Ep 1415 | I Witnessed Charlie Kirk’s Murder & It Opened My Eyes to America’s War on Reality

0:00I am unashamed. What about you? So welcome back to unashamed. I love winning the Jason we have returned. Yes, for one thing it forces me to go back and watch one of our podcasts because I never watched our podcast because we're doing so many. But I love going back because one is I realized we got a pretty good podcast because I was laughing out loud watching the last time we had Frank Turicone. Would you take yourself? Well some of me but more of Jason dad, dad tells us really good stories on that podcast and you know now that we're like going back it's like I miss him, maybe miss him all the more, you know for sure. I mean don't take this the wrong way Dr. Frank, I didn't realize you had been on the podcast. You know what, Jason? You know what? That's it. That's it. He's out of here. Come on 48 seconds of break, Terry. Welcome back. It's the amount of podcasts. I actually stopped

1:04and told my wife. I was like we had Dr. Frank Turic on our podcast. She was like you did. I was like and it was pretty good. So yeah, I just was so shocked that you made the track because back then we had the podcast down at my dad's which is another place for parts unknown or you know, you don't get out of there. I don't know what you left right to get out because you were speaking at Louisiana Tech that night and you'd been at Louisiana College. I think that night before. So you were in our neighborhood and so you came and graciously did the podcast. It's a really big neighborhood to get all the way down there. It's a long one. You know, I don't know how you tell us what you thought. Because I just just tell me the unfiltered. Could you unfiltered? I'm not ever returned. The unfiltered truth and unashamed to say this is that after going there, I said there's

2:08nothing fake about this family. I mean, this is real. We had to walk through mud. We had to go through ATVs. We had to go through like shotgun rooms to get to the podcast room. I mean, it was like the podcast is an afterthought compared to what you guys were doing down at the compound. It was like you got built it like inside a big sort of like military shed. You had this room there where you did the podcast. It was just mud and guns and duck stuff and ATVs everywhere. True, true. So we had only in the kingdom of heaven. Can you have that experience? We had Joel. We had Joel Smallbone come on the podcast when they did their film and he shows up and he's wearing like a, he was fancy. But it was like, I mean, fancy like with a scarf and he's kind of like he's like really nice loafers. He's like, he was there. He was there. He was out of the fair. He talked

3:09to stepping stones. We're stones. They were alligator heads. You know, it's so funny for me because we had Alibis Tokyo and she was there. And I asked her what I asked you. I said, I bet what'd you think when you walked in there and she said, well, it certainly fits your brand. So she's kind of what you were saying. It is real. Although now we're in this nice cushy studio up here in Duck Amanda. So you guys like an hour from where that we did that, right? Yeah, yeah. 30 minutes down, 30 minutes back. They've upgraded. They're living large, living large. It's amazing that we come from two different worlds and we do a lot of the same things. You were telling us you spoke last night out of college. Next to Zach and Zach didn't get the invite. Yeah. Our cousin goes to that university. Hopefully she was there for eight and heard you last night. I was at Western Carolina last night. We'll be at University of Georgia this coming Monday night. So you're still that that's what you're doing. You travel all around the fruited plains and purple mountains to go to Tau Tau students, right? What does that look like in detail? Do you give a speech

4:13and then do the Q&A or? Yeah, yeah, pretty much. I give a presentation and Q&A and Q&A is on anything. I mean, last night, maybe I spoke for a little over an hour and we had an hour and 15 minutes of questions. So people ask questions all over the map and it was the first time I'd been back to that university since last year, it was one week after Charlie Kirk was murdered that I was at that university. We were thinking of canceling it after Charlie was murdered. But then we got security and we did it and that was a tough one to do. But then a year later, we just went back last night and we got a bunch of colleges scheduled this semester and some next as well. We're just trying to do what Charlie was doing. Charlie and I were working together to try and sharpen one another on how we can answer questions on the college campus about Christianity, about evidence for the faith, that kind of thing. That's why we co-authored mine and I just pulled together a new book called The War on Reality.

5:18We were actually writing this book before Charlie was murdered and then when he was murdered, we decided this book needs to be dedicated to him because he was fighting for reality when many people are fighting against it. And it was so tragic what happened. Well, and that's what got me in the book right off the back because you opened the book, obviously I guess you guys added that back in after you were working on it because it's called murder on campus and it's what happened. And you were a witness, you were in the tent and with him, even on the trip to the hospital. So you had a much closer view than all of us. My first question I wanted to ask you is now that you've had a year, it's almost a year since this has happened. And there was even news last night from the trial, all that's still going on. So it's obviously very well, but I was wondering have you noticed a difference in the audiences that you speak to in terms

6:23of on college campus since this has happened? I mean, what's kind of your view of that? Because obviously I know right at first there was a huge movement of people towards turning point. I forgot the numbers, but it was insane. How many requests there were for what was going on. So have you noticed it just I mean, visually and from talking to students, what kind of impact his, obviously we knew what his life was doing. But what is his death done to that? Well, obviously some of the sentiment has waned since a year since it happened. Of course, some of it is sort of rekindled when we have these hearings like we had yesterday on the murder. What I did notice immediately, Al, was that questions shifted from skepticism like skepticism to the evidence for Christianity that it shifted from that to how do I get my my roommate to become a Christian? In other words, it shifted from skepticism to evangelism. There were more Christians

7:25eager to do something. And by the way, I mean, I still get emails from people saying I became a Christian because of Charlie Kirk or I was a Christian. I fell away and after Charlie was murdered, I not only rededicated my life to Christ, but I am actively involved in promoting the gospel. I'm actively involved in trying to save my country. I'm actively involved in trying to make disciples. So I mean, he that awful event did have a ripple effect. They all do. And in many cases, it's been a tsunami with Charlie. There's a lot more enthusiasm for evangelism. I'm finding a lot more interest in Christianity. Also, as you might imagine, when something like a revival is about to break out, Satan's going to attack it so we can talk about that too, but that's been going on as well. Yeah, for sure. I noticed last night, my wife showed me a clip of I think it was Jesse Waters from Fox. And he was kind of giving his testimony. And but that's when Charlie Kirk was

8:28murdered. He just honestly, you know, thought, I need to look into this Jesus that he was talking about. And he's they've mentioned it several times that and they started studying the Bible. And he got failed too. Who's probably the worldliest person. Yeah, Fox. But but he's they are all in Harold 4d. They talk about that they've been having Bible study. And Charlie's death is what what led them to that. But I mean, so these are well known people that are talking actively and openly about God and faith that never did before. Well, I've always said death gets everyone's attention. Yeah. But the resurrection will change your life. And I think it's kind of the way God set that up. And there's a reason. And you have one of the what I did notice from them when you were on the podcast before is you're take on on how we read the Bible and that the resurrection was why they wrote the New Testament. It's such a great great point. And I'm I've used that

9:30hundreds of times since then. Well, I want to break the tension a little bit because when I saw the title of your book, the war on reality, I immediately, of course, I had no idea what it was going to be about. But I thought, well, here we were on a reality show. That's that's what they call what we did. And it's the most non real thing in the world. A reality show because it's basically a sitcom that is created without actors. Well, without actors. Well, I know that a lot of us have thought about the kind of content that's streaming into our homes. A lot of it's built. A lot of it is actually degrading our minds and shifting our imagination for the kingdom to earthly kingdoms and things that are just honestly in that right opposition to the king of king. So that's why we started a new platform called Echo. We were part of it. It's called EKL dot com. It's more than just a streaming service. You have movies like the blind series like dynasty along with a lot of others

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12:39I actually had a weird conversation with AI about it because I was, I wanted to see what it would say about how real our show was and some 90% of you are becoming bad. This is sort of bad. I like having these arguments, but he addresses that in the book. I want to talk about that because just like the first time you were on the podcast, I thought I had all these clever arguments about because all these discussions that I'm having with people and then I met Dr. Frank and I thought, Oh, he's been doing that way long. In your arguments were way better. But the reason I bring that up is because it was a war on our reality in that show, in that because we found ourselves, they were trying to change who we were based on their narrative of all their thoughts on life. We're talking about Hollywood and a very extreme left wing partnership that we had. And there were a group of people that sat in a room and wrote down

13:43their thoughts of what they wanted the family to do. And they're created attention that was almost on every episode. And it was so much conflict. But I thought about it was just our little small way of having a war on reality. We either going to be true to ourselves and probably not do this show or are we just we're going to be unashamed and go with it. And it actually worked out the conflict actually triggered more passion from us to really be who we really were. And I think so partly that was true. We got to play ourselves. But then so when I started reading the book though, the first chapter was so profound because every I think everybody who's a believer remembers where they were when this happened. I was fixed to speak a couple nights later. And it was the first time I've ever done an event that when I got up and opened my mouth to speak. There was a few thousand people there. I just was overwhelmed with emotion. It just picturing, I'm doing the same

14:48thing basically introducing Jesus. And it was so profound. So I had the first time I was going organ a week later. And we flew into Portland. And obviously, there's some people there. There's some groups that wouldn't agree with what we were doing because we were doing a pro life event. But when we pulled in underneath the building, I asked security to come down and meet me at the car because I felt fear for the first time speaking. And I never had before. But that's how much this shook me what happened to Charlie. Because then I realized our enemy, what he does in the minds of people and what they can do to you to take you out of the game. And so I had never felt that for front until that happened. And God has seen me through. And you know, a year later, I don't have that fear as much. But I tell you what, that next week I did it's part of it was the setting, part of it was the topic. But I was like, man, we're in a battle here. It is over. Well, that was the question I was going to ask you, Dr. Frank, when I read this, it just, you know, to have you

15:56pin this being right there along the way in every all the details, it was just so overwhelming for me to read. I mean, the point you make after this are fantastic. But just that first section, and I was just going to ask how hard was that to put it on the paper and just relive that? What was that process like? Yeah, I probably rewrote that chapter five times, just just to make sure that I could get it right. And five, about five days after the murder, I did a podcast. So that helped my memory as to what happened. Of course, you don't forget the big issues. That's what we call in psychology and impact event. When you see something like that, you never forget it. And it's not just that event. I mean, those were old enough, if you have older people, they could remember the day Kennedy was shot. They could remember the day, the challenger exploded. They can remember 9-11 where they were, what they were doing. They

16:58can remember when Trump was shot. Where were they when they heard it? And they certainly can remember where Charlie Kirk, where they were when Charlie Kirk was murdered. No, I of course couldn't forget it if I wanted to because I was looking at him when he was shot. So I did a podcast that is still up on our cross-examined YouTube channel. You want to go back and watch it. It was like five days after the murder. And we relate that, of course, to the resurrection because there is no way to explain why these 12 scared, scattered, skeptical disciples would have abandoned Judaism essentially and adopted these new beliefs that they didn't think were possible. They didn't think a man could claim to be God that was blasphemy. They didn't think a man would rise in the dead in the middle of the time and be there a Messiah. That their Messiah would be crucified on a tree and wouldn't overthrow the Romans. But that's what they wound up saying because he had risen from the dead and then they go suffer and die for this because they couldn't forget it. They couldn't

18:03get it out of their heads. There's no way they could go on and ignore this because it really happened. It was an impact event. It turned them around 180 degrees. And when you witness something like that, you're never going to forget it. And the same is true with the resurrection. That's one way we know the resurrection really occurred. What did you decide on the title? I mean, it's interesting because I've had a phrase I've been using for probably the last three or four years. And I've been working on a project similar title, but it was called the weight, the weight of unreality. You kind of feel this on society right now. Yours is a war against reality. I'm sure you've been incubating on that. Did you come up with the title before or after Charlie's murder before Charlie's murder, but the initial it was like right after COVID, we started thinking about this me and my co-author and it started just on identities act like the war on reality.

19:05Like men can have babies. That kind of thing. There's an infant number of genders. That kind of thing. And we said, this is really a war on reality. And then it expanded to so many other topics. Reason and logic are tools of oppression or marriage doesn't require a man and a woman or actually castrating children is now called healthcare or abortion is healthcare. You're going, we're pulling baby parts out of women and we're calling it healthcare. I mean, body part, what do you, what do you, this is the kind of war on reality people are having. And the interesting thing is is that the more extreme the idea, the harder it is for people who came out publicly and supported that idea to repent because then they'd have to admit what lunatics they were for actually back in this idea for a while. You know, probably the hardest person to flip on an idea would be someone like who maybe has had an abortion and has had several of them. There's no way they could go back and say without Jesus. There's no way they could go back and say I was wrong about that because the guilt would be too great. That's of course why they need to accept Jesus because they can put that

20:08under the cross. Or if somebody has tried to transition their children, how are they going to ever admit that was the wrong thing to do because then they would be the one saying I actually cast treated my own child. So it's hard for them to flip back on that. And the war on reality, the book is trying to show them this is not the right road to go down. You know, you can fight against reality. You can deny reality. One thing you can't do is win against reality. Reality is undefeated. Yeah. And yet people are trying to win against reality. Yeah, I like the approach. I mean, this has been one of my critiques of the right and are kind of, if you want to frame it up as the culture war, is that we, I feel like we've reduced the argument to moral values or like, or the way it would be said is our Christian values. And it just seems like such a privatized thing that I never really liked that language because that's how most people viewed it. And I've thought for years we have to anchor this in, you know, telos and our teleology, which we've talked a lot

21:13about on this podcast as we've gone through scripture, we look at this, like this God has an intent and purpose to design. It correlates with it. It's what is real. You know, and that's where to me, the argument has to shift is to what is actually what is reality? Number one, and two, am I aligned with that reality? I mean, to me, this is like the ground zero of where the discussion has to moved to. And so the book, I mean, it's such, it's so timely for where we're at right now. I mean, I think you're kind of ahead of the argument with it, but you're also on college campuses all the time. So you're, you're kind of, I feel like you're in ground zero. And you're kind of, it gives you like a, you're getting a preview before maybe the rest of culture does, right? Well, this book is written for almost anyone who's interested in reality, but especially college kids when they go to college. And, you know, they're told there is no truth. And we say, when people, when your professor says that, you ought to ask them, is that true? Is it true that there's no truth? I mean, it sounds like you're making up a truth. It's completely self-defeat. Hey, if there's

22:16no truth, why am I paying you 50 grand a year? What are you telling me? You know, am I here to learn truth? Or am I here to just learn opinions? You know, what's, what's the deal here? I just, though, surprise, housing costs are a real consideration for families right now. And how helpful is it to have somebody that's trustworthy that can walk you through all the options as instead of you trying to figure it out all by yourself. I'm telling you, you got to find people that you trust because mortgage rates may be harder than they used to be, but it doesn't mean that there aren't opportunities worth looking into. And my friends, Andrew Delray and Todd of Aiken, they've recently made them moved to any Mac home mortgage and have more than 40 years of combined experience helping people make sense of their mortgage options. So whether you're buying, refinancing or just want to review the loan that you already have, they'll walk you through it clearly without pressure or confusion. Their team handles the process from application to closing. So there's somebody there to help you every step of the way. And you can even get a free mortgage and refinancing review to find out whether your current deal still makes sense. For me and Jill,

23:20buying a home has been the most important decision that we've made financially over the years. It's been one of our main tools of building well, but you got to find people that you trust along the way. You need trusted expertise. It matters when the stakes are this high. So I'm encouraging to go to Andrew and Todd.com for a free mortgage and refinancing review to see if your deal still makes sense. Visit Andrew and Todd.com or simply call AAA to 1172. In fact, we have a section in the book called Reality Does Not Have Pronouns. In other words, here people saying, you know, I've my truth, you have your truth. That's just faults. Okay. There's not my truth or your truth. There's just the truth. There's not like my law of gravity and your law of gravity. There's just the law of gravity. There's not my logic and your logic. There's just the logic. There's not my math and your math. There's just the math. Right? And yet people are out there saying they have their own reality. No, you don't have your own reality. You may perceive reality differently. And I may perceive it differently than you,

24:23but there's a real reality out there that we discover we don't determine. In fact, we couldn't even have a debate if there wasn't an external reality. Debates presuppose that the two debaters are trying to convince one another who's closer to the real reality than the other person. If there's no real reality outside of ourselves, then there's no reason to debate. There's nothing, there's no way to even have an argument or a discussion because they can't use logic and reason to support their positions. I mean, the guy that allegedly killed Charlie Kirk and it sure looks like he did kill him based on the evidence called Charlie a fascist. Yeah, we all know it's a typical fascist tactic to hand your opponent the microphone and say, hey, please make your case and then we'll have a discussion. The guy that shot him couldn't tolerate that Charlie had a different viewpoint than his and instead of debating Charlie, he just decided to try and silence him. He tried to, you know, you can't kill God, but you can't kill God's representatives and that's what that guy did. The reality is still there. And the irony is

25:27that very person provided a lot of evidence towards what now will be, you know, his trial. That's the irony of the whole thing. The reality of the truth is now against him, exactly. What I found fascinating, your book that the title made me look up the Greek word for reality and of course it's translated truth more times than any other. It's 110 times in the New Testament. But I thought this was fascinating. It says, while the Greek mind viewed reality as a contrast between illusion and fact, it is mostly translated truth. And I wanted to read this because I found this fascinating. After the most famous verse probably, arguably in the in Jesus' sayings when John 316, for God's love, the world that he gave is one and only son, whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. Well, right after that, he gets to verse 19 and it says, this is the verdict. Light has come into the world.

26:34But men love darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, which is how Charlie got shot. And will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God, which is what I thought. I mean, this book is all about when you think about reality and truth and these concepts that it's not breaking news. You know, we look at male and female. I never thought I'd be on a planet where that would be a thing, you know, because even our dad used to say, well, you just need to ask your local red net. We're pretty good at identifying male and female. He just seems so bizarre that this is that thing. Does your house not have a mirror? I mean, it's just, it's like, it's a sample. So we

27:40would kind of laugh. But then all of a sudden, you see something like this happen and you realize, okay, there's a spiritual war going on. There's some delusion that is being believed and there's a hatred that is developed over this. And then you see this, this book of revelation being played out where, you know, all you, you at the hands of Romans, Christians are being martyred for this. And you just wouldn't think, now a couple thousand years later, this would, would repeat itself again. And here we are. And you're literally five feet from this, you know, in a car, taking a guy to a hospital who all he's doing is sharing Jesus, loving people, having debates and arguments about truth, it just seems so surreal to me that, that all these concepts, you know, even the verse I just read, it's just so true to the overall picture of good and you read that verse, immediately transported me to John 19, where Pilate said, you're a king then,

28:45Jesus said, you are right in saying, I'm a king. In fact, for this reason, I was born, for this reason, I came into the world to testify to the truth. And if that's the same word to the reality of who he is, everyone on the side of truth or that reality listens to me. And then Pilate says, what is reality? Yeah, what is truth? And so it is, it's a two thousand year old question, right? This steel is being challenged. And I love in the book how you made the point, the reason why it's so important now is because we've been debating this a long time. But now in America, in American culture, we now are policing people about this. So now all of a sudden you got people in power implementing how we're supposed to think and change our reality, which is not going to happen. But that's the tension, right? I mean, that's what we're talking about here. Yeah, in fact, you notice how you don't have to teach kids that there are men and women or the boys and girls, they automatically know it. You have to talk them out of that notion, right? You've got to,

29:45you've got actually lied to them and persuade them and conjole them to say, oh, there's an infinite number of genders, right? You don't have to somehow force people to believe something that's real. You have to force people to believe things that are unreal, especially obvious things like gender. I mean, you know, I'm sure I'm sure your dad didn't have any trouble telling the difference between a buck and a doe, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Here we are. Apparently, the most intelligent beings as far as we know in the universe, and we are actually suppressing the truth because we want to do our own thing. I mean, Romans 1 describes it perfectly. God's invisible qualities are clearly seen so that are men without excuse, but we suppress the truth and unrighteousness to go our own way, particularly on the sex issues. To the point, we're not only do we have futile thinking, but if you go down that road far enough at the end of Romans 1, it says, not only do people who suppress the truth practice these evil things, they give hearty approval

30:48to others who practice them. Did you guys see a couple of weeks ago that governor up in Massachusetts who passed the bill that said, you could murder your child up to the moment of birth? Yeah. And they were applauding this. That's Romans 1. That's the end of Romans 1. They're giving hearty approval to people who actually practicing and fantasize. They're clapping about it. And by the way, everybody who is in the medical profession, OBGYNs, they all know that if a woman has a problem with their pregnancy and the third trimester, there's never a reason you have to kill the baby. You can always just do a C section, take the baby out, keep the baby safe, and deal with any medical crisis the mother has. You never need to kill a baby. But that's what those people are celebrating up there. It's actually more dangerous to do an abortion at that stage than to deliver the baby. I mean, any doctor will tell you that. But again, it's like you described before. Before we thought people who claimed to be science taught me how to be a doctor, now if I said

31:53in that reality goes out the window because of some crazy belief system that's out there, that somehow we're celebrating women. Now I was going to say, I'll notice what they do to get you to believe it. Actually, it's what Satan does, right? Satan comes as an angel of light. In the book, we call it linguistic theft. What's linguistic theft? It's sugar coating or white washing something evil with pleasant sounding words. Like abortion is healthcare or abortion is reproductive justice, right? They will never say abortion is murdering a or ending the life of an innocent human. They would never say that. They're going to put a nice sounding word on it. Now, you only need to whitewash things that are dirty. You don't need to whitewash things that are good. You don't need to whitewash love. Love is love, right? Love is what we all want to do or we should want to do. But murdering people, we've got to put pleasant sounding words on it. And that's what they do. Or they'll talk about we all want equity. Well, that sounds so nice, doesn't it? But all equity is a code word for socialism. And I don't know about you, but I don't know anybody in Florida

32:58getting on rickety boats to escape to Cuba. Do you? I don't know any caravans going from Texas to Venezuela. They're all coming the other way. I don't know anybody who is in West Berlin when the Berlin wall was up who was trying to get into East Berlin. Do you know, they're all going the other way? Why? Because socialism doesn't work because it misunderstands human nature. It doesn't even produce food much less freedom. And it just leads to murder. I mean, a hundred million people died under communist last socialism regimes in the past century. And yet there are people here in this country who have such a war on reality, they want to bring it back. Recently, there's a subscription that I'm signed up to to drives me nuts that when I had a problem and a call, I can't get anybody, I can't get anybody on the phone. So I actually canceled the subscription to move somewhere else. It is super important that when someone calls your business, there's somebody there to answer the phone call. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quote. It's about QUO. It's the business phone system built so that you never miss a call. Quote keeps your calls, your text,

34:01your voice smells altogether so that your team can see the whole conversation and jump right in without missing a beat. They are the number one rated business phone system on G2 with more than 90,000 businesses that are using it to stay reachable and professional. Setup only takes a few minutes. You guys can keep your current number. You can add teammates as you grow. It's super quick, super simple. So Zach, when we first started Doug Commander, our phone was on a party line. So we missed a lot of calls in the old days. We definitely could have used Quote. And that's exactly where Quote makes the difference by the way, guys, because if that business that I was telling you about have been able to answer my call and get back to me quickly, they might not have lost my business or my patients. So when money is on the line, always say hello with Quote. Try Quote for free plus 20% off your first six months when you go to Quote.com slash on a shame. That's q-u-o.com slash on a shame. Look, one of the things I really like about this book I wanted to go here because I

35:05I was kind of convicted because here I am simple guy. I try to stay out of politics just because of how corrupt the actual venture is. But and I have been guilty of some of the things you threw under the bus. The people are like, well, I'm just going to preach the gospel and let it sort out. But you had this list of policies and where the two parties line up and it was probably maybe 10 or 12 things. And it was very convicting to me to see because even if you realize Jesus is the king of kings and all this and Charlie Kirk's mantra was the first of all, me said it many times. Jesus is the Lord of his life and that was the number one thing. But he also said and secondly, I want to be in a place where I can get that message out, which I think is profound and can't be repeated

36:07enough. But how do you what was your thought process on that because it because it worked for me. I mean, I thought I'm in the fight. I'm ready to get in the fight. I'm on a shame. I'm out there, you know, put my life at risk in these some, you know, conflict setting sometimes. But even in that world, it's, you know, Ike, but I think the policies won out. It just I literally told my wife. I was like, we need to get in that fight. Yeah. I mean, look, look at these issues and maybe you can go through some of them. I don't remember them off the top of my head, but it was very profound and very convicting to me. What was the thought process behind that? Well, that was one of the reasons I think Christians have to be involved in politics because kind of you just put it this way, Jace, you know, who is involved in politics? Satan. And, and, and if we don't push back on Satan, Satan's going to take over. I can tell you who's involved in politics. Secular SR, Marx SR, Muslims R, why

37:11aren't Christians? And these are the policies we went through. It's in chapter 15. We went through abortion, transitioning children, men and women's sports. Are there more than two sexes, religious freedom judges, racism, sexism and identity politics, trans people in, in the military, the border support for deportations and ICE benefits for illegal aliens, defund the police, sexualization of children in schools, school choice and the requirement of welfare recipients to ultimately work. So they're not so dependent on the government can have some self respect. And on every single of those issues, look, this is not, I'm not editorializing. I'm just telling you what the party platforms endure, the party positions are on those positions. Here are the facts. Yeah. That's why you're robbing it up. I thought it was so profound. You just look at the policies and the issues you're like, I could never vote for that. I just couldn't do it. You know, it goes against every biblical truth

38:13and reality that I'm all about. I mean, it was, I'm giving you a compliment. It was very, it was a very good way to present that issue. Yeah. Thank you. Well, it's gotten further and further divided. You know, maybe you went back 40 or 50 years. The differences between the two parties weren't as great. You know, they were arguing over tax policy. They were arguing over, you know, how much money do we spend on roads? How much money do we spend on the military? You know, on things government, only government can do. And that is build roads or defend us or that kind of thing. Now the government has traversed into the lane of the church by telling us what a marriage is by telling us who's human and who isn't. You know, by telling us there are more than two genders. You know, they've traversed by telling us what we can and can't teach our kids. And maybe even in some cases, they'll take our kids from us and transition them if we don't agree. I mean, this is how crazy this has gotten. And if we're going to stay out of it,

39:18we're going to ultimately lose our freedoms. And when people say I just preach the gospel, I don't get get involved in politics. I normally say, I guess you don't think the gospel is very important and people will say, what do you mean? I say, because politics affects your ability to preach 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 at Iran. I checked. It's not there. I've been to Saudi Arabia. There's no Calvary Chapel of Mecca. They don't allow it. I just got back earlier last year from Egypt. If you want to start say, Grace Church in Egypt, you're going to have trouble politically. They don't want you there. And so politics affects our ability to preach and live the gospel. In fact, I submit to you, you probably can't listen to the unashamed podcast in North Korea. You probably can't listen to it in Saudi Arabia. You probably can't listen to it in Iran. Why? Because they don't want the gospel. The government doesn't want the gospel there. And they'll prevent it. And so we need to be engaged. We also need to be engaged because we love people. And we should put laws in place in the institution. God created. That's one of the three

40:21institutions he created, government, the other two of the family in the church. Government is instituted among men according to Romans 13 by God to punish wrongdoers and protect innocent people from evil. And if we have an opportunity to put laws in place to protect innocent people from evil, oh, I know you and your wife are big in the pro-life movement. If we put laws in place to protect innocent people from evil, that's a good thing. We should be doing that. And too often we stay out of it. You know, maybe the acid question is this. I ask people this question. We say, oh, I don't get involved at all. I said, are you telling me that 165 years ago, Christians should not have gotten involved in politics to outlaw slavery? Is that you're telling me? And they all go, oh, well, no, we should have done that. Okay, welcome to politics. Or or elevating, you know, women's right to vote. I mean, yeah, things that were biblical notions, the government finally said, yes, with those are the things we should be doing because those are right things. These are these. And we did that in a lot of our history. And you're right. Now we've hit this other turn. And I

41:26do think it's the other influence. I'm glad you brought up the other countries because we now know that that, you know, Iran and Russia and all that China are invading their ideologies into our stream through these bots and all these, one of the reasons we're so divided is because those forces of evil that are in other parts are now in American politics and dividing people and making up fake stories. And I mean, it happens every single day. You see how the evil is working this out. I mean, it's got to be him. Yeah, one thing, I think one thing too, those, reminded of a quote, I think, I'm trying to think where I heard it first. I think it was Nancy Pierci. I don't think she came up with it, but it was in, I believe it was in her book, Total Truth or Right Years ago. She said politics is downstream of culture. And so another area is thinking of like, you know, how do we even arrive at a place like this, like where this is the political environment, right? Like the war on reality, I think it transcends even politics. I mean,

42:30it's down to the very, everything that actually shapes the imagination of a culture where we would see this. What's the guy's name that wrote the book on? It was called the Rise and Try for the Modern Self, Carl Truman. Carl Truman. Yeah. He asked that question at the beginning of the book of how, you know, how do we, how do we arrive at a place in history where the following statement is taken serious? And he wasn't saying this as like a tongue and cheek. It wasn't, he was asking a real question in the phrase is, I'm a man trapped in a woman's body. He said, had you said that to my grandfather's generation, even 20 years ago to Barbershop, people would have thought that was a joke. And now this has taken serious. And so he goes back and looks at kind of just the philosophical history of how we arrived here. So I think the war, it's more than just getting the right politics. It's, it, we should be involved in politics for sure. But it's not just a political answer because the politics happens because that's like we're voting for this stuff.

43:30You know what I mean? Where, where is the imagination? Where's the heart? Where's the, why do we want this as a, as a culture and as a people? Why don't we want reality? That's, to me, that's a big question that you don't see a lot of people talking about. I don't know if you, I haven't read the whole book yet, but I don't know if you get into any of that in the, in the book at all. Yeah, we do. I look, I, I don't make the rules, but if you don't read the whole book, can't be saved, Zach. I'm sorry. You know what you're gonna get so close for, he's right there. He's in the middle. I gave you the best endorsement ever. The fact that I, I didn't skim this. The first chapter, lured me in. That's right. I really felt for you to have to experience a modern day participation in a guy getting martyred. He got for it. Yes. And you're, I mean, it was so hard for me to read, but riveting. But I, I do think that I could see how God worked in that experience in your life to really just have the ability to look at all these divided lines and issues and

44:38write about it. I mean, it, it, look, this is one of the most extensive books I've ever seen on our current, where we're divided. And you have all these godly principles over here. And then you have people who want to get in power and change what our founding fathers originally had created of, you know, looking at God's nature and just the things we take for granted. Because it made me think last year when I was so perplexed. I walked into my house and I see it says breaking news, you know, Fox, Ellie. The sound wasn't even up, but just the TV was on. And it said Donald Trump has declared all citizens of US of the US male and female. And I just looked at that life, breaking the breaking news. We have to stop. And I was just thinking, Genesis one in my mind. And I thought, man, that news broke

45:41in the beginning. Yeah. We're, we're, we're, this is, we're having to stop our life and say, this is a thing. You're either a male or a female. And I should have just gotten involved in the fight right then because it was so shocking to me that that was a thing. And every time I say that in a speech now, people clap, just they can't help it. They, they clap because they're like, yes, we're male and female. And I thought in someone wrecking it, someone in power were wrecking it. We got that deluded in our culture where, where this is, this is a thing now. Tradition all health insurance is skyrocketed in price. I'm a big fan of an alternative called Christian health care ministries because it looks a whole lot like the book of acts where believers come together to help share and medical bills together. At least in a, you know, have walked this journey with other people, praying for us, also sending us checks. It's part of the system of health cost sharing. And it makes a, it made a huge difference for us. Christian

46:45health care ministries is not health insurance. It really is a faith based alternative. Like I said, where believers come together and share the burden of medical bills. The HM, it's an affordable assurance for your medical bills. Membership start out around 115 bucks a month, getting families a more affordable way to plan for health care costs. Also, you've got the freedom and the flexibility to shop around and choose the care that makes the most sense at the best available prices. Family spend to one membership cost for dependent children. So whether you've got one kid or if you've got a whole house full like I do and for 42 bucks a month, you can add extra protection, which is designed for this unexpected catastrophic medical events as well. You guys can join CHM under 10 minutes. It's super easy with their speedy enrollment process. So take charge of your health care visiting CHministries.org slash solution. That's CHministries.org slash solution. That's where this thing went off the rails from the Eve one. He's been busy. A lot of good

47:47followers of Jesus who are going to church ever Sunday that they're not getting into the fight about this. And you're looking around and it's affecting our kids and our culture. And I do think it goes back to that conversation Jesus had with Pilate because he was like, what is truth? Because in his mind, whoever has the power has the truth. And that's what we're really up against right now. And I just think a lot of believers in God are just sitting on the sidelines. And I don't know what else has to be done for us to wake up and say, I need to get in the fight here and start having conversations. Hey, Jay, one of the things that we know in that interaction with Pilate, he says, what is truth? And then he goes on to immediately say that Jesus is innocent. So he utters a truth claim. But Jesus had said, I am the truth. And the truth will set you free. He says that in John chapter 8, as recorded in John chapter 8, which implies that if you don't have the truth, you're in bondage, right? The truth will set you free. And people say, well, what is reality? Well, first of all,

48:50truth is what corresponds to reality. And reality is just the sum of all truths. And only God has all knowledge about reality because he's omniscient. We discover reality. And too often we suppress reality because we want something more than we want reality. This is why I ask people on college campuses all the time. If they're not Christians, I ask them this question. If Christianity were true, would you become a Christian? And I can't tell you how many times people have said no. I said, no, wait, you claim to be a person of reason. And I ask you, if something were true, would you believe it? And you say, no, how's that reasonable? It's not. It's not a head problem. It's a heart problem. They don't want it to be true. They don't want there to be a God. Why? Because they want to be God over their own lives. They're not on a truth quest. They're on a happiness quest. And they're just going to believe whatever they think is going to make them happy. That's why people will believe they can transition genders because they think it's going to make them happy. That's why people will believe that certain people are oppressors because it makes them happy to say they're the bad people

49:52and I'm a good person. That's why they will believe that say, math is racist. That just doesn't add up with me. That's why people will believe that there is no truth because it allows them to make up their own truth. But of course, if they say there's no truth, they're actually uttering a truth claim. It's a self-contradictory way to look at reality. And people are contradicting themselves left and right, but they're trying to be happy to do so. So they're not all that interested in truth. They're just interested in what they want and they want it now. And the war on reality pushes back on all that. And I love where you started our discussion today, Frank, because it's you mentioned you talked about the resurrection. Yeah. And I thought that when Charlie was murdered, that you noticed that Christians, the ride of our country, conservatives, however you want to lump everybody into, they didn't respond with violence. They responded with worship. You know, 100,000 people gathered in Arizona and worshipped, worship God. How do you do that when

50:55a young man who, by the way, was about the age of Jesus when he was murdered and gave himself for us, you know, the early 30s. Yeah. And the response was, we love you, Lord. We trust you. It makes us, and I love what you said at the beginning, it made people more evangelistic, not less. In other words, we want to tell the story more. And so I just, it's never going to be the same reactions because we, the Eve one does not rule us. And so our reaction is one of, we double down on who God is and reality and continue in that truth. And so I feel like that revival is happening. You know, all the numbers are showing that so many young people are coming to Christ and now attending church again. I think this played a role in that. I think this book will be such a great guide for them because it's so well done. Erica does the forward is so touching just reading her words, you know, about, about the fight and about why we do what we do.

51:58And to be honest with you, I didn't know, I knew Charlie, like everybody else, you know, he was a firebrand. He's out there. He's talking. He's in, and they only framed in the political sense. I didn't know how deep his faith was until he was gone. Until I heard other people telling me about that, like you and that you were his mentor. I didn't know any of that stuff. So it's made me even more falling in love with God and our mission and what we're supposed to do. And I'm like one of those 12 scattered that you mentioned at the beginning. And I realized whatever time I got left, it's going to be wide open. It's going to be out loud and on purpose. And this will be a shame. You know, that's what it's done to me. Hey, but can I just read one paragraph from Erica's forward? Yes. Because it's probably the most profound two and a half pages I've read in a long time. She's a brilliant woman. But here's what she said just in the forward. And by the way, you don't need to buy the book to read the forward. Just go to the waronreality.com. You'll see it there. I hope you do buy the book because all the proceeds of the sale of the book will go to feed

52:59needy children. Mine. Just so you know, um, but I got I got grandkids now. But anyway, here's here's what Erica says in the in the forward. Erica Kirk. She says since September 10, 2025. I've been faced with my own new reality. One that I still wrestle with as I attempt to grasp its earthly permanence. Quite honestly, it'll probably be like that for the rest of my life. Yeah, what I've realized is that redefining my reality isn't what gives me peace surrendering to it does. Unquote. You know, at the end of the day, if you think about all this, you think about everything we talk about on our podcasts, everything we're trying to do as Christians. If you want to boil it down to one problem human beings have, it's not death. Jesus has has fixed death. It's not sickness. It's not global warming. It's not racism. The one problem that we have as human beings is rebellion.

54:06We want to rebel against reality. We want to rebel against the author of reality because we want certain things more than we want the author of reality. And so what Erica is saying here is surrendering to reality is what brings me peace. If you want peace with God, you need to surrender to him. You can't. You're not going to beat him, right? You're not going to, you're not going to somehow outlive him. You're not going to outdo him. God is God. You need to surrender to God because he loves you, but he's not going to force you into heaven against your will. If you don't want him in this life, you're not going to want him in the next life. So this is how we end the whole book on the war on reality. The author of reality is Jesus. Do you know him? Because if you've been, you've been resisting him for so long, rebelling against him for so long, by the way, that's exhausting. And it's futile. You're never going to defeat God. That's right. Exactly. He's still there. Yeah. The book is called the war on reality of

55:08Frank Turek. Phoenix Hayes was the person who worked with you on it as well. The war on reality .com. He mentioned that. Also, if you want to see more Frank stuff, it's crossexamined.org. Phoenix is Phoenix Hayes.com. The book is out September of the eighth. Yes. We highly recommend that you get this book. It's really good. It's just going to bolster your ability to share Jesus. And so Frank, we love you. We love you coming on the podcast. Keep doing what you're doing, brother. Hey, thanks for having me on. And I did not have to use this button once wrong. Didn't have to use it once. You guys got everything right. And I'm going to take this. I'm going to take this back. All right. I'm taking that back. All right. And so feed those needy children and grandchildren. I always get this book. We love you, right? Thank you, buddy. Thank you, brother. God bless you. All right. Thanks for listening to the Unashamed podcast. Help us out by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And don't miss an episode by subscribing on YouTube. And be sure to click the

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