Transcription
[music] [music] [music] Heat. Heat. Heat [music] up here. [music] >> [music] >> Before I introduce our speaker, I want to make just a few remarks that I think kind of capture the current cultural and political moment in and the greatest need of the hour.
Courage is the great need of the hour. Courage is what we're celebrating this evening, ladies and gentlemen. Telling the truth in a world of lies is dangerous business. It requires courage. There is something incredibly powerful about speaking, especially speaking the truth where it isn't welcome.
How did God create everything from nothing? How did he bring everything into existence? He spoke it into existence. He spoke. We are the only creatures in all of creation who have the ability to speak. We are created in his image and we share with him the power to speak. And because of that, we should not take speech lightly.
Why did Jesus come to the earth? There are many good answers that involve redeeming sinful man and laying down his life for his bride, the church. But the answer that Jesus Christ gave to Pontius Pilate in John 18:37 was this. For this purpose, I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth.
God spoke everything into existence and his son came into the world to bear witness to the truth. Speaking the truth is a divine act. As his image bearers, we not only have the divine right to speak the truth, we have the divine responsibility to speak the truth. So please hear what I am saying. God's people have a responsibility to speak the truth. This is not an option, guys. This is not an option. We have to.
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Speaking the truth is an incredibly powerful act of warfare. The battle we are involved is a spiritual one and the truth will set us free. A simple summary of what we do here at 1819 News is we speak the truth no matter the cost and because of that the Lord has blessed our efforts.
Speaking the truth will come with consequences and that is something conservatives have struggled with. That is probably our biggest hamstring. Conservatives love their stuff, their houses, their boats, their cars, their vacations, and all of these things. Okay? We are not going to get our nation back if we're not willing to sacrifice. There is no way we win our country back without some level of discomfort and hardship. It's too far gone.
The Russian philosopher Alexander Solzhenitsyn urged that we live not by lies. Communism, one of our political enemies, spreads through people living by lies. They don't even have to believe the lies. They just have to live as though they believe them, which means not confronting them. The act of doing this kills our soul. Allowing a lie to go unchecked and living as though it were true so that you don't have to face it or get in trouble kills your soul. Silence in the face of a lie allows the lie to continue deceiving.
Think back on the last 5 years and how the lies were able to move forward because countless people refused to speak the truth. How did we get to the place where grown men are in locker rooms undressing in front of girls? Because out of cowardice, people refuse to speak the truth. Specifically, men refuse to speak the truth. Imagine being one of the men on the sideline of a girl's athletic event and some hulk of a man crushes a young lady and you just sit there. Okay? Not speaking the truth in that situation is as bad as the lie and it makes you complicit in the abomination taking place right there in front of you.
And here's the thing. It didn't start with dudes undressing in front of girls and cutting kids' genitals off and pumping them full of cross-sex hormones. That's not where it began, guys. It started with accepting pronouns. It started with calling Bruce Jenner, Caitlyn Jenner. That was a lie. It was a lie. And every single person who participated in it needs to repent because look at the wickedness that it's foisted and brought upon our country because we were cowards.
Modern evangelicalism has fallen into accommodating progressivism as a means to win lost souls who adhere to these wicked ideologies. And this strategy has failed miserably and must be abandoned immediately. They called this pronoun hospitality in the church. It's disgusting. The difference between Tim Keller and Charlie Kirk is Keller sought to accommodate liberal views and hopes to win them. And Charlie confronted those ideas in order to win them.
>> [applause] >> One of these men has brought us to the beginning stages of revival, and the other one brought us the woke church. Choose accordingly.
Every lie that was forced upon us since 2020 was allowed to continue through a majority of Americans refusing to speak the truth. And again, the church played a role in many of these cases. COVID, the masking, the social distancing, the jab. Remember walking into a restaurant and being told that you had to wear your mask until you sat down, but once you sat down, you were allowed to take your mask off. You guys remember that? That was real. That actually happened. It's hard to remember that. It's painful. But people actually complied with that. They shut down the economy, told people they weren't essential workers, and our illustrious governor here in Ruby Red, Alabama, even issued a curfew. I remember I was watching Hunger Games, and there was a curfew, and I'm like, "God, the tyranny." I'm like, "Wait a second. Our governor DID THAT TO US. Can you believe it? She did.
Many pastors kept their churches closed and encouraged their congregants to get the jab. After all, what better way to love your neighbor than taking an experimental shot that might slow the spread. Maybe. We're not really sure.
The 2020 election was obviously stolen. Obvious. And everyone pretended like there wasn't enough empirical evidence to conclude that it was stolen. Really? A dementia-riddled child sniffer that never left his basement got 81 million votes. Did you really need empirical evidence or was that probably just enough to be like, you know, there's something fishy going on here? Did you speak the truth or did you cower in fear? January 6th was obviously a staged false flag. Did you fall for it?
I could go on, but here's the deal. To speak the truth in those situations brought serious consequences. Real ones, felt ones. The least of which was being called mean names. And for many, that was all it took. Science denier, election denier, you're trying to kill grandma. Those were all real pejoratives that were slung at people like us. Like again, it's bad memory. I get it. We try and block it out.
If that didn't work, then you would lose your job. My podcast was removed from YouTube for these exact subjects. Doesn't matter. One of my friends sitting right over here was kicked out of the military for not taking the jab. He is running several successful businesses now. So it worked out. But the point is you have to have that kind of courage. Okay?
We will not save our state or nation without conflict and confrontation. Progressive Marxism, Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ, DEI, and the rest of the alphabet soup in Islam have marched through the West unimpeded because we have come to believe that speaking the truth is mean. And that is the worst thing we could ever be is mean. The 11th commandment, thou shalt be nice and forget the other 10.
Our seminaries and churches have been hijacked and Christians are told not to engage in politics because it'll ruin their witness. How has that worked out for us? What we don't understand is that the meanest thing we could do is to continue letting these ideologies run rampant in our nation. That's actual cruelty. Look at the consequence of this. Never in the history of Western civilization has the church stayed on the sidelines as enemies of Christ sought to devour their lands. Never. This is evil.
I'm constantly asked, Brian, "What can we do? What can we do?" Hopefully, through this speech, you've heard the answer. Speak the truth when you encounter a lie. Confront wickedness when and where you see it. Support those who have platforms who speak the truth. Support those in office who have shown that they stand for truth.
God spoke the world into existence. Out of nothing came everything by speaking. He has given you the ability to speak. Don't allow yourself to be silenced from fear of consequences. Speak the truth like our civilization depends on it because it does.
[applause] >> [applause] >> Goodness. [applause] [applause] >> [music] [music] [music]