After Charlie Kirk: Revival or Awakening?

Following the shocking assassination of Charlie Kirk, Pastor Ken Ortize asks whether America is on the edge of another revival — or something deeper, a true spiritual awakening. Drawing on Scripture, history, and lessons from past cultural turning points, he challenges the Church to pray, speak truth, and reclaim moral ground in a time of confusion and division. Discover how believers can impact the trajectory of our nation through prayer and bold faith.

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Transcript

Welcome to What the World's Coming To. This is Pastor Ken Ortize and every week in this podcast we attempt to kind of step back from all of the chaos and cut through all of the noise and look at the world through the lens of scripture, truth, and hope in Jesus Christ who is the Lord and Master overall. The Apostle Paul warned us that in the last times there would be perilous, dangerous, and difficult seasons. And Jesus—oh my God.

I'll just keep on going here try it again. Welcome to What's the World Coming to? This is Pastor Ken Ortize, and each week we try to step back from all of the chaos and cut through all of the noise, and hopefully look at the world through the lens of scripture and truth, as well as hope in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. This week, I want to talk about

Charlie Kirk's assassination and what's the context? What's coming next? What should we expect? So I invite you to join with me as we continue on.

The apostle Paul said that in the end times the world would be perilous. He said it would be full of difficult and dangerous times. And yet Jesus at that same time said, I have overcome the world so that in him we could have peace in the face of a lot of adversity and difficulty. That's why I think it's so significant in this particular moment in time following the assassination of Charlie Kirk that we

recognize that we are really at a critical inflection point in the history of our nation and one that I think really aligns with many things we see spoken of in scripture. But what do I exactly mean by the inflection point? Well, we are, to coin a phrase, at a turning point nationally simply because we have been in the midst of a serious cultural divide. Some would even say it's somewhat of a civil war.

where there's a loss of a common culture, where we've melded together many peoples and groups and even come into question what is going to be the prevailing language that's spoken around our country. With that, there comes a certain degree of value change that some people find other things important, especially when you have millions of people who come into a country who don't know our history, don't have our values, don't speak our language, who basically have come from a background

that is far different where the very idea of a constitutional republic is foreign and even uncomfortable to them. They're much more accustomed to an autocratic kind of governmental system. And so we find that even when we come to issues like what is the truth, there doesn't seem to even be the ability to come to a agreement as to what a clear definition of things that are true, even if there is such a thing as absolute truth. I'm reminded of when Katanji Brown

the most recent appointment to the Supreme Court was asked the question by one of the senators from Kentucky, if she could define what a woman was. And her response was she's not a biologist and she doesn't feel qualified. So amazingly, nobody took her seriously. Nobody believed that she actually had that kind of intellectual amnesia. But the whole point is that she was deflecting away from having to say anything absolute or certain.

And it's not surprising that many of her opinions that she's written since that time, and since she's come on the court, have had the more like a political polemic sound to them than any kind of legal argument, especially based upon the Constitution. But we've seen a lot more than this, haven't we? We've seen a coarsening of our general conversation, the use of what we call ad hominem attacks, where people are called Hitler and Nazis and so forth, a threat to democracy and

Even the place where certain politicians are saying we are at war with one another and we have to do whatever we can to fight. And it begins to change the way people see themselves. I was so surprised that in one survey following Charlie's assassination that they found that 26 % of Americans, at least the ones they interviewed, said that they thought his murder was understandable, which is a strange statement. mean,

understandable in what ways, but the suggestion was they felt that somewhat it was Charlie's fault for addressing the issues and confronting the things that he was. And so as a result, we find that there's this idea that you shouldn't really have an opinion or hold to a position, and if you do and harm comes your way, you asked for it, you had it coming. I can tell you how that from my personal experience growing up in the aftermath of a series of assassinations, I mean,

I was 14-year-old when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, following a few years later with his brother Robert, with Martin Luther King. This had a profound effect upon my generation. It affected our culture where we distrusted our own government. We began to distrust the authority or the things that were said to us, because most of us had a hard time believing that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman or any of the other things that were said about

Robert Kenny's assassination or so forth. It all seemed like there was a whole, basically, was a, it seemed like there was this whole movement behind the scenes of a cabal of evil workers and the CIA and the FBI and other places who were machinating to remove people that they saw as being political opponents or politically difficult. And what came as a result was

A disillusioned generation, the whole hippie movement was spawned out of that. The idea of Timothy Leary advising us to take LSD so we could turn on, tune in and drop out. The idea that we no longer had a place, a stake, an investment, part in the future of our country, but the country was being controlled by sources and powers and forces that were secret and behind the scene and that we would never know.

Even the idea of sealing the facts of Kennedy's assassination for 60 years was just added to the sense that somehow they're hiding from us the truth. And so there has been a not just a skepticism, but a cynicism that has entered into my generation. And ironically or tragically, my generation's are the ones instead of going into the marketplace, instead of going into the military, many of them chose to go into academia.

into education to become the teachers. In fact, that was the direction I was headed for at one point in my education. And we found that when we were in college, that we had people who shared our suspicions and distrust of the government. And all of that had a mental condition. So when we look at the situation we're in right now, it isn't something that just happened recently. You can go back to the 1960s and see how this thing has just fomented so that in the 1970s,

that turned from being a distrust and dropping out to many choosing to use violence. Everything from bombing federal buildings to attacking policemen to even spiking trees so that they would stop cutting down the forests. The idea of social violence being permissible as a way of speaking out against the man, against the machine, had become really part of the cultural dynamic of a whole sector of our

our nation, and many of them filled the seats and the classrooms of academia. So that today we have a whole generation who has grown up under that kind of influence. Where you talk about an imbalance of power, you have a 18-year-old young man or woman who comes into the educational system and suddenly finds that there's a whole new version of reality that they're being subjected to. And then when my generation grew up and we had our kids, we were already

partially indoctrinated into this new way of looking things. So that when we talk about this being an, excuse the cliché, a turning point, it really is more an inflection point. Whether we turn or not is up for discussion, because what we do know is that this is the same kind of social dynamics that existed before the American Civil War. We see that North and South got to the place where they no longer could.

have conversations. They could just yell at each other and had hardened themselves into intractable positions of differences and opinions. that Northerners viewed Southerners as being cruel and unfair and vicious people, and Southerners viewed the Northerners as being elites and unreasonable who wanted to steal their way of life. And as they began to harden those positions, they became more opposed to one another.

to the place where ultimately violence was the only way. But it didn't start with the Civil War or the bombing of Fort Sumter. It started with really people like John Brown and his rebellion. And that's what kind of caught my attention, where I saw that there was a whole group that basically was passing out literature on campuses.

and they identified themselves as the John Brown Gun Club, and they said they're the only ones who are rejoicing in the killing of fascists. And you realize that these people are extreme and they're outliers. They undoubtedly are anarchists. But there are so many of these groups that are proliferating, whether it be the Black Lives Now Matters movement, which was basically, if you've ever read their statement, is intrinsically Marxist and socialist.

ultimately communists, or we have people like the the social democrats who are filling so many places in office. have Antifa, of course, which is the anarchist organization, along with the John Brown group, which declares themselves as anarchists. And the thing that we need to understand about anarchists, the anarchist feels like the only way to fix what's wrong with the world is to destroy it and then start all over again. And you, if you have something, if you have a wife, a family, a husband,

a a home, a future that you're working on, a business you're running. You may look at that and say, who in their right mind would think such a thing? But these are the people who went through colleges and they ended up with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and all they have is a degree in poetry or social sciences or gender dysphoria. And the result is they can't find a job, not surprisingly, and they're in debt and they find themselves pulling shots in a coffee shop and they're angry and resentful and feel like they've been tricked.

because here they are 25 years, 35 years of age, and they're still living in their mother's basement. And so they find a group of people who are equally disenchanted with as they are, and they decide amongst themselves the only way that they can be free is to tear it all down and start all over again. And that would give them the opportunity to have equal standing. So when we try to figure out why is there somebody like Mondami, this clear social Democrat, a social Democrat is basically a communist. I mean, it's just,

just a different name that doesn't sound nearly as offensive. Why do find him like him and others who are filling up these places within our city governments and then declaring themselves as sanctuary cities or sanctuary states? Do understand that sanctuary cities and states are very similar to what happened in the South when they said we are secessionists? We're succeeding from the United States? They're essentially saying the same thing.

that. They're essentially saying that

What they're essentially saying is that their state and local laws supersede federal law. In other words, they can decide about all sorts of things independent of it. They can decide about gender. They can decide about their schools. They can decide about how the environment is there, what kind of restrictions they put on their citizens, what kind of taxes they pay. And even they can say that ICE agents can't wear masks. And so California passes a law

which has no federal authority. But nonetheless, what they're doing is they're basically saying, we are breaking away and rejecting the authority of the federal government. That is the beginning of the dissimilation of the union and is the predecessor or the predictor of ultimately a full civil warfare that can break out as various areas claim that their National Guard are

loyal to their state and don't have to submit to the federal rule of the National Guard. Keep in mind that every governor is in charge of the National Guard that is in his state, and yet we have it that the President of the United States is the Commander-in-Chief and he overrides them. But if there's a decision that's simply made because part of the population says, don't want to submit to that, then you have full-blown insurrection. And so

What we're seeing is really the formations of an insurrection. Now, you may be sitting here saying, am I concerned about this? Because we are at a point where if we don't begin as Christians, as a church, to begin to react more positively and more assertively, if we don't stop just simply hanging back and waiting to see what happens, if we don't stop being silent,

and not speaking up and saying that some things are wrong and some things are right and some things are true and some things are false, as long as we begin to try to pick that middle ground where we don't offend so that people don't get up and walk out. And by the way, I understand the concern because I have people who get up and walk out on my sermons every Sunday. They've kind of done that for a very long time. But if you're playing to the crowd, then you're going to be concerned about those things.

But the church is not an entertainment industry. We are to be a prophetic industry, if you will. We're to prophesy and foretell what God's Word says in a way that Charlie Kirk has become a really good role model for many of us that I hope that many of my peers and colleagues will seek to emulate in their own way, but nonetheless just as earnestly and just as forcibly.

But what's really needed in our country is what is called an awakening. Now, I've heard many people say to me, I feel like we're on the verge of a revival. I hear it on TV and podcasts, people saying there's a revival starting in America. People were understandably impacted by the memorial service. I know that my wife and I have watched it twice because we just reveled in hearing politicians preach the gospel more clearly than we've heard from some of our pastors.

And was really stirring, and yet at the same time, you have to understand that sometimes what looks like a revival really will only turn out to be a ripple. Because after 9-11, we found that for two or three weeks, our churches were filled to the walls. People kind of came to the church for answers and for stability and for insight into how do we look at the future? What is the world coming to, they were asking, which kind of was the impetus between the title that I

started using many years ago. And that's understandable, but what happened is as things got back to normal, at least everything seemed to be tranquil, people began to settle back into the old routines. That's natural, because what hadn't happened is they hadn't had a come to Jesus moment. And really, that's the difference, that even the term revival needs to be used precisely and not so broadly.

because revival is talking about something that happens in the church. In other words, if a person goes unconscious, they need to be revived. And the revival comes to the church because the church has gone unconscious and needs to be brought back into consciousness. In fact, one of the things we find is before there is ever a great awakening, which is something different,

The Great Awakening or awakening is basically an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that's like a tsunami that falls upon a nation and sometimes around the world, where people make this radical transition. There's this moment of awareness and suddenly their eyes are opened and they have a spiritual insight that the reality is that there's a battle between God and the devil, between light and darkness, and if they're going to survive they have to choose the truth.

So that when we talk about what's needed in America, I think that first and foremost, it needs to have a revival, but that begins in the church. In other words, when I make a comment like that you have politicians who are preaching the gospel more clearly than many pastors, that tells us there's something horribly unhealthy within the church. That basically the church on many levels has gone asleep. And that's why Peter said in 1 Peter 4 17,

for the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God. I mean, we know in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 that it tells us in the last days there will be a great apostasy. The word apostasy, apostasia in the Greek, means a departure from the faith. And in many ways we're seeing that happen in many of our churches. I mean, we began with many churches abdicating their role within the culture. I mean, people have used the seven mountains of

culture or the Seven Mountains mandate to describe how society is structured and influenced. Unfortunately, it's kind of been hijacked because when Bill Bright of Campus Crusade first came up with that term, he was talking about the areas where the church needed to be influencing through the preaching of the gospel and by the presentation of Christ-filled believers in every sector of society, in the economy, in the government, in the church, in the arts.

in the entertainment industry and across the board. And we find that Francis Shaver picked up on that, and he developed it even further and gave it more precision. But then in the 90s, there was a group of people who called themselves apostles, who kind of hijacked the term and they called it the Seven Mountain Mandate. And the idea was that Christians need to take over those seven mountains of government, and then we can control the world.

and then Christ can come back because we will put the world into the position of righteousness and holiness. But I don't think that's what the Scriptures teach. In fact, it tells us that before Christ comes, there will be a great departure from the faith, that many people will be denying the faith. And that's what we see. We see an abdication basically by saying things, well, there's no place for politics in the church. And I would respond, like, since when? And who says so? I mean, that's a whole other

podcast, but the reality is I think the Church has always had an obligation to be involved in the politics of the culture. Even we see as happened with the Apostles or even with people like Daniel and Isaiah and so many others. These guys were front and center in the critical discussions of the political and military and economic dynamics of their day. They had something to say. And am I to believe that Christians

aren't allowed to say anything or shouldn't say anything or that we're so spiritual that we don't want to say anything. It's an abdication, I think, that we need to repent of. Secondly, there's been an accommodation as well. As the church has backed away from the hard issues, what we've started doing is making room for people who don't share our faith. The reality—I remember when I heard my friend Jack Hibbs say one time that he said, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I don't think you can be a Democrat and be a Christian. Well,

I'm not sure I would go quite that far. Only God knows. But the reality is, how can you say you're a Christian yet support the platform of a party that abdicates abortion and homosexuality and LGBTQ transgenderism and all the rest of this kind of stuff? How do you as a Christian say, support that agenda and it doesn't affect your faith? How can you as a Christian say you're

pro-abortion or you're even neutral on an issue of abortion. When we're talking about one of the main commandments, the sixth commandment that said, thou shalt not murder, and that's what abortion is. I'm sorry if I've offended you. I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but the reality is we have to stop calling it anything other than what it is. It is the murderous taking of a life of a child while it's still in the womb. And is it surprising now that they're even asking for permission to kill them after they come out of the womb?

So this kind of accommodation of saying, we don't want to divide on those issues is to me just another expression of the cowardliness that I see is becoming so much part of the Christian community today. And so with these things, with this abdication and with this accommodation, we find that slowly we're slipping away from really what we're called to be about. And is it surprising that in the context of that, that we've also began to

avoid Scripture? mean, you know, I find churches are saying, well, we believe the Scriptures are the Word of God. And I have to press them and say, what exactly does that mean? Do you believe it is literal? Or do you mean it's basically generally a kind of suggestive kind of direction on life? Do you take it literally, but do you also take it seriously?

Because I feel like if you're taking the Bible seriously, you need to say that every word from Genesis 1 to the end of Revelation is the Word of God, and I need to follow it as faithfully as I possibly can, so that it is allowed to convict me. And yet I find many of my colleagues today are picking and choosing which passages they want to talk on. I had one pastor very honestly tell me, I only teach on those passages that speak about God's love.

because I don't want people to feel guilty. So we're afraid to make people feel guilty. Well, how in the world are they ever going to repent? And how are they ever going come to Jesus if they don't repent? You see, there has to be a change of mind, and that change of mind is saying, I was lost, but now I am found. I was blind, but now I see the recognition that I have believed and followed and lived a pattern that is wrong. And if we don't call people to repentance, then what they'll think is it's OK to stay the way they are.

As I said in my first book, if the difference Jesus makes doesn't make a difference, what difference does it make? And that's essentially what we're finding in the church, as people avoid really tackling the scriptures. In fact, we find—I've looked this up—that the two books of the Bible that are least often talked about are Genesis and Revelation. In fact, which ones are talked about? More and more knows particular book in general, just they go through and pick and choose

passages and teach topical messages, but they're not going through the work of reading through, teaching through, explaining verse by verse, as Paul put it, the whole counsel of God. And so large numbers of Christians, sincere Christians, are completely ignorant of whole sections of God's Word. And I would ask you, how do we understand the thoughts of God if we don't read those thoughts as they're expressed within His Word?

So this is a critical issue that not only as I go back and say we have basically abandoned our responsibility and we've accommodated the culture, now we're avoiding the Word of God, and last of all what happens is we begin to accept even embracing, affirming things that God said are an abomination in His sight. So that you begin to wonder how do we get from

point A to point B or C or D or all the way we are today. And again, I would say it starts off by avoiding the conversations, by accommodating the culture, by avoiding the teaching of Scripture. And ultimately we find that large numbers of our people will accept what the culture says because it speaks more concisely and clearly and vocally than does the church. That we have prophets who

Don't say anything specific, because we think that the worst sin that we can commit is to offend people. Have we forgotten that Jesus said the gospel itself would be an offense? You can't tell people they're sinners going to hell without expecting them to be offended. But if you don't tell them, you're not telling them the whole truth. As I've often put it, we have to tell people the bad news of the gospel before they can really grasp the good news of the gospel.

I was lost in my trespasses and sins. Jesus saved me from a fate worse than death, a place called hell." So that's what we're really trying to accomplish, I think, in these podcasts. And I think that we need to begin to understand that we are living in critically important times, that we shouldn't be complacent, we shouldn't be on the silo, we certainly shouldn't be silent. We should be looking at people like

Charlie Kirk, and there are others who are speaking out loudly and clearly and trying to make a difference. And if you're afraid that people will dislike you or won't be popular, well, that's part of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Jesus said they hated him, and if we love him, they'll hate us also, because we don't love what they love. That's why I would really encourage you to really begin to anchor yourself in the truths of God.

And the realization that even though the scripture says that no man knows the day or the hour, that doesn't mean we should buy into what I call Christian fatalism. You know I mean by that? The fatalism that I hear coming from many Christians saying, well, whatever happens is going to happen. God's will is going to be done. And I'm just waiting for the rapture. And that's the end of the story. You know, there are some people who, Christians, who feel that those of us who believe in the rapture are part of the problem.

And I would say that's only true to the extent that you believe that's an excuse for not being engaged in the world that you're in. If you want to just walk around with a smile on your face and tell everybody you love them and hope that somehow, through some kind of spiritual osmosis, they're going to pick up on where you're coming from, well, the point is they aren't, because it says in Romans 10-14, how will they hear unless someone preaches to them?

We're supposed to speak. God has given us language. He's given us the capacity to verbalize words, to express emotions and thoughts and ideas so that we can do that, not that we can sit by silently or just hope that people think we're nice persons. In fact, when we take that passage where Jesus says, no man knows the day or the hour, I think it took me a long time to figure out why that was case because Jesus said that even He didn't know the day or the hour.

Well, I kind of think he does now, but then as I thought about it, it suddenly hit me because God has not determined the day or the hour of his coming because everything is predicated on how mankind responds to his word and to his chastening. That God does miracles in our life. Some are positive miracles, and some are like some of Jesus' miracles are destructive miracles.

Remember when Jesus cursed the tree and it died? And sometimes God brings a curse upon a nation because of their wickedness and their sinfulness, even to the point of destroying it. And so he's waiting to see how we respond. In fact, at the end of chapter 25 in Matthew's Gospel, he tells us that the nations will be judged on how they treated God's people. This is why I think it's pretty frightening when I see the governments of Australia and the UK and Canada coming out

supporting a Palestinian statehood and accusing Israel of all sorts of evil things. And I'm not saying that the Jews, just because they're Jews, are going to heaven, but what I'm saying is when God made a promise to Abraham, that he said, those who curse your descendants, I will curse. He didn't say even the nation, he just said those who are descendants. And so the Jewish people, when they are cursed, whether they're in a nation or an individually, God says, I will curse the people who do that. These countries are

actually imploding because of their policies, and it isn't any surprise because they have backed away from the Christian ethic and the Western foundations upon which the Bible gave them, and as a result they're beginning to collapse on their own self. They're falling apart. And it's not surprising, but the whole point is they are drinking the poison of the secular culture, and then they wonder why is it that we are becoming such sick and unhealthy cultures.

Well, I believe that God has made us a promise, and I think this is really important promise. I know you've heard this passage quoted more times than you can remember, but 2 Chronicles 7 verse 14 I think is key to our understanding of where we are right now in the world. He says, That's called repentance.

It means that we humble ourselves and we change the focus, the direction, the trajectory of our lives. We, instead of going fast and hard after our best life now, we're turning and saying, God, I want your life now and forever. And so as a result, he says, if my people will do that, and remember, one of the key parts of this, we humble ourselves and saying, God, we don't have the answers. One of the things that it says in Luke 21, 25, I believe, he says in the last days,

the nations of the earth will be in a state of perplexity. You know what that word perplexity means? Having so many problems and no solutions. The nations will find themselves filled with problems and no solutions. Kind of description of what the UN does on a regular basis. They talk things to death but never do anything of constructive good, and when they do something it's usually destructive. But he says if the church, if God's people will humble themselves,

pray and seek his face, which means you're looking to follow him and be in his presence. And if they turn away from their wicked ways, that means we repent of so many of the things that we're guilty of. Our pleasure seeking, our indulgence in things that God says not to do, our endorsement of behaviors, or just silence in the face of wicked behaviors. If we will repent and turn away from our wicked ways, he said, not only will he hear our prayers,

but he will forgive our sins. And then he says, and then I will heal your land. Where do we see examples of that? It's interesting because when we read in Genesis about the city of Sodom and Gomorrah, we feel that God says to him, if you just find 10 people who will repent and turn from their sins, I will spare this incredibly wicked city. Just 10 people. Well, we estimate the population base of that area could have been three, four or more thousand people.

That means 10 people is less than 1%. It's a handful of people. And he said, if just a handful of people will just turn to me and seek my face, I won't destroy that city. Well, here is interesting. He didn't find 10. He found eight. And some of them wouldn't come. So he ended up with only four people who were willing to leave the city. The rest were destroyed.

And I'm saying that what happens is when God finds that something has become so endemic to a culture, what does He do? He destroys it and He starts over again. Remember the story of flood? Only eight people survived that. Do know it's estimated, based upon the genealogies in Genesis chapter 5 and 10, that there were as many, potentially as eight billion people on the earth at that time, as many as are in the world today? And they were all wiped out, and only eight were left.

a miniscule amount, and yet God started all over again because the culture, he said, their every thought was continuously wicked. Their every imagination was evil all the time. In other words, God said they have been some come so corrupted that I can't find any good in them anymore. And that is the trajectory that cultures go when they turn their back on God. And that's the trajectory our nation is going as we turn our back on God. And so I'm telling you that

The answer is that we pray, that we humble ourselves, we pray, we confess our sins, we call on God to heal our land, but we begin by saying, God, forgive me for my lethargy, forgive me for my apathy, forgive me for not even doing as much as simply praying. Now, I don't want to diminish the importance of prayer, but remember the story of Nineveh? God told him, you have 40 days.

and I'm going to wipe this city out. 150,000 people are going to be wiped out. And what happened? Jonah went into that city. It took him three days to cover one end of it to another, and I don't know that that necessarily means the distance was so great as it was a large city. We know today from the archaeology it was a massive city of the day. But what's really important is he made his way through the city preaching to people, talking with people, having conversations, warning them, telling them what was coming, and what did they do?

They humbled themselves, they prayed, and they asked for mercy and forgiveness. And what did God do? He spared that city. That city was not destroyed for another hundred years, because it took them that long to regain the evil impetus that had been driving them prior to that time. And so, as I look at what's going on in our country today, I realize that if you and I just do one thing, if we go away from this today with only one commitment, and that's that I'm going to start praying that God

would bring a revival to his church and a great awakening to our culture. And you pray that every day. I think we'll see God begin to move in wondrous ways. Quite honestly, after the 2019-20 election, and my wife and I looked at it said, there's something rotten in USA. We began praying that God would expose the unfruitful works of darkness, that he would reveal the evil, that he would bring to surface

the dishonesty and the corruption and the evil that was taking place in our land. And you know, it's interesting because we saw almost on the heels of those prayers, God beginning to expose all sorts of things. Take for example, all of the resources and power they had to hide the incapacities of the sitting president. And as much as they tried to hide it, somehow it couldn't be hidden. It just kept on being exposed. You might say via the internet, it was shouted from the rooftops.

And I believe that God will do that. I continue to pray that God would expose the wicked. And I have other specific prayers maybe I'll get to in further episodes about how we can pray to change the dynamics of our culture. But I think that if we have this attitude, well, the end's going to come when God has ordained it and there's nothing I can do, I think we're missing the heart of God. I think we're missing what's really essential. Because what we want to see is the church revived. If we see the church suddenly

be having a reawakening where pastors begin to speak out clearly on the great moral and social issues of our day, the Holy Spirit will begin to move in power. He hasn't expressed that power as we would like him to because we haven't given him permission. And yet when we look at Charlie Cork's memorial and we look at the effect across the country, what did we see? Not just the popularity of a young man, but we saw the power of God beginning to move in a way that

I haven't seen since I was a teenager. What is called is an awakening. Dr. Edwin Orr, who was the foremost authority on revivals when he was still alive, is still considered to be the greatest authority on American revivals. He used to say that calling a revival a revival is somewhat of a misnomer because the revival is the reviving of the church. It's getting the church to get back to where it should be. But he says what we've seen in American history are awakenings.

and awakenings are where blind eyes are open. You see, a revival is waking up people who have fallen asleep, and awakening is opening the eyes of people who are blind, people who are dead suddenly coming to a new life. And he said that is the result of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And he says you can't attribute it to any one individual or even one denomination or church or group of believers. It's suddenly there's this awakening that comes on every realm that people suddenly recognize

that Jesus is Lord and we have sinned against the God of heaven and we are in deep trouble. It's the kind of awareness that Josiah had when they brought to him the scroll of scriptures that had been lost and forgotten in the temple. And they began to read it and as he read it he said, God, have mercy upon us because everything you said you would destroy us for, we have become guilty of doing. And God spared him and he said, because of your repentance, I will spare the nation.

Do understand the concept? We have the ability to affect the flow of history. That's the power of prayer if we utilize it. Yet I find that most believers are prayerless. If you pray, it's, help me to become successful. Help me to get healed. Help me to overcome a problem. And I'm not saying those things are wrong, but I'm saying that we should also be praying, God, save this nation. Have an outpouring. Awaken your church. Revive your church.

pour out your Holy Spirit on the land that people would turn to you in repentance and call upon you as the one true and living God. And who knows what will happen? Because America used to be, as the Pilgrim Fathers said, a light set upon a hill, a shining light that the rest of the world would look to. They came to America, the Puritans came to America with that vision to plant a society that would be a light of Christ's life to the rest of the world. And that's why for years, America

was the evangelistic cannon shooting missionaries into the world. Paying 80 to 90 percent of all funds that were going to the mission field came out of the American coffers. Before us, that used to be Britain, and you know what changed? Britain began to become so absorbed in their pleasures and their pride that they stopped doing the things that made them great. And America has a greatness. It's not a greatness of a military and our economy. those things are great also by worldly standards.

but we were people of a great faith. That was the thing that people like de Kokeville, when he came here, recognized. He said there's such a fervency and a fire within the church. And it was so much so that we have a period called the Great Awakening, the first Great Awakening, 1730 to 1740, before the Revolution. And it really became the seeds that were sown in the Revolution, where the Gospel was preached so powerfully, and so many people began to come to repentance.

because they felt themselves oppressed by the tyranny of the British government and they were calling out to God for help. They didn't believe that there was any way except for God to save them. They had a theology that said, well, can't... Excuse me. They had a theology that said you can't rebel against the king, you have to submit to him. And suddenly when the gospel began to flow across the land, they came to a new awareness that tyranny is sin.

And just like the apostles said to the Sanhedrin who forbid them to preach in the name of Jesus, they said, whether we should obey God or man, you judge, but we're not going to stop preaching. And the same thing becomes true of you and me. And that's what caused that great awakening. They suddenly said, wait a minute, we don't have to sit and live under the victimization of a governmental, kingly, monarchial tyranny. And they cried out to God in heaven as they turned to seek Him and to be obedient to Him.

more than they were to their earthly leaders. And then that brought the revolution. But it's interesting, after the revolution, at that new sense, liberty became an excuse for license. And suddenly alcoholism became rampant throughout the colonies. In a population of five million people, there were 250,000 confirmed alcoholics. That women were not safe to walk on the street because they would be assaulted and raped, and many times murders were taking place.

All sorts of violence was taking place because they took the liberty that they had gained and they gave it, used it as a license to do whatever they felt like. And that's why there was a call, a prayer, a humbling that, God, you need to save us once again. And it led to what's called the second great awakening. That's where we had men like men coming and preaching the gospel to all sorts of quarters. And it was amazing. I'm going to take a drink here, sorry.

Let me go back to the second great and awakening.

But that's what led really to what was a second great awakening, because after they had gained liberty, many interpret that liberty that we had as American citizens as a license to engage in sin and immorality. In a population of five million people, it was reported that there were over a quarter of a million who were full-blown alcoholics. It wasn't safe for women to walk on the street. The people had degenerated into theft and dishonesty and all sorts of criminality.

And drunkenness was a major problem. so, men of God began to pray and humble themselves. And keep in mind, every Great Awakening always began with a small group of people individually and in small groups praying that God would intercede on our behalf and would save us, that there would be a reawakening, a reviving of the Church, and that the Church would begin to carry out its mission to impact the culture. And as they did,

to bring about a whole change, to open the doors, if you will, for the Holy Spirit to begin to minister in a new and rich way. And that changed everything. America went through a time from the 1830s, I mean, 1790s to 1840s that was a completely change in the culture of our nation. Many social reforms came. It was where the idea of ridding the country of slavery, the abolitionist movement, women's rights,

the temperance movement that said we need to get a control of the abuse of alcohol and other substances. And so as a consequence, the country started to move back in the trajectory of being good because Proverbs says, righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to every people. And so oftentimes those parts of our decadent years prior to Civil War are highlighted in kind

put in this way that they were really this great time of individualism when they were a time of chaos and confusion that was only saved as the gospel began to penetrate all the way into the frontier settlements and change the country. And then there came the Civil War, so savage and so destructive that as a result, many people despaired of faith in God. And again, what was the answer? There was a call for prayer and we had the third great awakening that

began really in the early 1850s, but carried all the way to 1900. It was really a rich time, a time of great Christian intellectualism. Some of the great leaders of the Christian church in America and around the world began to speak from pulpits all over the major cities of the country, and people began to find a renewed passion and faith for Christ. And then what happened? Well, after World War I, World War II, and the Depression,

people began to despair and they began to embrace, really especially after the end of World War II, a libertine lifestyle again. They had lived such a period of hardship and deprivation, they wanted to enjoy the pleasures of the new prosperity that America was experiencing. And we began to create a generation of selfish and indulged people. Do you realize that my parents who grew up in, my dad was born in 1903 and my mother's

born in 1923, they lived by cash. They paid for things. If you didn't have the money, you didn't buy it. But my generation was the first generation to have credit cards. And we began to use credit cards and we began to spend beyond our means and began to grow the US economy around the ability to spend more than we had. We went off the gold standard because it restricted our ability to continue to raise the national debt. And on and on it goes.

And so what happened was that we began to be so satiated that my generation basically, who had never wanted for anything, who had never known a moment of hardship or hunger or difficulty, we felt empty and unfulfilled. And so it led us into the world of drugs and alcohol and all sorts of free sex and substance abuse and all those kinds of things, basically living lethargic lives of slothfulness and seeking to indulge ourselves.

in whatever pleasure we can. In effect, our byword was, it feels good, then do it. But we found out that there were some things that feel good that were destructive. And we found that when you coupled that self-indulgence with a disillusionment of seeing people like the Kennedys and Martin Luther King murdered, even guys like Malcolm X who had some good things to say. When we saw that, we just said, why don't we just drop out and forget about it? And that's when

a group of Christian people around the country began praying for my generation. My pastor Chuck Smith, he and his wife would go down to the beach at Huntington Beach, and they'd sit in the parking lot in their car and they'd see the hippies out there on the beach, and they were praying. And a lot of times Pastor Chuck's wife Kay never got the credit because she was the one that kept on insisting to Chuck, we need to go down to the beach and pray. Praying that God would save this generation, they saw it going to hell.

and God began to move, and that's what came forth to the fourth great awakening. It was called the Jesus People Movement. It was a movement that couldn't be explained, and it was happening all over the world. It wasn't just happening in Southern California, that's just where the TV cameras were. But it was happening all across the country, and it was happening all over the world. And that raised up a whole new generation of spiritual leaders. In fact,

In fact, Dr. Orr said that the purpose of a great awakening is to raise up a new generation of leaders to carry the church forward into the next generation. And I feel like we are right here now again.

And I feel like we're right there again, right there at that same point where we need a great awakening. I see God moving in His church. I see a whole new generation, the younger, younger people who are beginning to discover Jesus, and they're beginning to discover the Bible. And people like Charlie Kirk and many others were able to begin to tap into that, and we're seeing that tide rise, not just through Turning Point, God bless them,

but through many organizations and many youth groups around the country and around the world. The people are resonating with this message that's going out over the internet and all all the airwaves and they're responding with faith and with passion and excitement to live for Jesus. And I think that this is an opportunity for you and me to be part of that because Dr. Orr said the real critical element to all of these awakenings always was prayer. And he says it's like

People pray and he says it's almost like a nuclear explosion that there's a certain, can't remember, it fission or fusion? Whichever way it is, that suddenly there's an intensity and then it explodes and blows out. And he says that's what has to happen. We bombard the gates of heaven with our prayer, not with neutrons. And suddenly there comes a critical point and there's a fissure and there's an explosion and things break out.

To me, it's just a magnificent and exciting picture. And I think that we can look at a moment like this and say, we may be on the cusp of that if we don't fizzle out, if we don't look at Charlie Kirk's memorial as a great moment and then simply go back to our lives the way we lived them before he was so horribly massacred by that gunman. You see, I think I'm reminded of the song by Matt Brock where he had this great line, he said,

You've done it before, and you'll do it again. God isn't limited in what he can do, but for some reason he's chosen to do what he's going to do through the church. And what is the church? It's you and me. It's people like you and me. That when the church takes on the mantle of responsibility to pray and to preach and to seek his face, to humble ourselves, to confess our sins, that when we do that, God says, I will move in my church.

to impact the culture, to change the world, and bring people into a saving relationship to Christ. I'm not saying we delay the Second Coming, and that's kind of a conflict of interest for me personally. I think for me at 75 years of age, I'm probably pretty close to seeing heaven anyway. But the whole point is I don't want to think that I can delay the Second Coming because God in the perfection of His knowledge, who's the Lord of time and space, has that all figured out.

But all I'm saying is that this little bit of information, insight that God has showed me, I believe, is that we can impact the trajectory of time. We can impact the timing of what God does in the world. And even though I'm yearning for that day when I'll go home to be with Jesus, I tell you what, I am terrified for many people I know and love and care about who I know won't be there with me if they don't turn and give their life to Jesus Christ.

I think, Christians, we need to strive to retake the culture. We need to start taking the high ground, and we can do that in three ways. We can pray. We can that God would revive our church. We pray that God would pour out His Spirit upon the land and bring us another great awakening. We can do it by being willing to step into those public places.

to retake the high ground like the book of Proverbs says that wisdom is standing at the gates in the high places of the city and is crying out and saying, you simple ones, you foolish ones, turn away and come into the truth. Don't destroy yourself. We can begin to become that voice. And maybe you don't have that voice or that gifting or that calling, but you can get behind and support and pray for those who do have that voice. And lastly, we can basically

Yeah, I kind of missed my outline there. Let me go back a little bit. You'll figure it out. What does all of this practically mean to you and me? Well, I think the simple fact is that you and I have the capacity to affect the trajectory of human history. That it's not just a matter of what actions we take or don't take.

It's a matter of what we plead for God to do and invite Him to move. My pastor used to put it very simply. He had a great little book called Effective Prayer Life. And in it he said these words, said, when we pray, the victory is won through our prayers and service is only picking up the spoils. So how do we defeat the enemy? We defeat him with his prayers. Why does he try to discourage you from prayer? Because he knows it makes a difference. So that when we began to pray, what happens?

God begins to open doors for us to speak into the culture, and God enables us to retake the high ground and begin to influence the direction of culture. And not that the culture's direction is to depend, determines when Christ can come back, but it simply means that more people are hearing the gospel and seeing it lived out in a way that makes a difference and brings a blessing. America has a chance to be an exalted nation.

And right now I'm praying that God would reach around every culture that once embraced the Western culture, the Western value system that's based upon Scripture, and would return to the God of the Bible. Well, would you join with me as I just offer a short prayer for us? Father, I pray that we could be people who would change the world because we're people who cry out to the God who holds that world in the palms of His hands.

You created it, you sustain it, you control it, and yet you've done this amazing thing, God. You've given us a freedom to choose to say yes to you or say no to you. As I call upon my brothers and sisters to pray, I pray that they would say yes to that calling. That even if they begin in the smallest way by themselves each day to say, Lord, I pray that you revive your church. I pray that you bring a great awakening upon this land.

I pray that you bring revival into my heart." And then as they find they're praying with their wives or husbands, their children, that they would pray that prayer again. And as they get together with other friends and family members and people in their congregation, they would pray that. That whole congregation began to pray that. And suddenly, as we see those prayers like neutrons bombarding that radioactive cell, it would just explode in an overpowering flow into the world and people would be saved.

I pray God that you would do this miracle in Jesus' holy name. Amen.

Well, if today's episode has been helpful to you in seeing things more through a Biblical lens and understanding the current circumstances that we're in and having a plan of action for going forward, I would just encourage you to share this podcast with your friends. I would encourage you to subscribe if you go to our website, www.wtwcomingto.com.

Go on there and subscribe and you'll find that we have other resources and updates that are available. And encourage you to really become part of this ongoing effort to awaken our culture and awaken the church to the plan of God and to become part of it and not see ourselves simply as being spectators.

God bless you and God's grace.