Live Free with Josh Howerton - 5 Megachurch Pastors React to Charlie Kirk's Memorial | Live Free with Josh Howerton

Episode Date: September 28, 2025

In this special episode of the Live Free podcast, Pastors Josh Howerton, Ryan Visconti, Landon Schott, Josh McPherson, and Russell Johnson reflect on the Charlie Kirk Memorial, an unforgettable moment of worship, gospel clarity, and cultural significance. More than a tribute, it became a bold declaration of Jesus' lordship on a global stage. drawing in figures like Marco Rubio and Elon Musk, and sparking debate over “Christian nationalism" in America. Join the conversation as they unpack why this moment marks a shift in the church today.   👍 Like, Comment, & Subscribe for more life-changing podcasts! 🔔 Turn on notifications so you never miss an update! 📝 SHOW NOTES Subscribe now to receive the show notes directly in your inbox with each new episode. These notes are filled with key insights and scripture to help you reflect and grow deeper in your faith – https://lakepointe.church/shownotes    👇 DON’T MISS OUT! Have you recently accepted Christ? Check out the link to take your next step with Jesus at Lakepointe: https://lakepointe.church/baptism/   ⛪ ABOUT LAKEPOINTE CHURCH:We believe that Lakepointe is a movement for all people to Know God, Find Freedom, Discover their Calling, and Make a Difference. With 7 DFW locations and programs for all ages, there's something for everyone.  🤝 Support this ministry and help us reach more people with the Gospel: https://lakepointe.church/give    STAY CONNECTED:🌐 Website: https://lakepointe.church/👍 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lpconnect/📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lpconnect 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lakepointechurch   🎧 LISTEN ON THE GO! ▶️ Live Free on Spotify / https://open.spotify.com/show/353ryGdZNlebaiqkCcy3Yc▶️ Live Free on Apple Podcasts / https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/live-free-with-josh-howerton/id1669321198

Welcome to Live Free with Pastor Josh Howardton. We're so glad you're here. Lake Point Church is a movement for all people to know Jesus, live free, and make a difference with their lives. And this weekly podcast is all about helping you do just that. Each episode is a deep dive into the Word of God tackling life, culture, and faith with truth and clarity so you can be equipped to live free in Christ.

Thanks for tuning in. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode and follow us on all our social platforms to stay connected to everything happening with Live Free. Now, let's dive into today's episode. Ladies gentlemen, welcome to a very organized bonus episode of Live Free with two homeschool Reform Baptist, a military minister, and a couple of flag waving Pentecostals that walk into a podcast.

That's my best. I am here with my good friends. We got Pastor Ryan Visconti, Bishop Josh McPherson, who are. both up in one at you, by the way. Landed shot, who's been lifting too many weights and his hair looks too good. He makes all of us look. It's actually lifting flags is what it is. They're very heavy flags.

Shoulder. Weighted flags. And then Russell Johnson, who looks like he's in the witness protection program right now. I am. It's great. Well, hey guys. That's a podcast intro. Here's what we want to talk about.

I think all of us get a sense that one of the most spiritually significant events in our lifetimes in our nation probably just happened and a couple couple of us were actually there and so we want to debrief what happened at the charlie kirk memorial and then the spiritual effects that are rippling out in our nation as a result so uh dude let me just kind of tell people where we're going to go on this um we want to talk about some of the things we saw there you're already starting to hear by the way everyone should follow all these guys you're going to see their instagram handles at the bottom i recommend following all of them these are good dudes you're starting to see some things,

some aggressive pushback New York Times this morning, like waving the sounding alarm of a dangerous fusion of Christianity and government. Anyway, we're getting into a bunch of things here. Let me just go ahead. I want to play a clip that sort of sets the tone, and then I just want each of us to go around, and especially I want to start with Landon and Josh McPherson, who were actually at the memorial.

And we'll get some quick things we initially saw. For people who didn't watch it, I think, feel free to disagree with me, guys. I think this was the most explicit declaration of the Lordship of Jesus and the gospel from the leaders of our nation. Definitely in our lifetimes, yes, I think. Absolutely.

I'm going to give one example of this. There were six explicit gospel presentations at this thing. here's one just to set the tone and then we'll get some quick reactions from what you guys saw who were there especially there are people watching here tonight that didn't know much about charlie kirk until 11 days ago maybe they were disengaged from politics maybe they were partially engaged i hope one of the things they take from this is that the movement charlie kirk led and started and gave fuel to was about politics but not only about politics it was deeper it was broader and i would say that taking the liberty but i'm confident he would

degree, one of the things he wants us to take away from this, from all of this, is the following. His deep belief that we were all created, every single one of us, before the beginning of time, by the hands of the God of the universe, an all-powerful God, who loved us and created us for the purpose of living with him in eternity. But then sin entered the world and separated us from our creator. And so God took on the form of a man and came down and lived among us. And he suffered like men. And he died like a man. But on the third day he rose unlike any mortal man.

And then, and to prove any doubt is wrong, he ate with his disciples so they could see and they touched his wounds. He didn't rise as a ghost or as a spirit, but his flesh. And then he rose to the heaven, but he promised he would return. And he will. And when he returns, because he took on that death, on that death because he carried that cross, we were freed from the sin that separated us from him. And when he returns, there will be a new heaven and a new earth. And we will all be together.

And we are going to have a great reunion there again with Charlie and all the people we love. Thank you and God bless you. Let's go. Come on, baby. I wept. Listen, I'm not joking. I wept when I saw that. I wept. Let's go ahead and get initial reactions. What were your initial reactions watching the Memorial in general and what are things people might not have known that you're aware of land and let's start with you you were there so we get in the room at 8 a.m i start getting text from josh at uh you know late the night before he's like you got to get there 5 6 a.m like there's going to be hundreds of

thousands of people like it was bananas um so so we get in the building i get the building around 8 a.m and it's four hours of worship and you have 20,000 30 40 50 150 a hundred thousand people worshipping for hours declaring that Jesus is Lord, declaring the holdiness of God. These worship leaders like, do you feel the Holy Spirit in the room? Can you feel the tangible presence of God? So worship is going forth. The first thing I notice is like, whoa, like, like I know this is supposed to be a somber moment. We're at a funeral or celebration of life, but the presence of God was in that place. And then you can't stress this enough. Like, like, you know that Marco Rubio is a Christian,

professed Jesus, but when Don Jr. is quoting scripture accurately and profoundly, I mean, guys, it is scripture after scripture after scripture from declaring God every one of these people. So here's what I realized, you cannot talk about Charlie Kirk without talking about Charlie Kirk's God. Boom. And it was eight hours of proclaiming Jesus to hundreds of millions of people around the world. I mean, it blew my mind. The other thing that stood out to me, and there's a lot of guys that are going to talk, but when Vice President Vance, who we all know is married to a Hindu woman, he says, yes, I have not shared my faith or been public about my faith.

And he goes, I haven't talked more about Jesus in my faith in the last two weeks. I've talked about it more than the last two weeks than I have my entire career. He said publicly, I have shunned away from mentioning my faith. in Jesus until Charlie's passing and now I can't stop talking about it. It is amazing. I don't know if there's another human being who would have died, who would have brought the church world and the government together in one place. Guys, it was a historic event unlike anything I've ever seen in my entire life. Josh, let's go to you and then to Ryan. I'm echoing all of that. I mean, it was getting in was insane. I mean, I was getting texts from buddies at 3 a.m., 4 a.m. They were stuck in traffic four miles away

from the stadium. We're walking there. It's Blackhawks overhead. It's sniper teams on every roof. More cops I've seen in my life. I was told accredited LEOs weren't even allowed on the floor where we went. It was all taken care of by Secret Service.

It was a surreal event. I mean, you know, we get in, we get down on the floor, we get into our seats there. And just to echo everything, Landon said, it's three and a half hours before the service starts, and it is a full-on worship service. And just the brilliance, I thought, of that, just washing that place with the spirit of God and the word of God and the praises of God,

I was like, this was tactical. This was strategic. This was doing as much important work to keep the people safe as the incredible law enforcement and in Secret Service work. And then you're looking around and it's like, it's like, and I'm not kidding, 50 feet away, Elon Musk is sitting right there. And then, oh, there's Tucker Carlson. And oh, there's Ted Cruz. Grant Cardone, and oh, there's J.D. Vance. And oh, and you realize, like, Trump's entire cabinet's there. Trump is there himself. It's like, I don't even know if that's happened before. I mean, they don't do that. You don't put those men in the same room just for safety purposes outside of the White House. And so you're like, from the get-go, it felt historic in every way. And then just multiple times, and we'll get to this, I'm sure, later.

but so many reactions to the actual service, I wept multiple times. It's just like, are you kidding? The gospel is being preached again, and the gospel is being preached again. And I don't know where some of those men are personally with Jesus, but I say with Paul, if Jesus has preached, I rejoice.

I mean, you could not get clearer. This wasn't like God-Faith country language. This was the risen and resurrected Jesus Christ. It was very specific and distinctly Christian language. And what I loved was, the Christian worldview is on full display. We can both forgive our enemies as citizens as were called, and we can both demand for justice from the government as their assigned responsibility. And so when Stephen Miller got up and just went, I mean, like, peel the pain off the back of the stadium walls,

fire with the law. I was like, that's exactly what I want the men in government to say. I want the preachers to preach the gospel, and I want the men of government to stand on righteous moral law and call for justice. remarkable experience. Ryan. I was watching this live stream all day in between church services, go out to preach, come back, watch the live stream. And through the live stream, I just felt the tangible presence of God in such a heavy way that it was almost hard for me to just even get back into church in between, you know,

watching this live stream. But it was just so clear that God opened the heavens and poured his spirit out on this gathering. And if you think about it, going all the way back to the founding of America, there is no way that there has been a gathering like that where the top government officials have explicitly declared the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we know many of the founders were Christians, but I think back then there was such a Christian society that they didn't really feel probably the need to get into all of that. But Charlie was a devout believer in Jesus, as Landon said, to the point that you could not talk about the man without talking about the man's savior.

And if you were watching this and you did not recognize on a spiritual level that the Lord was doing something powerful and significant, starting there that will have implications for our country, if you don't recognize this, I would seriously question a person's spiritual discernment. It was just so tangibly a win and an outpouring of God's grace. for our top government officials. We don't even actually understand the implications of our highest level authority figures professing the lordship of Jesus like that. What kind of favor does that invite from God on our country?

What kind of blessing does that invite? We don't even know yet. That's good. Yeah, bro. That's right. Russell. Yeah, I mean, I was preaching in Seattle, and then the same as Ryan, like watching the memorial service in between services.

But that was the most watched gospel presentation in all of human history. That moment. And I think it was, you know, obviously extremely significant. And it wasn't just like big box Christendom. You know, like put your hand on the Bible when you're sworn into elected office. It was like expressly evangelical, the Lordship. of Jesus Christ, the vicarious death, resurrection, and the return of Christ, and... Repentance of sin.

Repentance of sin. And like an appeal to heaven for revival. I mean, like on the official White House Twitter account, they are posting videos with the song Holy Forever in the background. I mean, who would have thought ever in our lifetimes we would see this moment? you know, when the scripture talks about, can a nation be saved in a day? Like, I think we saw that prophetically on Sunday. Again, not in like everybody got saved on the same day, but like something forever changed in the soul of America on Sunday. It wasn't just a moment in history. It was a

moment that defines our history. And I think if the Lord should tarry in another couple hundred years, historians will point back at this moment as a moment in which something of a fundamental nature transformed, transitioned in the soul of America. A hundred percent, dude. So there's, I won't, you know, I won't share who. One of the people that was helping lead worship, I was texting with like in between their sets. Now, I want to read to you what this guy said. I texted him with some encouragement.

He said, bawling my eyes out reading this, the presence here has been so, so heavy. there was a moment just now in worship I've never experienced before it will mark me forever and these are worship leaders who have done it a time or a time or two so I'll just point that out dude to what I think all of us

have kind of mentioned this to what you just said Russell I wept I'm there with my kids I get home from church I'm watching it I wept off and on for three hours and my daughter was like dad like why is this emotional for you and probably like you guys I've seen pictures from like the 50s

of when they would put the crosses on the Empire State Building or in the 40s, when there would be a public declaration of the Lordship of Jesus at Christmas from the White House. And honestly, as a Christian man, I've always kind of had a sadness in me when I saw those things because I was like, man, my grandparents got to see it.

But I'll never get to see that. And on Sunday, there was this thing where I went in the midst of our years, he might revive it. And I honestly, I just sat there just like wept, I'll just say a couple things that people might not know who weren't there, and I've heard these from some of the guys on this pod and some of our mutual friends. So again, I want to point out what McPherson said, and Ryan pointed out,

never in our nation's history that I'm aware of, have you had all the top leaders of our nation in an explicitly Christian worship service, many of them being the proclaimers of the explicitly Christian gospel calling a nation to repentance in our nation's history. You had Elon Musk and Josh, this is a little tidbit that he's made public and so I can share it. Our mutual buddy Mark, he said you could see Elon Musk singing along with the worship songs while he is there. He's twilight. We were watching him and at first he's just kind of looking around observing.

and all of us are like, what's happening? And not to interrupt you, Josh, but in the room, you're just having a sense like, this can't not move the needle in every heart here. There's too much spirit of God. There's too much truth in the words being declared and sung. There's too much power in the words being spoken for it not to move the needle.

And then you start thinking about, what will be the ripple effect of the gospel seeds taking root in every heart here? And just this last piece here I'll say is, and I think Landon would agree with this, when we were in the room, and people need to hear this, I think every person there

felt like they were being carried along by something outside of us. This was not an event that was organized by a man, powered by a man, manipulated by a man. There was like this corporate sense, like we're all observing something happened to us. God is doing this. The spirit of God is coordinating this.

Eleven days ago, this event was not on the schedule. And it spoke to the beauty of Christianity. When you bump us, Jesus comes out. When you bump us, hope comes out. When you bump us, faith comes out. This was not an event that they had manufactured for eight months. This just, this was the overflow of Christians responding to tragedy how Christians always do with faith, hope, and with love. Amen. Clear, just so we're clear about this, this was not an interfaith event. No. This is not a universalism of, hey, as long as you have faith in something, this was a Jesus. Christ is the way the truth and the life. This was no other gods before me. This was different

than majority of the faith things that you see that are coalitions. This wasn't a coalition. This was a declaration of a kingdom. Yeah. The last thing that I'll say is I was watching it and going, I voted for this so hard. I voted for this so hard. Absolutely. That's the other thing I was Absolutely. Ryan, what were you going to say? And then I'm going to move this our next question. I was going to say, do you remember when we were younger and, like, President George W. Bush would say something about Jesus because he was a genuine believer.

And sometimes he would allude to his faith. And I remember being in the living room with, like, my parents and we'd all be like, yeah, he just said something about Jesus. How awesome is that? That doesn't even hold a candle to what was happening at this event. A preacher of the gospel, a full-time pastor, one of us, we wouldn't have been able to state the gospel more explicitly than Marco Rubio did or than many other of these speakers did. It was profound. And I just thought of when you mentioned Elon Musk

starting to sing along, that is what 1st Corinthians 14 said would happen. If an unbeliever comes in and all are prophesying, unbelievers will be convicted of sin judged by what you say as they listen, their secret thoughts will be exposed and they will fall to their knees and worship God declaring God is truly here among you. Bro. All right. Let me ask this question. This is a curveball.

Didn't plan to take it this way already. I was watching and honestly, I was extremely discouraged. Not discouraged. It bothered me. I was watching more progressive pastors or pastors who like just, I don't know, woke, soft woke kind of guys. And it was like they spent the whole time counter signaling what was happening. So it was like their posts were like,

like, hey, just because somebody uses the word of God doesn't mean it's a word from God. Or if you say, I love the Lord, but you hate your neighbor, then you're a liar and the truth is not in you. It was like they were counter signaling as if this was actually a negative thing and that really the vibe was like, really, this is just evil people co-opting the gospel to advance their political purposes. Somebody take it away. What do you say to those guys' response? Or they were just like spending their time like talking about. the football score on Sunday, like ignoring the obvious, like, elephant,

not just in the room, but like the elephant in the world. You know, this was like a world-shaping event. It's been global news. But Charlie's memorial service wasn't just a funeral for him. It was a funeral for third wayism. It was a funeral for... Can you define that for listeners?

Yeah, like this idea of like, well, I'm neither left nor right. I'm really above the political binary. And, you know, there's pros and cons on both sides, but in an effort to reach as many people as possible, I'm going to use ambiguity as an ideological strategy so nobody can tell where I stand, lest, God forbid, somebody who might be a little more moderate

or on the left, you know, leaves my church. And, you know, I think Sunday, you know, for us, like we are believers, so it was a reaffirmation of what we already know to be true. But the reason why we're seeing record salvations at the church, people turning to God, people like Elon Musk singing along in worship, is because an event like this, it functions as a crime against the moral fabric of humanity. People intrinsically know it's wrong. They intrinsically know deep within that immaterial.

part of who they are, that something has been violently robbed from, like, the human experience. And, of course, that speaks to the idea of a chief lawgiver and the idea that eternity is planted on our hearts and so on and so forth. And so, you know, for me, it, like, wasn't surprising that the usual suspects pulled out the usual playbook of either, like, complete avoidance, total ambiguity, or, like, all of a sudden this, like, grotesque appeal to, like, new. wants. Like, well, you know, I found an 18th second clip of Charlie from when he was 14 in high school, and we really need to, like, deconstruct that clip in order to, you know, really

figure out whether or not his memory is honorific. And I just thought this entire grift has been exposed. You know, what people are looking for is like strong leadership that's able to speak with moral authority about the, the defining issues of our day. And, and you know, And so, like, in similar ways, like COVID helped expose that. The political elections helped expose that. But, like, when Charlie got assassinated on live TV, and then when his memorial service functioned as a platform for the gospel, they preached literally to hundreds of millions, if not billions, at this point.

And for pastors to act as if that is an event of no consequence, exposed the spiritual depravity of cowards who stand behind pulpits and get their talking points from ex-vangelicals. Anyone more? Ryan? Yes. Yes. Standing ovation to that, Russell.

Man, those pastors. I'll toss. Oh, sorry. Those pastors who have tried to do, hey, neither left nor right. The third way is Jesus. I'm not going to glorify a donkey or an elephant, but a slain lamb.

You know, we've kind of heard those things, but we've said some of those things. in the past, but some guys are still repeating those sentiments and operating from that framework, which, you know, is a pre-2020 positive world framework in a lot of ways. And the truth is that God is going to, not to over-spiritualize this, but I think God is going to remove his lambsstand from churches that won't shine bright and declare the gospel truth with authority and clarity and confidence. He's going to remove the lambstand. And what that really means is his anointing, his favor, and those churches are sadly going to just become less and less effective for Jesus.

And you read, again, the parable of the talents, the churches that are being faithful servants are going to be entrusted with more kingdom opportunity. And I say to that, let it be, if you listen to this and you're a pastor and you've been trying to ride the fence, there is no more fence. You have to choose this day whom you will serve, right? And if you don't, I pray people leave your church and go to a faithful church. Sorry, not sorry. You guys need to be exposed.

They need to be exposed. And Russell just did it. All of these cowards that call themselves pastors, the last book of Revelation, says the cowards are the first to go into the lake of fire. And so you are seeing a spiritual division. There's all this people talk about being unified. Well, we're not going to be unified with your perversion and your transgenderism. So we're just not going to unify with it.

So there's a division that's happening. body of Christ, and there's no more neutral, okay? And so you had Obama's White House where he's ushering gay marriage, pretending he's a Christian, and manipulates his way in, placates the Christian population, everyone was excited about a black president. We all wanted that, thought that was a great thing, but he was really a wolf and sheep's clothing. He ushers in gay marriage, okay? So Obama lit up the White House in rainbow. Then you have Biden come in, and he ushers in transgenderism. So he has men with prosthetic breasts dancing on the White House lawn on Easter Sunday. This is what he brought in. He brings in trans activists all throughout his government. That's what he's bringing in. Then you

have Trump comes in, and he's bringing in thousands of pastors. Every single one of us have prayed and worshipped in the White House. So you have gay marriage president, you have transgender president, and then you have the pastor president. Which one do you want leading? I mean, there's no nuance in this anymore. And so this is a good evil. This is either, are you more loyal to? Are you more to your culture, are you more loyal to the kingdom? This is, are you placating to political ideologies, or are you a true Christian? So this is not denominational. We're not talking about second, third, dear, personal preference of theology. We're talking about good and evil, right and wrong, righteousness and it's time to pick aside. Josh, I'm going to give an objection to what was

just said, and I want you to respond to it. So, look, if you're that guy, let's say you're a guy, and I want me to respond to it. I want you to respond to it. I'm going to give the objection, and I want you to respond to it. And maybe Russell. because of where you guys are located geographically. So, you know, let's say you're a pastor, because I texted with some guys about this, where so this happens, and exactly, they see what Landon sees,

but they're in a city that's 95% blue or whatever it is. And so it's that situation where somebody can have real feelings based on wrong thinking. All their congregation has literally ever seen are selectively edited clips, and then they've just been brainwashed and waterboarded with Charlie was raised, racist, Charlie was misogynist, Charlie was full of hate. So then the situation happens as a flashpoint

and all of their people genuinely think this was a bad guy because they have real feelings based on wrong thinking. So then that pastor is going, hey man, am I a coward or is it just like, dude, honestly, there's so much to untangle here. I just, it's really, I'm just trying to make a pastoral decision. My people aren't ready for it. Thoughts. I think if a pastor told me he was concerned about addressing it because his people have heard lies about a godly man, I think that's the apologetic for why he can't not address it. So if you as a pastor think your people may be listening to wrong voices and believing lies, and you know it, it's literally in your job description to address it with the truth. And so, you know, both, both Russell and I are in deep, deep blue

context. And I think pastors need to lose the word nuance and stop being measured. It's time to be bold, clear, and then let the chips fall. And I think what you'll find is there are more people than you think who are genuinely starved for the truth. And so one of the great gifts of pasturing in a deep blue state and in a deeply, wickedly progressive state, is that we're in a desert, which means everyone here is thirsty. And so we've got to give them the pure stuff. And I think one of the blessings of this moment is the myth of the myth of the,

of the neutrality of secularism is being exposed. It's dead. There is no neutrality here. We have to decide if we're going to be a Christian nation or not. We have to have a framework to start with. And to the pastors who were virtue signaling, as you mentioned earlier, Josh, your question and talking about, you know, oh, well, this or that. Honestly, I have mixed feelings in my heart.

I don't even feel like their, what do I want to say it? Their position almost warrants a response because it's like, it's so laughable. It's like, are you that desperate to try to not see what God is doing? I mean, so for the reason I don't like responding to those guys is because none of them are acting in good faith. I agree. They're not actually trying to see what's happening. They have a pre-determined position to be against the work of God. that it's demonstrated in the body of their work and their tweets.

And so this is just consistent response to where they've been. But for those who are listening, who are good faith actors, who are trying to figure out what this was, if you have any major respect for my Christianity, my witness, my discernment, here's what I'll tell you. For three hours before the service started, it was straight worship to the throne. I mean, Brandon Lake, Chris Tomlin, Phil Wickham,

this is down the middle evangelicalism guys, right? right? These aren't wing nuts. These are the guys that have written the songs we've sung the last 25 years. 11 minutes into the service, there's a call for repentance and salvation, and a guy behind me stands up, and a guy in front of me stands up, and 14 minutes into the service, I have my hands praying on someone who just gave their life to Jesus. Like, that's my testimony of the Charlie Kirk event. Well, I would challenge, I would challenge this is, is, if you're, both you guys, Russell and Josh, you guys are in blue states and you have mega churches. So just because you're in a hard place doesn't mean that the truth doesn't work. So the pastors that are having a hard

time, did you have a hard time when George Floyd was killed? Did you have a hard time when cities were being rioted and destroyed all over America? Did you not talk then? So if you're, if you have a problem in your church of speaking the truth, what have you been doing the last few years? how come when you speak the truth in this situation, it hurts your church? Russell, for onlookers they don't know, Russell, you're in like downtown Seattle, the heart of Mordor. Talk about this real quick. Yeah, you know, I think a couple things of note. You know, number one, like an eight hour, an eight hour Sunday morning service is actually like short for mercy culture.

You know, usually they go about nine, nine and a half. But I think like the second, the second thing I would want to note is this. Like, if you want to uncover the controlling spiritual principality and power in your church, just figure out the one thing that you can't talk about. That's right. Russell. When I see these guys saying things like, I can't address this, you don't understand. It's my board. It's my staff.

It's my nephew. It's my people. It's my city. You know, I think it was Ravenhill who said, um, it's my staff. If you marry the spirit of the age, now you'll be widowed in the next. And so it's like this capitulation towards, you know, cultural, you know, principalities and powers and the doctrine of secularism and the, you know, myth of neutrality. No. And it's like, yeah, I've gotten the same phone calls from guys, which it's almost like laughable to me.

Like, they're like, no, you don't understand. I can't talk about these things. I'm like, you're in Lincoln, Nebraska. I'm in downtown Seattle. What are you talking about? You know, being like a Christian and a conservative is like an endangered species. I'm like the last albino rhinoceros in Seattle. And it's, it, you know, it's not like, you know, we take a democratic poll of the, you know,

demographic of the city that we're in in order to determine what we're supposed to preach on it just to me it's kind of like it's kind of mind blowing but what it reveals is that people didn't make the necessary micro adaptions when they needed to

to their worldview and their epistemology and so now they're faced with this macro moment and all of us already have the battle scars and the wounds from like being willing to take the shots and take the hits to be outspoken. So then for this, it was like, oh, yeah, this is a softball. I can knock this out of the park.

I can speak to the culture, the emotion, the epistemology, the public policy implications, the critiques of nationalism. I can speak to all of those things because this isn't my first rodeo. Why? Because I learned the right lessons back in 2016. And then in 2020, during COVID, then during the BLM riots. That's right. And you have a lot of people who never learned the right lesson.

They learned the wrong lesson from the pain of the culture, and all it has done is actually, like, reduce their authority, their ability or their competence to speak to the issues of our day. And so, you know, when people are like, well, you know, is Charlie like a martyr or not, I'm like, well, yeah, of course he's a martyr, but like you're missing the point. This is the greatest opportunity for the preaching of the gospel. And you have politicians on a stage in Arizona who are more poignantly poetic, and prophetically declaring the death, resurrection, and return of Christ Jesus, then, you know, pastors

who've got, you know, these like, you know, woke board members who are like, well, you know, like, we just want to, like, stay out of that type of stuff. And so that is totally being exposed. It's been weighed and found wanting. It's a form of godliness, but it denies the power there within. And it's actually even more dangerous. And I'll end here. It's actually more dangerous than people who are in opposition to our message. Explain that real quick, and then I'm going to Ryan. It's more dangerous because it shrouds itself like in this cloak of like,

like, it's like lukewarm. It's like, no, I'm still on the team. Like, you know, I can kind of virtue signal to the people who are expecting me to say something, but I don't really want to wait into the waters because, you know, God forbid I lose people. You know, when we lost half the church, when we reopened during COVID, the Lord spoke to me and said, you didn't lose half your church. I just revealed to you who your actual church is.

And so you've got churches that are like overly inflated with people who either aren't disciples, aren't born again, aren't regenerate, who are like holding pastors hostage from being able to just like speak the truth. And Chesterson said this prophetically, you know, in the last book that he wrote, that there will come a time where, you know, you know, to say that a triangle has three sides or that grass is green or to say that two plus two is four is considered a revolutionary act and like that's where we are to just say the plain truth is considered a revolutionary act. Ryan. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, let me just quickly preface this with if anyone's listening to this as a church leader, you have to know that we're not talking about this to beat our chest and flex on you. Look how bold we are. But we want you to understand how to more effectively reach people because we need as many Jesus loving followers of Christ in the fight as

possible. That being said, a lot of pastors will tell themselves, I can't address this because I live in such and such city or I live in a diverse community. Your community is not any more diverse than Corinth was or than Ephesus was. So when you start thinking about, you know, there's all this diversity, so I can't speak the truth because a lot of people in my church have different ways of thinking, Well, what you are really dealing with is you have people in your church who are deceived by the lies of the enemy. So you have to ask yourself, do you want to keep them comfortable in captivity or do you want to set the captive free? It's by knowing the truth that the captive is set free. Don't trust more in your own strategic leadership thinking than in the power of God's word to transform people's hearts.

Come on. Come on, man. Let's great. Let's go. Let me say one thing and then move us along. So to what Ryan said, because I think there's a lot of pastors who are trying to get their head around it, is the analogy that I like to use is not originally. It's actually from our buddy Mark is discipleship at the end of the day is air war and ground war. And where ground war is discipling individuals, families, it's teaching repentance, prayer, loving the word, ground war. But then air war is applying the gospel to culture out there.

So if ground war is applying the gospel to somebody's heart and life and family, air war is applying the gospel to culture out there. And what a lot of guys, I think, don't understand. And by the way, probably all five of us are a little more naturally wired to do a little gospel and culture engagement. And not everybody is wired that way. That's okay. That's okay. But we do need to understand this paradigm that in the same way, if in a military, if somebody has ground superiority, but they have no air force, then every time the ground war gets won, the enemy's air war comes in and undoes what you just did. And you lose all the ground that you just gained.

Well, if you as a pastor, you only do ground war and apply the gospel to somebody's heart and family and life. But you never do the, let me apply the gospel to the culture out there. Then they walk out of your church service and in every TikTok reel that they watch, every news feed that they see, everything that they, every YouTube video that they watch. They're getting reverse disciples because the culture, the secular culture is doing air war. They are applying those things. So they're getting reverse disciples out of the things that you just disciple them into. So we have to, listen, man, we have to learn how to do some air war along with the ground war and apply the gospel of culture externally. Now, on that note, let me move us on.

So this is for every Christian everywhere. Here's what I think all of us are going to predict Christians are going to start getting in a very aggressive way. Can you guys go ahead and toss up that New York Times headline from this morning? If you're a Christian, you're going to start getting this. This is going to become the conversation. You got that Trinity? All right. At Kirk's service, an extraordinary, and I think in the article it used the word dangerous. A dangerous fusion of government and Christianity.

And then, guys, I'm going to show about 30 seconds of a Don Lemon clip from last night that went like mega viral. And Trinity, go ahead and toss that Don Lemon clip up. I'm going to cut it off. And then McPherson, I want you to respond to this first, the Christian nationalism scare thing. Here we go. Is that what happened in Arizona this weekend was not just a memorial. It was something else entirely. People will tell you that it is about grief.

It was about grief, about honoring a man's life, about faith. And on the surface, you know, maybe it looked like that. Tens of thousands gathered. The music swelled. I'm sure some of you saw it. I just saw some of the sound bites. There were prayers and tears and moments of silence. but if you stayed long enough for the for the little bit that I could stay and then I said you know what I'm out

if you listen long enough and close enough if you stayed long enough and you listen close enough you could feel the ground shifting beneath you because that wasn't just about a man who died this was about a movement claiming divine permission to rule cut it off right there okay that's that's the accusation. This is a movement claiming divine right to rule. This is dangerous fusion of Christianity and government. Josh McPherson, what say you? Well, hey, guys, one of the reasons we are intentional in creating these kind of podcast episodes is because we believe that discipleship happens in relationships. Having said that, what we want to do through the live free podcast is we want to model what it looks like to be in a discipleship group where we come together and open up the word of

God together and honestly just grow together as followers of Jesus to live free in Christ. For this reason, we love that you're tuning in, but honestly, we don't just want you to be a passive listener. We want you to be an active participant. And so if you have not yet joined a group, whether that's in person or online, I want to challenge you to test drive one. To do that, just text the word group to 20411, or you can also go to lake point.comptych slash group. groups because listen, you're not one podcast away, one habit away, one decision away, one book away, one sermon away. You are one relationship away to experience freedom in Christ in community. And now let's get back to the podcast. I agree with the first part.

Amen. I think he was paying attention. The second part is laughable. It's It's embarrassingly ignorant of our nation's history. We are not a religious nation. We were founded as a distinctly Christian nation, and therein is the only ground that we have to stand on for other religions to exercise their freedoms freely. So the scare tactics, I mean, Josh, we've talked a lot offline, so you know, like, it's hard for me to even take that seriously.

And it's hard to even warrant it with a response, because it's like, are you kidding me? like the dangerous fusion. Like, you know what's dangerous? Is a guy on a roof with a rifle who just shot the guy in a neck who was having peaceful dialogue with people he disagreed with? It's like, how come the guy that got shot in the face is being called the extremist? And no one's talking about the guy in the roof of the rifle as an extremist. This is demonic gaslighting.

I want to highlight with a verbal highlight or what you're saying. So how is 300,000 people gathering to worship Jesus, repent of sin, and forgive their murderers? That doesn't sound very dangerous to me. I'll just point that out. Yeah, I mean, it's, yeah, it just can't be taken seriously. It's like 300,000 people gathered, they worship Jesus, they respond in repentance. I mean, one of the messages was the gospel says, as a part of the good news message, that you're the problem first. That was said multiple times.

It's a call to personal reflection, to personal response, to personal repentance. So that I just, my mind goes numb when I think of the demonic gaslighting that's being done. And again, it's exposing the reality that America is going to have to choose a moral framework to work from. And John Adams said it. It's been repeated a lot in the last few months. but our Constitutional Republic does not work without a Christian populace. It doesn't. It was built around the assumption that Christianity was the moral framework

that the populace drew from to think about rule of law, to think about society, to think about what it means to be a productive citizen in our nation. I mean, you couldn't even give testimony in a court of law unless you were a Christian. I mean, we have case law where a judge rejects the testimony of an unbeliever who is an espoused atheist, because he says, how can we know if we can trust your testimony unless you acknowledge God in heaven? If you don't acknowledge God in heaven, why should we give any credence to what you say or trust your observation of the world around you if you ignore the most obvious thing in the world, which is there is a creator? That's in our founding reality as a nation. And so when a gay man who is already living in open rebellion to God with his lifestyle stands and admits he didn't watch the whole thing, he's working off of clips and mocks a move of God among a peaceful people.

I hesitate to even give it credence with a response. It's so laughable. And here's the last thing I'll say. There were a couple wrong notes. There were a couple wrong notes during the memorial. And I think that's important to say. this isn't just us like waving the flag and not being asserting as a Christian man and pastor there were a couple people who got up and I'm like yeah that was off yeah that wasn't right

that was angry the tone wasn't there the spirit of God was not behind that and I'm telling you when those guys did their thing and it was off the whole room felt it so this wasn't like not this was not a carte blanche just kind of a frothing at the mouth crowd cheering everything, easy punchlines. Guys got up and went for the easy punchline and went for the kind of get the crowd cheering and it didn't land. Good.

And so I just want, that's important to say too, there were a couple of flat notes during the service and everyone knew it. Landon. Yeah, Josh is right. You have open homosexual who feels danger. And he's living in the Romans one to Bay's mind.

He's in sin against God. He's a reprobate mind. And so it's, Isaiah 520, woe to those who call evil good and good evil. That's right. And so they have forfeited their ability to determine good and evil as they've hijacked language. So they'll say, you know, Christian nationalism. And these are guys that won't define what a woman is.

These are people that think that you could choose your gender. So, so you're dealing with reprobate mind that only can think about evil thing. And so we're talking about Christian national. nationalism, really what we're talking about is just Christians that love their nation. And so, you know, Jeremiah tells us to seek the welfare of the city. It's interesting because no one said the MLK was a dangerous Christian nationalism when he went in opposed unrighteous things and uses scripture to confront culture. And so it's amazing what they're trying to manipulate and they say it's Christian nationalism.

And really it's just Christianity. That's good landing. Ryan. Yeah, I would like to say. you know Don, let's just acknowledge what happened here is dangerous. It's dangerous to the enemies camp. It's dangerous to the schemes of hell. And if you oppose God and the things of God, this should scare you.

And I'm not surprised that it does scare you. But for those of us who love what is good and we call good good, this is not dangerous. This is a blessing. What Landon alluded to is if you look at the definition of nationalism, it's almost identical to the definition of patriotism. The only distinction is that nationalism carries the idea of believing that your nation's culture is superior to others. It's interesting that every other nation on earth is allowed to celebrate its culture other than America, according to the leftists. Americans are not allowed to be proud of any part of their culture or nation, but no one goes and says that to the Congolese or no one goes and says that to the Ecuadorians, that you're not allowed to love your own culture.

Whether or not a listener thinks that America has a distinctly superior culture, you could debate certain elements of that, I would argue that our culture is vastly superior in many ways because it's founded so much on Christian values. But even if you took that element out of the equation, Christian nationalism, quote unquote, is a scare label that the enemy kind of uses, the leftist kind of uses that as a synonym for you're a Nazi, when in reality we are just Christian. Christians who are patriots who can objectively recognize that there is a lot about the land of the free and the home of the brave and prosperity that America has enjoyed. That is awesome and that other people would benefit from as well.

And even if they don't want it, I'm going to celebrate it. If that makes me a Christian nationalist according to whoever, like so be it. If this is dangerous to the enemy's camp, welcome to the danger zone, baby. Like, I'm down for that. You know what I mean? like okay so when when don said that there's a verse that came to mind that i was like he just prophetically proclaimed that verse to our whole nation and he didn't know it this is second grinthians two 15 and 16 for we are to god the pleasing the pleasing aroma of christ

among those who are being saved and those who are perishing to the one we are an aroma that brings death to the other an aroma that brings life and who is sufficient for such a task so a Eventually, when the Spirit of God is pure, undefiled, and set on display, people whose spirits are moving towards the living God, they breathe it in and they go, oh, wow, this is beautiful. And then to Landon's point, people who have been, like the book of Romans says, who have been given over to a strong delusion, people have a reprobate mind, people whose hearts are set to do evil all the time, they breathe in that same aroma and it is a stench to them. And so I just want, like, for a Christian that's watching, your Bible is true. And every word of it is true. That's what you just saw. That's right.

Now, let me say a couple things about this. When men who hate God respond, how they're responding, it's actually a stamp of authenticity on what actually happened. Yes. That's good. That's great, Josh. Just in accordance with Second Corinthians there, if Don Lemon, who is on the record as being a God hater with both his words and his lifestyle, I was like, oh, not a big deal. It was a great event. and you'd be like, dang, we missed it.

But because of his response, he's authenticating the truth of the Word of God that read his mail 2,000 years ago, and he's authenticating the work of God that happened in that place. It's like a response, like we saw at the Charlie Kirk Memorial, it always like elicits two things

that Jesus warns the disciples about. Number one, it's the leaven of the Herodians. Number two, it's the Levin of the Pharisees. So you have the Herodians, people like Don Lemon and those who are going to come out and bemoan the dangerous fusion of the Christian ethic with the political system. Those are the modern-day Herodians. And then, you know, the Pharisees who are either too scared to even make mention of the fact that Charlie was assassinated or too inept to use it as an open door to preach the gospel. But, you know, the idea of Christendom somehow being a dangerous fusion for a government is completely without merit.

Christendom is the reason the slave trade ended. Christendom is the reason we have the university system. Christianity is the reason why we have hospitals. Christendom is the reason we have Protestant work ethic. Christendom is the reason we have child labor laws. You know, the idea of America being a Christian nation or founded on Christian principles doesn't just go back to the founding of America. It goes all the way back to Augustine, a North African church father, you know, who adopts basically Aristotle's framework for governance and then like infuses it with this Christian complex and then Aquinas builds on it and then Chesterton builds on it. Of course, nations have cultural and religious identities.

And so this idea that we've got to appeal to this either like ultra-libertarian neutrality or ultra-leftist secularism, because those are the only two buckets that can really contain the American experiment, is not only historically inaccurate, it's intellectually dishonest. And the secularists are terrified, and they should be that this is a turning point for the nation, where people are recognizing, you saw this with Elon's tweets. You see this with James Lindsay's tweets. I'm going to pull one of Elon's tweets up right now. People who are agnostic.

They are not believers in Jesus Christ who are like, we are now recognizing the fundamental importance of Christology to the West. Trinney, will you pull this up? Like to this point, so this dude, Matt Van Swole, which is a great last name, by the way, he tweets, I'm pretty confident. Everything started going dramatically downhill in America once Christianity started being replaced by secularism. That fact alone might be the strongest argument for Christianity. By the way, this guy's like a brand new convert.

I've been watching his deal. Elon Musk responds to him and says, you're probably right. So everyone is figuring out like, hey, man, there's only one foundation where you're building on a rock that can actually stand when the storm comes. You can take that down, Trinity. That's right. So let me say just a couple quick things about the Christian nationalism thing and then move us on. Or Ryan, did you have something? Okay, let me say one quick thing and then move us on.

The reason I want to do it is because Christians are going to have this thrown in their face. Here's what I think is going to happen is, and I'm not saying this, part of this is obviously not good. What I think is going to happen is progressivism is going to get more overtly demonic and more overtly anti-Christian. And what I think may end up happening is conservatism as a movement. And none of us here are saying that political conservatism equals Christianity. Nobody's saying that. But I think what may happen is political conservatism may. get more openly and overtly Christian.

As that happens, you're going to see this thing we're talking about right now, in my opinion, become like the absolute tip of the spear battlepoint in our culture. So a couple of things I want to say on the Christian nationalism thing, because every Christian, I think, is going to have this thrown in your face. When we're talking about the separation of church and state, that is an explicitly Christian idea, but it gets co-opted by progressives to mean something it was never intended to mean and that God does not want it to mean.

So we just need to say this. The separation of church and state does not mean the separation of morality in state. That would be evil. It does not mean the separation of religion and politics. That's literally impossible. That's a whole different discussion. It means the separation of governments. When we pulled away from Britain, the United Kingdom had a state church.

So the church and the state were one organizational entity. Our founders went, hey, let's not do that. So when it's talking about the separation of church and state, what it means is the separation of governments. The same dudes that's the president shouldn't also be the pope. All five of us are going, yes and amen. Of course, yes and amen. All of us want that. Now, what a Christian understanding of religious liberty means, and by the way, anybody can disagree with me on this point.

We've never talked about this. What a Christian understanding of religious liberty means is that we want a government that promotes, that supports freedom, in religion, but we also want a government that promotes the true one. So let me say that one more in time. This is really important. We want a government because we want people to have an ability to choose Jesus of their own accord. We don't do converted I. That's Islam. That's a Christian did do that. So we want a government that will support freedom in religion, but we also want one that will promote the true one. That's great. So freedom of religion, not freedom from religion, is what we're talking about.

The last thing I'll say, and Russ and I were talking about this before the pod, is what people say is, hey, man, you get it thrown in your face. You can't legislate morality. That is an utterly stupid and foolish thing to say. It's completely illogical. Literally every law. That's all you do. That's it. Literally every law that has ever been passed legislates a morality.

So the question is not whether you will legislate morality. The question is, whose morality are you going to legislate? So what we're saying is Christians, let's, do the morality that doesn't invite the judgment and the wrath of God on our country. Agree, disagree, additional comments. A thousand percent agree. And this is what I was referencing earlier, is we're going to have to decide again if we're going to be a Christian nation. We were founded as a distinctly Christian nation.

Twelve of the thirteen original colonies you couldn't run for public office unless you agreed to Trinitarian theology and acknowledge Jesus Christ is Lord. when we were having freedom of religion conversations, it was between Presbyterians and Baptists. I mean, that was the discussion. It wasn't between Christians and transgender ideologies. It was between different sects of Protestant Christianity. And as we've said multiple times on our pod, Josh, when the separation of church and state was intended to keep the state out of controlling the church for the express reason of allowing the church

to influence the state. Yeah, that's right. God's given these different jurisdictions, different responsibilities, and when they blend lanes, and when they, we don't ask the government to raise our kids unless you send them to government schools,

which is wrong, and we shouldn't ask the government to preach the gospel, that's the church's job. And so I want my government to bear the sword. Think of this. I want my government to bear the sword. But the question is, against who?

Against unrighteous evil doers. He's quoting Romans 13. for people who are listening. Right. I'm working for Romans 13. God has given the government a job to reward the good, to punish the evildoers, and to bring the sword of justice in the earthly realm so that there can be order and not chaos in society. So I'm saying as a Christian man, I want

my government to bear the sword against evildoers, and therein is a moral question. Who is going to decide what is moral and what is immoral? What is right? What is wrong? What is right? what is unrighteous. So now we have to have a standard to your point, Josh. And the question is whose standard will we all agree to bow and need to? And if you don't have a moral standard, you can't have a righteous government and they can't do their job. And so when I think about we're at as a nation, it's an inflection point. I mean, just the prophetic nature of Charlie's ministry turning point can't be overstated. This, I believe, was within God's heart when he was 18 and

named that crazy thing. Having no idea. that both his life and then his death would bring about his dream of a turning point for our country. Okay, speaking of this being an inflection point, I'm going to toss another video up. I'm going to toss the top-bottom video up here in a second Trinity. And Landon, I want you to go first on this. This is a lot of people have been drawing this analogy. And by the way, we're big boys. If people disagree on this, like that actually just makes the pod more fun to listen to.

But what you have right here is people have been pointing out, hey, man, so we, I'm going to speak to the moral asymmetry of where the parties sit right now. And you can kind of see that in the reactions to prominent deaths. Now, there's some, you know, I know Josh said, hey, don't do nuance. You could obviously nuance this a little bit. But the point is, I just want to show these two side-by-side reactions. You have a prominent situation where there's a death on the progressive side of things. And then you're going to see that response at the bottom of this video.

And then obviously you have the contrast of a problem. prominent death on the on a conservative or a Christian side of things conservative specifically on the and you're going to see the reaction on the top of this video now go and toss that up Trinity Landon when you watch this you I want you to start when you see this when you guys see this like spiritually what do you see go ahead and Trinity you can go and do it spiritually what do you see there you go by the way Brandon Lake crushed that moment It goes on for about another minute. It's honestly just powerful to watch.

Trinity, you can pull it. You know, Landon, you watch that. Wow. Wow. You know, there's a contrast there. What do you see? Thoughts? I'm honestly grieved.

And I'm grieved that there is so much confusion in the body of Christ that so many pastors helped promote those riots and the dysfunction and were a part of it and were coerced into their black squares and didn't have a, firm foundation and didn't lead their church as well in those seasons. And we need to lead better. I'm grieved that we're seeing the destruction in our nation, in our city. We're seeing truly the separation of wheat and chap. It's light and darkness. And you're seeing the church getting brighter and the world getting darker. And after I'm grieved, I'm motivated. Like I'm motivated to get the gospel into the every city, every, every church in America needs to be outside of

their churches, taking territory, reaching ground. So, So I'm grieved and then I'm inspired to do a better job myself and to reach more people. I mean, the Harvard, it's good to be in the business of church right now, guys. It's good to be in the business of church. There's a lot of people to reach. Russ, and then Ryan. Yeah, I mean, I think the difference between those two videos is you have one segment of people who grieve, but they are not without hope. and then there's another segment of people

who grieve through the lens of hopelessness. This is all that there is. And that's why, like, on the left, political secularism has become the default religion. And it is all they have. It is where all their eschatological hope is placed in. And so, you know, you have like, Marco Rubio up there saying,

hey, Christ is going to return and we're going to have a reunion and we will see Charlie again. And then you have the other side who it's like, let's burn down the city because this is all we have. And this is why like city of God and Orthodox, these were like such important books because what they did is they helped, what they helped do is like diffuse the lie of like, agnosticism that I think has crept into Christian thinking, especially as it pertains to its national effect. And by that, I mean this. You have, I think, well-intentioned, oftentimes well-meaning people

who will say things like, well, you know, our only hope is in heaven. And that's the real, you know, one day glory in the sky and the reward and, you know, all of those types of things. So then it leads to this kind of agnosticism here below, like this divorce between the spiritual and the natural. and it's like we shouldn't advocate for more Christian outcomes because that's not what this world represents, that's only what is represented in a future state. And of course, that's what they're saying. Yeah, that's not what they're saying.

And to me, like, that's obviously the inverse of the gospel imperative. Why do we all advocate for better governance and advocate for better leaders? And we don't have a hard time saying, no, there is a clear distinction between good and evil right and wrong, and there is a way that people should order their lives and order their societies to reflect better the priorities and the principles of the kingdom of God. Because we believe in a hope that's not either or, it's both and.

And so, like, the only reason why a person burns down their own city in which they live is because they don't have the ability to grieve through the lens of hope that leads to what Landon is talking about, which is an inspiration of go, the joy of my tomorrow can more than pay for the pain of my yesterday if I learn the lessons of what has happened and then incorporate it into a discipleship matrix that helps give my kids a better world than the one I was raised in. Ryan.

Amen. When you consider the BLM riots versus the memorial of Charlie, what you are seeing there is a physical manifestation of a spiritual reality. Jesus said, you will know. them by their fruit. And what did the enemy come to do? Steal, kill, and destroy. That is what you saw in the video of the BLM riots. Literally, theft, destruction, and death, stealing, killing, and destroying. When you look at the Charlie Kirk Memorial, you saw, blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Blessed are the peacemaker, for they will be called sons of God. You saw taking

our pain to the Lord, casting our cares upon the Lord, glorifying the name of Jesus, forgiving of our persecutors and murderers. I mean, that was God glorifying. So all that to say, any Christian or any pastor, God forbid, who looks at those two things and tries to equivocate them as if, hey, the left and they're right, they both have problems. They both have strong points. Like, bro, what world are you living in?

What reality are you even processing right now? You cannot compare those two things honestly and pretend that we're dealing with equal ideological frameworks here. Yeah, man, I'll just I'll dovetail this and then we'll move it. Ryan, honestly, I got some of this language from you that I use now because what pastors will do, Landon hinted at this, Russell hinted at this,

is they'll kind of do this thing where it's like, they'll do it, it's almost like a political, spiritual bifurcation that's an agnosticism where it's like the spiritual's up here and it never touches the political or the social down here and never the twain shall meet and it's, you know, honestly, it's a very convenient position to take so that you never have to make anybody mad it just seems like there might be a motive there but what I'm pointed out is those guys what they'll say is they'll say

well man you know politics can't save anybody and the question is well from what can politics save anybody from going to hell absolutely not but with our votes can we actually make decisions about whether or not we're going to pull hell up into the world or whether we're going to pull some heaven down into the world? The answer is yes. If you watch that two video, if you watch those two videos side by side, there's one of those directions that actually you literally see it. You see heaven coming to earth and God's kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven.

Just millions of people worshipping Jesus, repenting of sin, offering forgiveness to murderers. Like I get emotional, even just listing what happened. And then to Ryan's point, on the other side, what you see is steal, kill, destroy. So can we please, let's just like gently, can we please be done with the fake agnosticism that separates the political, social, and the spiritual? We just need to be done with it. It's like politics can't save you from hell, but it can save you from hell on earth. And politics can't get you into heaven, but they can give you some foretaste of heavenly things like forgiveness and murder.

and prosperity and satisfaction. So let's not pretend that those things don't have very real implications for our world. Spiritual things have to intersect with reality, political things, social things, cultural things. They're intermixed. Totally. All right. And one of the things you see is when you test a worldview, how does a worldview respond, how does your worldview guide you to respond to suffering because all of us are going to suffer? That's great. And then how? And then how how does your worldview touch and affect people that don't adhere to it? And so when you're testing worldviews, you saw on display in those two videos two different worldviews.

The top is responding to suffering and pain with hope to Russell's point. And the bottom is a worldview responding to suffering without any hope. And then secondly is, which worldview does the most good for the most people, even those who don't adhere to it? That's great. And so just ask yourself, just ask yourself objectively, looking at the two screens because a picture is worth of a thousand

words. Which worldview do you think is doing the most good for the most people, even those who don't adhere to it? The below worldview is burning businesses and destroying people's lives that aren't even connected to their story of pain that they're responding to. The above worldview was 300,000 people gathering to worship Jesus peacefully to, reflect on their own sin and then to honor the woman who stood and forgave the murder of her husband. And so when you're testing a worldview, ask yourself, how does it hold up under suffering? And then which one does the most good for the most people, especially those who don't adhere to it? That's great.

And I think that the answer is clear. Christianity is the superior worldview. Amen. I think I want to show one more clip. And then what I want to do is kind of ask you guys, I think all of us are, seeing some pretty radical things happening in our church right now. So let's show, I think everybody watched Sunday and the moment when Erica chose to forgive the murder of her husband was one of the most spiritually potent things I've literally ever seen. So I want to give that a little airtime. We're going to show that clip. And then I want to ask you guys talk about what's happening in your churches, and then I just want to ask you guys, what do you think is happening in our nation? And I just

want to ask this specific question. I'm seeing people start to go, man, is this, is this revival? Is that what this is? So I want to talk about that. Let's see Erica again real quick. My husband, Charlie, he wanted to save. Did you see this coming? Young men. Did you expect this? Just like the one who took his life. Young man. On the cross, our savior said, Father, forgive them. For they not know what they do. That man, forgive him. I forgive him because it was what Christ did and is what Charlie would do. The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the gospel is love and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us. Wow.

Landon, you go first, buddy. So this was my favorite part of the whole day. Not only was the gospel proclaimed for hours, it was demonstrated. Literally an act of forgiveness of one of the most heinous crimes you can possibly commit. I believe not only are we in a revival of souls, but I believe that we're entering a revival of forgiveness. that same day when she released forgiveness over the entire nation and world, I started getting messages from people in my church and family that have held on to

unforgiveness for decades. Wow. And they started texting one another saying, I forgive you. I forgive this person. I get goosebumps you just even right now. Literally the same way that she released it over the world. She released this infusion. this fire, this passion for people to not only have faith in Jesus, but to live like Jesus,

follow Jesus, be like Jesus, and to forgive like Jesus. This was one of the greatest events that has happened in the history of the world. Guys, only this, only forgiveness can heal the racial divide. Only forgiveness can heal broken marriages and broken families, all these other things that people are looking to for answers that will not do it. The only thing that can is forgiveness. modeled it and released it across the entire world. Landon, do you mind me ask? I haven't asked you this yet. What have you seen in your church in the last two weeks?

Oh, I mean, we're jam-packed to the rafters, just people at the altar. I mean, you sneeze and people are getting saved. I mean, it's just absolutely just incredible, full of faith. It's just wild. Ryan, what do you think is, what do you see when you watch that? What do you think is happening in our nation? Yeah, I mean, forgiveness invites the anointing of God. R.T. Kendall talked about that, and that has impacted a lot of us, some of our other friends like Mark.

And Erica doing that in such a public setting in front of some of the most powerful people in the world, it feels even more significant than just an individual forgiving someone who hurt them. It felt like almost a communal type of forgiveness, again, for our enemies. And I don't know, it just felt like it represented something big. bigger than just her forgiving her husband's killer. I like how Landon said it unleashed something. And I think in this context, it's appropriate. I don't claim to fully understand it,

but I think it invites God's blessing on our nation when we do the things he tells us to do, when we applaud the things that he says are good. And I pray that that would just impact our leaders. And I see it impacting individuals, same as Landon and you guys, you see it in your church, you see people who had no interest in God, their hearts softening, people who were far from God, considering spiritual things.

I got text messages from family members who have been uninterested in the things of God for years. And now they're talking about spiritual matters. And if that's not revival, you know, we hesitate to use that word revival because I think we start to play comparison games. well, is it a revival compared to this past historical revival? And like, I don't know. I mean, we're going to see things play out and in time will tell. But when people start forgiving their enemies and confessing sin and going to church in mass,

like that seems like revival to me. I'll take it. McPherson or Russell, somebody take it. Yeah, I mean, I think for me like... Go ahead, Russell. You know, I told the church on Sunday, as I was pretty, preaching and you know I was pretty emotional about it myself but I said I feel like for the last 11 years I've I've been the guy saying in Seattle like the rain is coming.

Like go up to Mount Carmel and check again to see if you see it and like Sunday at that memorial service like I saw it that's right. You know it like it like it is. revival time in America again. I think we are in the midst of what will be the greatest awakening our nation has ever seen. And awakenings historically always have inflection points. And there's a lot of incredible amazing things that will happen in all of our churches and all across the nation that don't have 250 million people watching it live. For sure.

But like every forest fire has a source. spark. There is a moment where historians and theologians can point to and say that was the shift. That was it. And like we saw, like, we get to be alive for it. We get the best seats in the house. Like we, like, it reminds me of what David said. Like, like, I don't even need to be on the throne. Just make me a gatekeeper. Make me a door. I just want to be in. the room when it happens. And so for me, like, this is the reward. Like, this is what you sell everything for to buy the field. It's this moment, right? This is what we have prayed for. This is what we have prophetically talked about. This is what we have pre. This moment is what God in eternity's past

has designed our leadership and our voices for it. And it's here. It's now. It's happening. We are in now the early stages of the rain coming back to the nation of America. There is a cloud that is formed. And it's like the words of Elijah, get ready to run. Get ready to run. The cloud has fought. Like, we are in it. Yeah, come on, man, Josh.

Woo! Man. Someone taking an offering. Go ahead, Josh. Did you ask me something, Josh? Well, just lots of stuff. Just, what's that? No, you go ahead.

Go ahead. Yeah, agree with everything that was saying. said, in regards to Erica's clip, you watched that. I heard the guys at TPP USA on a podcast later say when they were talking with her about why she wanted to do that moment. She said there was two or three reasons. One, she wanted to forgive him because she knew that she's been a forgiven much from Christ. Two, she wanted to forgive him because she knows what Charlie would do and what Charlie would want. And three, and this is still important, she said, I don't want to let anything get lodged into my heart

that could one day prevent me from seeing Charlie again. Wow. And what she's saying there is, is God says very clear, if we refuse to forgive other people, he can't forgive us because the proof of the gospel is, it's not in us. Because if you have Christ,

you're able to forgive. And so what she did there was this monumental demonstration of the power of the gospel in the heart of a 36-year-old widow, that you do have the power to over. overcome the deepest, most egregious wounding a person could experience, and that is having that which is most precious them on earth taken. So it was such a powerful proclamation of the gospel. And then secondly, in our church, we're just seeing the same things that you guys are

seeing in unexplainable, increased supernatural spiritual hunger. It's just everywhere. and the same stories. People texting, emailing, driving, flying in, showing up at church. It's the same story. Haven't been to church in 20 years or never been a church in my life. And watching the events unfold, I just knew I needed to go to church. I just knew I needed to read the Bible. I just knew I needed to get right with God. I just knew I needed to consider eternity. I just knew I needed to forgive those who have hurt me and I've carried bitterness toward them. It's just you look at this, and all of us who've been in this business a while, you know what I mean, doing church for a while, it's like, we've been labor in our whole life to see something like this, and you realize man can't do this. You can't stir up something like this. This is a move of God. Man can't stir revival. Of course, we know God goes where he's wanted, but we can farm the field, but it's God that gives the growth. And so what I would just encourage pastors who are maybe dragging their feet or slow on the uptake is, you're hearing us talk that this is an hour and a half out of our week. We're spending the predominant hours of our week laboring in the field God gave us. We're working in our local church.

There is so much, I live in the middle of an orchard. And when harvest comes, everyone goes to work because that's what you worked all year to produce as a harvest. It feels to me like in my city, I woke up and the whole harvest ripened overnight. There, there, there is. There is so much gospel opportunity everywhere to go. So if you're a struggling pastor, look, don't stop trying to figure out what you think about Charlie Kirk and get to work with the people in your city who need Jesus. Whether you agree with him or not, his life and now death through the providence of God has afforded all of us an opportunity that we should be taking advantage of.

His life and death breached the wall of the enemy, and we should be marching through it with confidence and clarity, proclaiming the gospel in our town to people who have, to people who have an openness to it in levels I have never seen in my life. Same. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, same thing as you guys. We had, so here's what's interesting to me. First of all, when I saw Erica do that, one of my first thoughts was the strength, dignity, grace, and truth of that woman is a testament to who Charlie was as a husband. Because you do not, you do not, you do not, a woman does not become that in the same way that a man does not become an incredible, you know, backbone of steel, loving his heart, firing his eyes, sword in his mouth, man, without an amazing helper.

Like, she doesn't become that unless Charlie was an unbelievable husband. And honestly, I saw Ryan say something about this. She was telling stories about who Charlie was as a husband. I was like, dang, bro, I got to pick up my game. And I think I'm pretty good husband. I think I'm pretty darn good at it. Totally. I was like, man, this guy was a slayer.

He was crushing, you know. The other thing that I'll say is, it's really interesting. If you guys go, this is a fun little research experiment. The number of revivals in world history that began specifically with a moment of forgiveness, a documented prominent moment of forgiveness is remarkable. Korean revival at Pyongyang, Welsh Revival is another one. Welsh Revival is another one, prominent revival. The Indian Revival in 1905, there are.

are a strange number of national revivals that began with, I loved Landon's language, I'm going to start using it, when someone made a decision by faith to release forgiveness from heaven out into the world. And it was like the domino that just trickle out. And so if... Yeah, I'm telling it, Josh, in the room, you could feel it. In the room, I mean, you're sitting there and I had the thought something just happened. Yeah. And that unleashed language is so powerful. It's like, that's exactly what happened. It's like something just happened that we're not going to recover from in the most glorious way possible. Do you remember when Trump declared over the nation there's two genders? And he took spiritual authority. You know, something shifted in that moment in that speech.

It was very similar. When she released forgiveness, something shifted, the strongholds of unforgiveness, those principalities that have root in cities, in people, and nations. Like, it loosened. It was a powerful moment. If this becomes a prolonged revival in our nation, the history books will show that was the moment it began. I believe that. That's what the history books will point back to that moment and say that's when it happened. And I'll just say like for our church, I think the last time any of us saw anything like the church attendance swell that we've seen was probably like 9-11. If you were doing it in 9-11, you saw something kind of similar. But here's, dude, here's what's that's interesting to me. 9-11, that swell was for one week, and then everyone went right back to

exactly where they were. For us, we bumped up significantly week one. We were higher this weekend than the weekend before, and the spiritual intensity of the people in the room, like, we have a, we got a freaking big auditorium here. I mean, it's real big. And the stairs were just, we're covered with college students. They all get emotional to talk about with Bible. in their laps. It's just like people walking in and it's that thing of them going, is there a word from the Lord? And I've never seen that before. And I just keep going like, man, in the midst of our years, revive it. In the midst of our years, make it known, Lord. Please do it. That's right. Let's do this. Final comments. Anything just generally that has not been said that you would like to

say in closing, anybody take it away? I'll just say this. You mentioned, you know, what you're, what you think is coming. You have a good eye for this, Josh, that, you know, sides are going to move further away, that the progressives will go deeper. You'll me read that real quick? Yeah. Okay, I've got this. Oh, wait, you're talking about something else. You finished, Josh. I thought you were going somewhere else. No, no, take it away, buddy. If you got something. Okay, I thought this is where you're gone. I tweeted this a few days ago. I said, right or wrong, here's what I think is going to happen of churches in the next few years. I said, number one, I think the conservatism, progressivism divide will unfortunately get farther and farther apart in our country in the coming years.

Conservatism becomes more overtly Christian. Progressivism becomes even more overtly anti-Christian and secular. Number two, cultural flashpoints will continue to arise, like COVID, presidential elections, BLM riots, Kirk assassination. Number three, churches that try really hard to be a church where committed progressives can worship without being uncomfortable, will lose a large chunk of the solid conservative Christians every time there's a flashpoint.

I'm not calling for that. I'm predicting that. Number four, churches that are more openly clear about the cultural implications of Christianity that very obviously aligns significantly more with modern conservatism than progressivism will gain those people. And then finally, number five,

for lack of a better phrase, the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer because over time you can't really build a church with people committed to modern progressivism. That's good, man. That's really good. I don't think that's where you're going. I didn't seem that tweet. No, no, that's super, super good, really helpful.

I think that is a little bit what I was going to say is just that as you're talking about kind of what you're predicting you think might happen, I just want to encourage pastors and Christians as well is we shouldn't be going further right or further left, we should be going deeper down into Jesus. And so as I've thought about this, and we've all said this off offline together, it's like, the weird thing is, I'm literally not saying anything different than I've ever said before. And so when I picture the Church of Jesus Christ,

and when I picture the man of God, we stand in one place and we say the same things. And then we adjust and tailor the emphasis of the message to meet the moment the culture is struggling with, but we don't move. And then culture comes and swings right and swings left and all these things, and the Church of Jesus Christ stands. And when either political party happens to swing one way so they're aligning with the Word of God, we encourage, we cheer, we say yes and amen. And when it swings out of a line with the Word of God, we call it what it is. So I just want to encourage churches and Christians. As you think about the things moving and swinging, and polarizing, we're called to stand.

This is not about left and right. It's about up and down, north and south. We are called to be men of heaven who are proclaiming heaven on earth and stop thinking of the church as a mere spiritual exercise. Jesus said, Mike, you should pray our Father who are in heaven,

thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, and it's incumbent upon the church as not only our responsibility, but our great privilege to bring the culture of heaven to earth in how we live, in how we act, in how we love, and how we forgive.

So things are going to go right, things are going to go the left. We're called to go deeper into Jesus Christ and to stand and proclaim the timeless truths of God that are always timely in any culture on fire. Right. You know, I'm thinking you can tell a lot about an ideology in how it reacts to a tragedy and where it culminates. And I'm thinking about the secular progressive social justice movement and particularly like secular racial reconciliation, what we saw in response to like BLM stuff.

It was like there was never, people would ask this question like, when do you get to the point of reconciliation? When do you get to the point of restoration and relationship? And you notice that in that secular progressive social justice movement, there is no place of forgiveness. you never arrive at a place of restoration. It's literally impossible. Whereas with what happened with Charlie, we had a murder, we had an injustice, we had a sin against God and man,

and where did it culminate with forgiveness, with the worship of God, with prayer, it just says everything about the dichotomy of these ideologies. Landon. That's good, man. Dr. Ben Carson is not a powerful speaker, but he's a godly man. And he quoted John 1224. The moment Charlie died, John 1224 is unless a grain of seed falls in earth and dies, it remains alone.

But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Here's what he said in his really soft, fragile voice. He said, revival is coming and you can't stop it. Yes. that was good Russell final thoughts yeah I think

you know for me in closing you know I'm often reminded of what Jesus says in the book of Revelation where he says I rather have you hot or cold because if you're lukewarm I'll spit you out of my mouth but what is so intriguing to me

about that verse is that it presupposes the church is in the mouth of God and so like figure out what you signed up for either we're going to be a voice or we're going to be an echo but when they ask John the Baptist

who are you are you the Messiah or should we wait for another he said I'm not the main attraction but I'm a voice that's crying out in the wilderness and that's what we are churches are housed in the mouth

of God. Churches have a responsibility, like Paul says, to be the pillar of truth in society. The church was made for moments just like this. And, you know, for me, this is not like, I know, like, maybe some pastors or spiritual leaders, economical personalities, they view this through the lens of like, oh, crap, now another issue. I'm going to have to like, speak up on. Like, no, you have fundamentally misunderstood your role in the first place. When the church loses her voice, the world loses its conscience. Wow.

We were created for this moment. Only the Church of Jesus Christ provides both the eschatological hope and the real life practical solutions for the moments we find ourselves in. And so I would just encourage people who are listening. Like, no, you're built for this. You're equipped for this. You've been getting everything you need pertaining to life and godliness. And you don't have to have a mega church in order to have a mega voice.

You just have to dare to tell the truth. That's great, dude. That's right. Ryan, did you hit, where you're signaling for something? Are you good? No, I'm good. All right. Gentlemen, thank you for joining.

Josh, should follow these guys on Insta. McPherson? What's your final word, buddy? I spent it when I read my tweet. I rudely interrupted you. I rudely interrupted you. It was worth it. I think, man, you guys have all hit it.

All right, I got one. There you go. This is a church nerd pastor thing. But I came out of until late 2019, I was more that, hey, neither left nor right. Hey, just in general try to stay Switzerland. and don't say something that would alienate people who are more committed, politically progress it, you know, that was me. And then I just had a breaking point where I realized like, oh, like, we actually have a moral responsibility as the church to oppose evil. And so I think

here's my reflection as like a church nerd pastor thing. You guys know that there's the parable of the wedding banquet. And Jesus is like, hey, so like there's this group of people that I invited to the wedding. And I kept inviting and I kept inviting. And they wouldn't come. And it was all the elite people of the city. And they didn't come. And so eventually then Jesus went, well, then fine, I'm going to go out to the fields. And I'll invite the blue collar dudes that are out there with dirty hands. And let's see if they'll come. And they came. And in a little bit, man, I honestly feel like that's what happened to pastors in the last like six to eight years is this like we tried to tailor make this missiology from like this imagined like secular progressive elite person that was in

our heads and we spent all these years going hey why don't you come why don't you come and man god saves everybody he saves everybody and has a heart for everybody but in general they didn't and what i feel like is happening right now is god's going you know what man let me go get that dude with his hands that are dirty out in the field. And that that guy that people kind of said was a little deplorable and really didn't matter. And he's like, will you guys come? And it's like, hey, you know, I've chosen what's weak in this world to shame what's wise. That's right. And I've chosen what's foolish in this world to shame what's strong. And honestly, there's a little bit of like where I just like, I look back and I see, I'll be very honest. Where I look back at like 2000 late 2018, Josh is

preaching and I have like a heart of repentance and sorrow for it and so for the pastors that are like watching like I think the five of us would just say and by the way we're I'm not there's so much more that could be said I'm not saying there's only one type of person that Jesus is saving right now et cetera et cetera caveat caveat caveat but what what I would say is like hey man the five of us are saying to you as a pastor the fields are really ripe for a harvest if you're just willing not to have to be the dignified guy. Go get it. It's a good word, bro.

It's a good word. All right. Guys, thank you so much. Let's get Ryan out of McPherson's closet, and let's get Russell a shower. Thanks for tuning in to live free with Pastor Josh Howardton. We pray today's episode helped you take a step forward in life, culture, and faith as you live free in Christ.

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