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I Don't Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST
The #1 Driving Force Behind Political Violence in America
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Foreign assassination attempt, ladies and gentlemen, what is driving political violence, particularly from the left? Why do I say the left? Is there no political violence on the right? Well, let's look at the data, ladies and gentlemen, because today we're going to unveil something that might not be obvious but is really driving much of the political violence and political polarization that we're seeing in our country. Just Saturday night, as you know, there was another assassination attempt on not just President Trump or probably some of his officials, according to the manifesto of the would be assassin. And my friend Erica Kirk was there, as you know, traumatized again by political violence. You saw the video, her leaving. Just, I just want to go home. Don't we all just want to go home to when Americans didn't think political violence was the way to solve our problems here in the 21st century? Because some data has come out. In fact, this data was brought to bear right after Charlie was murdered. There were several thousand people surveyed. And we'll put the data, the survey in the show notes 25% of very liberal people in this survey this past September said political violence is sometimes justified. Only 4% of very conservative people said that political violence is sometimes justified. And if you dig a little deeper into the data, while 25% of very liberal people said that political violence is sometimes justified, only 55% of very liberal people said it's never justified. Well, you say what, what about the other 20%? Where did they come from? Well, 14% of very liberal people didn't know if it was justified and 6% said they, they, they're not going to answer the question. They wouldn't say. So only 55% of very liberal violence is never justified. Only 55%. The other 45% either say it is or they don't know or won't say what is behind that. We're going to get to it. By contrast, 88% of very conservative people said it's never justified. Now, why is this, what is the worldview that justifies political violence in very liberal people, at least a significant minority? Well, if you look at the manifesto, I'm not even going to say the guy's name. You know who he is. I'm not giving any more publicity. But the manifesto of the guy that tried to shoot up the White House correspondence dinner the other night, if you read his manifesto, he talks about the oppressed and the oppressors. The oppressed and the oppressors. What is he talking about there? Well, he's talking about critical theory. And this guy, by the way was a schoolteacher, at least part time anyway. Oppressed and oppressors. What is that all about? We've talked about it, oh, several years ago on this program in wake of the George Floyd situation. We talked some about critical theory, but it's time to revisit it. Last week, when I was in Dallas, Texas, at the TPUSA Pastors Summit, I decided, since I only had 25 minutes, to try and help pastors, who, by the way, are very busy people, especially pastors of an average church of two to 300 people. These folks, these pastors are expected to do everything and be experts in everything. And no person can do everything or be an expert in everything. So what I tried to do in this presentation to about 1100 pastors was to try and give them kind of a short summary of critical theory so they could see in one slide why some of the people, maybe even in their congregations, and certainly people outside their congregations, believe that political violence is sometimes justified and why there appears to be some really odd political alliances, like Gays for Gaza. Like, how. How does that make any sense? Gays for Gaza? Why would LGBTQ people be siding with Hamas? Because if Hamas had access to LGBTQ people, they would throw them off roofs in Gaza. That's what they do. Why would these two parties be in alignment on a political issue when in reality they are diametrically opposed in their worldview? At least you might think they're opposed in their worldview. Well, enter critical theory, ladies and gentlemen, because people who agree that they are oppressed will align themselves with other people who also think they are oppressed, at least to a certain extent. And what I do in this presentation, which we're about to show you from last week in Dallas, is put in one slide, sort of the key to why people think political violence is okay and why you have people telling other people you have no right to an opinion because you're an oppressor. Only people who have certain characteristics should be heard. You should shut up because nobody should hear your opinion because you are an oppressor and we're being oppressed. This comes at right out of Marxism, and then after Marxism, cultural Marxism. And I give a short summary of it in this presentation. Again, this was recorded before the assassination attempt. The reason I'm showing it to you now, in fact, I had a whole nother podcast that we had already produced that was going to go out today, but we're going to put this one out today because it's important to try and understand where people are coming from and Then what you can do about it. And on the other side of this 28 minute presentation, I'm going to give you some ideas on what you can do about this problem that we have in our society today. So here's the presentation from last week in Dallas, ladies and gentlemen. On September 10, we drove into Utah Valley University and Charlie got some footage on his phone from a bridge above us, a building above us. And about an hour before we were supposed to be there, it looked full, thousands of people. And I said, charlie, I don't like this place. There are too many buildings. He just shrugged it off because he knew in order to love people, he couldn't be completely secure. Love risks. If you're going to reach out to somebody to help them, you have to expose yourself to a certain extent. And Charlie decided to do that. And as we walked up to the area where the tent was, it was so festive, so many people yelling and screaming. It was like a Trump rally times two without Trump. And not even to hear a speech. It was a Q and A. And so Charlie starts flipping hats. I'm just standing there, somebody hands me a row of hats, so now I'm tossing hats. And then Charlie grabs the mic and he says, okay, it's time to go. First question is about Mormonism. We're in Utah. Of course, we had rehearsed that question on the way in. Second question was about trans violence. Ironically, when the shot rang out about 12 minutes after he started, he was gone. In the car on the way to the hospital. He wasn't looking at me, he was looking right past me into eternity. Absent from the body, present with the Lord, he was already gone. We learned later from the surgeon. The surgeon said if he was shot in the operating room, we couldn't have saved him. He was killed instantly. My question is, what's wrong with the world? Why do we have this kind of evil? And what's the true solution to evil? This is the most succinct explanation of the entire Bible in three short sentences. God created it, we broke it, Jesus fixed it. What is the solution to the problem of evil? Christianity is the solution to the problem of evil. Do you know if we had never sinned, there would be no reason for God to add humanity to his deity. Come to earth, allow the sinners that rebelled against him to torture and kill him so he could take their meaning, our punishment upon himself. And so by trusting in him, we're not only forgiven, but given his righteousness, there's no other way this could happen. Because as an Infinitely just God, he can't allow injustice to go unpunished. Otherwise he wouldn't be infinitely just. All of us have been unjust or injust, so all of us deserve punishment. This is why at the memorial, I wanted to honor Charlie, but I wanted to center on the gospel. And so I said, charlie Kirk is not in heaven today because he died for his Savior. Charlie Kirk is in heaven because his Savior died for Charlie Kirk. We have the greatest message anyone could ever have. And let me say, I couldn't do what you guys do. I couldn't be a pastor. I don't have the patience to be a pastor. I'd rather deal with atheists than elders. And you guys have the second hardest job in American Christianity. The hardest job is pastor's wife, right? Ladies are going preach it. What is the solution? Well, Christianity isn't the solution that our culture wants. And what I'm about to do is echo that great message that Pastor Ed Young had last night. I hope you were here for that. Pastor Young was talking about how Jesus was not a soft serve pastor, a soft serve ice cream pastor. And we ought not be either. I mean, I know you know this. You're pastors, you study the word. But many in your congregation might not know this. They think Jesus was a sweet guy who's never said a bad word about anyone. If you think that or your congregation thinks that, ask them to read John chapter 2, John chapter 8, and Matthew chapter 23. What happens in John chapter 2? Jesus makes a whip and he goes and he jacks people up in the temple. But sweet and gentle Jesus did this. Yes. And then in John chapter eight, he's talking to the Pharisees, who, by the way, were the politicians of his day. Many of them were on the Sanhedrin. They were lawmakers, they were judges, and Jesus went after these people. Are you telling me Jesus got involved in politics? Yes, and he wasn't so nice doing it. In fact, to these politicians, in John chapter eight, he's having an argument with them. And he's right in the middle of the argument when he says, your father is the devil. Jesus, you can't say that. That's not very Christlike. Excuse me, I am Christmas. Can you imagine? You're having an argument with somebody and you say, your father is the devil. Never try that with a sibling, by the way. And then in Matthew 23, Jesus really unloads on these Pharisee politicians. He says, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You strain out A gnat and swallow a camel. Oh, you look great on the outside, your whitewashed tombs. But on the inside, you're full of dead men's bones. You go a mile to make a convert, and then once you make them a convert, you make them twice as much a son of hell as you are. How will you avoid being condemned to hell? What sweet and gentle Jesus said this? Yes. Jesus was not. Barney. Can't we all get along, boys and girls? No. I came to bring a sword. It's gonna divide mother and daughter, father and son. How often have you heard those passages talked about? Not very often. Yet you all know these passages are true because you're divided in your own family over Jesus. And you should be. If Jesus is the truth, you ought to be following Jesus and not what your family says and not what your culture says, not what Instagram says. You ought to be following what Jesus said. Jesus was tough. He was not soft serve. In fact, if he was soft serve, why did they kill him? He claimed to be God. That was blasphemy to the Jews and sedition to the Romans. He was tough. And so what I want to do is not be a soft serve presenter here this morning. I'm going to show you what I think is true about what the culture believes and why it believes it and why you're having so hard of a time talking about what Lucas yesterday called the four immigration, Islam, identity, and integralism. That's a hard one. Integral Israel. We'll talk about integralism another day. But those four issues are hard to talk about today because you're going to be called all sorts of names because the culture solution to evil is not Jesus. Here's the culture's solution to evil. There are oppressed people out there and oppressors. And here are all the oppressed people according to critical theory. Pastor Young started to talk about this yesterday, that if you're a people of color, you're poor, you're middle class, you're a woman, you're trans, you're lgb, you're non Christian, you're disabled, you're an immigrant, you're an indigenous person, you are by definition oppressed. Doesn't matter what your own personal behavior is. You're in that group. Regardless of your personal behavior, you're an oppressed person. So let's go through each one of these. If you're a person of color, you're oppressed. Who's your oppressor? Anybody who's white. If you're. Did I mention this is going to be correct? Not politically correct. Did I mention that? Did I also mention that this is going to be controversial and you might not agree with me? That's okay. If you don't agree with me, you have a right to be wrong. All right, Poor middle class. This is the owning class. This is right out of Marxism. Women and trans, who's the oppressor? Men. Those evil men can't have any of that toxic masculinity. Why don't we get some of that toxic femininity? Charlie was talking about that quite a bit. Lgb, who are the oppressors of the lesbian, gay, bisexual? Anybody who's a heterosexual. Non Christians are oppressed. Obviously, the oppressors are the Christians. The disabled are oppressed by the abled. Immigrants are oppressed by citizens. That's why we can't have any borders. It's oppressive to have borders. And finally, white settlers are the oppressors of indigenous people. If you don't get anything else, take a picture of this screen, because this is what we're talking about for the next 14 minutes. All right? Now, this is the way people think today. Even if they know nothing about critical theory, they may know nothing about it at all. But this is just. They've just imbibed this from the culture. And intersectionality is the idea that the more of these oppressed qualities you have, the more you should be heard. This is called standpoint epistemology. So if you are a black woman, lesbian, non Christian, who's from out of town, whoo, you've got all the moral authority. Doesn't matter how smart you are, if you're one of the oppressors, you should not be heard. Now, intersectionality is the more of these oppressed qualities you have, the more you should be heard. And it leads to very perverse outcomes. Rod Dreher, who wrote a book four or five years ago called Live not by Lies, put it this way. He said, curiously, the poor are relatively low on the hierarchy of oppression. For example, a white Pentecostal man living on disability in a trailer park is an oppressor. A black lesbian Ivy League professor is oppressed. Do you see the problem with. Does any of this look remotely Biblical? No. Remember, Martin Luther King famously said, I have a dream that my children are going to be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. That's out the window now. Martin Luther King's dream has turned into this nightmare because this is how people think. And this is how, by the way, you'll find gays for Gaza. What Gays for Gaza, that's like chickens for kfc. Why? Because you see the people over here on the left, regardless of how they may be opposed in other areas, they will unite against Christians. Now by the way, you say, where are the Jews on this? They're non Christians. Yeah, but they're Jews. So they're demonically hated. They should be considered oppressed because many times they are given persecution. But no, in fact Charlie was. The day before he died we were talking about this issue and he said, why don't we use the term Jew hatred? Because anti Semitism isn't the right word. Why do we have Jew hatred? None of this makes sense logically. Now why was Charlie killed? If the evidence that we see now is good, and I really believe it is, you know why Charlie was killed? Because he was an oppressor. According to them, he was a white owning class man who was a heterosexual Christian abled a citizen, a white settler. He shouldn't have been heard. His alleged killer said he needed to shut Charlie Kirk up because Charlie Kirk was a fascist. Gee, I never knew. A fascist tactic was to hand your opponent the microphone and allow him to make his case while you humbly listened. Who knew this was fascism? News flash. The guy that killed him was the fascist. This is projection. You're claiming somebody else is doing something evil when you're the one doing it. And now it's absolutely demonic that people are going after Erica Kirk. Do you know that Jesus and the apostles called Satan a murderer, liar, accuser and slanderer? Who wants to steal, kill and Destroy. Notice on September 10th we had a murder. What have we had since then? We've had lies, accusations and slander from people who want to steal, kill and destroy. And people say they don't believe in demons. Could it be more obvious this is what's going on? And do you know that if we lived in the old covenant, what God would do with such people? Exodus 22:22 says, Anyone who oppresses a widow or the fatherless, God says, I will hunt you down and kill you with the sword. Deuteronomy 19 says, if you falsely accuse someone of a crime and you're found out, you get the penalty of the crime. So if you falsely accuse someone of murder and you're found out, you're the one executed. That would shut down the Internet. How sinister is it that they're going after a widow and the legacy that her husband built? We're not going to allow that to succeed, are we? In fact, when we got to the hospital. Mikey immediately called Erica, sent a plane to get Erica and probably around 3pm she got to the hospital and she went to see the doctors by the way. Didn't have a really good bedside manner. About half an hour after we got to the hospital, he came out into the hall. After he came out of the operating room. I can't get this sound out of my head. He said, he's dead. No, I'm sorry, no. We tried everything with all the tenderness of a brick. He's dead. I need to talk to Erica. Mikey's on the phone with either Erica or J.D. vance trembling. I need to tell her before she hears about it on social media. As if this guy with this bedside manner is the guy we want to put on the phone with Erica. Anyway, she went and talked to the Doctors. Maybe about 5:30 after she spent time with the doctors and Charlie, she came downstairs, our eyes met. She walked over to me. She was a mess. Obviously we're both crying. We embrace. She said, he loved you and he was doing what he wanted to do. Please don't let his legacy die. That's why all of us are here. We're not going to allow that to happen, are we? In fact, Jesus started the most important movement in history with 11 guys, most of them fishermen. We got 11 times 100 in here right now. They took over the Roman empire in 280 years. What can we do with 100 times 11 in this room? We need to get busy. So how do you deal with these issues? Immigration, Israel, Islam and identity. We call these the four I's. Well, if you're going to talk about immigration, you're a xenophobe. If you're going to talk about Israel, you're some kind of crazy Zionist. If you're going to talk about Islam, you're an Islamophobe. And if you're going to talk about trans issues or identity, you're a transphobe. Let me clear up one thing. Let's just talk about Islam for a second. There's no such thing as Islamophobia. Islam is not a race. Islam. Islam is a political, religious ideology. There are Muslims from every ethnic and racial group. It's not a race. You don't equate it to race. Islam is an ideology that wants to impose Sharia law wherever it goes. Sharia law is fundamentally at odds with the United States Constitution. There's no freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of petition, freedom of assembly. Under Sharia law, it's not a phobia. To want to oppose an ideology like this, it's called wisdom. Now, this doesn't mean that your Muslim neighbors aren't nice people. They probably are. What it means is, even those nice Muslim neighbors, when Islam gets a majority, those nice Muslim neighbors don't really oppose the more radical elements in their groups and Sharia laws put into place. And by the way, this is why we have to be involved politically. Because if we don't protect our ability to preach and live the gospel, who will? I always hear people saying, all I do is preach the gospel. I don't get involved in politics. To which I say, I guess you don't think the gospel is very important. Then why? Because politics affects your ability to preach and live the gospel. If you don't think so, go to some of the countries I've been to. I've been to Iran. There's no First Baptist Church of Tehran. I've been to Saudi Arabia. There's no Calvary Chapel of Mecca. Just got back from Egypt. You want to start a church there, you're going to have trouble from the government. Why? Because politically, they've ruled it out. If for no other reason, you need to be engaged politically is to protect your ability to preach and live the gospel. Also because you're called to love your neighbor. And in order to love your neighbor, you have to put laws in place that protect them from evil. If you don't do that, who will? Some politicians want to ban plastic straws, but they don't want to ban child mutilation or child murder. Jesus had a word for them. You're neglecting the more important matters of the law, he said to the Pharisee politicians of his day. Don't neglect the more important matters of the law. What could be more important than life? The right to life is the right to all other rights. If you don't have life, you don't have anything. So every one of these issues needs to be dealt with in this context, because the reason you can't, people don't hear you on these issues is because they're thinking that you're an oppressor. And all the people on these issues are in the oppressed category, whether they be immigrants, whether they be non Christians, like Muslims, or whether they be lgbtq. You can't oppress these people. That's wrong. Of course. They have no moral standard by which to judge this. You know, if there is no God, nothing's ultimately right and wrong. Everything's just a matter of opinion. God is the ultimate standard of righteousness. If he doesn't exist. Nothing's right or wrong. There's nothing wrong with oppression, even if you're right, that somebody's being oppressed. That's why atheists have to steal from God to argue against him. They have to steal a standard of righteousness to say you're unrighteous if you don't agree with me. Nonsense. So we want to provide a resource to you, Lucas, myself, my other friend Jason Jimenez, who's here, who's going to be leading a group this afternoon. We're pastors Lucas and Jason are, and we want to be your research team. We've just started this new initiative called PastorsBrief.com you don't have the time to research all these topics and figure out how to deal with them. So we want to help you with that. We're just working out the details. Not all of this has been put in stone yet. But if you go to pastorsbrief.com you're going to see what we're going to do. And we're also going to have a. In addition to these four topics, starting in the fall, once every other month, we're going to have a live zoom session with somebody like Ed Young or Jack Hibbs or Jack Graham or some other guest that you want to ask questions of. And you can be a part of it. It's just for pastors because you don't have time to do all the research. We get that. So it's going to be Lucas, myself and Pastor Jimenez. We need to do this because we as Christian leaders have the answer to what's wrong with the world. Let not us be the problem with the world. Let us be the solution to the world. All right, one last thing. My friend Steve Meyer has a new movie that's coming out this next weekend, April 30, because you might be thinking, well, look, I even got friends that don't even believe in God. How can I get them to believe in God before I can ask them to obey what the Bible says on these moral issues? This movie is starting on April 30th in theaters. I want you, if you would, to tell your congregations about it. Let me just show you the trailer. It's an amazing film. You can take anybody to this movie, whether they could be atheists. It's not a cheesy Christian film. It's just showing them there appears to be a God out there. Check this out. Today I'm going to tell you a story which may seem very strange. Galileo, Kepler, Newton, each tried to explain events in the history of the universe, has the universe always been here? Or is it finite? Is there something else that would lay these questions to rest? It reopens that question of ultimate meaning. How in the world did this start? The simulation theory, the multiverse. You can't trust what's in front of your eyes. Come on. That's. That's ridiculous. That belongs in the movies. We want to take our metaphysical hypotheses and see what they point to. And I can remember him saying, here is evidence for what can only be described as a supernatural event. He himself made a discovery that shook his personal philosophy. The fact the universe sprang into being at a definite moment seems to me theological. And it is science that has revealed this. We are dealing with a system of manifold, complex design. 110 to the 10,000 turned out to be the tip of the iceberg. We associate information with a rational intelligence behind it. It had an uncanny resemblance to a digital bit string, very much like an information carrier. You can read the same segment forward to get one protein and backwards to get another. It struck us with a tremendous impact. Without guidance, we would get a life. Unfriendly universe. Many organisms have beauty beyond anything that's relevant for their survival. The concept of life as a cosmic phenomenon should have many consequences. The question then was, what does one do about it? Please tell people about this movie and join us because we want to expand Charlie's legacy into the future for not only the nation, but most importantly, for heaven. Amen. All right, ladies and gentlemen, at the end of that, you saw. I just played Steve Myers new film, the trailer for it, the Story of Everything that's this weekend that starts on the 30th, actually this Thursday. So please go and see that film. It's a great film. And when you support a film like that, filmmakers like Steve and others can make more films like that that can impact not only the church, but also the culture. All right, let's go back to what we were talking about there in the presentation, Critical Theory. As you know, Erica was at that event the other night where the president and the assassination attempt took place. And as you saw, she was just distraught. Rightfully so. I mean, another. Another incident of political violence, and she's somehow a part of it. She just wanted to go home. Don't we all just want to go home to a period when Americans could discuss their differences through reason, logic, evidence, and then go to the voting booths and whoever persuaded the most people would win? Why are we trying to assassinate people who are democratically elected? Why are we trying to assassinate people who are just offering others the microphone so they could make their case, and then we could have a dialogue. Why? Because of critical theory. That's one influence. If you are deemed an oppressor, according to these folks, you don't have any right to even have an opinion. You don't have any right to be heard. In fact, we're going to somehow figure out a way to justify your murder. That's what's going on. Ideas do have consequences, ladies and gentlemen. Ideas have consequences. We need to teach people the truth and give them the proper worldview that there is a God, you are not him, that you're made in the image of God, so are other people, that we should reason through our differences rather than resort to violence, especially violence on innocent people. Charlie Kirk wanted to just have conversations with people, and someone who called him a fascist shot him. Yeah, the guy that shot him was the fascist, not Charlie Kirk, who was simply trying to have a conversation with people, to have the free exchange of ideas so we could mutually figure out the truth together. But when you put people in these boxes and say, I don't care what your personal behavior is, if you're in one of these boxes, if you're a white owning class A man, if you're a heterosexual, if you're a Christian, if you're abled, if you're a citizen or you're just a white settler, you don't have a right to be heard because you're an oppressor. Well, gee, you say that enough and then you call people in that category Hitler and fascists. Someone like this alleged assassin is going to try and take matters into his own hands, because ideas do have consequences. Now, he is responsible for his own behavior. But this kind of influence obviously can drive people toward that kind of violence. So what can we do? We can teach people the truth. We can teach people that we ought to judge them not based on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character. As Martin Luther King famously said that we ought not be favoring people based on what their socioeconomic status is or treating them poorly. The Old Testament says that James in the New Testament says that we ought to treat people as people. We ought to have blind justice. We ought to not worry about what the status of an individual is. We ought to treat them as human beings made in the image of God, regardless of their status. Instead of this theory of conflict, which never ends, there's just going to be conflict forever. I mean, what's going to happen if all the so called oppressed people suddenly get power, are they going to suddenly become oppressors? Not according to a critical theory. Critical theory doesn't give you an answer. The revolution just continues. There's never a period of peace. It's always a theory of conflict where human beings are put in perpetual conflict against one another based on a perceived status that they have. Where people. Other. Other people. You're on the other side. You're on the other side. You're on the other side. Oh, you're of a different ethnic group, you're of it. You're a different socioeconomic status. Oh, you, you have a, you're of a different worldview, a different religion. So we're not going to even treat you as someone worthy of having a right to life. Can you see how poisonous this is, ladies and gentlemen? This is what is fueling so much of the political violence. Not all of it. I'm sure there's some people who don't hold the critical theory that get involved in political violence because we're fallen human beings. But this is certainly driving it. And when you have only 55% of very liberal people saying political violence is never justified, that 45% are entertaining it in some way and 25% say, oh yeah, it's justified. Look, you've got a real problem on the left. Why is all this political violence, particularly coming from the left? Why, why is that? Because in my view, it's political. It's, it's critical theory that there are oppressors and there are oppressed and if you're an oppressor, you're automatically guilty. We're not going to judge you based on your individual behavior. We're going to judge you on the group. We happen to put you in a group we don't like. Now, by the way, this isn't to say that some, there isn't some truth that sometimes, for example, racist things do occur, but you don't defeat old racism by new racism by introducing new racism. You don't say that only people who are white are, oh, can only be racist and people of color can't be racist or vice versa. You don't say. That's just, that's. We used to call that prejudice in, in my day, right, where you're judging people based on their groups. And as we pointed out in a, a podcast a couple of months ago about the whole ICE situation, that it is illegitimate to simply take a incident off the Internet, in particular 15 second video, which you don't have the complete context for, and say, I just saw a murder and therefore everybody in ICE are murderers. That's what we call a hasty generalization. It's a logical fallacy. When we take individual data and apply them to entire groups, again, that's prejudice. And yet many on the left think this way. In fact, maybe some on the right do as well. But it seems to be coming more and more from the left. We need to teach logic in public schools, ladies and gentlemen. Instead of teaching kids how to think, we're teaching them what to feel. And that can be dangerous because you can feel anything from a 15 second video where there's a confrontation and then you suddenly apply illegitimately whatever you thought happened in that video to the entire group of people, whether it's a police, police, the police department, whether it's ice, whether it's some other group. That's not how you treat individuals made in the image of God, by smearing them all just because they're in that category with the behavior of one or two. Even, especially when you don't know if the behavior that you saw in that video literally was immoral behavior. And maybe the law enforcement officer had a real reason to use force like that. So we need to teach logic, ladies and gentlemen. That's one thing we can do to help people. And we also need to point out that this oppressed oppressor dichotomy, we need to expose it and show people the first of all unreasonableness of it and the immorality of it. To put people in categories like this and judge them by their category. And by the way, for those who are pastors, you saw at the end of that presentation, we're starting a new ministry to pastors and the website is pastorsbrief.com if you go to pastorsbrief.com you can be a part of it. The first thing we're going to do is help inform busy pastors who don't have the time to dive into all this stuff. What we call the four eyes. Immigration, Israel, Islam and identity. Immigration, Israel, Islam and identity. Because you don't have time to deal with all this. I get it. I don't even have time to do it. But we have a research team that can help you give the essentials. So you can then inform your congregations on these issues. A biblically informed presentation. You can give them on immigration, Israel, Islam and identity. These are things that are tearing people apart and that will also deal with critical theory as well. So you can inform your people. You know, you might not even know you've been thinking this way. But if you're thinking that certain people are oppressors always and other people are always oppressed, you might have imbibed critical theory without really thinking about it. So we want to help you get better at addressing those four eyes and then into the fall. Our plan is, is to have high profile people that you as a pastor want to ask questions of, maybe pastors that you might admire out there, other people in the field, and do these live Q and A zoom sessions so you can interact with people like Jack Hibbs or Gary Hamrick or Ed Young or Greg Laurie or any of these pastors out there that are maybe further down the road than you are and might have some wisdom or insight to help you in your ministry. We're going to have them on and you can ask them questions. That's our goal anyway. I haven't even invited those people yet, but I intend to anyway. Check out pastorsbrief.com also for those of you that want to get better all around at being able to defend the Christian faith whether you're a pastor or not, and be able to answer questions, be better able to present and interact in a give and take environment, maybe in a hostile environment. How do you answer questions better? You need to enroll or at least apply to. You just. You have to apply to what we call the Cross Examine Instructor Academy. C I A. This is like the 18th or 19th year we're doing this. We do it every, every summer. This summer it's going to be in Charlotte, North Carolina, July 31 to August 2. In fact, check this out right here, ladies and gentlemen. You want to be more effective in showing people why Christianity is true and bringing them into the kingdom for eternity. In order to do that, you might want to want to attend the Cross Examine Instructor Academy. It's not just me, but Greg Kolkol, Natasha Crane, Elise Childers, Alan Parr and others. You'll learn from all those folks how to better present and answer the most difficult questions about Christianity. It's three days of hands on training from July 30th to August 1st right here in Charlotte, North Carolina. If you want to apply, seats are limited. Get on it now. Get, get off the bench and apply@cross examine.org that's cross examined.org I'll see you in Charlotte this July. All right. CIA apply today because seats are very limited, ladies and gentlemen. Hey, also want to mention that last night my friend Rob Schneider and I were here in Charlotte and the entire, almost, almost two hours. There's a lot of comedy in it because Rob is a brilliant comedian, but we covered freedom and the idea that we need to defend freedom. I even talked a little bit about critical theory. You want to check that out? It's on our YouTube channel. It's called you can do it. Defending freedom, Rob Schneider, easy for me to say. Rob Schneider and myself. And we took questions from the audience. The entire almost two hour YouTube video is on our YouTube channel. In fact, we'll put it in the show notes as well. So check that out. This Thursday night, University of Tennessee, Elisa Childers and myself will be there, 8pm Eastern. If you're anywhere near Knoxville, would love to see you. It'll also be live streamed, so if you're not near Knoxville, you can watch it then. Next week, University of New Mexico, cinco de Mayo, May 5th. Next night, Calvary Chapel in Albuquerque with my friend Skip Heitzik. I will be doing the presentation that night. Three really good reasons you ought to believe the New Testament writers are telling the truth. Then the following week, I'll be with my friend Jack Hibbs out at the Defining Truth, a giant slayer conference at Calvary Chapel, chino hills. That's May 16, a Saturday. Hope to see you out there. I think that's a Saturday. Is that a Saturday? I think it is May 16th. Let me check, let me check. May 16th. Yes, it is a Saturday. And tomorrow, Wednesday the 29th, Erica Kirk is going to talk about political violence on the Charlie Kirk show, which is now chaired by Andrew Colvett and Blake Neff. So that's going to be at noon Eastern. You want to tune into that, please pray for Erica. She is such a strong woman. But how much of this kind of difficulty can any one person deal with? In addition to being attacked from all sides illegitimately, people are attacking a widow and her husband's organization that he built so well. And then she's part of a, an event where there's an assassination attempt. You can just imagine the kind of, of stress she's under. Please pray for her, but tune in tomorrow, Wednesday to hear what Erica has to say about political violence. This needs to end, ladies and gentlemen. We need to get back to reasonableness. We need to discuss our differences and allow people to reason out any differences that we have and come to a right conclusion based upon evidence, based upon the idea that God does exist, exists, because we can show he exists and he's put a moral law in place that we ought to adhere to. All right, friends, great being with you. We'll see you here next time. God bless.