Seth Gruber: Courage, Conviction & Influence | Episode 21

In Episode 21 of The American Story Podcast, Tim Barton sits down with author and speaker Seth Gruber for a thoughtful conversation about faith, leadership, personal responsibility, and the importance of living with conviction.
Together, they explore how values shape culture, why character matters in leadership, and what it means to remain grounded in timeless principles while navigating today's challenges.
Seth shares insights on influence, purpose, and the responsibility each generation has to pass on truth, wisdom, and strong values to the next.
If you care about faith, leadership, culture, and America's future, this is a conversation you won't want to miss.
Learn more:
WallBuilders.com
https://thewhiterose.life/seth-gruber/

#AmericanStoryPodcast #TimBarton #SethGruber #Leadership #FaithAndCulture #AmericanStory #PersonalGrowth #Influence #Values #Culture

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So what so what is Lincoln pointing out? He's saying that the very arguments for slavery cannot be constrained to the African American. That's his whole point. Is that you have now given philosophical and political ground to a strong man or to a state to abuse and remove your rights as well.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Welcome to the American Story Podcast. I am so excited today to be joined by my friend Seth Gerber from the White Rose Resistance. Now, this is a guy. His background is kind of remarkable, what his uh family was a part of, and how God gave a burden to him to carry on to defend the most vulnerable in society, the unborn, the ones that have been targeted so much over the last many generations. And really, not a surprise if you are a believer, because one of the things we know is everything that God tries to create, the devil has come in opposition to. And certainly this is true with the issue of life. And so I'm so excited to have Seth on. Talk about some of what he's been doing, but also there's a big conference coming up this weekend, depending on when you're listening to this. But uh I get to be with Seth and so many other conservative Christian heroes and leaders, and we want you to come too if you're available. But now I'm gonna welcome my friend Seth. Thank you so much for being on with me today. Thanks, Deb, appreciate you. Well, I we have been connected many times over the last several months, um, lots of different conferences, and you and I have had many conversations. Um, but for the American Story podcast, we really haven't had a very long conversation. Uh, we had a very abbreviated one uh last year where you were at our legislators conference. Um we started having a conversation of like 10 minutes in. It was like, hey, it's your time to get on the stage. You have to go speak. So we had to cut it short. So not to rehash everything we've already talked about, but there's a lot I want to get into as you're on the the forefront of cultural things. But will you give the high-level quick review of kind of your story, where you came from, um, when God got a hold of your heart, and how God directed you to what you're doing today?

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Yeah, thanks, Tim. Appreciate you. Can't wait to hear you just drop absolute fire spiritual historical truth bombs at our festival this weekend, uh, and some tickets still available for people at thelaststand.com. But um, let's see, I can't, where did I come from? Oh, I guess I came from a uterus. Um, and so um I'm very pro-life for that reason, because I'm personally offended by the fact that in 1991, the year I was born, the state of California and the country of America had declared open season on my life. And had my mother been a blue-haired fat lib, um, she could have paid a hitman to rip my arms off my body and suction my eyeballs out of my face, and that would have been called healthcare. Now, my mother was never going to have me sl slaughtered in the name of radical feminism in utero, but I'm personally offended by the fact that the law didn't protect my life. Legally, I had no right to live when I was in utero. So um abortion is not a woman's issue, y'all. It's a human issue. Um, and half of the babies being murdered, I'm pretty sure, are males. And so I think that that's pretty wrong, too. Um, I was homeschooled through eighth grade in Los Angeles back when homeschool kids really were weird, Tim. Now it's kind of flipped. Now it's the public school students who have lost their freaking minds, and it's the homeschool kids who look you in the face and they actually know stuff. Um, but yeah, there were some weird homeschool kids in the in the early 2000s. And this was in Los Angeles before it was hip and cool, and so it was all the it was all the lot of the scared parents who want to shelter their kids, kind of, kind of homeschoolers. And then I went to public high school at Whittier High School, Nixon's alma mater in Whittier, California. This is a suburb of of LA. And my senior year, I did my senior project on the issue of abortion because I realized I didn't have good answers to my pro-choice friends. The high school told me I couldn't pick that topic. Uh, they didn't know I was homeschooled, baby. And so I had uh memorized the entire Declaration of Independence and the entire preamble of the Constitution by the time I was 11. And so I threatened to sue them for viewpoint discrimination at 18 years old. Um and I was emailing with the superintendent of the Whittier Union High School District, and they backed off and I did whatever the heck I wanted to do. So, important lesson for the listeners sometimes you just have to look the Faucian, Faustian, tyrannical little dwarves in the face and tell them to sit down, learn to say no. And then I went to a fake gay Christian college in Santa Barbara called Westmont, Westmont College, down the street from Oprah's house, literally. Um, but I didn't know when I got there it was like super progressive and left. You know, it was it's taught as fact, by the way, there, Tim, that Adam and Eve didn't really exist. They were, it's uh it's just an it's metaphorical. Um in the Old Testament course, Tremper Longman III, very popular Old Testament professor today, um, sold many books uh and all this stuff. This taught this is taught as fact, not as opinion. It's taught as fact. Uh, by the way, Job never existed, and neither did Adam and Eve. Um, so and and then there were multiple pro-abortion faculty professors on the payroll. And so I started the first pro-life club, and I just raised holy hell. I was just a pain in the uh rear to the administration. And then I and then I held aborted baby photo signs outside the dining commons. So the faculty had to see the slaughtered children that their employer believe women should have the right to murder when they walk in to get their lunch in between classes. And so I like Christianity Today did an old piece on me. Um uh witness Christianity yesterday, obviously now, but um, World magazine, like all you can find all this old stuff of me at like 21 years old, challenging Westmont for their gayness um and their pro-abortion stuff. So, anyways, that's my background. And then we launched the White Rose Resistance in 2022, like uh a couple weeks after Roe v. Wade was overturned. And we're a Christian, unapologetically Protestant organization. 20, what are we, 27 employees now, resistance chapters all around the country, mobilizing the local church, not waiting for the GOP to lead on what historically has been the role and duty of the local church. So that's what we do.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Well, the Seth, there's already so many things I want to back up and talk about. Um, I'm I'm chuckling to myself because I imagine everybody right now is like, this guy is so fired up and passionate. And I'm chuckling, like, yeah, if if only, Seth, if you only had some backbone and courage, like what you could do. Bro, it's crazy. Every time we talk, uh I I I said this one of the times uh recently we had been in conversation. You remind me a little bit of like in the abolition movement of a John Brown kind of guy who was so frustrated that that more people didn't get it. He's like, What guys, what don't you see about this? Where are you looking? That like, what book are you reading? Obviously, not the Bible in his mind. He's going, This is crazy, but hearing your passion come out, obviously in college, where you're like, man, that is intense stuff outside the cafeteria. But what you are presenting, and and I want to say this kind of as a a little bit of context for everybody listening or watching, what you were presenting was the reality that many people have tried to cover, have tried to distract from, and that's the reality that abortion is the taking of an actual human life. Our friend Charlie Kirk on college campuses, that this was one of many topics he dealt with. Uh, but it it always made me chuckle when we'd watch the videos of him talking to somebody and saying, okay, so what species? Like you're saying fetus, which is just Latin for unborn child, but like, what species is this? And they're like, well, that doesn't really matter. He's like, no, it really does. The left has done such a good job of distracting from the reality that abortion really is the murder of an unborn child, a human child. And in some cases, like you were talking about, that this is a child that at that point is fully capable of life outside the womb when they try decide in that third trimester often to go in and do these horrific abortions. And and I I don't necessarily want to get into all of the graphic details. Uh, however, you are someone that's had to live with that, and you are trying to present all of those details to people to recognize that just like again, like the abolitionists of old, where they were back in the 1830s and 40s going, there's an evil that is on full display if you would just look, and this is an evil that as Christians we should be opposed to. You're doing the exact same thing, and and you're doing it with the ultimate big evil in our culture today, the the abortion industry has been swept under the rug.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Well, and Tim, so this is important too, because so a lot of people think have gotten to know me in the ministry through the 1916 Project film and book and through just me preaching in churches, because I've been probably in more pulpits on the issue of life on Sunday mornings in the last few years than anyone else in the country that I'm aware of. Um and so a lot of people come to know me in the ministry through kind of like wow, prophetic calls to action and repentance and and the history of ideas, the history of Planned Parenthood, why baby killing rots out the soul of a civilization. Um and but my background was in philosophy and apologetics when it comes to a lot of this stuff. Um and so I mean you I do that on college campuses, but I got so busy with opportunities in pulpits um that I I stepped away from the college campus stuff for a few years. So we're we're ramping that back up again. But the reason I say that, Tim, is because it's really important for people to understand, like philosophically and politically, um, what this actually means. We're not just dealing with another political issue. And and this is why it makes me want to pull my hair out, Tim, when you see the Republican Party rewriting their platform two years ago, uh, gutting most of their language regarding the sanctity of human life and the and the family stuff, like softening their language on the unborn and softening their language on the weird gay stuff. Um, I don't know if like people understand this, Tim. I know you do, but like for basically decades, part of the Republican Party platform on the life issue, now again, were they were they politically fighting for this? Not necessarily, but but the language was there, which was Fourteenth Amendment protections for the unborn. What does that mean? It means they're persons. What does that mean? It means that no person can be deprived of the right to life or property without due process of law. It means that, like, literally, there's no states argument for killing babies. That kind of language, Tim, was in our Republican Party platform up until just two years ago, bro. Okay. And why is that significant? Because this is the same problem Lincoln identified in all of his debates with Steven Douglas, the famous Lincoln Douglas debates, um, is that if you can set aside one category of persons and you can somehow get the public to believe that they the whatever they are, they're not fully one of us. They don't have the same rights, um, then you've actually opened up the door to human rights abuses elsewhere as well. In other words, that it's only by grounding our um common, our our our our rights and our nature in the only thing we have in common, being human, that we can assure human equality for all human beings. There's this famous little uh parchment called Fragments on Slavery, where Lincoln writes out his kind of um preparatory debate tactics that he would use with Stephen Douglas, and he says, You say A is white and B is black. So it is color, therefore. Uh the lighter having the right to enslave the darker. Um, take care by this rule you are to be a slave to the first man you meet with a skin fairer than your own. Um wait, but you say it is not color exactly. Uh it is uh a question of um intellect, uh, that whites are intellectually the superiors of blacks and therefore have the right to enslave them. Take care by this rule you are to be a slave to the first man you meet with an intellect superior to your own. But say you, it is a question of interest, okay, that if the whites uh can make it their interest to enslave others, uh they have the right to do so. Uh, take care by this rule, if he can make it in his interest, he has the right to enslave you. So what so what is Lincoln pointing out? He's saying that the very arguments for slavery cannot be constrained to the African American. That's his whole point. Is that is that you have now given philosophical and political ground to a strong man or to a state to abuse and remove your rights as well. And so this is what a lot of conservatives have missed about the abortion debate, Tim, and why it's really important that we understand this is not just another issue, okay? If the pre-born is not a person and they can be slaughtered in the womb through all nine months of pregnancy because of some ridiculous notion of feminism, bodily autonomy, and orgasms without responsibility, which by the way, total French revolutionary, if you want to get into that, um, then there's no reason why those rights to kill that child should stop at childbirth. Because the arguments used to dehumanize and de-person the pre-born in womb, whatever those categories are, there's no fundamental change during the six-inch journey through the birth canal. And they say, well, the baby's not self-aware, they're not conscious, they don't have desires. Okay. Well, nothing has substantively changed from the nine-month fetus to the child right after birth that would suddenly give them the rights that you claim they didn't have in the womb. So what we're doing is we're putting in place the premises that justify our own enslavement as well. So politically and philosophically, that's why this is so significant is even if the Christless Conservative or the kind of classical lib doesn't really care about the abortion issue, um, you will one day, when the same people who defended it and and argued for it are now wielding those same arguments to de-person you.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Yeah, and Seth, it reminds me a little bit of uh what is now being referred to as like the unholy alliance, the red-green alliance, where it makes no sense when you see some of these uh progressive liberals that are partnering uh with Islamic individuals and ideologies, and the Islamic nations that are the ones that believe it's appropriate to execute people that fall in certain categories, especially the homosexuals, you go down the list, and you have these homosexual progressives lining up with Islam against this kind of Christian notions of the West. And I say that to you. Right. Because what they're doing is saying, Well, I don't like that, so I'm gonna team up with anybody that will oppose you, not recognizing that you're teaming up with something that will lead to your own demise. Where I saw a report this week that in Canada, there's been more than 100,000 people that have gone through the euthanization process because they thought, you know what, life isn't worth living anymore. And it goes back to the contrast of the fundamental American ideal from the beginning. As we celebrate 250 years this summer of America being a nation, America was birthed on a set of principles. This incredible philosophical idea laid out in the declaration that there is a God and our rights come from God. And government's main purpose is to protect those God-given rights. If there is no God, there are no God-given rights. But also, if there is no God, there is no purpose, value, and meaning to life. And so the more secular we've become, the more we are seeing culture embrace these ungodly premises that are in direct contrast to the foundation of our nation. But I want to go even further when you pointed out that in the Republican platform, and to be clear for everybody listening, like neither one of us are looking to politics to save anything in the nation. Politics are a means of enacting and promoting those values. And I don't mean just politics, I mean political parties. Let me clarify that. We're not looking to a political party to be the hero. We support principles and whatever principles a political party will uphold, if the Republican Party is upholding the unborn and marriage and gender and basic things, then I'm gonna support the Republican Party because I support those values and principles. But if Republicans go a different direction and Democrats come on board, I'm not changing my principles and values, but I recognize politics is a means whereby we elect individuals that will hopefully promote those very things that we care about. All that to be said, we are principle-driven people. And so we care far more about the principle. So when we look at the the Republican Party, for example, two years ago changing that, Seth, I would contend, uh, and and I'm gonna toss you this softball and let you run with it. I would contend that's a bad analogy. You could hit the softball, run with the football. Whatever ball I toss you, uh kick it, hit it, catch it, run with it, whatever it is. But I think the reason that the Republican platform changed is a reflection of culture, that they're trying to be relevant with culture, and I think they're seeing culture shifting. And part of the reason culture has shifted is because of the inactivity and unresponsiveness of the church in discipling basic biblical truth. So politics is just looking, these political leaders who want to get elected, who want to be popular, who want to be supported, they're going, which way is the wind blowing? Oh, well, then we go this direction. And the reason the wind is blowing that direction is because the church has not done a good job discipling on some very basic issues. Seth, what say you?

SPEAKER_01 17:53

Yeah, no, I I agree with that, brother. Uh, this is why we say, unless the church flatulent becomes the church militant, it will become the church irrelevant. Um, think about the significance of the rescue movement, Tim. Um we we we could talk more at length about this some other time, but um, before the uh Biden and all of his cronies um helped push to make standing outside of an abortion mill and blocking access to the clinic peacefully, before they turned that into a felony. It's called the FACE Act, the freedom of access to clinic entrances. The rescue movement mobilized okay, okay, listen, okay, everyone listen up. Okay, American story. The rescue movement is the largest civil rights movement in American history. That's right. The rescue movement, guys, Operation Rescue, listen to me right now. Those Christians, not heroes, no podcasters, no platforms, no one famous, the local church, the bride of Christ, in the 80s, outside of abortion mills, laying on the grass, peaceful civil disobedience, way bigger than anything MLK Jr. ever did. The rescue movement of pro-lifers is the largest civil rights movement in American history in terms of the number of people involved and the number of arrests. But at the time, Tim, it was simply a misdemeanor to quote block access to an abortion mill peacefully. And the Dems realized, oh my gosh, this is going to destroy the abortion movement. The local church is so awakened and engaged, and they know that they can end this. And they are shutting down abortion mills, left and right. And they're willing for uh to count the cost because it's just a fee, it's just a misdemeanor or one night in jail, uh, no big deal. And all of these Christians were willing to endure a little bit of sacrifice and a little bit of persecution to save the lives of pre-born babies. And the mantra of that time, and I'm getting, I'm actually answering your question, Tim. I know it sounds like a tangent. The mantra of that time was there are no heroes here. What what all the Christians were saying at that era in the 80s, Tim, was we are we're 15 years late. There are no heroes here. And it was a move of the local church that was willing to stand at the gates of hell, like the disciples' accessory of Philippi, uh, and say, Death is not welcome here. Um, man, you talk to some of those people at that time, Tim, the early rescuers, they're like, dude, there was so much energy. We we we were gonna end abortion. And this created, what did this create? The moral majority. Yes. The rescue movement created the moral majority that ushered Reagan into office and stopped a bunch of filth that was getting frankly out of hand with with secular liberalism and the sexual revolution and the radical left. And we had a season of liberty and a big breath of fresh air and a moment of peace. Because what? The local church was so engaged in the culture that their courage created political capital so that Republicans who may or may not give a rat's butt, sorry, elected Republicans who may or may not give a rat's rear end about the pre-born child and Jesus Christ knew that they had to go kiss the ring of the local church in order to get elected. So we were able to get things done at a political level. Why? Because we were a bunch of MAGA cult worshippers who were obsessed with the Republican Party. No, because the local church feared King Jesus enough and understood their legacy of resistance and reformation to get eng engaged locally against what historically has always brought down civilizations the murder of one's own progeny. It was the opposite of what we've been told by the evangelifish leaders like Tim Keller. And Russell Moore and Rick Warren and a bunch of others over the last century, it's the opposite. They told us that we had to avoid politics and just preach the gospel to build the kingdom of God. But if we if we started mixing up quote unquote political issues, which really aren't political issues, uh, and we got too engaged in what the left defines as a political issue, then we were creating other gods. We were confusing what our role is as the church for the kingdom of God, and it was harming our gospel witness by getting engaged in politics, so we should avoid that and just preach Jesus. It was the opposite, dude. It was a bold declaration against evil and protection and standing for the pre-born child and the local family that actually created political capital to be able to get righteousness done in the high places. We've gotten the framework, Tim, all wrong. And so until we get back to that, why would we expect today's GOP to stand for the kind of righteousness that historically only the local church has done? And that's really what my film is about, the last Stan Film and Book. It's scratching the surface, because of course there's 2,000 years of church history, but it's scratching the surface of the legacy of the church, which until the beginning of the 20th century was resistance and reformation. They faced all the same issues we're facing today, and they pushed out the darkness. They were building for a day they'd never see. They were planting oak trees, the shade of which they'd never sit under. And they laid the foundations for renewal and reformation in our day. And we need their stories, their legacy. Dude, like Prince Caspian, we have to learn to blow on the horn and call on the heroes and the kings and the queens of the golden age, because we need their stories, their biographies, their faithfulness, their courage to be able to live the way that Christ has called his church to live in America and in the 250th, which is roughly the average lifespan of a civilization.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Yeah, so one of the things that that we've talked about, but it's true just historically, usually why nations that were great, powerful, prosperous nations, usually why they fall, is moral rot and decay from within. And what we know where America had fundamentally been different for so long was the impact and influence of the church. In fact, we track historically, every time there was a major moral issue in America, the reason that we put an end to those, whether it be the witch trials or the Indian land removal or uh slavery, I mean, go down the list. And it's it's not that America didn't have bad things that happened, but the reason that all of those things were stopped is because there were eventually enough Christians, enough churches, enough pastors that rose up and said, we're not doing this anymore. It often created incredible conflict. And so when you have pastors that just want to get along and let's just be friendly, and and they don't know, and this is important for anybody listening, that the adage of a hill that you would die on, right? Like we should know where is the where's the line in the sand for us that we're like, we're not crossing that and we're not letting anybody else cross that come in our direction. We have to put our stake in the ground, our flag in the ground, and say there's something that this is important enough to us, we will defend. And I think unfortunately, the church has been very negligent in clarifying what that ground is, where we should stake our claim, and it's it's why leading into this weekend, you're doing in a huge conference up in Colorado called The Last Stand. I'm super honored that I can be part of it. Um, hanging out with you, a bunch of our friends that are gonna be there. It's an incredible two-day event. So, what's part of the impetus behind it for people that are gonna come? What are they gonna hear? Uh, and what do you hope is the takeaway from this event?

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Yeah, amen, brother. Yeah. Um, the laststand.com uh kicks off tomorrow night, guys, Friday evening, then goes all day Saturday, um uh, or or in two days, I guess, if you're listening to this today, um, in Denver at Brave Church. So get your tickets coming out, and then we'll premiere my film. And we're dedicating the film and the book to Charlie Tim. Um, Charlie was supposed to speak at the last stand. We had lined it up with him, and so um, we're dedicating this whole film and book to him because his life is really the indictment on the evangelical church's cultural engagement model of the last century or so. It really is. Um, he did the opposite of everything the evangelical betters and the credentialed theologians and pastors would have told him to do. Um, he did the opposite. They w they they they told him what you're doing is harming the gospel in the Great Commission. And he ended up having a life in a ministry platform that uh resulted in the largest single evangelistic gospel preaching event in human history. Um and so we're dedicating the last stand film to him, and we love to have people see that. What's our hope? I mean, yeah, um listen, no one can replace Charlie. You only get someone like that every hundred and fifty years or so. Um, but we can all fill a quarter of one of his shoes. Um you know, I I I don't I'm not really um that impressed anymore, Tim, with heroes. Because the Lord will raise them up and and and I hope that they're faithful. And I I get to know a lot of people that I think are are heroes and warriors, and I'm super grateful for them. Um, but you know, all the accolades, all the attaboys, all the endorsements, all the book sales, um, you know, that dude, that's gonna fade, man. It's it's it's it's not going to give you any meaningful long-term identity. What I'm impressed by, what what the stories I love to tell are the unknown, forgotten, uncelebrated warriors who were faithful in their day, in their home, and in their city where God had put them. That's why I love the moms and dads speaking at school board meetings who saw evil in their community and they showed up and they did something about it. Yeah. Um, it's it's why I love the sidewalk counselors of America, um, who who nobody knows their names, but for years, sometimes decades, week in and week out, they stand outside of the baby murder mills and they plead for the life of the orphan scheduled to die. And and countless babies are alive because of those kinds of people. That's what we want to have a kingdom fruit from this festival is that local moms and dads, sons and daughters, aunts and uncles stop waiting for some warrior hero to fight the battle that the Lord has called families to fight, where God has given us dominion in our homes, in our cities, in our counties, and in our states. Um, make America great again? Sure. I'd love to do that. You know how we're gonna do that? Make the local church great again.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

I love it. Well, and and it reminds me of your organization, the White Rose Resistance. People that were just showing up to do the right thing. So, for those that don't know, where did you come up with the name The White Rose Resistance? What is that story? Because I think that's a connection to what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 29:10

Yeah, totally, Tim. Yeah, there's so many cool connections, right? Um, so in 1942, things were a little crazy in Germany. And um, you know, by the way, I love talking about this too, Tim, because you you've heard the revisionist history on on Nazi Germany, you know. By the way, there is a weird obsession with Hitler, of course, like, you know, because like Stalin killed way more people. Like he killed way more people. So it's really weird that like the the weird cultural obsession with Hitler. Like Hitler's become like a a stand-in just for like um Satan, actually. The the West um hates Hitler more than they hate Satan. It's way worse to be called Hitler or a Nazi than to be called a Satanist. Interesting. And part of the Church of Baelzebub. That's very concerning to me. This is sort of it's part of the same thing, but it's also sort of a tangent. But like that, so I it's important to talk about this period of time and of course the Christian heroes, but but in part because of all the revisionist history around it, there's a weird thing, obsession with Hitler, where he has become worse than the Lord of Flies, um, and the Prince of Darkness. And that that to me, that's a really weird thing. Maybe do another podcast on that another time. But so um it's 1942. Hitler was not a conservative. Uh, his problem was not that he went too far right. Um, if you believe that, um that's retarded. You need to stop reading the publications that you're reading. Um, he was a vegan. Um, he liked soy milk, uh, or whatever the iteration of that was then, uh, Tim. Um Nazi stands for National Socialist. Um, oh, but he threw homosexuals in jail. Isn't that what the far right does, Seth? Uh no, there was some weird boy adult sex stuff going on at the highest levels of the Third Reich. Weird sexual perversion. Um, okay, so Hitler was a rat was a leftist, not a not a far right person. And then in 1942, uh, this young 21-year-old girl named Sophie, who's the namesake of uh one of my daughters, is walking the sidewalks of Munich, Germany. And she was a Christian. Her parents were vocal opponents of Hitler. In fact, her father spent some time in prison for publicly criticizing Hitler. They had in their house banned books that Hitler didn't want families to be able to have. Her mother was an evangelical Christian. They lived in Ulm, I believe. And um, Sophie's walking the sidewalk one day and she finds a pamphlet uh on the ground. And it's it was called Leaflets of the White Rose. And uh she starts to read this and it's like explicitly condemning Hitler and the Third Reich, which is like that's not a safe thing to do, y'all. If you understand like this era, 1942, like pastors and German citizens were arrested, imprisoned, or murdered for less today. Uh, and it said things like, We are the White Rose resistance, we are your bad conscience, and we will not leave you alone. Um, they said, if you know, why do you not act? Uh they were calling people to passive and active forms of resistance to sabotage the regime. Okay, so she's reading this and she's like fired up, dude. She's like stirred to action. Um, and she's thinking, wait, this sounds a lot like my brother Hans. Uh, he talks a lot like this. It sounds like one of his dinner time rants against Hitler. She's like, this is weird. Uh, come to find out, the White Rose Resistance had not only been co-founded, it was being led by none other than her older brother, Hans Scholl, a 24-year-old, who, if you look in his history, he had some weird stuff going on. He had he was accused of a like a gay relationship when he was still in Hitler youth or some kind of weird thing that went on. Um, apparently he just started taking his faith much more seriously later, told his parents that he knew this was wrong and he wanted to stop. Um, and then all the other friends and members that joined the White Rose were all Christians. They had been initially impacted by some sort of German intellectual rationalism, um, but became significantly more Protestant. One of them was an Orthodox, um, he's actually a saint in the Orthodox Church, um, Alexander Schmirrel. Um, and then there's Willie Graf, Hans Scholl, Sophie. There was a professor named uh Professor Hubert, he was one of the only like uh older men that was a part of the White Rose. And so Sophie becomes the only female and the youngest member of the White Rose Resistance, and they stay up late writing these illegal leaflets criticizing the regime, and then they would take trains in the middle of the night to major German cities, and they would do leaflet drops in major German cities. It was a social media campaign, pre-digital age, right? It's what social media allowed for us to do, is to saturate the market with the alternative viewpoint so that the people are uh realize, oh, maybe I'm living in an echo chamber. That's what they were doing in 1942, early parts of 1943. And so then uh on February 18th, 1943, Hans and Sophie kind of stepped things up to the next level. And they walked onto the campus of the University of Munich during class time. Um, and they had a suitcase full of their illegal leaflets. Now, this is a super dangerous thing to do, you guys, if you understand, 1943, it wasn't just the clergy who had been co-opted into silence or obedience by the Third Reich, it was also the institutions of higher learning. And so during class time, they start dropping off leaflets all across the university, and then right as class gets released, Sophie runs three stories up to the third floor balcony inside the atrium of the University of Munich, where I film uh in the 1916 project, which any church can host a screening of that as well. And she throws like a hundred leaflets three stories down to the atrium below. So papers just falling everywhere as students are walking out of their class at the end of class and they're like picking these things up. So the janitor, who was a committed Nazi, calls the Gestapo, has Hans and Sophie arrested on February 18th, 1943. And so they spend the next three days in prison. Uh Hans tried to eat one of the leaflets uh that had the original writing on it so that it wouldn't indict his friend. Um, but he couldn't swallow it in time, and so the Nazis were able to get it. I'd match it to someone's hand uh writing, and they ended up uh arresting their friend um later that afternoon, and three days later they had their heads chopped off. They were beheaded by the Third Reich on February 22nd, 1943, um, for their Christian resistance and trying to awaken the church. But they thought that their actions, Tim, were going to incite a student revolution, that people would get so engaged that it would build a movement that became unstoppable. Um, and unfortunately, the church didn't listen. They were asleep in the light. Um, and over the next few months they found the rest of the members of the White Rose Resistance and killed them as well. But Hans and Sophie's Christian faith, and particularly Sophie's courage and calm in the face of death, is one of my favorite stories to tell, and it's why we named our ministry after their movement. She was so peaceful and courageous uh with her looming beheading, Tim, that the prison guards her her her demeanor was screwing up the psychology of the prison guards, Tim. That's the best way to put it. They ended up relaxing the rules, which could have led to their own death or at least being terminated from their jobs. And they allowed Hans and Sophie to meet with their parents in a side room um at Stadelheim Prison right before being taken to the guillotine. And Sophie's mother looked her doomed daughter in the eyes and said, Remember Jesus, Sophie. And Sophie said, Yes, but you too, mama. You too. Uh Hans's final words, according to the executioner, who was pretty screwed up after he killed them and he ended up talking to reporters. Hans's final words with his head on the shopping block, like William Wallace, was Friday. And Sophie's final words were the sun still shines, which is powerful because in her four days in her cell, she had a cellmate, Tim, named Elsie Gebel, a German gal who ended up surviving World War II. And so months later, Elsie wrote letters to Hans and Sophie's parents telling them every final moment of their daughter's life in the prison cell she shared with their daughter Sophie. And so um it gives us a window into what this 21-year-old was thinking um through all of this stuff. And and I I think she was probably thinking a lot of the stuff that decent Christians are thinking in the last few years right now, Tim, which is like, what the heck is going on? How did how did evil get so insanely powerful and out of check so quickly? And also, where the hell is the church? Where the hell is the is the people of God? Like I'm I'm thinking that's probably what Sophie's thinking. And she looks out of her window, little bars on it, a little bit of sunlight, Tim, and she says, How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there's hardly anyone willing to give themselves up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine sunny day, and I have to go now. But what does my death matter if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action? Yep. And so her final words were the sun still shines, one of our daughters is named Sophie Sunshine after Sophie. But that's the lesson for the church right now, Tim, is that historically how the church was able to turn the world right side up, although the ancient Romans were accusing Paul and his followers and acts of turning the world upside down, when really they were turning the world right side up, the way that the church was able to build the moral framework that ended up abolishing and ending sexual exploitation, brothels full of children, the abuse of women, the murder of babies was because Christians were willing to take a beating for Jesus. They were willing to actually sacrifice their own comfort and their own lives and lay them down for the weak, the vulnerable, the voiceless, the marginalized, the unfur the forgotten, the unloved, the unloved, and the unlovely. Um, and this is what creates Western civilization as we know it today. It's the same thing with Saint Basil of Caesarea, um, with Adai of Edessa, with Beninus of Dijon, um, with uh Barlam of Antioch, with Afra of Augsburg, with uh George of Diospolis, the patron saint of both England and Lebanon. Uh later stories embellished him as Saint George the Dragon Killer. Um, it's the same thing with Athanasius, Contramundum. Um, these people were well, except for Athanasius, who actually died in peace in Alexandria, but the rest of them were basically all murdered and martyred. And it wasn't just because they were saying, uh, Christ is king, because you were supposed to say Caesar Curios. Um, it was because they were actually sacrificing their lives to stop tyrants from sexualizing kids, murdering babies, and killing Christians in the Colosseum. They laid their lives down for these, the the weak and the voiceless. And this led uh Emperors Valentinian and Theodosius in 374, right after the death of Athanasius, who walked his church out of the sanctuary to tear down the local abortion mill. I'm sorry, the infanticide walls, uh, to issue edicts for the first time banning infanticide and legally demanding that parents take care of their children. Six years later, 380, Rome embraces the teaching of Christ because the church took a stand against these evils. Rome embraced the teachings of Christ, etching the sanctity of life into the very fabric of Western civilization. So, what's the takeaway? Go take a beating for Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

I love it. Evil is real, it's happening in the culture and world around us, and you have to pick, there's only two sides, right? Because complacency in the middle, ultimately, then you are allowing evil to persist. The Bible tells us in James that for him who knows to do good and does it not, to him it is sin. If we are not aware, then you need to pray, like Paul says in Ephesians, that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened. A lot of people have been very ignorant to how much evil there is around them. I think one of the good things, the reality of the last several years is there's a lot more exposure of this evil for a lot of people. And so now, for everybody out there, if you're watching and listening, you have a choice that you need to make. What side are you gonna be on? And like back to the White Rose Resistance, these were people that believed in a cause, a principle. They believed in moral values based on their Christian faith, that they were willing to stand for something and sacrifice themselves for the cause because they knew it would be the right side of history. We have to figure out what side are we gonna be on? Where, where, where are we gonna put that stake in the ground? We're gonna plant the flag and say, we are defending this ground, we're defending this hill. And you mentioned we we we are so encouraged by the moms and dads, by the grandparents that are showing up at school board meetings that are protesting some of the awful material that is in schools, the the comprehensive sex ed from kindergarten to 12th grade, I mean, just crazy stuff. The moms and dads that are showing up, they are the people that their eyes are being opened and they're putting that stake in the ground. And for everybody else, this is the moment you need to put the stake in the ground. Now, if you want to be encouraged this weekend, come to Colorado, come to the last stand. Um, Seth, real quick, if people come Friday and Saturday, who are some of the people they're gonna get a hear from or maybe even worship with?

SPEAKER_01 43:00

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we have Shane and Shane leading worship um at the last stand. We're kicking off Friday evening with Frank Turek and Nick Vojacich. Um, and then on Saturday, gosh, we've got uh Tim Barton, Ali Beth Stuckey, Rob McCoy, Steve Dace, Dr. George Grant, uh Abby Johnson, Victor Marks, uh AJ Hurley, um, myself and others. Uh it'll be a powerful day. And then we'll premiere the world premiere of the Last Stand film uh early Saturday evening this weekend at the Last Stand Festival, the day after we launch our church screening tour. Meaning the only way to see the last stand film, Tim, is for churches or Christian schools that host a screening uh for their congregants, for their church or for their school. And so people can go to the laststand.film to host a screening right now. Um, and thelaststand.com. Uh, you'll find my book, thelaststand.com, Christ or Chaos, The War for the West. Um, that book uh is available for pre-order, but it it releases this June 5th and 6th. So the book goes way deeper into all this history, Tim. You and I were talking recently just about some of that history that starts with Protestants after the French Revolution that we just don't know anymore. Yeah. But it develops the kind of Christian resistance that was integral in the founding of the Republic as well. And so there's so much fascinating forgotten history in there. And the film releases this weekend. Guys, go tell your pastor, your youth pastor, host a screening at your church. It's the only way you'll be able to see it for months by going to thelaststand.film.

SPEAKER_00 44:34

Okay, the laststand.film and thelaststand.com. If you want to come, please come hang out with us up in Colorado. It's gonna be awesome, but this is definitely something that you want to be part of. Uh Seth, bro, thank you so much for taking time to hang out and share part of your story today. Yeah, thank you, Tim. Appreciate you. Okay, for everybody else, we we have heard some clarity. There is evil in the world, and and there are some major issues. The reason nations historically fall is because of moral rot and moral decay. The reason our nation has had so much moral rot and moral decay, it's been the lack of biblical truth and principles instilled in the culture. Now, we can fault the church. Unquestionably, the church is at fault in this, but also as believers, we have to take it upon ourselves and come it upon us to study and know the word of God and to live according to what it says. And certainly, one of the things we see from the Word of God is that we need to stand up for truth and morality, that we need to be bold and courageous, speaking the truth in love. You need to figure out what side of history you're gonna be on. You need to plant that stake in the ground and become a bold defender of truth. Thanks for hanging out with us today on the American Story Podcast.