The Charlie Kirk Show - Russell Brand's Journey to Christ

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

Russell Brand lived not just a non-Christian, but actively anti-Christian lifestyle for much of his early life. Now he has undergone a dramatic transformation, gotten baptized, and become a Christian. He joined Charlie at the Student Action Summit to talk about his conversion, and how the values of Christ can empower a person to navigate through the "terrible trenches" of modern life. Russell also talks about becoming a target for censorship and denunciation in the Covid era, the decline of the UK, and more. Watch every episode ad-free on members.charliekirk.com!    Get new merch at charliekirkstore.com!Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here live from the Bitcoin.com studio. My conversation with Russell Brand, it's fun, it's lively, and it's insulting to me, but I don't take it personally. It's a lot of fun while I lozenge with Russell Brand. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you've got to listen to this. Russell Brand and I share lozenges next to the campfire as you reflect on the deeper things. Email us, as always freedom at charliecirk.com. Subscribe to our podcast.

I think you're going to love this conversation with a new believer, new Christian, Russell Brand. Buckle up, everybody here. We go. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks. I want to thank Charlie.

He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job. Building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. why we are here. Noble gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of the Charlie Kirk Show,

a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you could protect your wealth with noble gold investments at noblegoldinvestments.com. That is, noblegoldinvestments.com. It's where I buy all of my gold. Go to noblegoldinvestments.com. Okay, everyone. Let's get right to it. Joining us is a new friend and honestly a great person and amazing Christian, a new Christian.

You probably know him from a lot of different stuff. Give it up for Russell Brand, everybody. Russell, great to see you I'm so grateful to be here Charlie, you've been avoiding me for debating All right Wait, this is important

It's the Guantanamo Gator Charlie, I want to follow up on some of the Guantanamo Gator's questions Why do we have... No, keep talking, this is good And why don't you debate He's perfectly reasonable debate him now.

Why do you keep a vote? Because that's quite good. Do you see? Now, Charlie, now, can I talk to you about some of your booking ideas? And I will say, no one told me about the Guantanamo Gator.

I was not warned. And you know sometimes you see those videos of Floridians getting them into a trash can with wheels, I should like to see that take place with that gentleman. He was so, he honestly, like, he's just so reasonable. He should have kept the conversation going.

Russell, great to see you. Thanks for being here. It's so lovely to see you. So I've so much to talk about here. Are you hearing around a Bible? That's my Bible in one year from our daily readings. And I thought it was very apisite that today we've transitioned out of Acts and into Romans 1. Because on our previous conversation, which was in Milwaukee at the RNC,

said to me that Romans is the Christian constitution. This is from my friend Jay John. I like it. It's old and New Testament. It's very easy to carry around and read. These are just some of my notes in preparation for the interview. Note one, ensure Guantanamo Gator present in front row. This will distract Charlie.

No, there's just lots of actually notes about Rome itself and Caravaggio and stuff like that. So, yeah, I carry two Bibles, which I recognize it's quite cumbersome, but I've not been Christian very long. so what do you expect? So Russell, you have a phenomenal story and thank you for taking time to travel to this conference. It's terrific.

Thanks for paying me to come. Yeah, no, absolutely. Thank you for gladly accepting. So you were in public eye, you still are, in a non-Christian lifestyle. Is that fair to say? Almost anti-Christian in some ways. Walk us through the journey

as you're comfortable sharing from that lifestyle to now giving your life to Jesus Christ? Well, you know, in a sense, we have no choice but to worship something. And my devoutness and devotion was effortlessly directed by the culture and by my conditions, I mean familial and psychological as well as social, towards worship and reverence of the individual, which I see as being the nexus of false idolatry, really. As long as you're trapped in self, worshiping yourself, aspects of the individual. yourself, self-aggrandizement, pursuit of personal glory. You're very easily contained by the

culture. In a sense, I've started to recognise that the culture wants us in a state of self-centered bewilderment. When you're in that state, you're very easy to manage and manipulate. I really thought that I was autonomous and had a great deal of personal authority. In fact, I would have believed in the kind of rags to riches idea that I've come from a pretty modest background and through success and endeavor and hard work and through personal excellence and ability and charm, Moxie, call it what you will. I fought against the odds to become a Hollywood star and marry Katie Perry

and be on red carpets all over the place for a brief while I lived with the Guantanamo Gator. It was a complicated era. That's how I would have characterized it, Charlie. I missed that one. Yeah, no, I kept it quite, I was embarrassed. I would have characterized it as a sort of a story of personal success.

This is how I came to realize this. I was looking at the work of Yuval Noah Harari, the writer of Sapiens, which I found perfectly enjoyable until it became clear to me it was an atheistic trope that was geared towards directing people towards surrender and subjugation

towards AI force idols. That's what it was. It was, wasn't it? And I thought, oh, the reason this guy is such a popular and accredited intellectual is because his message and agenda fits very neatly into the agenda

of powerful elites who determine which cultural artefacts get celebrated and popularized. I didn't realize. that first. And then I thought, I wonder if you were that. I wonder if there was something about your success, Russell, that was telling the culture, a story that he wanted to hear. And I thought about it for a while because it is, after all my favourite subject, me. And while I was thinking about that, I thought, oh yeah, it was. My personal hedonism and my sense of myself as self-actualising

through excess, that's a story the culture likes to tell itself. So really, you were just the useful sort of vessel or expression of a particular set of cultural ideas. I came to Christ the way that some people do, who don't have the benefit of Christianity in early life, although it happened obviously at the perfect time, through a variety of collapses in my private and public life, sort of a personal difficulty with the birth of my son, who's sort of beautiful and incredible and in doing very well, but certainly it was a crisis in our family for a minute, and through false allegations of sexual or misconduct, which gave me great pause for reflection on the way that I'd lived for a lot

of time and the impact of that lifestyle. And I suppose in the midst of all that confusion, the clarity of Christ came in a way that's still difficult to describe. But most recently I felt, Charlie, when reading, I was looking at Acts, and it talked about the meeting of Paul and Peter, so I went to check it in Galatians, the same encounter. And I thought, in that encounter between Paul and Peter, you've got someone who knew Christ while alive and met the resurrected Christ, as well as Paul, who has this profound, incredible vision re-encounter with him. And I thought, and I had that kind of visceral wave of the reality

and truth of the historical Christ, not just the mythic Christ that we need to use as a sort of an inner constellation for personal guidance, but oh my God, it actually happened, it actually happened. And when I feel that, it brings me out of the humdrum, it brings me out of the sensual, and it puts me in the supernatural, where I believe we must, to some degree, live in the world, not of it. Yes, and so I'm sure you tried Buddhism or did you experiment with Eastern stuff? What made Christianity different? The reason I was repulsed

by Christianity initially was because I felt like this is the religion of like, you know, like any ordinary American or my grandmother or my wife is accessible to everyone. I must have something a little more esoteric, a little rarer, a little more hardcore. A little more Gnostic.

A little more Gnostic and a little less conformist. I felt that, you know, Christianity may be there's an argument that could be had about whether institutional Christianity is used as a kind of panacea to prevent people being the radical revolutionaries that I believe our Lord would have us be. And with things like Buddhism and Sufism,

not that I'm claiming to have had a deep understanding of these faiths, just an autodidactic perusal of the books of Sufism and Hinduism and Buddhism and philosophy, although there were many, many truths that were discovered in them texts at the centre of those truths charlie there i was still trapped in self when i surrendered kind of voluntarily yet exhausted to the man christ the flesh christ i realized oh i wanted to be jesus i wanted to be the centre the son of god the apex yet i can't do miracles i'm not willing to be crucified now since it's surrendering to him accepting him bowing at the foot of his cross

on my knees, shoulder, shoulder with any one of you that accepts Jesus alongside me, I feel relieved, I feel unburdened, I feel empowered. And I realize that the person that I used to be was not an error or a mistake, but part of the unfolding way, as the early Christians called it. And I find it interesting that a lot of these ideas that I investigated, dear Charlie, like Taoism say, have embedded in them even semantically notions that can be discovered in Christianity. And when His Holiness, the Dalai Lama gave his recent night. if birthday speech, as I sort of read, at least, you know, he posted on social media,

I read through that, Charlie. And I noted that most of his significant points about Buddhism, I could even with just a year in scripture, match with something from the gospel, every aspect. It was like, this is all in Christ. This is all available to us in Jesus. There is no need for anything other than Jesus Christ. There is no need for anything about Jesus.

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month of service. Switch today. That's patriotmobile.com slash Charlie. Would you like a throat loss? Well, I'm fascinated by them. You were staring at when you want one? It's not like I want one. I just want to know the story of them. I lose my voice at these events because I speak 14 hours a day. So... You fight it off with lozenges.

Well, no, the lozenges lubricate the throat to prevent you. Disgusting. That's just... Don't let go you man find out about it. It's very maha for the record. I like it. I have to have a hundred. A thousand.

Lemon eucalyptus. It's good stuff, man. I'm addicted. I'm going to grind it up and inject it in my arm. Don't do drugs, kids. We're told all religions are the same. Yes. You really like or you're no good.

It's actually amazing. It's delicious. It's tasty, right? Charlie, no wonder you can speak for 14 hours. No wonder you can get Gavin Grusome Newsome to admit that there are different genders. You're powered by lozenges. That's right.

He's the only one ever to mention the lozenges. No one else has ever met. I would expect nothing less. So... Not all religions are the same. That's by thought that you're what you're saying. No, yeah, no. We're told all religions are the same.

What is the differentiator that you want the rest of the world to know about Jesus, Christ, about self? You mentioned, I mean, for example, Buddhism, coming from wrong, Russell, is a very very, self-centric religion. Yeah, it is. I mean, like, is this, sorry, you know sometimes when you're a professional comedian, you realize that you do things that are funny, where you're

not trying to be funny. This is one of them, I'm not even actually trying to be funny. For me, it seems normal that you would take the lozenges in and out like a cigarette. Well, Charlie, uh, your father and I, we used a lozinge together

at Harvard. George Bush and I were in the Skull and Bones Club. We would lozenges together at Bohemian Grove. Then who's that under the privet? It's Alex Jones. After my mollicrobes was Jones. After my mollicrobes was he. No, I mean, yeah, like Buddhism is self-centered.

I reckon the reason, the thing that I resisted about Jesus was the very thing that I needed to yield and surrender to. I was messianically infatuated with myself as the kind of centre of the world and the culture also gives you that offering. It's appealing that your personal identity can be the altar of false idolatry, i.e. your sexuality, your race or your gender. All of those things are glorious creations of our Lord. But when you make them the focus of your spiritual attention of your devotion,

they can't hold it. I look at the instructions in scripture now, not just as edicts to be obeyed, but simply as suggestions that if you follow them, you will have a better time. If you turn sex into a type of God, you're in for a rough ride. If you turn your personal identity into a kind of God, you're living in an illusion, die on the cross with him. The conversation I referred to between Paul and Peter, as rendered in Galatians, leads to Paul saying, I lived by a certain law, and I lived by a certain law,

The idea of self, the idea that do as, well, indeed, one of the edicts of Satanism as espoused by Alistair Crowley is, do as thou wilt, shall be the whole of the law. That what you want to do is God, that your own desires are God, that by truncating, curtailing and ceasing of your desires, you'll somehow be not true to yourself, that you should be who you are. Now, consumerism and commerce benefit if people want to fulfil their desires all the time. every single purchase is undergirded either by necessitation or desire. But what I have been shown by our Lord is that the perennial ideas of Aldous Huxley that all religions are the same, or the Cambelian ideas of the heroes with a thousand mask, or Jung's ideas about archetypes are not untrue. There are truths presenting themselves again and again through culture.

But there is, I believe, for some of us, maybe not for everyone who would, how am I after like 14 months of Christianity to tell everyone that they have to do, immediately what I couldn't do 15 months ago. But it seems to me that the way of the cross, the way of the son, the father and the Holy Spirit is a way of bypassing and navigating your way through the terrible trenches of bewilderment strewn by a culture that wants you ignorant, bewildered, and delirious.

You need only glance at the Parisian Olympics to be aware that what they want to do is surpass and supplant the values of Christ with the values of a culture that want you sick, ill and weak. There is an attack on all categories that empower people, that's the category of woman or the category of man. These are empowering and holy roles that we might play. I note since living in Florida that there's an attack on excellence, on expertise, on competence and capability. They don't want men and women that are awakened and armed and capable

of taking care of themselves. They want us all like hopeless blobs and parasites hooked onto their system of ignorance that tells you there is no God and then tells you that it is the very God that it denies the existence of. Omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, wanting complete control through surveillance and data capture an observation and ultimately wants you to submit to its false idols, its false idols. Mm, lozinge. Imagine that was all a campaign. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Imagine that whole thing, Charlie, was just an elaborate advert for this brand of lozange. You know how, like, Tucker does those ziffs or whatever. The zins or whatever now that I call it. He's got his own one now. It's called Alp. So Russell, all kidding aside, when are you going to start a church? Are you going to start a, are you going to try to start a ministry? I mean, the UK could use a revival.

I'm really trying to surrender to whatever he wants. You know, I've always been talking my whole life. So like it would be a false modesty for me to say, oh, really, Charlie. You know, I'm aware I hear myself talking. But when I'm not sucking on a sweet, sweet lozenges of the Lord, like, but I do want to participate in his ministry and mission. But because I have a tendency to appoint myself and anoint myself in certain roles, I want to be sure that it's the path he would have me walk.

And I have pretty serious challenges to surmount in the UK when it comes to my personal legal situation. Well, the entire government is going after Russell. I hope you guys know that. It's exhausting. Yes. But so Russell, how is that played into your walk with Jesus? Is it fair to say, and I'll just, I mean, I don't mean to be offensive or provocative,

but that you were like brought to Christ because things started to go rather negative. like things started to fall apart and you realized that you had to surrender in front of the cross. Yeah, that's sort of a pretty simple way of putting it, Charlie, yeah. Thank you. Good. Charlie Kirk here, crime is skyrocketing.

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Is that correct? No, it was a little later, but I knew that it's been revealed that I was under observation from groups like logically AI and Crisp, who are sort of online organizations that often work with either government agencies or government carve-outs. You're aware of things like the Atlantic Group and various organizations that were funded by USAID or other. CIA carve-out organizations.

What it seems to have taken place is I provided a lot of raw material by living like an imbecile for a long, long while, in a way that is not at all in accordance with the way that I've lived as a married man for the last eight years, nine years, ten years. God, that's not going to look good for my wife.

Hold on, let me do some quick maths. When was that baby? I'll know, out of wedlock, sorry, Lord. Eight years, but my daughter will be nine at her next birthday. While I was single and young, I live very promiscuously, and when you live like that, I can see that it causes harm to be selfish in your sexual conduct is essentially exploitative. But there's, in my view, a world of difference between that and forcing people to do things against their will. That is a very, very clear and atrocious crime.

What I believe happened is that due to the popularity of much of the broadcasting that was taking place at that part, time, which happened sort of really organically, and almost Charlie Kirk, as a quirk, of the technological advancements of that time, like you could exist outside of centralised media, and just as I was doing on YouTube, quickly garner a following of millions. We were talking every day

about Pfizer's lack of clinical trials, modernist relationship with the government, the inability to prove the efficacy of those medicines, the likelihood that the COVID vaccine, excuse me, COVID virus originated in a laboratory. There's peculiar funding relationships between DARPA and COVID. Anthony Fauci's

deception. His peculiar visits with the CIA, his relationships with Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, all sorts of stuff that was available, and Charlie would have been reporting on the same stuff, and certainly Joe Rogan was. I was talking about those kind of things, using a variety of articles from people like Matt Taibi and Michael Schellenberger, bringing together narratives. But I think hopefully we were able to speak about it in a manner that was sort of funny. For example, one of the Moderna booster shots was only ever tested on eight mouses. And I would, like, say, you can't give a whole population a booster on the basis of something that's only been given to eight mouses, and all the while I'm aware that people

are going, but the plural for mouse, mouse is mice. And they get little tricks like that help information to land with people. Yeah, that's the most important part of the state. It's absolutely vital. Focus on the pluralization of the word mouse. Good grammar, mass death, you know. Without grammar, there's no point in being vaccinated. There's no point in surviving. Also, I hope that was observing the unspoken narrative of COVID is this. Check it out. Life is so sacred. And each of us, so precious, the most vulnerable, no matter who you are or where you from, life is a sacred gift from God. Therefore, if there's a virus that's a threat to anybody, we must all be locked in our homes. We must all wear masks. We must all obey these edicts. And if necessary,

you must take these vaccines. And if you don't, you are lacking in compassion, you don't care about others. The entire premise is erroneous, because where else do we see our culture behaving as if life is sacred, as if we must sacrifice ourselves for one another? Indeed, don't they mock those very values? Don't they mock our Savior? Don't they mock our church? Don't they laugh at the idea that there's something more valuable

than the fulfillment of self and the adornment of self? Anyway, so during COVID, I talked about it a lot. I was pretty loquacious and pretty nonstop about it. The videos were doing well. I was enjoying it,

and I'm a kind of a naturally anti-establishment person, I suppose. I didn't take the vaccine because I don't like being told what to do. I didn't take it because they were telling me. In fact, if they wanted me to take that vaccine. All they would have had to have done is leave a couple of syringes in my bedroom and tell me, under no circumstances, do not touch that, no matter what. Doesn't matter who coughs

or however quietly in whichever grocery store, don't take those. Oh, what, you've already taken them. Sir, I have taken 20 or 30 vaccines. I don't like being told what to do. In this way, I'm closer to the native mentality of the people of your nation than my own, because over in the UK, people seem to have happily tumbled into submission. Incredibly obedient in the UK. I saw some of your appearances there on G.B. News and your debates there, and I thought you conducted yourself marvelously as always. But I am, like you, concerned about what's happening in the United Kingdom. And however you want to carve that up from the left or from the right, from a materialist, rationalistic, atheistic, or Christian perspective, is a country

that is in very real danger of falling. It is. And so, Russell, you brought something and I want to isolate it. You said, you don't like being told what to do. That makes it even more incredible that you submitted to Jesus Christ and submitted to Scripture. Yeah. Because that's a surface contradiction, so walk us through that. Well, I think that might have been one of the initial obstacles because there's this sort of, in pantheonism and paganism, there's this aggrandizement or acceptance and celebration

of what you might call the humors or the inner deities, your warlike aspect, your the Aphrodite aspect, your sensuality, all of these things can be revered. And I didn't want to submit to Christ. I didn't want to surrender to Christ and if I'm entirely honest Charlie there are some days still where I don't want to bow down

in total submission and surrender and recognize that my self-will is my biggest obstacle. That's exactly right. The flesh, the world and the mentality. I'm continually caught in a loop of fallibility around these things

but I can't believe it's all in scripture it's all in the word but it was like the scripture coming to life somehow like I felt like it is finished it is done his words on the cross

I felt the compassion that is available through the love of his mother, through his forgiveness of us, through his acceptance of us. I do believe the submission to a higher good. I believe now humility before honour. Before the idea of surrendering or accepting any human authority as supreme, I find it kind of repulsive. And I believe that there are significant institutional, if not constitutional changes coming to your. country because I believe that there is an appetite for more freedom that is growing. But freedom cannot exist without virtue. And so freedom will come after, and it's happening right now, people go to church and give their life to God. You cannot have a free society if you do

not have a society that values God. That's why continental Europe is so unfree. It's secular. It's interesting. And so you pinpoint something, first of all, there's a great verse that I think you'll love, Romans 12, 2, which is do not conform to the ways of this world, but instead be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Fact check me if I got it right. I'm not fact checking you. I'm just... The Believers Constitution... I consider you a kind of living Bible. I'm not quite a living Bible, but I do take that seriously. So Romans 122, it's one of my favorite verses, because you talked about your mindset. So that's Romans right there, I think...

Yes. Yeah, 122. All right, so this is a new international verse. version probably Charlie so that any distinctions are likely because of the translation I won't nitpick that but what do you go with ESV yeah that's my prayer or new king James one of the two I like ESV as well all right so and so dear brothers and sisters I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you let them be a living holy sacrifice the kind he will find acceptable this is truly the way to worship him don't copy the behavior and customs of this world but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think then you will learn to know god's will for you which is good

and pleasing and perfect it's beautiful i like that it starts off charlie as well yeah praise the lord i like that it starts off with give your body that's one of the things that hit me early on through saint paul i think in corinthians and it was somewhat by the brilliant rendering of the british pastor that i first heard used these words in a sermon even though their words we're all familiar with that's frequently misused of course sarcastically even ironically do you not know that your body is a temple do you not know it has that prefix do you not know that your body is a temple i like the gentleness of you wouldn't be doing this if you knew that your body was a temple i lived like someone who didn't know that their body was a temple a dwelling place for the holy spirit a place for the lord to inhabit

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I'm a bit nervous about talking in front of a big audience. Okay, I do get nervous. See this thing. When I went to Rome the other day, I was in one of these churches. You know, like if you ever go to Rome, you've got to go. It's amazing. I don't mean Rome in Florida,

because there is one, is there? Or Georgia. I don't mean that one. I mean the first one. There is a wrong Georgia, yeah. I mean the one with Italians in it. There's probably some in Georgia, so, aren't then? But anyway, I mean full of them. Brimming over everywhere you look.

One of these churches, he's got three Caravaggio's in it of St. Matthew. One, Caravaggio is one of our favorite sort of late Renaissance artists. There's a lot of darkness in the way he paints and shafts of light. They say that Francis Coppola used his image system heavily for the Godfather movies. Anyway, there's this one image painting, beautiful, unbelievably beautiful painting of St. Matthew being appointed and anointed, like chosen, like I suppose in the show chosen when our Lord goes, wait, follow me. I don't know if he goes, he's not from Essex, but you know. And Matthew was a tax collector, I believe. So they say. And in this picture he's depicted as being sat around with a bunch of other taxpayers and near do wells. And at the end of the table, rather like this one that you and I are at Charlie, surrounded by him, look like they're playing games of chance. I believe it's St. Matthew at the end, although it's one of those paintings. where there's some discussion over which one is Matthew.

The one I think is Matthew, the painting's called the anointing of Matthew, or the appointing of Matthew. I can't remember which, probably appointing, I suppose. Like, one of the geezers is sat at the end like that. And I think that's the one that's Matthew, that one. What? Who's getting appointed? And you will understand his reluctance

to be appointed in this holy mission when you see that the next of the... They're not a triptych, but they are three paintings hung together, is Matthew with Gabriel, writing, his testament and gospel. And then the final image is Matthew being flayed, which means skinned alive for his faith and for his Christianity. I thought if we believed as he believed,

how could it be that you could have an institution like the Vatican and not have a revolution? If we believed as he believed, how could you have us going to church every Sunday praying, teaching our kids, reading the word and not have the revolution, or at least the way made straight for the return of our saviour? If we believed only as Paul believed, as Peter believed, as Barnabas believed, as Mary believed, as Stephen believed. This is the church that excites and interests me, and I know it comes at a high cost.

And I know what our Lord said to, is it Anayas when Paul's on his way of Damascus? Paul's come in. I've chosen him. He's going to suffer greatly for my name. So go over there and sort his head out. He's gone blind. He's had a little bit of a shock on the way here. Paraphrasing.

But what I feel is that it was a threshold. harsh Charlie, that I was still withheld in the new age, and I still bear the scars of the new age. I was going to ask you about that, but I wanted to be polite. She's Durga. Durga is a great goddess in here. You know, this is a tattoo I've had for some years now, of course, prior to coming to her. I mean, why did you decide to get a tattoo of her? Because Durga is a, she's female goddess energy, and I have a wife and I have two daughters, and I was commemorating and celebrating the power of my wife, Laura, and of my daughters, Mabel and Peggy, Durga, in one of our aspects, rides a tiger.

And I like the idea of my daughters and my wife being powerful, strong women who know how to marshal the energy that God gave them. And of course, there is no God by him, and I surrender and bow down to Christ Jesus, and I disavowal all false idols. But the false idols that concern me most are not those that emerge out of Hinduism

or even Islam, although I'm sure you'll hear rhetoric here to the contrary. No, it is the false idols that emerge from our culture, the ones that the graven images that we stare at day after day, hour after hour, the endless, endless effluvia and limitless flow of filth and pornography that denigrates and lowers us all. It's the false idols within our culture that I fear most, but, you know, Peter took the Jews and Paul took the Gentiles. We're all going to get called to different

missions, and I don't claim to know very much. I think about myself all the time, and I don't understand myself yet, so how would I know anything about anyone or anything else? But what I would say is the false idols in the culture that I fear most that want us deadened and distracted I totally agree it's look modernity has made us materially wealthier but spiritually poor and that that is that is modernity and we are seeing a reckoning of that while people want to return to a tradition we only have a couple we only have a couple minutes I got to get you on stage but really yes this is just the warm-up act oh man I'm feeling nervous how many seven thousand It'll calm you down.

Give me that for my pocket. Yes. I know that's there. 7,000 people for you. Oh, Charlie. Russell, your show is called Stay Free. Yes, I'm Rumble. Are you, do you believe you are freer and more joyful since giving your life to Jesus?

Oh, man, there's no question. Even with the really difficult things that happened, like being told that our baby might be born dead, being offered late-term abortion, him being born and requiring a surgery when he was 12 weeks old, turning into the glorious little boy that he is. is now. The reputational attacks, the exhaustion, the confronting with the things that I have done wrong in my life. I have never been so free. In obedience and surrender to him, there is perfect freedom. There is no freedom out there. There's no freedom in hedonism, in Epicureanism, in the constant devouring of concupians and endless pleasures. There's no freedom there. It's an illusion,

but it's a powerful illusion. I'm not suggesting I couldn't fall for it again a thousand times. I have to stay very close to Christ Jesus. And to do that, I need Christians everywhere around me, and perhaps that's what fuels my evangelism. And so, yeah, Russell, what has worked for you? Every believer is different? Is it Christian music? Is it reading the Bible?

Is it going to church? What keeps you close to Jesus? Because you're right. You're constantly attacked. By the way, Satan, I believe, has singled you out for quite a while, and you better believe the enemy's not happy that now you're proclaiming Jesus in front of millions of people. And, you know, we as believers believe Satan is real.

Satan is active. Yes. Satan attacks. Satan targets. Satan is literally in Hebrew, Satan means the prosecutor, the deceiver. So all of what you are going through in the United Kingdom is a satanic attack to try to say, oh, Russell, remember that thing that happened 10 years ago? Try to have you feel guilty and ashamed.

Remember, Satan throughout the scriptures would constantly always whisper, whether it be in the garden or elsewhere, about, oh, you need to be held back by what you once did. But Christ sets you free. And so, knowing that, what keeps you spiritually active and alive? You know, of course I am cowed by what I've done, but I am attacked for things that I have not done. I recognize that my objectification and exploitation was wrong, and I accept the forgiveness of my Lord, and I pray for the forgiveness of people that have been negatively impacted by my selfish conduct,

by my greedy conduct, by my low conduct. I was told this by this brilliant Vietnam vet in your great nation everything's a burning bush he said it like this everything's a burning bush is how he said it that's how he said it may I ask what you mean sir and he said that Moses could have encountered

Yahweh at any time it could have happened at any time take off your shoes for you are on sacred ground that all things are incandescent with the Lord yet not immolated all of us burn with the holy light of the holy fire all of us feel the living presence of the Holy Spirit and all of us benefit from the sacrifice of Christ Jesus and we may know eternal life in him we access him here in this moment let this moment be a burning bush to all of us let us comfort one another let us love one another let us serve one another as he has served us amen so beautiful thanks Russell I'll say in closing

you have millions of people praying for you thanks the the Christian journey is not is not necessarily easy, but you can rest that Jesus is with you throughout every step of it. And you'll say this. Your whole thing is freedom. Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Thank you. We'll leave you with that teaching. How great is Russell Brand, everybody? Give it up

for Russell. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Email us, as always, freedom at charlacirk.com. Thanks so much for listening, and God bless. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to Charliekirk.com.