The Spirit of Freedom IS the spirit of God.......What happened to the church?

When C@vid started many churches were shut down alongside businesses and the majority remained silent. When they re-opened many required or encouraged masks or even remained with online only services out of fear. Now many are encouraging the v@ccine, or in the case of the Mormon and Catholic churches, even calling on everyone to take it. As our society continues to split and the government goes full speed ahead creating a second class citizenry, the  modern day church is mostly silent. Why? The founder and CEO of the Daily Brief   news site and Minister Chris Russell is here to talk liberty and answer this question. The spirit of freedom IS the spirit of God.  DO NOT MISS THIS.

Gust Bio:
Chris Russell is founder and CEO of The Daily Brief and host of the Chris Russell Show which is heard in more than nine countries. He has over a decade speaking, coaching, and mentoring. He earned two AA’s degrees and a Bachelors in Business from Rochester University.

Chris has a deep passion for truth in the media, education, faith, and family values. He is passionate about leadership and seeing each person reach their full potential and becoming the best version of themselves.

Chris is an avid conservative and family man. He derives great inspiration from his wife Rosa and family. He enjoys speaking to people, helping the less fortunate, and spending time with family and friends.

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Transcript

Intro: 1:12

fighting back against the left's non stop attacks on liberty, freedom. And America, America. This is don't tread on liberty. Jason Davis is on the air.

Jason Davis: 1:27

Welcome back to don't tread on liberty. Thanks for being here. Jason Davis back with you more information that you need to know. And we have a lot going on as always over the last couple of years. But like we've had some discussions on the show before, but not a lot of people talking about it. What is going on with the Christian community? Why are they not really speaking up about these things, and I've got a guest today that maybe can shed some light on that for us. He's actually the founder and the CEO of the daily brief news site. He's got 10 years experience in ministry, and he's also got a nonprofit glory bound ministries, spreading the gospel and helping people in need through that. And he's also got the Chris Russell show, Chris Russell is with me today. How are you, Chris? Thanks for being here. Doing good.

Chris Russell: 2:17

Thanks for having me on.

Jason Davis: 2:18

Yeah, of course, thanks for being had. That's what I always say. So. So like I said, there in the intro, you know, modern day, evangelicalism, for the most part is relatively quiet. I mean, there's a few pastors, you know, Pastor, John MacArthur, and some others that are out in front, they're leading the way. But most of these modern churches are pretty much silent on a lot of what we see happening, you're working in ministry, you've been in it for a long time. Why do you think that is?

Chris Russell: 2:50

I think, honestly, there's there's a couple factors that go into that. I think, one, the thinking of the world has crept into the church. So instead of the church being the one that leads the way standing in faith, I think they're taking the mentality of the world. And that mentality is in times like this, when you have, say, a pandemic, or you have some sort of virus or you have something, some sort of issue, whatever it may be, that's fear, right? They don't want to, they want to kind of bury their head in the sand and not talk about the issues. But the church should be leading the way on whatever those issues may be from, you know, mandates to abortion. The church should be leading the way. That's That's what I feel. But seeing it from a practical perspective, there's a lot of pastors, there's a lot of people in ministry, that they're scared, they're scared to talk about the issues. I think they're scared to confront the issues because it may not be amenable to their church may not be amenable to the people. The the people may not like it, they may not want to come back to the church anymore. They might lose congregants, but we're not called to build a giant church, we're called to build the body of Christ and do that in truth. So that means tackling the hard questions. Secondly, I think the other issue is, is that according to the most recent studies, most Christians do not read their Bibles. That is a 100% proven fact that says proved by some Gallup polls and some Rasmussen polls, that Christians generally do not read their Bibles overall, the body of Christ does not read their Bibles. So when an issue comes along, they have no idea what God's word might say, on that particular issue, or even how to judge it based off of God's Word. So I think those are the two main issues that I see.

Jason Davis: 4:48

Okay. Now, I tend to agree with you that a lot of these pastors are, you know, they, they don't want to offend anybody. They don't want to make it uncomfortable for people to be in church, because as you say, they want to build their congregation, they want to build a big charity. So churches, just like anything else, just like pharmaceutical companies are businesses that are trying to turn in some ways a profit to pay staff and other costs, right. A lot of these churches have high paid pastors, they have to pay these bills, big buildings, right, all that. So I tend to agree, but I want to circle back to what you said about fear. It's kind of interesting, because you know, a lot of times you go to church and you'll get the message. Don't be afraid God is with you. And and and this and that. But here we have a situation with COVID. Okay, so when COVID first started, many churches allowed their doors to be closed and said nothing about it. You know, again, John MacArthur and His Church fought back and they want every step of the way and they remained open the entire time. But a lot of these guys just closed up and they didn't have any fight in them at all. Doesn't that like, isn't that almost like shooting off your own foot? Like if you did want to make money if you did want to drop people into church? Closing your doors is not going to help you, right?

Chris Russell: 6:13

No. And I think that's why I don't, I'd have to disagree with you a little bit there. I don't think that a lot of churches are in it for the money. Statistically, the majority of churches across the US about 98% of the churches in the US looking at the stats actually have the average pastor makes about 30,000 a year. So I don't think they're in it for the money. But I do think that obviously, the mega churches now that's a different story with the mega churches, that's about 3% of the churches in the US. And of course, that's a totally different story. You know, like you you mentioned, John MacArthur, obviously, that is a mega church. And he did and actually, that's one thing I bought about John MacArthur is that he kept his doors open. Now, I don't I Well, I disagree with the people that did close their doors. I don't, I don't, you know, demean them or anything like that. That must have been a hard decision. I totally disagree. I think they should have kept the doors open, or fought in some churches did fight. So like, you know, I talked about last year, some of the churches did fight back and it didn't go so well for them. You know, the state courts or specific state Supreme Courts actually shut them down. And then what was the determining factor is when the churches in California went before the Supreme Court, which the first case that went before the Supreme Court? Actually, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was on the court, they actually ruled and shut the the churches down. But then when she passed away, it went before the court again, they overturn that ruling and said, No, it's unconstitutional, unconstitutional to force these churches in California and in New York to shut down. So that was a huge win for religious liberties. And you don't even have to be religious to realize that, obviously, we want to protect our religious liberty. I mean, it's it's absolutely an important thing.

Jason Davis: 8:15

Yeah, there's no doubt about that. But I mean, I would argue that any business regardless, has a right to be open, and the government shouldn't be able to close them. 100% Yeah. So I yeah, what you say is absolutely correct. The problem is, is that many of them and believe me, I've attended numerous mega churches, you say it's 3% of all churches, I buy that. But just like New York, and California is only two states out of 50. They control a huge percentage of our voting populace. Right. So these mega churches kind of do have greater weight because, you know, they have more people in attendance. So they're influencing a lot more people right there in that one spot. I'm just wondering why. And I still to this day, and many of these churches are not, and in fact, many of them are telling their congregation to get vaccinated. The entire Mormon church has taken a stance, telling everybody to get vaccinated the Catholic Church, the largest church in the world, telling everybody to be vaccinated because it's for the good of all people. Okay, that's the guys that they're trying to sell this on. What are your thoughts about that?

Chris Russell: 9:33

Well, I as a credentialed minister, with my denomination, I wholeheartedly disagree, and the reason I wholeheartedly disagree is on a couple grounds. One is that in the testing, and in the vaccine itself, aborted fetal cells were used. So on that moral and religious grounds, I disagree with this. Secondly, it should be the choice of the person I do not believe that our congregation does not come out and say you should be vaccinated what we say to our congregants, the church I go to is we say it's your choice. It is your constitutional choice to to figure out what you want for your medical procedures. And if you want to go get vaccinated, we don't condone it. But hey, that's your choice. You can go do that. So I wholeheartedly disagree with the Catholic Church. I do not think they should be pushing the vaccination. I don't think any church should be pushing the vaccination. And I sure as heck don't think that the federal government, which got a slap in the face shouldn't be pushing vaccinations as well. I think that it should be left up to the individuals to decide if they want a vaccination or not. Now, with that being said, I'm not necessarily for vaccinations myself, personally, just in general. I just my thoughts on it are that God designed your body to be able to fight viruses to fight germs, let your body do what it's going to do naturally. That is what I personally believing, and I espouse that I talk about it all the time. I tell people, you know, private conversations out in the open when I'm speaking whatever I, I wholeheartedly believe that, you know. So and I think from a religious perspective, God did an amazing job when he created our bodies. And we see that this, this virus has a 97% recovery rate. Okay, and the people that are passing away already had my wife worked in a COVID unit all of last year. And the people that were passing away, she can tell you, 90%, and one and we're we live here in Michigan, she worked in one of the major hospitals here in Michigan. So it was one of the bigger hospitals, I won't I won't name the name, but it was one of the bigger hospitals. And she'll tell you 99% of the people that passed away from COVID were people that had stage four cancer, they had COPD, emphysema they had smoked for 30 years, they were on the way out already. The doctors had already told them, hey, listen, you're probably going to die at some point because of this disease. And it just kind of pushed them over. Now, I'm not saying that's not terrible, because that that is it's a sad thing when anybody dies. But the vast majority of people in the populace are totally fine from this virus. And statistically, that can be backed up. So

Jason Davis: 12:34

yeah, absolutely. Anybody that looks into it. It's actually even worse than you think. I mean, I've seen over 99% recovery rates and studies without any intervention whatsoever. And the total death numbers that the CDC puts out for the whole year, you know, every year they come out and tell you supposedly how many people die in the whole country all year. It's been steady around 2.8 million per year from before, during and after COVID. It hasn't changed one bit. So what you say is absolutely correct. The people that were going to die that year from the flu or whatever else, they probably died from COVID.

Chris Russell: 13:14

And I have to say this, if I can just real quick if I'm if it's okay to interject, butter it my mom who got COVID Because, you know, in our household, we all got COVID here. And my mom who's helping us we have a little little bugger that we had last year our daughter, Hannah, so my mom spent here helping us taking care of her. She got COVID And my mom has COPD, she's over 60 She has asthma, and she's just not in very great health. Otherwise, she's got diabetes and all kinds of issues. And she has normally she has vitamin deficiencies, all these things. And she came out of COVID came out the other side with with being fine. I mean, not that it didn't rock her world. She was sick. She was sick for a while. She's had no vaccine whatsoever. And her body fought it off. I mean, we ret she rested, they put her on some antibiotics, we we got an oxygen tank for here at the house and put her on oxygen. And after. I don't know, I think it was about four weeks. She recovered, you know, and she's getting back to normal. Now she's moving about and doing everything she did before. So now I'm not saying every situations like that, but I'm saying my mom's not a very healthy person. And she's over that age bracket. She's got all those cool comorbidities. And she came out the other side.

Jason Davis: 14:43

So yeah, for sure. And I'm happy to hear that last question. I personally believe that the spirit of freedom is the Spirit of God. You've probably heard the quote from Thomas Jefferson, right, like rebellion to tyranny is obedience to God. What are your thoughts about that? I mean, if I personally feel like this vaccine mandate, it's a global push, right? It's not just like the US is doing this. This is happening all over the world. It seems like a coordinated effort. It seems like it's been planned for some time. It almost seems like the most tyrannical thing I've ever experienced. So to me, as a believer, we're called to stand up against evil. Wherever you find it, and this is probably the most evil thing I've ever seen. Why is it? Why do you think that? You know, not every church is screaming at the top of their lungs?

Chris Russell: 15:35

I I think one I think one you're right. I think you're totally right that we have to stand up the tyranny like this. And it one of the saddest things that I've seen is what you said is not that a lot of people in the church, they're just kind of going with it, whether it be pastors or congregants. They're kind of like, and I think the reason they're doing that is they're scared. You know, there's scripture in the Bible, right? It says, it says, I have not given you the spirit of fear but of love enough peace and have a sound mind. That's That's what it says in Scripture. And the reason God says He says don't Fear, I haven't given you a spirit of fear. Because when you're fearful, you make irrational decisions. If you think about it, when you're fearful, you will give up your freedoms, right? And a freedom once lost, is almost never gained again, you

Jason Davis: 16:26

never get it back or get it.

Chris Russell: 16:29

I mean, you look at you look at Russia, you look at China, you look at all these places, where their freedoms, you look at Cuba, where their freedoms, Venezuela, weather items were completely given up and given over to the power of the government. And now they have no freedom. Right? They, they, they tell them and they dictate what they can and can't do in every area of their life, from looking on the internet, to who or what they can worship, or how many people can attend a church, for instance, in China, where the persecution is rampant. I had one of my contributors today actually contributed an article and we were talking about it about the places in the world where persecution is, you know, the number one place where you cannot worship for Christians that it is a bad place to be a Christian, the number one place now, can you guess it Afghanistan, where we just left where they see it all the power to the Taliban, which is obviously classified as a terrorist organization, and has total authority and total autonomy over the people? The moments?

Jason Davis: 17:47

Hey, Chris, you didn't hear parents that go to school board meetings are now classified as terrorist organizations? You know that right? Yep.

Chris Russell: 17:55

Yep, I do know that is his main effect. As a matter of fact, one of our contributors actually talked about that about how the DOJ is is waging war against parents that go to school, school board meetings, I think a lot of people they're scared, so they're ready to give it up. And they're thinking in their heads, this is what I'm thinking and they're thinking in their heads. Well, you know, it's not that big of a deal. It's just forcing people to get this vaccine. But it's a vaccine today that maybe you agree with or don't agree with, I don't know. But it's it's a vaccine today. But tomorrow, it might be something else. There's no limit, there's no end to the push that this tread on our liberty, no pun intended, but that the tread on our liberty will take us to constitutionally, that is why these safeguards have been set up, that there has never been a federal vaccine mandate in such a way that the Biden administration was trying to push on American workers and on the American populace. There is never that has never happened in the history of our country. What he tried to do right now, and and, you know, I disagree with the court's decision for health care workers, I agree with the decision on general laborers in the American populace.

Jason Davis: 19:24

Well, I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to have you back because we're gonna talk about that again, on a different show. But I'm gonna tell you right now, just a very short synopsis. I listened to the arguments to the Supreme Court, the questions that they were asking, they should have not been asking. I mean, they're asking questions about, you know, how they can mitigate people getting sick, and all this kind of stuff. That's not their job. Their job is to tell us is that constitutional or not? Under the laws written, they are not health ministers, they're not doctors, their job is not to determine what's going to save lives. Their job is to say, what is in the Constitution? Is that legal? That's it 100%. And you know what, none of them were even hardly concerned with that at all. I have a huge problem with the Supreme Court. This whole country is drifted so far from the intended setup, the way it's supposed to work. I don't even know if we can ever get back. But like I said, we'll have to talk about that another time. Because we're running short, Chris, really appreciate you coming on. It's the daily brief, T D b.com. fantastic news show, the Chris Russell show, as well, Chris, we'll have to have you back and talk again. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Chris Russell: 20:40

Absolutely. Be happy to thank you.

Intro: 20:45

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