Let's be honest, most men drift. We wake up, we scroll, we work, and then we just rinse and repeat. And we know we're softer than we should be. That's why I built the 31-day resilience reset. This is not a devotional. It is a field manual for men ready to stop drifting and start fighting back. So, for 31 days, you'll train your spirit, mind, and body with scripture, prayer, and daily challenges that forge real resilience. Go to www.undaunted.life/31. life/31day to download this resource for free. That's undaunted.life/31day. Start your reset today. [music] This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it. All right, guys. Got a special return guest on the podcast today. His name is Lucas Miles. He is a pastor, author, speaker, and radio show host. And he is the lead pastor of Influence Church in Granger, Indiana. And he is the senior director of TPUSA Faith. and he has a new book out now called Pagan Threat: Confronting America's Godless Uprising. He's also the author of the book, The Christian Left. And we had him on here years ago to talk about his other book, Woke Jesus. And so, this was a very interesting interview today because if you may have noticed whenever I held this up on the screen, who wrote the forward of this book, and that's none other than Charlie Kirk. Obviously, Charlie Kirk was assassinated on September the 10th of last year. And really, for the first half of our conversation today, we talked about that day. We talked about his last interaction with Charlie. There was a very symbolic moment where there was almost like a little bit of a passing of the torch, if you will. And then obviously what happened the day of the assassination, he was on vacation with his wife, the frantic nature of what was going on in that moment, trying to get the right information, trying to get back to where everything was going on, but also everything that happened thereafter. So what exactly went on in those days after that? Why was TPSA somewhat silent on a few things? What people were doing internally there? We also addressed some of the stuff that came out about the different conspiracy theories and all those other different things, but really we focus in on the legacy of Charlie Kirk, what he was trying to do with TPUSA, how that led to the Make Heaven Crowded tour, which we talked about on this podcast, and you can check that link out in the show notes are going to be coming on tour this year, probably to a city near you. And ultimately, there's not going to be a limit to the legacy of Charlie Kirk because of the ubiquity of the videos and the video in the clips and the books and all the things that Charlie put out there that will certainly last as long as there's an internet and even thereafter. But then on the back half of the interview, we talked about the new book pagan threat. And we talked specifically about what was going on with with paganism, why that is the a really big threat that's happening right now, how it can really go back all the way to Karl Marx. It can go back to the early gnostics and really the issues that's having not only for the church but our our culture in the world at large. We talk about the trans movement and how that is being used in this entire thing. We talked about how there are very powerful people that are trying to make sure that masculinity is stamped out and doesn't get in the way of kind of this new universal order that we have forthcoming. We talk about the inagram and other kind of pagan things that have been brought into Christianity. Obviously, you've heard me talk about that on the show before. And then towards the end, I talked to him about some things that I thought should have been in the book. I was surprised at one particular thing that wasn't in the book. But then he did also address kind of pastors and their role in this and how, you know, wussy pastors or pastors that have a lot of cowardice or a lot of laziness, how that's not really doing us any favors in modernity. But I really enjoyed my time with him. He's great every time he's on. So guys, without further ado, let's get into it. Lucas Miles, welcome back to the show. You always look so professional. You make me feel bad that I don't have a suit on. What's the deal? Why didn't you give me a heads up? >> You know what? I Hey, it's good to be here and this is just kind of daily wear for me. People are like, "Do you do this all the time?" Most days I have a sport coat on, even sometimes on a Saturday. Not always, but even sometimes on a Saturday. >> Well, I had one on last night and I'm still uncomfortable and I took it off like 12 12 hours ago. So, uh, good on you for doing that, but I'm, uh, glad to have you back on the show today. You have a new book that came out at the end of last year and we're going to get into all that, >> but obviously the thing that we need to talk about here from the beginning because the forward of your new book was written by none other than Charlie Kirk and so y'all worked together on this project and you worked together at TPUSA, you know, senior director of TPUSA faith September 10th of last year. Uh I feel like the entire country changed in an instant. Um the entire country paused for an instant uh before people started expressing their outrage or before people started expressing their excitement. I feel like the entire world kind of like took a breath to try to understand and surmise >> what exactly does all this mean? And after this happened, Lucas, I spent several weeks gathering my thoughts, praying about it, gathering other people's thoughts before I did like a fullbore reaction to the assassination on my show. But I really talked about, you know, it wasn't as much a rundown on the news. It was what does all this mean? What is this leading to? >> And so I'm just curious for you, >> you know, when you got the news. I got the news when I landed on an airplane. I'm driving to a church to do an event and you know, I get I get the news and then unfortunately I got the video as well and I'll never be able to unsee that. But where were you when you got the news and let's let's just kind of work through the reaction. >> Yeah. So I I'll back up a little bit beyond that and first off appreciate the opportunity to talk about it. It it was the honor of my life to serve Charlie for the the past 18 months. Um that I was senior director at TPSA Faith underneath his leadership. I'm still in this role in capacity now serving Erica and the board and the team here. Um and uh you know we can talk more about that, but working for Charlie was an amazing experience. Um there was I've never met anybody like him. He was 15 years younger than me. I learned so much from him. Um the I was with him about a week before he was killed. We were together in Phoenix. It was the day he was leaving for South Korea and Japan. I had helped him a little bit navigate some of the theological and religious issues with his trip especially to Japan. Um he was going to be speaking to a group of kind of their their conservative or nationalist party. um uh in Japan that is sort of like this MAGA adjacent movement there. Um and I had talked to uh a significant or prominent pastor in Tokyo kind of getting the the rundown on some of the political landscape and also some of the religious landscape that that he would be entering into. and and I had the opportunity to kind of just give him a little bit of prep and notes on on on just maybe the the ethos of the people that he was going to be speaking to from a faith standpoint. I I I certainly didn't, you know, uh he didn't need my help when it came to the political, you know, side of that, but just kind of understand the religious component. and and there was a great anticipation that this was going to be an awesome moment for him to be able to share the gospel to people that liked and valued and and admired what we had here in America but didn't understand why we had it or how we got there. >> And so, um, I gave him, you know, kind of those notes. We had talked a little bit in person. We were at an event that's called Freedom Night that Charlie used to host, uh, monthly at, uh, Dream City Church in Phoenix. Uh, I've since inherited that event and now lead that myself. uh in his absence and it's a really special event. He started with Luke Barnett and so we were there. Charlie was originally going to skip the event and he was like, "Look, I got a bunch of my plate. I got to fly to to" and it was like he was looking for me to give him permission to not be there. And not that he needed it from me, but I I just said, "Hey, Charlie, like I got this. Like if you need to take off for Asia, like you're good." And at first he was like, "Yeah, no, that's fine. Why don't you run the night?" We had Nathan Pinocchio in there for uh we were interviewing and um and then he came back and he was like, "You know what?" He's like, "I think I can make the first half." And so uh I joined, you know, him backstage and he's like, "I'm going to do the first half and when it gets to the Q&A portion, I'll hand it off to you. I'll say goodbye and then I'll let you kind of wrap the event and and take questions and everything else." And so that's what we did. And so his my final moment with him in person was him introducing me uh on stage and saying some really kind things about me and he he was always so generous with his words and then um us crisscrossing on stage and you know if I remember correctly I think he handed me a microphone or something as we as we passed and and it it it became kind of this symbolic thing you know in my life of just you know remembering that final moment with him and seeing him in that Okay. We did text though after that. I texted him 2 days before he was killed. I uh he originally wanted or he had asked me. He said, "Hey, are you going to be with me in Utah?" And and I said, "No, remember you actually approved my vacation that week. I'm going to be in, you know, on vacation my wife in in Aruba." And I said, "Otherwise, I'd love to be there, but I said Aruba." He's like, "Well, I want you to jump in on the next one and would love to have you." And so, um, you know, if I wouldn't have been on vacation, I would have been there. I I probably would have been standing next to my buddy Frank Turk, you know, and and you know, right in the mix of things and and I just I feel for everybody that was that was part of that experience. Um, you know, and and had to go through that horrific day. I was fortunate that that because I was out of the country, um, my assistant called me before I saw a video, I was trying to not stay on social media while I was on vacation, and my assistant called me and said, "Hey, Charlie's been shot." um figure out how to come home. We don't know what's going on. We don't know how bad it is yet, you know, get home. And so we started working on the first flight. And I knew right away that whatever was there cuz I'd heard from one of the people on our trip with us that they did see the video. And I intentionally made it my point not to look at any social media. And so I I um I I I probably am one of the few people in the country that did not see that video. And I'm I'm grateful for that. Um, but man, it's it's been a it's been a whirlwind, a storm ever since then. I've probably done 250 media interviews since Charlie was killed. Um, uh, in the last, you know, 5 months. And, and, uh, there's this cataract of grief, but yet a tremendous resolve as we move forward, uh, with the mission. Uh, TPSA faith has grown from 4,500 churches to 9,500 churches in that time period. And so there is a lot of um uh momentum and revival that's taking place, but you know, I wish that Charlie was here to see it. Momentum certainly revival. Um sociologists are pointing to the fact that the Sunday after Charlie was murdered, uh you know, half a week later was maybe the most attended >> Yeah. >> church Sunday morning in the history of humanity, if you can believe it. which tells you something about the political right and the religious right versus uh the other people in terms of what we do whenever one of our >> no protests no buildings burnt down my church tripled that day so we tripled in size in one day uh or one week um and have really kept that momentum up uh have probably had minor you know uh attrition but very little I mean we're still we're still two to two and a half times the size that we were and It's it's remarkable. And I would say, you know, I talked to a lot of pastors. I've got 10,000 underneath me that I work with. Um we're seeing those same kind of numbers in a lot of churches across the country. >> Well, and I was at the Church of 1122 down in Jacksonville. Every year they do this thing called Saturated. Uh Joby Martin has had me out there and we we were interviewing the people that speak and so it's, you know, Willie Robertson and Phil Hopper and we had Lisa Turkers there and you know, Joby speaks and all that. that when I got there, Wednesday was the first day of this event. And when I landed to to go to this, this had happened. And Joby [clears throat] got up there and basically started by addressing what had happened. And man, I still get chills thinking about what was in the room because you know, the Holy Spirit was moving so much in that room and God was moving and and speaking to people and like people aren't falling out in the aisles and waving batons or anything like that, but like it was just this such a palpable, you know, moment where you feel like you can grab two fistfuls of the Holy Spirit and put it in your pocket because it's just like in the air so thick. But there was something extra about what was going on there. And you know, Joby and I, even I had to we had to record a reaction podcast like the next day cuz he was getting blasted with messages and so was I about what are we supposed to do now? Like are we at war? Like is you know you know what do we do? What do we cling to in this moment? >> Yeah. >> And so you know oh I guess I I would like to ask you because in those immediate moments like when you're in the real thick of it, right? Whenever you have a lot of, you know, forces against you in your life, you kind of figure out what you are. Are you really tough? Are you really resilient? Are you kind of like, you know, a coward? And I feel like a lot of people had to really have a gut check of who am I in this moment? Am I default violent? Am I default get even? Am I default grace? Am I default's turning the other cheek? Which again is not pertaining to physical violence that is pertaining to, you know, sllights, you know, that that you get verbal slights and things like that. >> But, you know, what was your advice? Because I know you had a lot of conversations with pastors and congregants and just, you know, general people on the street about, okay, what do we do with what happened? >> Yeah, I I all good questions. And I think things that we each have to navigate individually as well as you know organizationally with our our different uh you know maybe movements that we're part of. Um you know I know this I'm a different person on the other side of September 10th and and I think that you know uh especially um in the days and weeks that followed that there was a noticeable change on my heart. I I stopped caring about what people thought. I stopped, you know, worrying about a lot of the things that I would have worried about before. Um, there was a perspective shift that I think happened that was um, you know, very very noticeable. Um, you know, we also I mean there was a there's like a PTSD as part of that too that you know, even though I wasn't there and I can only imagine it's that much worse for the people who were who I you know, most of them I I'm very close with. Um, [clears throat] you know, I mean, I I was on campus at Turning Point headquarters, gosh, uh, within probably four or five days of that happening. And so, we all kind of just, you know, a lot of the staff across the country all came to our headquarters, uh, in Phoenix and and just sort of, you know, were together crying, laughing, um, trying to, you know, just pray for one another and encourage one another. We had pastors coming in and just, you know, worship leaders coming in and just worshiping in the building just as people were sitting at their desks. There's not wasn't a lot of work that happened during that time period outside of the preparations for the memorial, but there was um it would just seemed good to be together. And I can remember walking in between buildings. We have like six buildings on our campus and like the whole time you're looking up at the you're looking up at the rooftops, you know, and it just was like it was just like this, you know, uh you couldn't get out of your head, you know, of what was there. And so, um, you know, it it was a it was a seismic shift, you know, sort of experience. I think though as some chance you know here now four or five months away uh from the from the assassination um having a chance to have a little bit more sobriety about uh and you know where we're at right now. I I think that we are at a place to where there's a sense of urgency more than ever before. Um Charlie never wasted a day. I just I swear I watched that man. I traveled with him often. We did a lot of events together. I didn't see him waste any time. Um, he was either, you know, learning, he was either helping somebody else, you know, instructing, answering questions, those sorts of things. I mean, he might get he might close his eyes for a quick power nap and then he was right back at it. Or he was with his family and they were they were unplugged and just loving on each other. And he was such a good leader, good visionary, good husband, good friend. Uh, I've known him, you know, we met at 2020 and and I think that, you know, like we none of us can fill those shoes. I I can't be Charlie Kirk, but I can be the best Lucas Miles of this generation and just pray to God that that's enough for what we need right now. And and that that's what all of us have to do, you know, and it's going to take all of us to kind of come anywhere close to filling his shoes. And so, I just want to be faithful with what's before me. I want to operate with that kind of urgency. And I want to be so intentional on how I move forward. >> Well, with that intentionality comes uh real. You had to really surmise what what am I going through and what am I doing? Because my wife and I have had the discussion before like, "Hey babe, there are things I say into this microphone that could land me in prison someday." But we really had never reckoned with the thought of like, "Hey, there's things I say into this microphone that could get me killed." And you know, when I was there at the church, I had security on me. I had security on my wife. The kids area was locked down like Fort Knox. And it was just one of those moments to where it's like it reminded me when I spoke at at Lewisburg prison in Pennsylvania and at one point my you know security if you will had walked away and here I am in this stupid stab vest and I'm thinking like I'm about to have a dumb and dumber moment like what if he shoots me in the face and like you know there's nothing that they could do to to stop if these guys wanted to take me out and I was like well of all the ways to go out like coming to a prison to share the gospel with a bunch of inmates. not what [clears throat] I would choose, but you know, there are worse ways to to go out. But, you know, you you know, one thing that you're talking about that we're circling, you know, the wagons on a little bit is the concept of legacy. Now, I think some people get an outsized understanding of what legacy means for themselves cuz they're like, "Well, I'm not a author. I'm not a pastor. I don't have a lot of followers on Instagram. No one knows who I am." And then, so they think they can't have a legacy. I'm like, "What about the legacy inside your family?" Like, if your last name is Smith, what do Smith men do? Right? What are Smith men about? And you you pass that on to your sons and daughters. But with Charlie, a lot of people have been asking, "What is Charlie's legacy?" as if there's a period on the end of that as opposed to a dot dot dot. Because with the ubiquity of information out there about him, the the videos, the clips, the everything, like his story is [clears throat] not going to be done being told until there's a new heavens and a new earth because, you know, as long as there's an internet, like there's going to be Charlie Kirk information and debates and quotes and things out there. But when you think about what his legacy is and what it could become, not just in the context of TPUSA, but in the context of who he was as a man and as an American, what do you think about that? [gasps] >> All so good. Um, it's such a good setup to think about, you know, a question like legacy. Legacy matters. We all have legacy just in the same way that we all have influence. And you might go, "Well, I'm not an influential person." Well, you're influencing somebody, even if you're just influencing yourself, right? And so there's there's always room for um expanding that, growing that. Uh you you're right on Charlie. It's not something that's stopped. You know, the question that I got a lot after after he was killed was, you know, uh and I did a lot of the media for the organization. Um or I should say I did a lot of media for the organization after um he was killed. did, you know, multiple Fox News hits and, you know, Newsmax and, you know, all the platforms kind of just speaking on behalf of of where we are and how we are and what's next and everything else. And and the the question I got a lot was, you know, how is TPSA or how is Turning Point going to move forward, you know, without Charlie Kirk? And it hit me pretty early on where I was like, who says we're without Charlie Kirk? You know, his DNA is over everything that we're doing. He has he has poured into every single staff member in the organization. They've been impacted by him. Um his there's a there's a you know fingerprints on each of us of our time with him that you know we know what his vision was. We know who we were. We know who we were in proximity to him. I didn't apply for this job. I didn't I didn't try to work at Turning Point. Charlie personally brought me in. And that's the story for a lot of people uh especially at top level leadership at Turning Point. They were people that Charlie sought out and personally recruited. Um, and and those individuals are more committed and more unified and have more resolve than ever before to carry out his mission. And there are regular conversations within the organization of, hey, what would Charlie do in this situation? What would you, you know, what would be what would matter to him in this moment? And and that's driving, you know, a lot of decisions, I think, in terms of how we're we're doing things. And and and I think in all the best ways possible. um not in a sense of enslavement to the past, but but understanding that that as our founder and friend and visionary and all the roles that he played in each of our lives that he that the Lord used him to to lay a road map for where we go from here that is is was very clear and was um was I think a a winning strategy, you know, for the future. And so, you know, for me when I think of Charlie's legacy, I think you're right. It's ongoing. And there's still there's young people today that like maybe didn't know who he was before, but now they do. You know, now they're watching everything. There's I've met a lot of boomers that had no idea who Charlie Kirk was, and now they've watched every video they can get their hands on. And so, you know, Charlie influenced a lot of people in his life. Arguably, I think he influenced even more through his death. And I wish that it didn't have to happen. I don't think it was God's will or best in that sense. I think you know what the enemy intends for evil, God will use for good, but that, you know, this is this is as a result of sin and evil and viteral and and hate and um you know, I wish I could turn that back every single second of the day. Hey guys, real quick. So, I remember back in high school, I was training with these guys and they all got super jacked, but they were training and using these supplements that they were buying online and a lot of them had crazy side effects. These were not good things. There's no telling what all was in these supplements. 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Well, Lucas, I've asked this next question to a lot of people and we get new uh viewers and listeners every week and so we we tend to repeat some stuff, but this is one of the most important things that I pondered uh maybe in the history of my public ministry and it's what it's the the men specifically that were taken off the chessboard in 2025. So, you had the great Phil Robertson, my my dear friend. You had Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family. You had John MacArthur, the absolute lion, uh, John MacArthur. And then you have Charlie being assassinated and then Vodie Bacham. And I was just like, holy cow. Like, this can't like what is happening? And I just saw these five giants get taken off the chessboard. And all I could think, Lucas, is God is preparing us for something. Now, my answer to that question has been I think a lot of people were depending on people like those guys as opposed to learning the scripture for themselves or evangelizing for themselves or reading philosophy textbooks or trying to understand their enemies as opposed to them doing it. They're just like, "Well, here's Vodie Bacham explaining the gospel. Okay, here's John MacArthur executing some obscure Greek uh phrase or something like that. Here's Charlie Kirk explaining why the trans agenda uh is, you know, show shows the cultural rot that we're currently living under. >> But for you, what is your feel when you see five and those aren't the only men? Those are just very prominent men within modern Christianom that four died of natural causes and one did not, but they were all taken out kind of almost at the height of their influence. >> I mean, what a what a tremendous void, you know, they've left. I I had the opportunity to spend a little bit of time with Dobson. Not much but a little bit. Um I spent a lot of time with Charlie and was a dear friend and and you know and leader in my life and a boss in that in my life for the last 18 months. Um I got to know Vodie a little bit. uh he had actually uh read one of my books and talked to me about it and we were supposed to do a conference together uh actually down in Florida um later on this spring and uh you know just hated hated hearing and and you know that of his passing and and you know just such a such a strong individual and these guys are juggernauts. They're they're gladiators for the faith. Um they're warriors but you know I think back to I'm a church history guy. I'm an early church guy and you look at the early church and you know how they must have felt when James was killed when Steven was martyed you know when you know Bartholomew was you know killed when Barnabas was killed like you know like you could go on in church history eventually I mean Peter and Paul died we think within 2 years of each other in Rome you know between I think it's 64 and 66 AD me and the loss that the church must have felt when those two guys were gone. I mean, this is this is Peter and Paul. Like, you don't you don't get more influential and central than those guys. And yet, they're taken out, you know, in with a violent deaths within two years of each other. That's man, that's how do you move forward? How do you not collapse? Well, God's in the business of giving us grace for today. And I think that when you recognize that, look, it's it's never about any single one of us. Um, as great as these men are, and and I think they're the best among us, um, God is is in the business of showing himself strong. And often times, as we see in scripture, it's in our weakness we're made strong. And so I just have to believe that this is a time of a mighty move of God because I think that we're weaker before or weaker than we have been in a long time and and that there is um but there's opportunity in that for God to really do something incredible because we don't have the bench that we used to have right now. But I'll tell you what, he's not done. He's raising people up. People are getting discipled. People are getting in the word. I mean, I had 30 to 40 people that joined with me in January 2026 to read the entire Bible in 30 days in January. And and you know, like I could never get anybody to do I would I don't know even as a pastor, I don't I I've never took that on in the past, you know, but I did this year because something there's a level of urgency. There's a level of of significance right now, a move of God that's happening. And I think that people are feeling it. they're waking up to it and they want to be part of that. And so, um, I'm despite the fact that we lost these great men of the faith, I stand here or sit here optim very optimistic about the future because I know that that God still has some of his best work to do, you know, ahead of us. I appreciate that. And uh before we get into the business of uh your latest book, which we need to spend some time on, there's the obvious question here about the masks that seem to come off of of certain people after Charlie's death. these nefarious actors, these grifters that were, and I'm all for people making money, but how you're making your money and the things you're saying in order to make your money, in order to increase your profile, uh those things are incredibly incredibly concerning to me. And so I've talked a lot about those people on the show and you know you don't have to exactly elucidate the individual people but you know with Candace Owens, Ian Carol, Tucker Carlson, it's like um all these people that I've liked at some point or another for some type of work they were doing or stance they had. It was like either the mask came off or my eyes were opened for the first time as to how these people have have operated and just the the really nefarious nature of how they're going about their daily business. And the thing is is that some people burn hot and then they burn out. I think we're going to see that with with some of these individuals. But some of these people, their careers will persist uh for as long as they're here on this planet. And then as we said with Charlie, even long after they're gone because of the ubiquity of the internet. But for you guys, for for close friends of Charlie, when you hear your people, because it wasn't your buddy Frank Turk, it was the man in the white hat, right? What was the signal he was doing? He couldn't have just been adjusting his ball cap, right? And then Erica Kirk, like that she was somehow in cahoots with Donald Trump and JD Vance, who she was having an affair with. They can't explain why, but she hugged him once on stage and that obviously means they're sleeping together. And the Jews are somehow involved and I don't know, but I know, but I know, you know, and dreams and all these different things. And it was it was very gnostic. And we're going to get into some of that with with pagan threat. But it was like, hey, I just have this secret knowledge that you can't really know, but I know. And trust me, bro. I'm just wondering what it was like for you because I know what it was like for me. I didn't know Charlie. I don't know Erica. I don't know his children. I don't know his organization. But for someone like you, what's it like when you hear these things are just being bandied about on the internet as if somebody's just ordering dinner? >> Yeah. You know, obviously a lot there and a lot of I mean, you know, not all these things are the same, right? There's there's so men and women are very complex beings and so there's different motivations. So you have grifters, you have people that are just radicals that were maybe were kept at bay and Charlie kind of helped keep some of that at bay. I think in a lot of ways you have um you have other people that are just trying to you know I think anytime you have kind of a a king figure like Charlie that is that is eliminated there's people that want to rise up into that spot and they think that the way to do it is by the shock value comments and by throwing stuff out there and getting their opinions out there. What they don't realize is that's not how Charlie did it. Charlie got there because he developed character and God increased him and put him in this position and and the you know he he grew as scripture would say in the favor of God and man I think in in many ways in his life and so they're trying to duplicate the outcome of Charlie's success without duplicating the process that actually got him to that place and they end up they don't have the character to sustain the position and these people will rise and fall and I think that we're going to see some of these people that have been on top not there anymore just because they don't have the charact it's like a one-h hit wonder. You don't have the character to actually you don't have the you don't have the the poet's heart to actually write the next song. It took you 12 years to write the first one because you had to like force it so much and you don't really have the gift to keep it going. And so um you know we have to anytime you're talking about developing in any area you have to develop your heart as much as you develop in your craft. Otherwise they're not sustainable. But but I'll say this on a on a bigger level with me and TPSA is that, you know, there there's a there's a culture within Turning Point that is very unique and I experienced it right away when I came in. Um these are the hardest working people you've ever seen. I mean, they give it all. Um and they didn't do it out of fear. They didn't do it because you know they were uh you know being pressured to. They did it because I would say we work at that pace because we wanted to one because we believe in the mission. Two because we wanted to like you wanted to like please Charlie. He was just he just had this personality that you felt him believe in you and and you know just one statement from him. Sometimes he would see me and he goes, "Lucas, we got to dream bigger." And like just that one phrase, you know, would make me go back to my house and like go full like beautiful mind on a marker board and want to like come up with the biggest most exciting like faith thing that we could do to dream because he knew how to like inspire greatness in people and bring them to that. Now, I say all that to say that like when stuff happened with Charlie, like first off, like our team was hurting. There was a lot of pain. There was this this thick cataract of grief that was that was developing, you know, and had developed in our lives that we were trying to see the world through. And simultaneously, there was this the only thing that we really knew down deep inside is that Charlie's attitude and his final wish was always that the, you know, I'll use this in an entertainment type of way, the show must go on. Like it was always like the mission is more important than any one person. We have to save the country. We got to save the Western world. We need We need a strong church. We need strong families. Like that is what we're about. That is what's driving us. Don't stop. Keep your foot on the gas. Like keep it going. And so I think that like the team after Charlie was killed did what we knew. And that was we pushed in deeper to like the work of the mission. We pushed in deeper to our relationships with one another. And and it's almost like when you go off, you know, I'm not a veteran. And I don't know if Are you a veteran? >> No, sir. >> Yeah. And so I mean, you know, I got guys in my life that are and I'm I'm sure it's like you go off to war and you come home and from these crazy experiences and and you know, terrible experiences and there's times where you just want to be around other soldiers that experience that the way that you did, right? And it was sort of like that a little bit at at at Turning Point. I think that there was a unity that developed amongst us who had this shared grief of like this closeness to the loss of Charlie and and so I think for a season like we just really kept within our pack and there wasn't a lot of like connection with the outside world. It was just like we were just tied in with one another, loving on each other, supporting one another, u praying for one another and and you know continuing to work together and it was all that mattered. And so like there were these battles and opinions and theories and all this stuff raging the outside world and it was almost like you know like those of us who were inside were pretty much blind to it of like you know what they can think what they want. I got a job to do like there's a mission. Um I got probably gosh I don't even know a couple hundred thousand emails during the last four months after you know um Charlie was killed. probably still have 64,000 unread emails. And and these could be they could be, you know, all anything, you know, uh prayer requests, um uh donors, um uh you know, just encouragements, um booking requests, media requests, all these sorts of things. And so like the the work that our whole team got buried under, I'm just one person in the organization. The work that our team got buried under was so significant. And much of that was because of this outpouring of support. And this is something I haven't heard a lot of people talk about, you know, and I think that people are kind of like, well, why wasn't why wasn't Turning Point more vocal during this time? It's because we had a massive amount of work that we were doing and digging out of this and trying to keep up with things because like there was so much like support that came in. But if you don't have the systems built for that, that can sink you very quickly if you don't really quickly like uh um uh adjust and and you know calibrate to that new normal. And I will say with Erica at the helm, she has done a great job of leading that. Uh I think that the organization is stronger than it's ever been. I think it's more unified than it's ever been. I think it's more lean than it's ever been. Um and and we are operating with a with a spirit of unity um resolve um uh on missionness. That's not really a word I don't think but that's probably the best way I could describe it right now than than what I've ever witnessed in a single organization. And so um you know it's uh people are going to say what they say. I I think that you know our perspective has been put out there. I think Erica has spoken. I think that, you know, our team has spoken. I think that, you know, we've we've put the data that needs to be out there. I know all these people that are involved, like these theories are just that they're not even worth like responding to, most of them, because they're so ludicrous when you know the hearts of the people that are involved in this situation. Um, and and you know, and you know, TPS faith has been at the center of a lot of these attacks. Um, and what's funny is like all the people that seem to know so much about TPSA faith, like nobody's made an accusation about me. I run it. >> I've been there's been not an accusation made about me. Uh, I run the organization. You know what? I'm thankful for that. I think the Lord spared me in that. But but there's, you know, Charlie put me in place here to run this and we're running it exactly how he wanted it to run. Our mission this year is to bring revival uh to steward the moment of revival that was caused on the other side of his his memorial. Uh we're doing 30 stops across the country for Make Heaven Crowded. Uh which was a mantra that he and Erica had together um about winning the loss. And these are not political stops. They're not cultural focused stops. These are like gospel focused stops. We did the first one had almost 6,000 people uh in Riverside, California. Had 300 people come to Christ. And I'll tell you what, we're going to see thousands of people come to Christ this year, if not more than that, um, as a result of this work. And so, you know, we know who we are. We know what we meant to Charlie. We know um, you know, what he meant to us. And we know what's what the job is before us. And we're going to keep moving at that. >> Very good, Lucas. And, uh, you got a lot of people in this audience that are very excited about what y'all are doing and are down to help. So, we do need to go ahead and transition over to your latest book, which came out at the end of last year. Again, Forward Word by Charlie Kirk, but it's Pagan Threat: Confronting America's Godless Uprising. I love the subtitle of that. But I want to set up the book in this way by reading a quote from the beginning. In my last two books, I warned of the deceptive infiltration of woke thought that has broken through the defensive walls of the church, quickly cloaking itself with orthodox appearances to remain relatively unnoticed. That is until recently when the true nature of this ideology began to reveal itself with alarming clarity. The encroachment of woke ideology was just the precursor to a more profound and unsettling threat. The resurgence of paganism. So why this book? Why now? Why you? >> Um the why me? I'm not sure. I think that you know I'll leave that to the Lord. Uh I I've been uh I'm I'm honored and humbled to be able to write anything at this level. Uh it's been very wellreceived. Um but what I saw out of my last two books and the book tours and media tours that I did and talking to people and pastors was that, you know, I I wrote On the Christian Left. I wrote another book, Woke Jesus, and and really dove deep into the how do we get here from a progressive Christianity standpoint? How did wokeism really infiltrate the church? And and those are the books that, you know, Charlie got a hold of that ended up, you know, bringing brought me into the organization as a result of those. Uh because he he knew that I understood what was at stake with the church right now. Um and the way that I write is I always try to do a deep dive. I have a lot of source material, primary source material. So, you know, 500 footnotes per book typically is like an average for me. And I try to do my homework well on these things. And I read the things that a lot of people don't have time to or don't know about or don't want to so that I can kind of bring that perspective out there. And so for this book, what I saw is that, you know, progressive uh uh Marxism is a parasite and it's a parasite that needs a vehicle. And for a time the church made a great vehicle for Marxism. And so we see that in liberation theology. We see that in progressive Christianity. And I mean the church has distribution centers for information that makes Walmart jealous. I mean every Sunday morning the pulpits across the world the message is proclaimed. If you can inject a new message into that but keep the old pulpit now you've got a channel to be able to distribute you know information and indoctrination. Uh that's that's very significant. And so Marxists infiltrated that. We saw that in kind of the liberation theology world in the Catholic Church. We saw that in in the you know uh um uh black liberation theology in America with James Conn and the 1950s and60s. Uh we've seen that now with kind of the the LGBT progressive, you know, church woke Jesus sort of framework where these churches are flying rainbow flags and and BLM Marxist BLM flags above the cross in many cases showing where their real allegiance, you know, lies. But what I would say is that Christianity is a is only a short-term vehicle for Marxism. Basically, it's like the parasite is too heavy that it ends up killing the host in many cases. And if it kills the host, then it can't live any further. And so it has to go find a new host. So in the case of progressive Christianity, you're going to do one of two things. If you push into the Marxist side of that progressive framework, you're going to deconstruct from your Christian faith and eventually walk away from the church and you don't use the structure of the church anymore. It's just you're out there on your own, basically a parasite without a without a host. If you push into the biblical framework of the the Christianity side of progressive Christianity, then you'll eventually recognize that Marxism is antithetical to the gospel. But what we're seeing, interesting enough, with with this new framework is basically that wokeism evolved and it found a new host. And that is, I think, in many cases these various forms of paganism. paganism, you know, uh oftentimes rooted in these ancient esoteric uh you know, religious practices and movements from Druidism to shamanism to um you have things like, you know, Roman and Greek, the worship of Roman and Greek gods, uh Norse gods, um you know, all of these are witchcraft, occult, all of these different forms of paganism. those things don't have the the the moral and uh rigidity or the um uh uh even doctrinal rigidity that Christianity possesses. And so it allows that Marxist infiltration of these pagan practices to take on sort of that choose your own adventure of, you know, you can kind of pick whatever path you want to pick and and and you don't have the the roadblock or the obstacle of the word of God preventing you from being able to do that. So what I the the point of this book is really showing that what we have happening right now in paganism is a bought and paid for revi pagan revival that is attempting to supplant or assurp the Christian worldview of this nation for the purposes of introducing and injecting Marxism into our framework in a way in which it can be accepted because until now it's always been repelled and it's had the roadblock of the gospel and it can't go forward anymore. And I think that if they they've recognized if they can get rid of Christianity now all of a sudden Marxism can can work its way into our nation. And I think there's massive attempts and massive dollars attempting to do just that. >> Well, people can't really seem to draw the line backwards. So, they look at things that are downstream of wokeism or leftism or those types of things. But, you have to go back to the source where I mean, you've got the Frankfurt school. You go all the way back to Karl Marx. philosophies come directly from the pits of hell. But the entirety of how Satan is using all these different worldviews and philosophies is deception. And you do talk about in the book in chapter six where the greatest pagan deception is LGBTQ plus. And specifically, it's the T part. Because if you buy wholesale the the whole concept of tea, transgenderism, right? I can convince you of anything. I mean a lot of people said Jordan Peter has said Jordan Peterson has said there's no more fundamental fact in all of the world than the sexual dimmorphism of the mamalian species right male and female like it it really doesn't get more fundamental than that but you talk about this uh you know around the midpoint of the book but I'll read this quote here for those who adhere to a radical left pagan worldview this confusion reaches its zenith in the full expression of the yin andyang principle manifesting in a profound denial of the immutable truths revealed in Christianity and vividly embodied embodied in the shifting ambiguous constructs of today's most sinister form of witchcraft transgenderism. So why is that one of the most you know important and nefarious versions of deception that is used here? >> Yeah. So in the book I go back I trace this back pretty far all the way to uh a lot of hermetic texts that we see which is this ancient you know esoteric kind of um religious practice uh and philosophy. And in that it is this idea that you know everything is sort of cyclical. Everything has polarity. Everything has an opposite. There's a dualism in everything. And so um you know that it is the male can become female and the female can become male. There's a fluidity there that exists in that hermetic framework that we see kind of resurface later on in paganism. A lot of the early depictions of Baffomet or these kind of Lucifer figures that we see uh we see this a lot in medieval art always painted um Lucifer or Baffomet in some cases as having both male and female genitalia. And so we see sort of this dualism um uh embodied within um this this demonic creature and and that I think was was something that was carried on. A lot of the early uh um you know feminists seemed to kind of revitalize this. There was um uh there was, you know, um you know, couple in particular that really focused on this that um that that dove into kind of their inner man, their this that they had this male figure on the main one was Madame Bllovzky was her name and and she taught or spoke a lot about that she had this inner man on the inside that this was sort of her her spirit and it it kind of gives this initial like crack of the door for this idea that could be born in the wrong body. That there's a difference between, you know, my physical um biology or sex and my spiritual makeup that determines, you know, my my gender or preference or or kind of, you know, we we use even these terms in modern culture of like spirit animal. And it's sort of that same sort of thing that that you can be outward presenting as male, but inward I could be, you know, a dolphin and that's really what I am. and that, you know, and so we see it go from um, you know, transgenderism into this sort of transhumanism type of framework. And and, you know, we go from transgender to now furries and now, you know, we're starting to give um, uh, uh, you know, almost like identity to AI, you know, in certain forms. And so there's this constant progression. I don't know where it's going to go next. I'm not a fortune teller, but I can tell you the the pathways that it's going to get there through and that the patterns that we've seen through these former things are going to continue in future things. So, if we can the the a lot of this book is about learning that pattern so that you can recognize it in history and then also recognize it today and then hopefully we can recognize it tomorrow to prevent ourselves from falling into these same deceptions. Well, and speaking of recognition, I mean, you need watchmen on the wall that are kind of watching out for these things inside the church, inside of families, and that the, you know, the whole role of protection really lands on men. And so, in chapter five of the book, you talk about the former assistant secretary general of the United Nations, Robert Mhler. You know, there's a list of some of the propositions that he had uh, you know, in his collectivist system of universal order. So, in order for that to come to fruition, here are the boxes that we need to check. But one of them was this. This is verbatim. A significant reduction in masculinity and an increase in femininity the world over. So you're speaking to a 95% male audience, number one podcast in the world for Christian men. We're excited about you guys. And the 5enters, those those ladies, those lionesses listening here, they're all about this as well. But I think about this in the way when you look at how people ping in terms [clears throat] of their affect or inner disposition, the more liberal someone gets, the more capital F feminine they present. And so that doesn't mean there aren't, you know, masculine dudes that can do a lot of pull-ups and eat beef jerky that are also liberals. Those people certainly exist. But the affect is definitely more feminine. It pings more feminine. It goes away from the provider, protector, warrior role, right? Uh prophet, priest, king role, and goes more towards the the things of of the feminine, of the effeminite. And so what is I guess your message even to my audience? Obviously reading pagan threat, guys, it's in the show notes. Go pick it up and check it out for yourself. We're barely going to be able to scratch the surface on the content today, but what would be your message to the men that are like, I I want to be a watchman on the wall. Okay, what do I do? Like, what are they trying to do to us so I can push back against this darkness? >> Yeah, I think first off recognizing that we are in a battle. I I think that that's something that that as men, you know, first of all, resonates with us and I think that, you know, is a call to to action. Uh this is not a battle of um you know uh in in most senses uh in in the natural in the terms of the way that we think of warfare but it is spiritual. Now we are seeing things where you know we've seen you know church stormed in Minneapolis. We're seeing you know um uh you know Charlie martyed you know through uh you know by the barrel of a rifle. I mean, these are these are real real things and we need real men to be able to stand up in these situations to protect their families, their churches, their loved ones, uh, in ways that that we can defend, you know, the helpless and the innocent in those situations. Um, we were in, you know, Riverside, California for our our first Make Heaven crowded had 5,500 people. We had 250 protesters, you know, outside. um and you know they were they were being advertised as peaceful protesters. Well, we had two or three people that were assaulted on their way in, punched in the face, kicked um you know and and this is this is unfortunately becoming the norm. And so, you know, we need to recognize that there is this kind of manifestation of evil that's taking place. And we need real strong men to be able to stand up, not to avenge out of their own hands, not to, you know, go outside of God's plan, but to be able to stand strong in spirit and wisdom and in in kind of fortitude. Um, to be able to be a leader in this generation to help show us how to move forward. uh help lead our families, our churches, our communities, you know, in in the way that that uh we need to walk. Uh Charlie was so good at this. Um I think he understood this pagan threat better than anybody. I think it's it's one of the reasons I think he was excited to do the forward for it and I I certainly was honored to to have him as part of this. Um and I think that, you know, and as he kind of states in this forward, it's we're kind of in these biblical times. you know, it it's not necessarily the priests of Baal, but it might as well be, you know, of the priests of the LGBTQ movement or or the priests of, you know, uh, transhumanism that we're seeing, you know, enter into this world. And there's a challenge much in the same way as we saw in the Old Testament between these two altars. And there's the altar to our Lord, uh, which is through Christ, and there's the altar through this world. And I think that, you know, as as men, um, it's probably easy to think about things like prayer in a very feminine way that it's just kind of this quiet thing you do in the prayer closet. And it's like we need guys that are living and breathing like like prayers and like voices you for the Lord like out there in the streets at our churches in their you know at their households really you know standing strong representing I think the full counsel and heart of God in those situations. >> Well, one thing I've done recently because I do a coaching program called Dominion and I have guys ask me about prayer specifically all the time. And so one day it just kind of hit me when I was doing a coaching program. I'm like, take take your Bible, open it up to roughly the first third, and you're probably going to land in the Psalms, okay? And whatever psalm your thumb lands on, open your Bible and pray that out loud. >> Boom. There's your prayer. And guess what? It might be a psalm of lament. And you're in a time of plenty. But that's going to be in there for whenever the, you know, you start entering the valley, right? You're going to have some preparation for that as as well. But one of the problems that we see in all this and you addressed it in the book is we are supposed to as men we are supposed to be the heads of our households. Our wives are to support us as helpmate made fit for us and we are to raise the nurture raise our children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. They are to you be under our authority. But the man is to be under the authority of God. And also the shepherds of these men, the pastors are supposed to help disciple them to where all that works, right? to where all that sinks in to where everybody knows their role and does their job. The problem is is we don't really have a lot of pastors that have enough lead in their pencil to be able to do that effectively. So, I want to talk about uh this. I think it was in chapter eight of the book. I'll read this quote. >> At times, I think the hesitation to get involved stems from fear. Fear of losing members, fear of jeopardizing their church's 501c3 status, or fear of public push back. But with issues like abortion, critical race theory, and the rising interest in witchcraft and pagan ideology, my fear is that the silence is not just about these external fears. It's because pastors aren't willing to learn new things or sharpen their skills to address head-on the spiritual needs of their communities. I fear this is nothing more than spiritual laziness. I I would cosign the laziness and I would raise you a cowardice, right? I think there is a cowardice here where they're like, "Well, I don't want to get into all these other different areas. We're just going to be about the gospel." But then they don't ever preach that either whenever they're behind the pulpit. And so it's just this kind of this muddled mushy TED talk type thing where it's all about emotions and God's really a big big fan of yours. He's really into you. And we don't really get substantiation. We don't really get that that meat that is needed to strengthen the body for the battle that is ahead. And these wussy pastors are just not doing these individual men favors. But they're not doing Christianom any favors overall either. and it's having a downstream impact on the culture. >> Yeah. No, I think all all true. Um and I I'll clarify this. There's there's been a lot of people in the conservative space where you know what they've said about pastors is they'll say, "Oh, it's just it's that 501c3 and that if they didn't have the 501c3, that's what's preventing them from standing up strong." And you know, first of all, every pastor knows that if you get a 501c3, you get a letter from the IRS and you never hear from them again after that. It's just a it's just a you fill out a form and you're done. So, anybody that's saying the reason that they're not standing strong is their 501c3 is just simply using that as an excuse for some sort of hidden cowardice, especially now that the Johnson Amendment has, you know, for all intents and purposes been repealed by the Supreme Court case that now allows churches to be able to, you know, be very explicit about even endorsing candidates. Uh, and I'm not necessarily saying that every church should endorse candidates. I think we should be selective with that. Um but um it definitely means you can talk about cultural issues. It definitely means you don't have to shy away from these hot button topics that you have full liberty to talk about, you know, sex, gender, marriage, you know, abortion versus sanctity of life, socialism versus free market. Like these are all topics that have been politicized, but they're first and foremost theological. So, you know, a couple things I always say. First off, there's three types of pastors. There's true pastors. They're obvious. They're preaching the full council of God's word. They're standing strong. They're they're they're being those shepherds that the Lord's called them to be. The the opposite of them are the traitorous pastors. These are pastors that have abandoned their call. They're they're not really on the team. Um they they they're wolves and sheep's clothing. Um and uh they've traded the gospel for some sort of you know, mammon or or some sort of uh you know um just um you know, pleasure of this life or lust of this world. Uh then you have the middle category which I think is a lot of pastors and that makes up what I call the trembling pastors. These are the guys like Gideon hiding in the wine press hoping the battle's just going to go on without him. And um and you know but I I'm I don't I'm not here to condemn them. God didn't come and condemn Gideon when he was hiding there. The angel of the Lord came and said, you know, rise up, you mighty valiant warrior. Essentially, it's time to get in the fight and you know, God's got a plan for your life. And I think that's what these pastors need to hear. I think the pastors that are actually on our team, they want to do the right thing. They care about the lordship of Jesus. They they want to live a biblical worldview, but they don't know how. I think those pastors need an on-ramp. Uh, and I think that that's a lot of the work that we're doing at TPSA Faith is helping to give these pastors an on-ramp to be able to do just that. I will say though, this issue about laziness is that um, you know, I I think that anybody who just comes and says, "Well, I just preached Jesus at my church, brother. We don't talk about those things." they they they either don't know what time it is, they haven't done their homework to be able to actually speak about these topics fluently um to be able to address them. And even that's no excuse because you can invite guest speakers to come in and hit the topics. You don't have to be an expert. You can say, "Hey, Kyle, come out and talk. Lucas, come out and talk." You know, Eric Mataxis, come out and talk. You know, it's it's easy to do that. And so um but I think in in many cases these these pastors are kind of showing their cards like if you understand just basic primary doctrine God is creator. Okay that's a truth that we see in Genesis chapter 1 very first chapter of the Bible. What does that show us? Well when you recognize God is creator you you recognize there's an order to government there's an order to the family. There's an order to marriage. There's an order to sexuality. there's a created order to the sanctity of life that we're made in his image. We could go down all of these major hot button issues in our culture are are addressed in the idea that God is a creator and he's a creator of order and here's the biblical framework for his creation. And so we haven't pushed into any other theological idea, just one idea that God is creator and we have a framework for all these controversial things that have been so politicized in our nature. But it starts with theology. And so like if you want to just say, "Hey, I just preached Jesus or we just preached the word of God here. We don't do politics." I would say to you, "Great. I think that's awesome. I don't either. Uh I I just preach the word of God, too." But if you're actually preaching the word of God, you're going to help your people contextualize the word in such a way that helps them to think biblical in the in in the boardroom, in the bedroom, and at the ballot box. If you're doing your job as a pastor, you're going to make that happen. >> Well, and here's the thing. when people are like even Christians will say well Christians shouldn't be involved in politics then the natural next question to ask them back is so are you completely okay with only atheists running our government like is that is that the ideology that you want to have in place because if you're cool with that we need to have some upstream discussions because there's some rot going on in your brain but a lot of this kind of or go ahead go ahead >> well I was going to say and and show me who in scripture what major figure figure in scripture did not have some involvement in some sort of political They were either talking to the king, they were the king, they were the prophet to the king, they were the wife of the king. Um, you know, they were trying to become king. Like, you know, all of the these figures, I mean, from Joseph to Daniel to, you know, even Paul trying to get before uh um Nemiah the emperor, you know, Nehemiah. Yeah. I mean, like all this stuff, it's it's it's so amazing that people can miss this. It is laced in the word of God. Now, I'm not I'm I don't I'm not somebody who identifies with the term Christian nationalist. I just think we can call ourselves Christians and by nature as a Christian. I care about the affairs of my nation and and that makes me want to be a good citizen in this nation and seek the welfare of the country that I live in. Uh so, as Charlie would say so often, I'm a I'm a Christian and I'm a nationalist. I'm not necessarily a Christian nationalist. Um we left England for a reason. I don't want the church running the state, but I do want the church influencing the state and being her conscience and reminding our leaders who are in power of what righteousness looks like so that they can make good decisions to be able to help shape, you know, this nation. And I want the nation to be what it says in Romans 13, I want it to be a sword to punish those who do evil and to protect those who do good. >> Well, we're called to be salt and light, right? So, uh, darkness is just the absence of light. But when the darkness creep creeps in, why did people were like, "Well, how'd you come up with your your tagline for a dawned life, equipping men to push back darkness?" I was like, "Well, because I couldn't think of anything else that would be more important than that exact thing." But salt is a preservative, right? And salt slows decay. >> And so I agree with our mutual buddy John Cooper that Republicans and Democrats are both going to take us to hell. But the train is a bullet train if you're on the left. And it's just like an old chugga chugga train on the right. Right there, we're all going to hell. It's just going a little bit slower on the right side of the ledger. >> Now, I you know, I just kind of need to pass over this because guys, you really do have to go get the book again, Pagan Thread. It's in the show notes. But in chapter six, you talk about this is really where the rubber meets the road in the book, but you introduce the concept of pagan Christianity. It's kind of this form of modern nasticism. You talk about the inagram, which I was so thankful for because uh a couple years ago, I did an entire show about how the inagram is demonic. And I taught Sunday school on it. And I knew there were a bunch of people in my Sunday school. It's a fairly large class that had that were big fans of the inagram. They liked the books that came from Christian publishing houses talking about how effective the inagram was. But then I very lovingly explained to them I'm like first of all I'm the only person in this room that used to make money. I would go into seauite and I was doing consulting where I would use the inagram to get to know the seauite people and so they could know each other better. I was like none of y'all made money using the enagram. I did but then I heard about the guys that you know really invented it. I really dug in and every time I I went down a different rabbit trail. But when you say you learn the inagram or the inagram was brought to you via automatic writing. Think Ouija board where you allow a demon to basically take over your pen and write down everything. It's like can we at least say that that's a little bit concerning. But there's this this kind of millu of yeah Christianity the gospel and all that stuff >> but also the inagram but also crystals but also tarot cards when it's helpful. And you know it's all deception. We've already talked about the greatest deception being LGBT >> to ward off evil spirits. You know all those things. Yeah. But my goodness, you want to talk about like I don't think Satan's just trying to sneak in. It's like he's elbowing his way into the church now and people are all about it. >> So here's where I would point people to. Um, you know, all of those things. I think the Inagram is a great example, especially because there's there's so much deception around it, but yet there's also so much like kind of hype that came, you know, around it as well. And a lot of the people using the inagram have been Christians. It wasn't the world that took this on. It was the church that took this on. a lot of Christian music people, a lot of, you know, a lot of big Nashville churches were doing this, a lot of big mega churches were doing this and still are. The the best way to think about the enagram, and we I always look for kind of models in scripture of how do we approach this, I think, is meat sacrifice to idols. And and so when you look at Paul's writings on meat sacrifice to idols, I think this what the enagram is. There's people probably like yourself that were using the inagram, not knowing its roots, not knowing the kind of occultic framework that was behind it. and and it was like you were going to the marketplace, getting meat, having lunch, not knowing that that had just been slaughtered to, you know, the fish god or something like that, you know, just three days before. And so you're doing so unknowingly. And so you there's no condemnation on your life for doing that. The problem is once you know that this is demonic or that this has been sacrificed to idols and then you continue doing it, what you're doing is you're putting yourself in a dangerous spot. uh you're putting other, you know, believers, impressionable believers, in a dangerous spot, you know, by your actions. And so Paul has a lot of strong words about how we navigate this. So what's amazing is I have people that are Christian friends of mine that I've brought this to and they're kind of like, me, >> you know, and it's like it's just they don't they don't care. They they >> because they say it works. And the reality is is Satan wouldn't be able to use it if it never worked. Like of course it works, >> right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, uh, robbing banks works, too. It's a great way to get rich, right? But it's also wrong. And so, we don't do it. And so, there's a lot of things that are that that that appear to work that are effective. Why? The the system of, you know, the enemy, it's built upon a fabric of lies trying to attempt to mirror the things of God, but in a distorted way. And so, it has this this essence of it seems to be effective. It seems to work. The Bible says there's a way to prosper that's not of God. Um, you know, but I think that if we're willing to really submit ourselves to the lordship of Jesus, we have to look at something like this and say anything that has its basis in the occult, no good. In the same way that I don't think there's a redeeming aspect of critical race theory because it is built upon a framework of Marxism that is anti- good. I don't think there's a redeeming aspect to the anagram or, you know, because it is built upon an anti- you know, Christ model. And so what we we don't need that. Instead, we can go to the scripture. If you want to know about your identity, go to the scripture. Now, there's other I think more, you know, I don't like the term neutral because I don't think there's a lot of neutral stuff, but the disprofile and MyersBriggs, like these are personality profiles. They are not rooted in occultism. They're not rooted, you know, they have a psychological framework certainly. U but but I don't I don't feel the same about those with the same level of prohibition that I do the Inagram. there's other tools out there that don't have the baggage that are great for that scenario. Um, in in I think that there's other things that we can look to and so, you know, Christians need to be wise today. We need to do our homework, but once you're aware of this, you don't have an excuse and you should run from this stuff. >> I absolutely agree. I'll make this the last question of the day because there was one thing that I was completely expecting to be a part of this book before I started reading it and I was actually pretty shocked by the end of it whenever there was basically no mention. So in the entirety of Pagan threat, you basically spent zero time on Islam. So it was mentioned once when discussing Muhammad, but it was because of a subject that had nothing to do with Islam. It was just kind of more of a historical fact. >> And so the more I've looked at it, >> I feel like I spent a couple of years, you know, woke Jesus helped me with this. And you know, I spent a couple years really like, what are we going to do to push back on wokeism, blah blah blah. But if you had to pick the greatest of the great dragons, right? And I don't mean great in terms of like awesome. I mean like the biggest and most dangerous of all the dragons. It's it's not really wokeism. It's it's Islam, >> right? And what we see as the downstream consequences of Islam and that's the cosmic battle that I feel like is coming that goes all the way back to Abraham. Was it Isaac or Ishmael that he took up the sacrifice on that mountain? One group thinks it was Isaac, one thing group one group thinks it was Ishmael. And then here we are thousands of years later and we're still having this tremendous battle. Now obviously I get it. you're writing a book about paganism. Just from a definitional standpoint, Islam can't be pagan because it is they do believe in a god. It's Allah, you know, it's, you know, via their false prophet which is, you know, displayed through the shahada, all the things. >> But I was curious why there wasn't even like a paragraph or two that was kind of dedicated to this. >> Why why was it left out? Did it even occur to you? Or is there something else that you haven't told us like a new book >> for? Yeah, I'll unpack. First off, thanks for a real question. you know, I think all these have been real questions, but you know, uh, a lot of interviews, people are not willing to ask a hard thing like that because it's, you know, they want to always paint in a good light. Uh, as an author, it's interesting. So, a couple factors. One, um, when you look at the timelines, you know, I I finished the majority of this book um, prior to 2025. And so, you know, it was it was mostly finished by early, you know, 2025. Um we there was a lot of stuff that happened with Islam and it came on not that it was not a factor before that certainly we've seen it for years but stuff like Mandani you know all these things happening in New York everything happening with all the fraud in in Minneapolis there's been a lot of stuff that's risen up since then where this is a much hotter topic now than what it was you know uh even a year or two ago when I kind of first started on this path. Um the other thing you mentioned and so so there is part of me that goes man it probably would have been good to get a chapter in on that book and had I had more time I think that that probably would have came. Now there's also there's also another factor and that is um this is a subject that I see myself writing on in the future and so there are things that I was saving wanting to kind of put into a future book that um that I think is going to be more timely when it comes out you know for the church in in on this topic of Islam. I will say that the red green alliance which is if people are not familiar with that term I'm sure most of your audience is because you got a smart audience is that it is the handholding between Marxism and Islam. It's what we saw happen in New York uh with this last election. Um that that same red green alliance type of framework is what is happening here in paganism that that Marxism plus paganism is joining forces the same way that paganism and Islam is. Now, I will say that ideologically I have kind of a unique perspective on Islam. I'm certainly not the only person that holds this, but it does change how I think about it a little bit is um you know, I believe Islam is categorically false and and uh uh uh as you mentioned, I think it's the greatest deception right now in the world. Um and it is uh the greatest concern that I have geopolitically. It's the greatest concern that I have even for our nation right now, even beyond this issue of paganism. Um, uh, when you look at Islam though, my approach to it is I actually believe it's a Christian heresy though. And what I would say about this is that all of Islam is built upon ideas that surround um Christian frameworks. Whether it be the, you know, uh the Old Testament or the New Testament, it's got an obsession with Christ. It has an obsession with Mary. It has an obsession with a lot of these kind of teachings. Now, there was not, you know, it's very obvious when you read the Quran that the the uh, you know, Muhammad did not have intimate familiarity with the New Testament. It was kind of all this like hearsay. It was a lot of Gnostic heresies that were coming in there. And so, these Gnostic ideas that were that were prevalent at that time, I think gave birth to a lot of this. And so I think that you know it's kind of how I categorize it that in my brain um you know Islam fits into a different category that is not paganism and it is in fact this Christian heresy and it is the greatest Christian heresy that actually makes Christ to be you know the uh um rather than the savior of the world the destroyer of the world you know in in uh you know in his return um and it is it is you know it is imperative ative that as Christian people that we understand it more, that we wrap our mind around it, and that we learn how to win Muslims rather than just criticizing Islam. I can do that all day long, but we have to actually learn how to win Muslims. And that's a very different thing than simply criticizing Islam. And so, I'm I'm spending some time right now working on that. I've been educating myself, working with a lot of of of evangelists in the space of um uh Islam. We actually just put together a course for TPSA faith that we're in the middle of finishing that is going to be a deep dive into Islam and how to minister to Muslims by guys that are winning Muslims to the Lord every single day and seeing great results. And so although it's a concern, I'm optimistic. And when you actually start comparing the Bible and the Quran next to each other, uh it becomes very obvious which one's true and scriptures light always gives way. Well, with this red green alliance at the end of last year, I did a episode where I talked about it was actually this year, Zoramani. I think something that he's ushering in, you know, he had that quote about, you know, rugged individualism being, you know, replaced by the warmth of collectivism. But it's not just collectivism because collectivism can go back to Mussolini and Castro and Maadong and, you know, Lynen and Stalin and Hitler. You can go back to all those guys, >> but it's Islamic collectivism that is this new thing that's being brought in. But it's it's kind of an oil and water thing. Kind of like democratic socialists. That's not a thing. You know, that that doesn't really make a lot of sense. But, uh, I got more questions, but you don't have more time. So, we're going to have to leave it there. But, Lucas, it's always great to chat with you. That's all I got. Is there anything else you want to get off your chest? >> Hey, I appreciate you. Yeah. Anybody wants to find out more, obviously, pick up pagan threat. Um, head over to tpusfaith.com. You can also head to makeheavencrowdedour.com to find out about our 30 tour stops across the country. Uh people like myself, Eric Kirk, um Eric Mataxis. Uh we've got Allan, Pastor Alan Jackson. We're going to be in in Dallas, Alaska, Hawaii, uh Atlanta, Maine. I mean, we're going to be all over the country coming to, you know, Rapid Rapid City, South Dakota, and Billings, Montana. Uh we're going to be at a city near you. So, make sure and come out and see us on the tour. >> All right, guys. Check all that out in the show notes. Lucas, we'll talk again soon. >> Thanks, Kyle. >> There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed the return appearance of Lucas on the show, but before I let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost at Undaunted Life. Our mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual, mental, and physical resilience. Links I've got for you today. I've got a link to Lucas' website. I got an Amazon link to where you can pick up the pick up the new book, Pagan Threat. Also, I've got the TPUSA faith website and also the website where you can check out the dates for the Make Heaven Crowded Tour. Thank you for listening to this podcast. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate, and leave us a positive five-star review. If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me an email to info@undantton.life. That's info@undantton.life. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else, including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way. Just go to www.undton.life. And as always, we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing us to use their music for our content. The music on this podcast is their song Perpeta, which is off their self-titled debut album on Faceown Records. The links are in the description. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness. Keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience. Keep seeking the Lion of Judah. >> [music]