Transcript for The Real Jesus vs. Woke Jesus with Lucas Miles

Yeah, it's his counter reading of scripture. You know, a lot of times it's called a counter myth, which even that statement is deceptive because it's implying that the first reading of scripture, or that scripture itself is myth, the start with. And so we have to present kind of this alternative Jesus that he is, you know, this great social justice warrior, rather than the savior of the world, that he's an immigrant, that he You know, is sort of this barefoot hippie that loves everybody, and he's pro-socialism, he's pro-trans, and it is a great deception. And Jesus is being used as propaganda to push this Marxist agenda in our nation.

Yeah, so if you're talking about specifically from a from a Christ centric new testament framework right we see early heresies in the church we can look at the first several hundred years Christianity and they exist But really at this level that we're talking about, it's the 1700s, it's at post enlightenment period where we start seeing in Germany specifically the birth of what was known as these Jesus biographies and that becomes later tied to the quest for the historical Jesus. And so it is essentially now that we're in this age of enlightenment and reason and rational thought and scientific method that we recognize now that the miracles of the Bible, that these can't be true, these have to be myths and fables. And so there was work that theologians were doing, specifically German theologians, to start rewriting the accounts of Christ to make sense of these miracles basically to excuse them away and to make Jesus more terrestrial. He was this great champion of the people rather than the Savior of all. And like the the activist for the underclass basically 100% 100% and you know everybody took that and kind of handled it a little bit differently and some of these were ludicrous. I mean you had people that say you know that he was part of a senior in calls and that the way he fed the 5,000 was that he had a group of monks baking bread and a you know behind a rock you know behind him as he's you know dressing the 5,000 their passing bread secretly to him that he's multiplying You know, these ridiculous kind of ideas that were out there, and most of those were criticized and kind of called out. But as theological thought went on, you know, eventually, you know, it was Albert Schweitzer that really, you know, wrote kind of the definitive work that established what we know is this quest for the historical Jesus. And in many ways, that's kind of what broke the Harvard's and the Yale's and the Princeton's as being theological institutions. It was introduction of this social gospel, the social Jesus, rather than a spiritual faith, And so, you know, we started seeing really a rewriting of Scripture, this revision is history, that is affected people the way they think about Jesus even today.

You know, it's interesting. I follow this fairly closely and they have some interesting kind of diverse names that are part of that, you know, whole creative package that went into that. And some of those names are more concerning than others, right? And by no means my an expert on that, but the thing that I've seen with it is the what they're calling it is sort of this pre-evangelism that, you know, we're not trying to share the gospel through these because there's no way you could watch these and get saved. You couldn't watch these and see somebody, you know, kind of a, you know, a priest watching somebody's feet and come to any sort of saving knowledge of the cross or or anything like that. There's no gospel presentation in them. It's very sort of what feels like pro, you know, pro socialist, pro illegal immigrant, you know, all of those things. But they're calling it pre evangelism. But I don't see anything in scripture that calls us to do what is called pre evangelism, right? We're called to preach the gospel. And then we're not called to just give little bits and pieces of it.

Well, that's, this is what they do, right? The perfect example, because, and I think it's so important, because most people, you know, I think that are out there. A average Christian doesn't know how media works. And so if you have some radical new concept that you want to put out there, what's the best way to get it to be accepted? Is to find other Orthodox groups that will sign off on it and go, well, see, it's not this radical. You know, we have groups like Turning Point and Charlie of Sign off on it. And so now all of a sudden, you're given, you know, validity to this slow, sort of, I didn't get away at all that time. Good for you.

And look, this should be an obvious, right? The God who made me, of course, gets me. He knows me because he thought of me. He formed me. But the question is, do I understand him? Am I willing to die to myself and embrace him? Am I willing to let go of kind of that pride and that ego? Transform. And to be conformed into his image. You know, I present it like this a lot of times that progressiveism and Christianity, they have one thing in common, and that is progress. Right? We believe in progress as Christians for the progressive. It's progress for progress sake. There's no destination in mind. It's just to basically put that dialectic to work and to transform the next generation into something further along than what the previous generation was. And there's no, there's no endpoint ever in mind. But for Christianity, we have a definitive endpoint, and that is to be conformed to the image of Christ. And we are moving towards, so we're not against progress. We are four progress, but we're four progress to a specific destination.

You know, look, when you look at this, I think that, you know, it's important to recognize it's so many of these ideas, whether it's Higalean thought or Marxist, you know, et cetera, paganism in general, it's a parasite. and it's hatching itself to Christianity because Christianity is a really good vehicle, but it's actually not a great long-term host for these things because the very, the absoluteness of God's word stands against some of those ideas.

It should, but when it's watered down, when it's not used fully, when it's not, you know, talking the way that it is, you know, you know, suppressed.

Yeah, lots of people to buy it. Absolutely. So the book is called Woke Jesus. And really what I wanted to do was put together a definitive history of wokeism in specifically its integration or intersection with the church and Christianity. Because of course, there's a secular wokeism that we see that really, it doesn't really have that much of an intersection in the church. Other than they hate Christianity and they hate everything that it stands for. But there is a woke, there is this verse in this kind of strand of wokeism that I believe really started in the church. I think that wokeism has a genesis in religion. It's religious structure first of all. And it started as this sort of parasitical thought or alternative reading of scripture within Christianity. And right from the beginning, Jesus was used as a propaganda figure. And so I go through the book, I go through what this known as the quest for the historical Jesus. I take that into, you know, how that, the social gospel and things interacted with the form of formation of liberation theology, which is Marxism and Catholicism within the Catholic Church. And of course, we see that jump to the United States in the form of black liberation theology with James Cone. And so I trace that. I spent a lot of time reading Cone's work. And it's some pretty disturbing stuff when you think specifically, this is a minister who's writing these words. Things like, you know, we have to throw in a Molotov cocktail and whitey storefront isn't the best way to do God's work, but somebody has to start someplace. You know, these statements like this that he makes that are really radicalized. You have to kill the white Jesus. You have to kill the white God. You have to become black in order to be saved. You know, these statements. And so then, of course, you know, I follow that into, you know, kind of the modern really more atheistic form of black liberation theology, which is what we know as CRT. I don't think we would have CRT without James Cohen. You know, he really kind of opened up a door for a lot of those ideas and dirt ball and others to be able to, you know, generate that. And then, of course, the modern implications, you know, how I have a whole theology of COVID, how we approach this. And I really, you know, a lot of times when I write, I have a message that I want to get out there about the dangers of this progressive and woke thought. But there's also a message for the church in there. Well, how do we respond to this? How do we navigate this?

So, first of all, you have, you know, if we look at, after the death of George Floyd, right, all of the protests and the burning of cities and all the things, these demonstrations that were happening, there's, there's monstrous, you know, you have to say certain phrase theology. There's certain posturing, you take a kneel, you raise a fist, you know, it's kind of this religious framework. You know, there are, there are certain doctrines and dogmas that they hold to that if you don't, you know, if you don't say that, you know, it was that hole that trying to catch people, Silence is violent. Silence is violent. If you don't say black lives matter, then you're a racist. And so kind of positioning people. And so it has all the trappings, yes, exactly. It has all the trappings of a religion. And it's really kind of in that Marxist framework of a man's centric religion. It's the flipped, the cross upside down, and they put man at the top, and they really put George Floyd at the top of it in that case as the gray savior.

Yeah, I mean, specifically in Rome, which is a period of time that I really enjoy reading about and reading original documents from, is that Christians were known as atheists during that period because they didn't believe in the Pantheon if that's exactly. They didn't adopt sort of this Olympic structure, or Hellenistic structure of deities, and even if they for the Roman just to accept Jesus as one of many wasn't a big deal, but for the Christian that was obviously an issue. And this is where a lot of persecutions. Many of the persecutions in Rome, I think that we get a wrong idea that Romans were just constantly trying to kill Christians. It wasn't necessarily the case. But they were creating a lot of standard kind of tests of religion that you had to demonstrate because they believed so much in the favor of this pantheon and these local deities that you had to sacrifice to them and worship them. And Christians could not, obviously, participate in that because to do so would be idol worship. It would be, you know, uh, a betrayal of the cross. Second command, absolutely. And so they, it wasn't that they were doing so targeting Christians, but Christians got brought into this because Rome didn't understand their faith very well, obviously at the beginning. But they were, they were called atheists because they wouldn't worship all these other gods. And this is where you have the great, you know, early Christians like Justin Martyr and others in Jerome that wrote these great apologies, these defenses of the Christian faith showing that Christianity is actually the thing that brings the best, you know, good into the world. And that it is, it is the answer for all these injustices that are out there. And that's how it won over the Western world. The problem is that, is that wokeism is rewriting that. It's providing this new kind of revisionist history that is tearing down those arguments. And most Christians are not actually capable of qualified to make a strong stance about their faith. And this is why it's so important that we get in the word, right, that we are reading it, that we're knowing it so that we can defend our faith in those ways.

anti-racism. So it might be themselves. It might be aliens, right? In today's world, it might be the earth. It might be the divine, the spirit, some sort of esoteric framework that they have. And what we're seeing right now, if you go on maybe an app like TikTok or Instagram or whatever, and you search modern paganism, you are going to get some of the craziest videos that you've ever seen of people dressed up performing Hellenistic rituals trying to go after the repeat and revitalize faith of the druids and other things. This is a real thing. Yeah, it's massively expanded.

and that's a whole other right so we have all these different variants of it and and the way in which it is sort of captured this so yes we see this you know whether it be you know queer paganism or or some sort of more you know historical framework that's trying to be revised it's although the same thing right it's being driven by this and that is an anti god anti bible anti jesus anti creator of the world uh... for it's a rebellion against god it's what happened in the garden is what happened again at the tower of apple It is this continuous rebellion that man becomes obsessed with to go against our creator.

Yeah, and look, this is an interesting thing. And I don't know if this can be very popular for everybody, but as the church is expanded and really become more of kind of Christian business and many industries, the church looks, it's obviously without a doubt, it's the most humanitarian, it gives more humanitarian aid than any other organization. I mean, Christians are really champions of that. But to some degree, I think some of that has done us a disservice. And here's what I mean by that, is that I believe that one of the benefits of actually being part of the church was the benefit of community. And we have sort of created this world where everybody gets the benefit of Christian community, whether or not they belong to Christ or not or whether they belong to the church. It's sort of like having intimacy before your married, what reason is it for the guy to get married at that point? And I think we have people out there that are receiving the benefits of Christianity without actually having that real draw to be led into an intimate relationship, a personal relationship with Jesus. And I think it pushes some, I think it delays that for some people.

You know, we've started a, you know, an organization and you guys have been incredible to work with us at turning point faith as well, you know, called the American Pastor Project. And it's really an initiative within our organization, the influence network. And and we have a call out to pastors where they would sign a statement at american pastor project org and they would take a stand against woken some basically say that i'm gonna preach you know a historical christianity that's based on the bible and i'm gonna stand against woken them at my local church we've got five hundred plus pastors i know you guys have thousands of pastors you work with attorney point faith and it's incredible to see those that are willing to take that stand, but there's still way too many out there, as you know, that are not willing to stand up. They're not preaching the full council of the Word of God. They're shrinking back on these issues because they're afraid of losing their people. I lost 50% of my church in 2015 to 2016. Refiners fire. I appreciate eight week series about what is the Bible have to say and we looked at socialism versus the free market. We looked at open borders and national sovereignty. We looked at things like sexuality, gender, divorce, you know, all of this and within about an eight week period we lost 40, 50, you know, percent more of our church. And with that, our revenue, everything else. And we're the strongest we've ever been with the biggest we've ever been. We have you recovered. We've built back better, right? You know, I mean, that's always the economy was like that. Right. But so we, we, but it really took getting on the other side of COVID. I think for people in our area to wake up, you know, I'm from South Bend. We had we lived through the tyrannical regime of mayor P. Buttigiegs there. Yes, all the potholes, pothole, peat there in in South Bend, and Domino's pizza actually came and gave the city a grant to repair those by the way. So we got bailed out by a pizza company. He runs our transportation. Yes, he does. Yes, he does. The train never worked from South Bend, Chicago either. It's always broken down. No surprise. But you know, look, the church, we have to circle the wagons on some stuff. There's way too many secondary doctrines that keep Christian separated from one another. Look, I think secondary doctrines matter. What am I talking about? Things like spiritual gifts, speaking in tongues, scatology, etchedology, etchedology, etchedology, etchedology, etchedology, etchedology. But look, and there are certain people that would go, there's no such thing as a secondary doctrine. But there are. There are. And the statement itself is, yes, it might be a tertiary doctrine at that point, right? And so we have to learn how to go. We have to set some of these things aside so that we can find unity and believers. There is Christianity. The nation is under attack. We have to work together if we want to see these things push back.

How many times do you think that sermon is going to be given a bunch? Why is that in error? So it's an error because there are specific things that are happening in our world and being presented that are cataclysmically against scripture, right? They're completely antithetical to scripture. I was talking to a Catholic priest actually about this and I said, you know, where are you at in the whole Republican and Democrat thing? And he goes, look, he goes, I don't think any other party is perfect. But he says, I have to commit nine sins according to the Catholic Church to sign a statement to support the Democratic Party. And just by doing that, and I thought there was such a great position, you know, the stance on abortion, the stance on, on, you know, really personal responsibility with all the socialism and entitlement programs that are there. The complete, just ignoring of sovereign borders and nations, the transit towards Israel, all the, all the transit, all the harming children, I mean, it goes on and on. A republicans, perfect, no, of course not. Is anyone candid? No, of course they're not perfect, but we have to take a stand, preaching the whole council of God. I think the first time that we connected in person was at your pastor's conference, you guys did. And one of the things I shared there was, look, You know, the same way that that God comes to even says, who told you you were naked, you know, to Adam and Eve in the garden. I think that pastors, we need to hear the Lord say to us, who told you these things were political? Who told you that abortion was political? Who told you, you know, that open borders is political, that marriage is political. These things are first and foremost spiritual issues and pastors, it is your job. It's your job to speak about these things in the pulpit and to teach your people on how to be a person.

So I think the job of the pastor first of foremost, you know, we see this in Ephesians 4. It's to train up God's people for works of service, right? But before we get to that, that sort of job description is, and let me back up, I would say the first job of the pastor is to protect their own anointing. It is in what I mean by that is that they have to protect their heart and to ensure that they stay connected to the Lord. That is their first job. And because so many have lost sight of that, I don't, I can't tell you pastors that never read the word other than to prepare for a message, right? And you look, you go through season. I've had, you know, you have seasons, right? Where you go, man, it's been, it's been a couple weeks since I really sat down and did this other than to do message prep, right? But look, you have to develop that discipline. You have to go, I'm in the word on a regular basis.

Right, you know, do anything. It is part of this. And I think that in our culture, the way it is, there's so many things that are pulling up past. There's pastors expected to be, you know, travel agents and counselors and attorneys for people and all these things that they, you know, get, get pushed to be. And I think that, you know, it's easy to lose sight, but you have to protect that first and foremost. The second thing that I think is missing in the church. And this, this I'm sure there's going to be some people who would want to debate me on this, but in Ephesians 4, before you see this mission of to train up God's people for works of service, it's not specifically the pastor only that's doing that it's what the what I would call the fourfold of the fivefold ministry we see a possible profit pastor teacher evangelist now I'm not going to sit here and debate whether or not there's a possible today that we're not going to use your show for that platform right and let you invite me back specifically on the topic I won't do that to you couldn't care about Okay, but I do believe that without a doubt the church is called to be apostolic. It is called to be prophetic in the sense. It is called to be evangelistic. It is called to be pastoral. It is called to be, you know, a teaching, you know, have a teaching component to it. A healthy church has all of those. What's the apostolic do? It advances. It moves the gospel forward. It takes it from, you know, point A to point B to going into new areas. What's prophetic to it speaks truth, you know, into into areas that are, you know, need to have those things. So many people that call themselves pastors are truly only doing the pastor work. They're shepherding the sheep or they're teaching But they're not willing to do the apostolic job of dividing doctrine and setting the record straight on what the Scripture is saying, what does it not say? They're not willing to do that prophetic job of really calling out things, you know, and being that voice that maybe somebody doesn't necessarily want to hear, but it needs to be said. And we have watered down the church to one job only, and that is the pastoral. When infected is supposed to have all of these functions, And again, I'm not going to say offices, but all of these attributes at minimum present. And I think that that's something, regardless if you're coming from a foreign background or Catholic background or evangelical background, I think that we should be able to embrace that the attributes of those things should be present in the body of Christ today.

I think it's okay if the Word of God fins a congregation, right? I mean, look, as a pastor, you're going to offend people. I've offended plenty of people. I've had plenty of people leave my church because I'm being someone talking to you. I understand completely, right? We need to be unafraid. It is that we have so many people that are kind of that giddy and in the wine press that are hiding that they're afraid of they're going to say something to set you off and trigger their audience. And look, I'm more concerned about ignoring truth and having to face the Lord. than I am about, about saying truth and having to face my people. And in fact, I think loving them is speaking truth to them.

Let me say to start with, you didn't ask me this ahead of time. So you don't know what my answer is. I have no idea. And without a doubt, I believe that there is one answer for this, for this election and that is Donald Trump. And present Trump, you know, we have seen already his time in office. The world didn't end. There were no new wars. The economy was going great. My bank account was probably doing a little better even than it is right now. And there was many, you know, many, many, many reasons to vote for him. And you've done a great job addressing some of those over the years. He has also been the most pro Christian president I think that we've ever had. And you know, repealing the Johnson Amendment from day one, you know, being able to, first Christian president, I can never remember who was speaking about persecuted Christians and actually addressing that. I can't remember any other president ever addressing persecuted Christians the way that he did. Yes, absolutely. You have to go to March for life. And so I think this is an easy call. This is a good versus evil election. Is Donald Trump perfect? No, of course not. None of us are. But do I think he has a handle on the tyranny that we're facing today as a nation? Do I think he has a handle on what's going on in the world and the way in which elites are trying to use power to really control the masses? I think he absolutely does. And I think his policies have already been proven. And I think we're going to see them work again.

Yes, and look, I mean, to some degree, I think that she's got a little bit of a prophetic statement because I do believe that Americans are going to choose to be speaking through Dr. Jill by it. He's spoken through Donkeys before, right? We can make this in our balance talking numbers. right? It wouldn't be the first time. And so, yes, this is a good versus evil election. And I think without a doubt, Americans do need to do the right thing. And is Donald Trump going to solve every problem? No, is that is the job of the church done after Donald Trump is elected? No, we've got so much work to do to win back this. It might buy us some time.

So, you know, statements like that actually to some degree are some evidence that we have, in fact, lived in historically a Christian nation, right? Because there's an assumption that a candidate is actually going to hold to Christian values, right? So we have people that, I mean, that, no, it's self kind of gives some sympathy to that. And so we have to come to turn. Let's just say the side Donald Trump's faith for a second. You know, you know, you know, and personally, I've not met him personally in those things. And so let's just let's set that aside. Let's just look at his policies. We have a track record. We've seen him in office. We've seen what he's done. All these statements of he's going to blow up the world and lead a nuclear war. Those are hollow power, right? Because we've already have evidence that none of that happened in the world. is actually blowing up. And the world is blowing up now, right? So we know that those things are hollowed arguments. But when we look at these other things, the reality is that there's micomotime in America's history. I pray it doesn't where we don't have any sort of Christian choice on the ballot. And so how are we going to handle that then? Are we able to go through and say is one better than another? Is one is one Caesar better than another Caesar in this regard? And I think the answer absolutely is yes. And look, to have a president that it all identifies and supports Christian values that continues to honor God, continues to honor Jesus, continues to honor pastors and prayer. And we're actually talking with these people right now about the possibility of trying to get him on the American pastor project for one of our calls. And I believe the pastors need to hear from President Trump on these issues. from any world leader, you know, on these issues that are facing the church. So they know are aware of our concerns and that we also have a chance to impact them and influence them as well as they are fighting out for all of our behalf. So I think these are empty arguments. I think they're foolish arguments. Of course, we all would love to have, you know, that Christian Prince, but I'm not waiting for Christian Prince. I already have one as names Jesus, right? And so we need the best option for the American people right now and we only have one option and that's Donald Trump.

But look, so I mean, this is what a lot of people aren't aware of. How much of Christian music, how much of Christian universities, how much of Christian publications have been infiltrated by leftist ideology already. And that they are pushing this. And so the Christians that are out there that aren't as engaged as you are. They're, you know, they're getting a subscription to Christianity today. And these other publications that are essentially, you know, being used as propaganda centers for a lot of these ideas. And look, there's good people with all these institutions and publications. But, but I think as a, as a whole, a lot of them have been impacted very negatively. You know, my, my previous book, The Christian Left goes into all of that. And look, we have seen this and so it's no surprise where we are today because millions of dollars have been trying to convince Christians of this very idea to prevent them from voting for figures like this.

I think that you have to have one foot in the local and one foot in the national conversation. You know, look, not every pastor is doing tons of interviews. I did 500 interviews last year on, you know, major publications in the States. And I understand that that's a rarity, you know, for a lot of people, but we have to at least be aware of what's happening in a national level. We have to be able to have those conversations because your people are watching the news. They're involved in this. You have to be able to answer those things. Anytime there's a major world event, I'm addressing that. Usually what my staff calls the pre message, you know, I'm getting up there. I might have a topic that I'm teaching on on that Sunday, but I'm going to take a little time and I'm going to address that to my church. You know, I've been, and look, I'm saying these things, not just as a traveling circuit speaker. I, I'm a senior pastor of a ministry. I preach. almost every single Sunday, you know, at our church, based in South Bend, Indiana. And this is, we've seen, you know, the importance of this for these issues. There's also, you have to be involved in the local. You have to, you know, know what's going on at your school board. Know what's going on at your county politics. All of these things get involved in that. Maybe, maybe have some people in your ministry that you can help raise up to run for office. Maybe you need to run for office and be able to assist this. And I think that we have to be able to do that. We also have to answer some of these big questions that people have. I mean, look at the millennial and gen Z. They have questions about the environment. They have questions about sexuality and gender and marriage and all these things. We need to show them how scripture speaks to these things and actually provides a better solution than what the world offers. Instead of just discounting them and calling them stupid, we need to answer them. You do such a great job at your events when you have the answer back and forth without doing that specifically.

Yes, we think about that term. So I was really hoping that my take on Christian nationalism would have taken over the nation and let's do it this the time. So look, I think that the term Christian nationalist, look, I know that there are people that have embraced it and they've said, you know, if that's what you want to call me, then that's what I am. And yeah, yeah, I want God to take over the country and everything else. And I understand that. And I understand the case for that. But I think, I don't think that we need other monitors for, you know, being Christians other than Christian disciple, believer. I'm okay with conservative Christian because we have so many that are not conservative Christians that, or biblical Christians in all nations. Yes, you have to kind of say that. But this idea that there is a false white gospel. This is straight out. James Cohen could have written this book today, right? It's just a regurgitation of that. It is that we have to kill the white Jesus. We have to do this. This is the oppressor versus oppressed, Marxist framework, except for instead of, you know, proletariat versus, you know, bourgeoisie. It is now the white theology versus, you know, black Christian, you know, where there's black gospel or non, you know, white gospel. And look, when you look at Christianity started in diversity, how am I a gustant first of all, like from Northern Africa? I mean, probably the most influential person outside of New Testament thinkers. Yes, and this is, this is, I mean, how much did he write and shape what we know of the church Christianity today of being able to interpret a lot of, you know, these New Testament scriptures, and he was a person of color. Yes. You know, and it's so much of, or so many of early Christian thinkers were people of color from different parts of the world. The gospel has never been a white gospel and nobody's preaching a white gospel. Maybe some, you know, backwards KKK group or somebody someplace. I haven't met him, but I haven't met him yet, right? Exactly. And so, you know, there is not, this is a straw man argument that Wallace is using here. It's completely ridiculous. I think that Christian National, the true Christian Nationalists, and this was my take, the true Christian Nationalists are the Christian left. because there is no difference right now between, say, you know, thinkers like Brandon Robertson, the kind of TikTok progressive, you know, LGBT preacher and the Biden administration's view on gender sexuality, open border socialism. They have identical doctrines in dogmas from state and church on the progressive church. They have truly bound the need to the state and they are, they are the true Christian nationalists, I think. Now, I understand that that term is as all sorts of different definitions for people, but I think if you look at historically what happened in Germany, who were the Christian nationalist, it was the progressive church. It was not the believing church that Bonhoeffer and others were part of. It was the notified German church that bowed the knee to the third Reich. that's exactly what we're seeing happen right now today. And I'm not saying that they're all Nazis, but I'm saying that they are bowing their knee to it to a false agenda of the state and they have left Christian doctrine at the door of the church.

Yeah, I was in Mesa last night, I didn't speak, but it was a special service where they are a special guest. Are you optimistic? I am optimistic. I'm always optimistic, Charlie. Like, I don't know how to temper. It's just how I'm wired, but optimism doesn't mean stick your head in the sand. It means we've got a lot of work to do, and I'm willing to do the work. I'm willing to put in time and have the conversations with people. This is why I've right, this is why I work. It's hard as we do. My wife and I, we don't have children. We've had some challenges in that area, and we've dedicated our lives to the sharing of the gospel. This is something that we're both involved in. And she's, you know, here with me in the studios, you know, and, you know, this is, this is our life's mission or life's calling. And is the church always going to thrive in America? I don't know. It, it faltered in Europe. We see these, these monuments that we call churches and cathedrals in Europe that are beautiful, but they're a reminder of a place where the church was once alive. And now it's dead. And I'm afraid that if it happens here, there's not going to be any beautiful buildings left to even know what was that. A bowling alley was a district club. I don't know. I might have been a church. I don't know. There's nothing distinctive about the church in America if we don't carry the gospel first and foremost.

Oh, thank you, praise God. Check out American Pastor Project. If your pastor hasn't signed yet, ask him why they have it. Because you might be in a woke church. He uses a great litmus test American Pastor Project.org.