying that churches are not essential i'm going to fight for justices that fight for that i'm gonna fight for the rule of law i am going to fight for the unborn i'm going to fight for someone who fights for those certain things and and the final point i'll say is this you know some christians reconcil they have they have tough time squaring and they say why i don't know if i'm going to vote i'm not going to do any of the politics it's beneath me and all this and i think it's a very simple decision making matrix i ask the question i say well does god care how you act and any reasonable christians say yeah of course yeah was voting acting well yeah so does god care how you vote yes of course he does if you're voting for people that are okay and want to increase the amount of unborn children that are terminated in the womb every single year how is that that not an extension of your moral action how is that not an extension of your biblical worldview how is that not an extension of the text that you're reading that says all people are made in the image of god of course he cares about how you vote of course you raise listen this is very interesting because uh i can speak to this a little bit that there are more bible studies and prayer meetings in this administration and cabinet than any other recorded time in american history and and that that is that's an absolute fact and what's amazing about what's going on is this president one of the first things many of you don't know this but before presid