Councilman Joel Grewe on Truth & Liberty Livecast // Andrew Womack Ministries

0:04 the world through the seven spheres or mountains of influence welcome to the truth and liberty 0:10 broadcast brought to you by 7m ventures and Andrew Wommack ministries good 0:17 evening everyone my name is Karen Conrad and I want to welcome you to the truth and liberty live cast tonight we have 0:23 got a great program we have Joel Grewe with us from the Joshua generation and 0:29 Richard Harris welcome Richard Karen it’s great to be here gosh we’ve got so much information to 0:36 share with you tonight and I think you’re really gonna enjoy hearing from Joel because he works with young people 0:42 high schools public schools in private and he gets the true American history 0:48 out there in civics and we’ll be hearing a lot more from Joel if I want to encourage you if you’ve got friends and 0:54 family that are interested and how to help influence this nation you want to watch tonight so please share this also 1:02 this is an interactive broadcast and we take questions from you we love to hear from you and isn’t our audience just 1:08 incredible they are smart they are smart yeah so they always give us questions 1:15 that are a little bit challenging and it’s really nice because we get to hear what’s on your mind and we try to answer 1:21 those difficult questions andrew is taking the night off tonight but he will be back next week so he just says hi to 1:29 everyone and let’s just bring you up to date here on a few things that are happening first of all if you want to 1:36 ask a question and you’re watching on social media it’s really easy just go ahead and enter that question into the 1:42 comments section and also while we love social media we do get censored once in 1:47 a while would you say that Richard and so if you want to make sure that you can watch this broadcast uninterrupted go 1:54 watch it at our new website truth and Liberty dotnet we’ve just done some really amazing updates including the 2:01 live news feed right Richard’s right and can we take a moment and share with them your latest blog that just went out on 2:07 the website yeah so we just did a blog last week the name of it is Martin 2:14 Luther King and and then the rest of it has to do with identity politics the manifest 2:21 danger of identity politics so really encourage you guys to take a look at that I think it might give you some insight on what happened with the 2:27 Covington Catholic school incident at the Lincoln Memorial awesome so you can 2:32 go ahead and check that out at truth and liberty net also you can watch this live stream there and if you’ve got questions 2:39 and you’re watching on the website go ahead and enter those questions into the chat section we’ve got a whole team that 2:45 is standing by and they’re ready to send those questions forward on to my iPad I also want to remind you that this is a 2:51 viewer supported broadcast first of all thank you so much for so many of you that are supporting us financially if 2:58 this is something that God has put on your heart to support you can give by going to truth a liberty dotnet and you 3:04 can click on donate or you can call our phone center at seven one nine six three five one one 3:11 one one and you can donate and also we’re here to pray for you so if you’ve got questions about what’s going on and 3:18 we’re going to be talking about what recently happened in New York so we want to we want to be here for you all so 3:24 what are the benefits of subscribing the truth and liberty is to find out who our upcoming guests are to get Richards blog 3:31 but also we have a free giveaway every week and last week we gave away boy that 3:37 was a good program last week actually if you did not catch it go to truth and Liberty net and go in the iCard I carved 3:44 page and we had Kamal Saleem on and he’s a former jihadist it was very 3:50 eye-opening so I want to congratulate Bart Norton who won his book the blood 3:56 of lambs and this week we are giving away Andrews a better way to pray oh my 4:02 goodness this book as Andrew said it you’ll either love it or it’ll make you mad yeah that’s right I’m telling you this 4:09 is one of I always say this is like my favorite book every book of Andrews is my favorite but this one if you want to 4:14 learn how to pray effectively this is an amazing amazing book and to qualify to 4:20 win just subscribe at truth and Liberty net also we have so much going on at 4:25 this ministry and I want to share with you a couple upcoming events first of all we have 4:31 the Orlando gospel truth conference which is February 7th through the 9th at the Hilton Orlando 4:37 we’ve got Andrew and Dwyane Sheriff’s so if you are in that area go ahead and 4:42 register for that it a WMI dotnet we’ve got the men’s advance that’s coming up on March 14th to the sixteenth I’m sure 4:49 you’ll be going there with your boys Richard we wouldn’t miss it oh it’s gonna be awesome we’ve got James Brown and Tony Dungy and you can 4:56 register at wwk in advance calm also 5:02 we’ve got the cares Bible College campus days coming up in will them Park April 3rd to the 5th and we’ve got David King 5:09 of Jerusalem back by popular demand it’s an amazing musical and that’s going to 5:14 be the weekend before Easter April April 12th through the 13th and you can 5:20 register and purchase tickets for that at a WMI dotnet slash events so we have 5:27 got a lot that we want to talk about tonight and let’s introduce Joel so Joel 5:33 we want to welcome you and introduce you to our audience with generation Joshua so can you just give us a little bit of 5:40 a recap and let the audience know exactly what you do with that organization pleasure 5:47 Karen Richard thank you very much for the invitation um giving me a minute to talk about what we do I admit I love it 5:54 to answer your question shortly a generation Joshua is a civics education project it was started by the home 6:01 school Legal Defense Association about 10 15 years ago or so they saw a need in 6:07 our culture of young men and women who truly did not understand what our 6:15 government was founded on why it’s designed the way it is what our 6:21 liberties and freedoms are where they come from and how to keep them and the idea was that we were going to equip the 6:26 next generation of leaders with the tools and the information and the principles necessary to be able to 6:33 maintain those freedoms liberties so that’s what we do we do it a dozen different ways in a dozen different places but that’s the heart and soul 6:40 behind it that’s great and you know when we look at the young people and the things that 6:45 are being taught Richard we’ve talked about this it’s just is it’s almost like the Liberals are trying to change 6:50 history yeah well they I think they clearly are trying to change history and it’s so 6:55 exciting to see an organization like Generation Joshua that’s out there pushing back and actually teaching the 7:02 truth yeah go ahead go ahead thank you we do our best to ensure that the young 7:10 men and women that are part of our program in which we primarily work with high school students are equipped not 7:16 only with an understanding where we come from but with the critical thinking and research skills necessary to dig on 7:21 their own and one of the reasons we find that so important is that often what you’re being handed today may or may not 7:29 be true what you see on social media what you see in people you talk to you on on the news there’s a roll of the 7:37 dice as to whether that’s a reliable piece of information or not and so one of the things that’s important is you 7:42 know checking your sources finding out where they come from what their background is which is become a rather 7:47 important item we’ve seen it recently in the news there’s a lot of reporters that probably have a little more egg on their 7:53 face than they’d like to tolerate we saw recently with the Covington story a little more research a little more 7:58 digging we call a journalism I know you you might have saved yourself some very 8:04 awkward moments and some really awkward editorials afterwards if you’ve done your research well that applies when 8:10 we’re looking at historical facts you accept that it’s not an evolving story those who determine facts you can go 8:16 look them up but if those don’t fit the narrative it seems all too often people are willing to just discard them and I’m 8:23 sorry truth is truth history is history it’s what happened and as a result we need to 8:29 know what we can learn from it we can start to do better in many cases but what happened happened 8:34 and we shouldn’t try to change it because it’s inconvenient you know a lot of people think that the young 8:39 generation is not interested in hearing truth and so we had David and Tim Barton 8:45 on the live Bible study I guess that was last week and one of the things they said is that actually young people when 8:51 you ask them questions will really engage with they said but if you try to tell them 8:57 everything and I could hear what you were talking about jewel is that you ask them questions you encourage them to 9:02 research so give us an idea people that might think the young generation is not 9:08 interested in this tell us what’s really happening with these young people in your interactions with them through the 9:15 program Klaatu first of all I’ll say this I do not find young people to be uninterested 9:21 about politics history or truth they find each one of them fascinating and very interesting what they are annoyed 9:29 by is someone who will just tell them here’s how it is I don’t question it and if you’re unwilling to take questions 9:35 frankly they often will consider you as someone who is scared to actually defend 9:42 or wrestle with ideas um which I think with a lot of the different stories that 9:47 are peddled out there if you scratch too hard they come apart so I understand the fear but the the reality of this is that 9:54 I find the next generation is honestly very much longing to know what is true 9:59 and what is right and how to know it and if you’re willing to wrestle with our 10:05 questions and talk about hard things and acknowledge that those are hard they want to hear from you if you if you just 10:12 brush it away and say oh it’s not a big deal it’s just this they will discard 10:17 you but if you’re willing to acknowledge to our question and then wrestle with the hard question they will listen to you for far longer 10:24 than most people think they will be amazed what an attention span of high school it has when you’re actually 10:29 talking about something in a way that he believes is true and authentic and actually values what they think and 10:37 willing to listen to the dialogue with them a posture of link lecturing from on a high will turn them off almost 10:42 immediately but this is their dialogue with them you will have their attention well you’re probably you’re probably 10:48 conveying to them you know the message that you want to know what they think 10:54 yeah right exactly it’s been ongoing for a while we discard high schoolers middle 11:02 schoolers even early college as people who really don’t know anything and really can’t make a difference 11:07 that’s not true and what it comes across as is dismissive and arrogant and when you 11:13 challenge that and you kind of flip that assumption and it’s like no you have unique gifts and talents and a unique 11:19 ability to make a difference in ways that often adults cannot so let’s have a serious conversation about what these 11:24 trees mean in your life l-listen so Joel I was looking at the generation Joshua website and and I had 11:32 heard of you guys before but I was not fully aware of all the different things that you do in the ways that you teach 11:40 young people I saw clubs and classes and camps can you can you share with the 11:46 audience a little bit more about exactly how does your ministry operate and all 11:52 the opportunities that there might be for young people to to learn this about 11:57 our history and so forth I would love to okay so generation Joshua I kind of gave 12:03 you the vision and mission a minute ago but one of the things that makes it unique is frankly some of the 12:10 methodology the way we teach most people think of teaching in two forms there’s 12:16 books and there’s lectures and that’s how education happens but most people 12:22 actually know that’s not the best way to learn the best way to learn is honestly to do the more senses you engage the 12:28 more kinetic activity that is involved the better you remember things and so we took that principle that is really in a 12:34 sense cutting-edge education theory it’s how they’re training some of the smartest and brightest people around the 12:39 world at this point and we said how does that apply in context of government because government’s a really hard one to make hands on for lack of better 12:46 terms and our solution to it was a series of different immersive and 12:52 kinetic activities where people do government now it might mean a local club which we have them all around the 12:57 country and these are groups have anywhere from 5 to 80 on the larger side 13:03 high school students that’ll meet up once a month they’re going to talk about local politics local issues national 13:08 issues see what their role in this is is in that maybe find ways that they can serve in their community be a 13:14 volunteering or engaging in the civil discourse in their town or County whatever that is 13:20 and essentially develop as responsible citizens where people see them engaging 13:26 and then are able to be able to meet them so it might mean that a club is you know cleaning up at a local park or 13:33 helping with a crisis pregnancy center or something like that and then in November or October they say hey there’s 13:38 an election coming up we need you to vote and people look at them and go well you know I know you you’re invested in 13:44 our community you care about people around you and if you believe that it matters that we oppose all right you 13:51 obviously aren’t just telling me that because you’re trying to win something you actually genuinely care about your community I’ll do that it actually is a 13:58 unique voice to high school students and that adults don’t have these are kids 14:03 who can’t vote yes but then go and ask people to do so and that’s a that’s a 14:09 posture they can ask from that is different and gives them honestly a bit of moral weight that we as adults don’t 14:14 have that’s our clubs and those happen all around the country and we also have online civics classes that you can take 14:20 and part of and that is more of the textbook talking format you need some of that how to convey a lot of data and 14:26 those are definitely options for people to be involved but the other large initiative we have on the education side 14:32 is a program that we call a governor and it’s a week-long intensive where we 14:38 simulate the federal government for high school students to run now that’s kind 14:43 of terrifying to be fair did you shut down the planet to bunch of high school 14:51 students can say how about it please don’t wreck the car what’s really scary is they often do pretty good which is 14:59 tells you something about our current state politics in America but we 15:04 simulate a Congress a house and a Senate with the rules of the house in the Senate we simulate the political process 15:11 so you’re not just learning the policy-making now it’s not just you know how a bill becomes law we’ve all seen 15:17 the cartoon but in this case there’s the politics of it the fundraising the media 15:22 component you have to deal with journalists you have to answer questions that you’re being written about in the paper or being interviewed and they’re 15:28 twisting what you said go figure how do you respond to that how do you build bridges 15:34 party lines when we said ours up so the house the senator controlled by different parties because that seems to 15:39 happen rather regularly in America today how do you advance good ideas how do you 15:44 present concepts in a winsome and compelling way how do you defend yourself when people say things about 15:50 you that you don’t think you’re true um how do you win them rather than just 15:55 essentially fight fire with fire is there a way to do that and there’s this blending of the policy and the politics 16:02 which there’s a lot of programs in America to teach politics and there’s a lot of programs to teach policy there 16:08 are very few to put those together we do that and we just do it for high school students so that when they actually have 16:15 the ability to vote when they’re engaged citizens they actually kind of know what they’re doing so Jules do you know do 16:22 you guys do this at different locations around the country we do that in Virginia right outside BC in fact if you 16:28 come there we’ll head into DC you’re gonna meet people we’ve had everyone from Mike Pence to well as a whole long 16:35 list of people who come and speak to our kids we do it in Ohio partnering with Cedarville University 16:40 and then we also do it in Colorado Springs actually up in the mountains in 16:46 a place called bear trap ranch which is about nine and a half thousand feet up there so there’s a bit of altitude but 16:51 it’s one of those spectacular views to get up into the Colorado Rockies and so we kind of make it a little more 16:58 accessible across the country for people in different places it takes a week they’re all during the summer if you go to Generation Joshua org slash I govern 17:05 it’ll show you all four of those different locations and the dates there is one special one that we do it’s 17:11 called eigenstate craft and instead of doing domestic policy in politics its foreign policy in politics so it instead of 17:19 being in Congress of a Senate you’re in the executive you’re working for the president you might be the Secretary of 17:25 Defense or the head of the CIA or maybe the ambassador from Russia or the 17:30 Ambassador from China there’s a functioning Model UN is it wearing that as well as several other pieces but it’s 17:36 a it is honestly a one of a kind experience in learning how our government works and why it works yeah 17:42 Joel so when kids go to something like this actually sounds fun but when they go so do you assign them 17:50 roles for example do you have like you know you are going to be Democrats you’re going to be Republicans you 17:56 assign them to have to argue both sides sort of let me mean once on that um we 18:03 found that it was best to put people who were new kind of in a random position 18:10 but as students come back because many come back year after year they’re essentially given veteran see where they 18:16 can start choosing specifically where they go we don’t give them the two political parties of today so you’re not 18:22 gonna see the Republicans the Democrats wouldn’t give them essentially we divided them into two colors golden blue 18:28 and those become their two political parties and they get to go through the crafting process that happens at the 18:33 party conventions to make their party platform they do that too they have to do their their financial plan and the 18:39 fundraiser you have to do all the process to make that and one of the things that becomes important for them is differentiating their party what they 18:46 believe from the other one it’s an exercise in methodology and how it works and they get to own it and so some of 18:52 the platforms and ideas they come up with are often going to be silly some of them are very serious and they have to 18:57 kind of wrestle back and forth with us and then to bring that flavor of real life in we bring in members of Congress 19:04 leaders in the political arena who can come and speak to the students as people who are doing it as part of their as 19:11 their day job about how that works and the stresses the challenges the opportunities that are in it 19:17 excellent so Joel the youth today I’m curious about what your observations are 19:24 since you interact with them on a daily basis like this and and or have you been 19:30 have you found in your experience that their perspective on history and 19:37 America’s heritage is a little bit skewed for the most part how do you feel 19:43 about that Jude is a really interesting way of putting that what I found I found three 19:51 different types that show up there’s some that have decided that they’re going to learn and those people honestly 19:58 have a fairly balanced view because often it means they’ve done a lot of independent research and the 20:04 people that are willing to go dig for the original sources and read the original papers they learn a lot then 20:10 you’ve got the people who just kind of absorbed roughly what they hear but haven’t thought about it and so when you 20:17 ask them a question they’ll spit back and answer that they’ve heard and then when you ask them a question about that they kind of look at you and they blink 20:22 twice and they aren’t really sure what to say next because there’s no 20:27 engagement either way and there’s other people who have very specific knowledge about very small points in history and 20:34 it can anytime you take a large subject and you take little pieces of it you can 20:41 paint well any picture and you take it out of context and it may be a true fact 20:46 but with without the larger context you don’t really see how it fits into the thing it and it creates a warped view of 20:53 of history and we run into that a fair bit but honestly the largest the most common group is the ones that haven’t 21:00 thought about it well when I teach you the public school the first 90 minutes of a class that I do which usually is 21:07 about a day long I’ll do it for an entire eight-hour day which gets attention because I want to get out of class but at the same time it’s one 21:13 topic for an entire day which kind of makes them blink twice but the first 90 minutes is just getting them to think 21:19 and once you get them to engage and actually start wrestling with things all the raw materials there the creativity 21:26 the ingenuity the things that we as we expect most people to have some of its 21:31 there well what I was I was curious about it was whether you’re finding that the the youth of today are they being 21:39 taught things in public schools or even in private Christian schools that are accurate or inaccurate and what kind of 21:46 a perception of America’s history and heritage are they getting honestly I 21:51 think they’re learning often is at least somewhat distorted there in one sense 22:00 they’re careful they try not to present something that didn’t happen but they often lack the rest of the findings so 22:06 that what they get is again just a small part of the story I do find places where people have 22:13 learned an honest and true understanding of American history 22:21 [Laughter] yeah we’ll just say the common public education may not be best known for its 22:28 quality and that’s not to say there aren’t good schools and good teachers there are but it’s often designed as a 22:36 system I admit I’m biased or homeschooling I homeschool my kids I worked for in a sense the home school Legal Defense Association and it gives 22:42 you that freedom to wrestle with truths and wrestle deeply and and when you’re like I don’t know how this part works again find out and it’s hard to do that 22:50 in 40 minute classes back to back what do you find when you bring the students in what sort of change are you seeing in 22:57 them over the course of the week comparing what they were like when they got in maybe what they believed to how 23:04 they are thinking and what they believe when they leave well I think you just said it well they’re thinking that’s 23:10 always good that’s a big step the other thing you find is that we’ll put them 23:16 through a media presser we’ll have people take their words out of context will have people challenge them with 23:21 ideas that are very contrary to what they believe in fact in one of the programs we actually have a kind of a DC 23:28 gala it’s like a lobbying event where there’s some sort of large charity and lots of lobbyists and politicians and 23:34 and different interest groups all arrive and from all around the political spectrum and they’re all pushing their 23:40 ideas toward these students and for a couple hours you learn to swim and how 23:47 do you respond to ideas that are not the same as your own how do you discern what is wise what is not and at the end of it 23:55 we find people that not only have wrestled with what they believe now and usually have it much firmer held but 24:02 also have the courage to share with other people suddenly it’s not as scary talking to someone they don’t know no 24:07 I’m not gonna let you just tell me what I just said and let me let you put words in my mouth I’m gonna say no what I said 24:13 was this not that and that courage often is what makes them incredibly effective 24:19 in the public arena and you see students walk out of it people that frankly were wallflowers and they knew what they 24:24 believe but they couldn’t articulate it to anyone else walking out going no I can do this you 24:30 see them at their college campus standing up for what is what is true or right for something that is not well you see them engaged in their local 24:36 community or standing up to say a city council ordinance on on crisis pregnancy 24:42 center labeling or or getting engaged in an issue in their area whatever that may be for what is good 24:49 well July we homeschool our kids and I know from our experience that there are 24:55 just amazing resources out there for parents these days to educate their kids 25:01 in the true American history and heritage and everything else for that matter in through creation science and 25:07 so forth but there are families a lot of families say you know Christian families 25:13 that homeschooling is not an option for them for whatever reason and I’m curious whether you have any thoughts about what 25:18 can those parents do if their kids are in say public school or even a private 25:24 Christian school that doesn’t necessarily emphasize these things what can they do to make sure that their kids 25:30 have a solid foundation in civics and in in the Christian heritage of this nation 25:35 well I would start with have them join generation Joshua that’s all that was a 25:41 softball Joel you hit practically we 25:47 offer a series of courses and curriculum designed to give you a good foundational 25:52 understanding of our country the particular one I’m thinking of is a program called I citizen 25:58 it’s a semester long course it could be done as part of a homeschool curriculum we actually have some schools that use 26:04 it as a curriculum they asked for copies and we were glad to offer it to them we have people that take it online it’s a 26:11 supplemental piece of Education that’s just separate from whatever other piece of like their standard education format 26:17 is there’s ways to educate yourself it might mean that you’re finding good books well researched books that are 26:24 grounded and you’re reading on your own not just because you’re assigned to you’re thinking about it you’re talking 26:29 about it that dialogue will we’ll do a lot to let you question and and understand what happened versus maybe 26:35 what didn’t these are all things that can be done the other option 26:40 frankly is finding other people who know history ask them where they learned it I 26:48 mean that you’re looking at four books that were published before 1982 or 26:54 significantly before that we wrote the I citizen curriculum because we couldn’t 26:59 find a good and will say Christian and well we would say philosophically 27:05 conservative view of American citizenship and governments that existed 27:10 after 1982 well we needed something there was a whole what have more line 27:15 1980 don’t yeah I don’t know that was just the last copy we found from a decent producer for like this isn’t this 27:22 isn’t good and we need to provide something that gives you all of those facts and rigorously engages with the 27:28 ideas but at the same time honestly presents the ideas and so we do 27:35 that and from foreign policy to domestic policy to our process of government to how you as a citizen or engage what are 27:41 ways the you as a citizen can have an impact on your government that’s more than protesting in the streets or yelling on Twitter there are a few other 27:47 things you can do believe it or not in fact most everything else works better but if you’ve never encountered those 27:52 things you don’t know that so we do that that’s a great resource there’s there’s 27:58 a dozen others you’ve already mentioned people that you have on your show that are great resources for learning the sort of thing you guys have a coalition 28:04 of them that people can reference it just on your website alone there’s a dozen links the places people can go to 28:09 learn and to study for us where are you sending me after high school and to give 28:16 them kind of a robust understanding not just of the truth of where it comes from but how that actually does something in 28:23 their life it changes things that’s what I think I would argue that’s what makes 28:28 us special particularly for high school that’s great you know Joel and Richard it just seems like in our college 28:33 campuses now to speak up for truth I mean people have to be strong in and 28:38 sometimes they almost have to risk their lives it almost seems certainly their safety in many situations so what I’m 28:45 hearing from you is with you’re really helping them to understand what they believe which is going to give them the 28:51 strength and the passion stand up for what they believe but considering what’s happening in our 28:57 liberal college campuses right now I’m Richard I might start with you on this you know how would you recommend that 29:03 that parents help their children and grandchildren to stand up for what’s 29:09 right to make a difference in these areas well that’s a great question Karen I think the statistics are really 29:14 alarming about how many Christian kids from Christian families actually 29:21 renounce or lose their faith after going to secular university so you know I can 29:28 tell you that as a parent myself of college-age son and another one who’s turning 18 this week actually you know 29:34 we encourage our our kids first of all we’re homeschooling and we’re trying with everything we have to give them 29:40 that solid foundation in a biblical worldview and even even engage our kids 29:46 you know constantly on issues of the day to provoke discussions and that kind of 29:51 thing but we’re encouraging them to explore other avenues for post-high 29:57 school education besides the secular university and for example here at Karis Bible College you know I’ve told my sons 30:03 guys I know this may not be all of your education here at Karis but you know come here and get at least one year and 30:10 maybe two years where you’re going to be grounded in the Word of God and it’s going to enable you to be able to stand 30:16 against the philosophies of this world once you go out into more of a secular education and I’m sure there’s other 30:22 strategies for it but that’s kind of how we’re doing it right now yeah that’s great Joel what would you recommend and what do you encourage your 30:28 students to do when they go forward into college well two things first of all 30:33 give them a foundation of truth before they’re in college there was a study 30:39 that was recently done by the Heritage Foundation that found that the majority 30:45 of young women graduating high school self-identified as a liberal feminist 30:51 that was high school not college we have as a conservative movement begun to 30:58 engage on the college level in a battle for truth and the response was that they 31:04 said fine we’ll just jump in front of you and so they went to high school and we 31:09 can have that fight there and we actually have a lot of good resources there’s great groups that are out there that work on college campuses and work 31:17 with college students to give them the resources the evidence the knowledge to back up their claims but if no one wants 31:25 that information that’s not going to do any good which means when those students are high 31:31 school students have the hard conversations they’re the one that the ones that you is mom and dad would 31:36 rather not have and that makes your kid’s face go red and it’s really awkward and there’s a lot of stuttering 31:42 back and forth you know these conversations because then those conversations happen with other people 31:48 and the kids not flawed or flabbergasted they have thoughts about the moment they 31:53 have answers to these questions and they can wrestle with it I remember in a class several years ago 31:59 I was in several years ago ok um but the teacher asked you know what is the 32:06 purpose of life a big deep philosophical question and it was just one of those 32:11 snap answers where you like you blurt it out and you realize so I’m home school right I forget to raise my hand it was 32:19 like well to glorify God and enjoy him forever and if you recognize the Creed you’ll know where that comes from and 32:25 you kind of looked at me and the rest of the room kind of looked at me and I’m like oh sorry it’s like wow I haven’t 32:33 had someone answer that quickly on anything in a long time and unfortunately for a lot of us we 32:40 can’t answer that question that easily not as easily as you can well it’s not 32:45 that hard if you’ve done the learning if you’ve thought about it in advance so thinking about advance have the 32:50 conversations early I remember growing up that I grew up on a farm and that meant that it was an hour drive to 32:57 anything so my dad took me everywhere and he spent an hour of conversation in 33:02 and out every day I didn’t realize how incredibly valuable that was until now I 33:10 have my own three sons and I’m seeing what the impact is and I’m running into kids and students from very broken homes 33:16 and all sorts of shattered places and they’ve never seen that before I’m like I don’t know 33:22 how you survive without it I barely barely tread water on my own with all of that and if you have the capacity to 33:28 pour that into your students lives do it have those serious conversations let them ask you anything as awkward as it 33:35 is and then answer them seriously it will thank you for us I think that’s a great toll I think grandparents to 33:42 have a lot that they can do I just find to like with my son I mean 33:48 he’s got such a great relationship with my dad and my dad is able to impart things to him that he may not receive 33:54 from mom right so I would just say you don’t want to hear it that’s true yeah I saw it encourage if you’re a grandparent 34:01 or a great grandparent or an aunt or an uncle you know who in your family can 34:06 you help to disciple one of the things that David Barton and Tim were talking about is if we disciple one person we 34:13 can literally change the world and so a lot of times we’ve got these youth these children right in our own families yeah 34:21 that’s something we can do that’s great Joel I’m gonna switch gears just a little bit here and I want to 34:29 take a moment and Richard I’ll have you kind of lead this off but we just had such sad news coming out of New York 34:35 this week and so Richard can you kind of just give the audience a recap I’m sure they’ve heard about it but kind of 34:41 really the depth as to what happened in New York this last week right well basically what happened is that the 34:49 state of New York passed a law and the governor signed it that legalized abortion in most cases up to the point 34:56 of live birth essentially embracing partial birth abortion if you will and 35:03 it’s one of the most radical I don’t think you can even call it pro-choice 35:08 right it’s pro-abortion pro-abortion measures in the world and then they 35:14 celebrated that with clapping and cheering and then the governor ordered that the spire on the Empire State 35:22 Building be lit up in pink and you know they called the bill something about reproductive health rights or something 35:30 like that I don’t know what reproduction has to do with it if you’re killing the baby that 35:35 you produced but anyway he’s very sad very tragic and then I’ve also heard that there are other states where you 35:45 know extreme progressives are in control now that are going to be following suit with similar measures so we’re in an 35:52 interesting time I think Karen because you see on the one hand some states are 35:57 growing stronger and stronger in favor of abortion and other states are growing stronger and stronger 36:03 in favor of life for example Iowa had passed a heartbeat bill saying it’s 36:08 illegal to have an abortion after a heartbeat is detected and then Ohio the newest governor there the former 36:14 Governor Kasich had vetoed that same measure the new governor says put it on my desk and I’ll sign it and we’ve got a 36:21 number of states passing strong measures like Texas for example restricted 36:27 Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood the good news there is the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals of held last week that 36:34 that is constitutional and is legal now that may make its way all the way to Supreme Court but but this battle on 36:40 life is intensifying just as the world views are intensifying and people are becoming more and more cemented so we’re 36:47 definitely engaged in a war on this subject and Joel we do hear reports that the young generation is one of the most 36:54 pro-life generations and so can you give us just a little feedback are you hopeful with this we’re very so not to 37:05 contrast the negativity let me give you maybe some hope on this I have found the 37:11 the younger the generation the more they they’re pro-life in fact it makes 37:19 logical sense for them they see value there in each individual person and 37:26 we’ve honestly the left has a problem with their ideas but I’ve talked about how each individual person is unique and 37:31 whatever they believe whatever their background is they should be protected and valued unless they’re not going yet 37:37 in which case people kill them that’s it actually doesn’t work they have a philosophical problem and the youngest 37:44 generations have picked up on that and they decided no all life is valuable it’s not a man it’s not like 37:49 you know an overwhelming majority yet but it is a majority and that’s honestly you want to find pro-abortion people in 37:56 America sadly the older the person is the more 38:01 likely they’re gonna be in favor of it the younger the gift the less likely they’re willing to tolerate it which I 38:07 find very encouraging in fact and this is kind of a a bit of an upset but I actually find the fact that New York had 38:14 to go to great effort to pass this and that it was a priority in a weird way encouraging and here’s why the only 38:22 reason you’re going to pass that is if you are very very worried the row is going down right yeah I think it’s going 38:29 to happen I’m not quite sure when but I think it’s going to happen sooner than most people think I I tell my students 38:37 that I I believe they are going to see the end of roe v– wade in America and I 38:43 that one’s personal to me it really is um I’m one of those kids that statistically shouldn’t be alive 38:49 I was the one that you know had the mom who was 13 who was raped and that 38:56 statistically that’s what you have abortion force to get rid of that problem she chose not to in my case Wow 39:02 she put me up for adoption let’s just say that that makes this an issue that I 39:09 care a lot about and I love science I’m seeing in the generation I work with for 39:16 life I think my direction I think we’re gonna keep moving in that direction until we see the end of that atrocity oh 39:22 that is amazing in here I love that that is such a story it really is a testimony 39:30 and look what you’re doing to influence okay well we have got some really good questions coming in and so we’re gonna 39:38 take a moment to answer some questions and so I’m gonna go ahead and start with 39:43 this one that’s specific for you Joel and this came in from our chat I think 39:48 this is kind of D the question is do you have classes for adults no I do not 39:58 now if parents want to join and take the classes with their kids they do and 40:03 that’s fine in fact with several of the courses we’ve seen students who take the 40:09 course and ironically at least for the ones that we do online we have some way you can actually do livestream talking to the different professors and teachers 40:16 as it goes along ironically mom or dad is in the room every time and they’re 40:21 learning right along with their with their children which I think it’s remarkable reflection on the fact that at least for some adults they learn they 40:28 know they don’t know it yeah and they want their students to know it but they also want to learn at the same time 40:33 that’s fine there are some great resources for adults we have the same 40:40 question in camps I’m sorry insurance says there’s got to be an age limit I 40:46 would love to offer that there is a lot of educational resources for adults but we are designed for Isaac okay very very 40:53 good and then Ghost Rider 316 who is coming in on our Andrew Wommack 40:58 ministries Chad asked this do you have a program for getting the average churchgoer to think well of a sort we we 41:11 do not do specifically church based ministry we partner with some great organizations that do that work in there 41:17 most often what we find is that we did this a couple years ago we have a 41:22 program called student Action Teams where young men and women will actually go and work in a race they’ll actually 41:30 work on behalf of candidates or on ideas and one of the things that we find very compelling is when they’re working in 41:36 their home area and they go knock the doors and they’re talking to their churchgoers and they’re there handing 41:41 out literature or their take here’s the election issues that are up here’s the votes that are gonna matter here’s what 41:47 scripture says about it and then maybe they stop there and say I’m gonna tell you how to vote what I’m saying you need to and I’m saying you need to vote in an 41:54 informed way and often we find that the young people doing that present a rather compelling challenge to their parents or 42:02 to their parents friends who may not be as involved as their conscience tells them they should or they just somehow 42:07 don’t make time for it and then a 14 year old says I can’t vote yes I’m very concerned about the future of 42:13 my country can you oh that’ll oh that would have an impact that will get you 42:19 very because we all know that we should be doing it and we don’t sometimes it 42:26 just needs to have a 14 year old with with braids going excuse me you know you 42:33 need to do can be very compelling that’s great Joel so we have Pat of 210 42:38 which is also on the aw n chat and Pat Avast this the public school system is a 42:44 massive socialist induction tool they no longer teach academics is there anything 42:50 that can be done about that several things yes there is 42:56 different states operate different rules for their public schools so ironically 43:02 in Virginia we’re invited in we get to come and we run these government 43:10 simulation programs we have which of these one or two day programs for public school students does that fix socialized 43:17 education no but at least in Virginia the law such that it is willing to not 43:23 only tolerate but is willing to encourage having a variety of views come 43:29 in they kind of that any of the marketplace of ideas if anything to take students and challenges them to think 43:35 and to engage frankly allows them to move beyond just the here’s what you believe here’s what you believe who’s 43:42 what you believe the question is you know why and where does that come from and what are the consequences of that and we challenge students that way to 43:49 fix the socialized education system as a whole I think probably requires being 43:55 engaged in your local government getting involved in your local school board running for office terrifying thought 44:01 that it may be in fact we have students that have come out of our program they’ve decided that the schooling in their county matter that even if they 44:09 were homeschooled or they were private school to coach school they’re gonna get them off I’ve got students that are now on school boards they’ve graduated the 44:16 program there they’re actually in governance trying to work to better the education system there they they said 44:22 we’re gonna take this to hearts I mean that’s why I got involved my town governments I’m one of my students saw let’s just call it a 44:29 scandal or bit of a mess and they actually came to my house with a copy of the Washington Post which when my little 44:37 town manages to make it in front of the Washington Post that’s not we don’t like it to be bad it’s not a complimentary 44:43 article let’s put it that way and he walked in he’s like joel is is this your town you know he holds up the 44:49 paper and well yeah that’s our town he goes so you talk about it and then he 44:55 goes no it’s more like you preach about how important it is for good people to be involved in government and if good 45:02 people aren’t involved in government the bad things happen to use do you believe that yeah yeah I do he goes so what are 45:10 you gonna do about it like I’m like I 45:17 guess I’m going to run for office then and you’re now my campaign manager congratulations seems like that was not 45:22 part of the plan and lo and behold he did in fact an entire team of students kind of came around that and they saw 45:29 the issue and they were committed to being engaged in fixing a broken system and Joel go can I go back to something 45:38 you said that that generation Joshua actually gets invited into a local 45:43 school there is that something that like you if a parent has kids in a local 45:49 public school and they they want to approach the principal or the educators there about the possibility of having 45:55 your program come in is that something they could do and how would they go about that yes yes certainly we’d love 46:01 to we we’ve navigated the public school bureaucracy for lack of better terms the 46:07 the we’ve got programs that are designs that can that can accomplish the ends 46:13 and means that are necessary in a way that is legally permitted for and 46:19 accomplishes you know all of their different rules and regulations and insurance requirements all the rest of it but we would love to come the we we 46:26 started a sponsorship with a partnership with a local public school here years ago and it was just the the the 46:33 government teacher said we’ve gotta have a better way of teaching and and what drew her to us 46:38 was these immersive simulations kind of the hands-on let’s do it we have a program that is a judicial program and 46:45 it’s a it’s a it’s a mock federal grand jury set in Chicago back in the 20s so 46:52 it’s a mob case and the kids actually get to do it and it’s also the only time I think I’ve ever walked you a public 46:57 school carrying a Thompson submachine gun ever knew that but it was it’s 47:04 immersive we come in as a judge and prosecutors and witnesses and characters at least these kids are having to 47:09 wrestle her occasion and then take the idea of what is justice that’s actually 47:14 not easy to answer sometimes and apply it to a case with real people involved 47:20 as far as they can tell and that was the beginning of a very long and really beneficial relationship and every year 47:26 this teacher partners with us they she brings her class or two or three classes depending to do one of our programs on 47:34 foreign policy and one of our programs on the justice system and how it works and where it comes from why and we teach 47:39 about it in a practical setting that you see what happens when justice is abused you see what happens when justice is missing and how important those things 47:47 are and we do programs in a dozen difference well that’s really encouraging and I know we’ve got some more questions but do you are you able 47:54 to talk about the Lord in these programs and about God and and the role of God in 47:59 an individual’s life and as well as in public policy we can talk about it in 48:04 certain forms we do have lines we have to be careful of to be honest we can’t 48:10 I mean preaches maybe the right word we can’t do that we can talk about where we 48:16 find these ideas coming from okay if we’re talking about you know these ideas came from kind of a judeo-christian 48:23 approach to the world and the Western philosophy of this idea of freedom and 48:29 where it comes from what the background principles of that are this idea of a codified law and what that looks like 48:35 and so yes justice rather naturally lends itself to who defines justice 48:43 that’s a great question and if you can’t answer that you can’t really give me any 48:49 form of justice so in that sense all we have to do is say age and generally the students get there 48:55 on their own but we have to frame the question that’s really good all right 49:00 we’ve got a fee we do have a lot of questions this is really a hot topic with our audience tonight and so we’ve 49:07 got Michael on awm chat that asked this he says Joel what is a percentage of 49:13 students that go politics and do you have any testimonies of those that have 49:18 attended your classes I’ve actually got quite a few I if you if you want to go 49:25 see it you’re welcome to do so I have them on my website as far as information but they find it to be one of the most 49:30 eye-opening experiences and a very immersive I I should have printed them 49:35 off I have piles of testimonies of of students talking about how much they learn that how much it it made them 49:41 think and engage them we talk about human rights and what are those why do they matter why do humans have Worth and 49:48 rights worth protecting where does that come from we talk about justice we talk about the idea of just war where does 49:55 that come from once the the tradition coming out of kind of a judeo-christian background there and the students 50:01 respond to that in fact we have a whole list of testimonials as it were of 50:07 people talking about how their lives have been changed as far as students 50:12 going into politics a generation joshua’s designed for two types of people someone who wants to go into 50:19 politics and someone who doesn’t because the role covers it yeah the idea being 50:26 that if you’re an American citizen you’re in politics congratulations 50:33 you’re in whether or not this is now part of your responsibility in Iowa so in a sense everyone’s in it we will have 50:41 a thousand kids every year go get involved in races that sound out of 50:46 three to five thousand students in the program that’s anywhere from a third to you know 20% I don’t know any other program that 50:53 can do that sort of deliverable to be honest we see students that run for office we see people in elected office 50:58 at the county and municipal level all around the country we see some at the 51:03 state level actually in state houses there graduates of a program that have worked their way up there we’ve only been 51:10 around for about 15 years so getting into the Congress and the Senate there’s like age limits constitutionally so 51:15 quite there yet but we see people our students as staff on the hill like I was 51:22 in DC a couple two or three years ago and I had about 200 people that I was 51:27 then we were in the Capitol building we were taking them to a meeting with the majority leader of the house a couple 51:35 years ago and we need to move them from one side of the political candidate the the Capitol campus to another the rule 51:41 was you only could take 12 people through the tunnel per escort some staffer who had an ID you know and so we 51:49 said okay we can do that and we have two other people so we pull out our phones we basically called up every Jen chieh 51:55 alumni that we knew that was working on Capitol Hill to move 200 people I had 35 52:00 staffers show up and we move to other people down those tunnels they’ve been placed because the people that are 52:07 inspired to get involved have been equipped to where they say oh you’ve 52:12 been involved in Jen chieh excellent we’d love to have you could you please come an interview week we’d love to give you a position why because we know the 52:18 quality that we’re gonna get and that makes you give people that are currently working in the White House there were 52:24 students of ours that are working in the Senate the house I’m a committee staff that are working in the think tanks in 52:29 DC that are working in the state policy councils around the country they’re working internationally on human rights initiatives they’re working with the 52:35 projects that are involved in the UN globally these are students who’ve taken their responsibilities as Christians and 52:43 as citizens seriously Oh Joel that is excellent okay so Kowboy 52:48 Tom who is on chat says this could Joel please speak to the use of psychology 52:55 being brought into the government schools he says I’ve observed what I see 53:00 as use of psych manipulation brainwashing into the social justice snowflake agenda in public high school 53:08 students something that was not so aggressively employed back when I was in school what are your thoughts on that 53:13 okay well one of our summer camps that I 53:18 govern I teach a class that’s I think all the leadership 401 but the idea is an introduction to high 53:25 school students of effective leadership and on the way through we talk about how 53:30 to motivate people and I give a warning right at the beginning of that class I said understand that this can be used 53:38 for incredible good or great evil the ability to inspire and move people is an 53:44 incredibly powerful tool or it’s a tool it doesn’t really have a moral base to 53:50 it how you use it employs that and so there are powerful techniques to inspire 53:56 and motivate people to good or to ill at least with our program we introduce 54:01 students to those techniques partly because when you encounter them you now know what you’ve just seen 54:06 you know what’s trying to move you and also we say you need to understand how 54:12 to use it well how to inspire people to uplift them to encourage them rather 54:17 than to manipulate them and that’s where I think you see people that are willing to abandon any sort of like moral basis 54:23 when they use it this idea of a culture of outrage as a standing methodology for 54:29 how we live like that’s not healthy in fact it’s incredibly dangerous for a society for a culture of free dividual 54:36 person there’s everything from like biochemical impacts on the body to be permanently angry on down to a society 54:41 to dissolves the scenes um you can’t actually have any sort of beneficial interaction back and forth even people 54:47 you disagree with how do you have a respectful encounter with people you disagree with we we teach that in fact 54:53 even on the council City Council I work with people that are politically very different from me some of them are very 54:59 similar some of them are not at all and ironically I have some of the best relationships with the people that philosophically are miles apart from me 55:05 why because at the beginning of that conversation we established the fact that we could respect one another and I 55:11 respectfully disagree another will disagree wildly on federal politics we send Christmas cards to each other we ask how each other’s family is 55:18 doing and this kind of civil society a little bit of a comeback at least and 55:25 frankly we can use them a lot more that’s great tool that’s awesome we only 55:30 have a couple minutes left this has gone so but I’m gonna share this question I’ll 55:36 direct it to you first Richard and we’ll have to keep it brief because of our time here but Ruthie on chat says this 55:42 what would you say to people who claim to be anti-abortion and pro-life but 55:48 disagree with illegal izing abortion because it would just lead to back-alley abortions how would you respond to that 55:55 Richard I’ll start with you right well that’s a good question Ruthie and it’s a common argument that people make but the 56:02 really is a moral issue and it comes down to does the does the convenience 56:09 and considerations of personal well-being of the mother aside from a threat to her life does that morally 56:16 greater concern than the right of the child to live and to the response to 56:22 that says well you’ll have back-alley abortions that’s a risk but all 56:27 government action every the purpose of government is to protect life including the life of the unborn and so 56:35 unfortunately that response about back alley abortions just doesn’t carry it 56:40 morally the second thing is that it’s not empirically true that we can we can 56:47 restrict abortion and doesn’t necessarily mean that women are going to be going to back alleys and and getting 56:52 abortions we don’t have time to go into it in detail but we don’t so okay and real quick we just have about 49 seconds 56:59 left but Richard yes you sent an email out to Andrews list in Colorado here recently because they’re introducing 57:06 some very dangerous things into the education system can you tell us real briefly about that yes so there’s HB 57:14 1032 has been introduced in the Colorado House of Representatives and it’s comprehensive human sexuality 57:20 it’s basically a UN originated program to indoctrinate our youth and in in 57:27 explicit sexual activity and techniques and this particular version of it mandates that students be educated in 57:35 the in homosexual bisexual and transgender experiences and we need to fight this with everything we’ve got 57:40 Karen yes so if you are on Andrew’s list go to the website in tells you how to go ahead and talk to 57:48 your Congressman Joel thank you for joining us again generation Joshua dot org good night and 57:55 God bless you it’s a pleasure thank you [Music] join us next time for the truth in 58:01 Liberty broadcast find tonight’s episode and related articles and links at truth 58:07 in Liberty dotnet 58:29 [Music]