I Read Russell Brand's New Christian Book So You Don't Have To

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast, where we are forging a bold Christian vision for America. I'm your host,

John Harris. We are going to talk today about Russell Brand's book, How to Become a Christian in Seven Days.

It's hot off the press. It is trending on Amazon. We would not be talking about it if it was just Russell Brand's opinion, but it has a much wider, broader, and deeper meaning.

That's the reason I want to talk about it on the podcast. I have been wondering for years whether or not we are in a spiritual awakening.

And I've said so many times that I am cautiously optimistic. There is a renewed interest in the things of God and spirituality.

There's also a lot of error out there. And given the metrics that we're able to study, it does not appear that we are in an awakening at least yet.

When we start seeing a lot more people signing up for ministry positions, the church's membership busting, the people evangelizing, the understandings that people have in their relationship to God's law and to sin changing in extraordinary ways, these are the kind of metrics

I'm looking at. And I'm not seeing that we're in something like that quite yet. But there's a lot of interest in the things of God.

Especially post -Charlie Kirk's funeral, I've really wanted to be optimistic about this.

But unfortunately, I've become more and more cautious in my optimism. I'm still optimistic, but I have a lot of caution there.

And that caution is rooted in things like the message in Russell Brand's book. There's some truth in it, but there's also cults that can give you truth.

There's a lot of, unfortunately, bad things in it, lies in it, obfuscations of the truth, things that will lead you down the wrong path if you're not careful.

And so I want to talk about those things. Now, it's also broader from this standpoint. This is the first book that is launched by the

Tucker Carlson Network's bookstore. And Tucker Carlson is very proud of this fact. I want to read for you a transcript from an advertisement that he read on a video that was pushed on social media.

And he says, For decades, Russell Brand was one of the most famous actors and comedians and agnostics in the world. Today, he's one of the most sincere

Christians we know. A follower of Christ. He writes his personal transformation. We saw it up close. He's now recounted it in an amazing book called

How to Become a Christian in Seven Days, and it recounts what happened to him. And it makes the cause, sorry, the case to all of us for stepping away from our secular assumptions and returning to the only thing that matters, which is

God. And then he tells you where you can find it. Now, one of the other things I found interesting is he also says this.

He says, We created Tucker Carlson books to bypass the censors and to bring you things that are actually worth reading and sharing.

And we're starting this venture with what matters most. And that's Russell Brand's message of the promise of forgiveness and joy through Jesus.

Now, listen to what he's saying there for a moment. He's saying that there's lies, there's suppression of the truth, there's censorship, and we're going to break through all that stuff.

And part of breaking through all that stuff is what Russell Brand's trying to tell you. He's trying to tell you about salvation in Christ, coming to faith in Christ.

This is something that, quote unquote, they, the censors, don't want you to know about. So we want you to know about it.

That sounds all well and good. But post 2020, there's been a lot of red pills. There's been a lot of things that you're supposed to realize.

A lot of things the censors, quote unquote, don't want you to know about. Some of them are true. Some of them are false. And if the purpose of Tucker Carlson books, we don't know at this point what other books he's going to be publishing, is to break through the censors to give you the truth, then

I think it is appropriate to have a message that certainly the world doesn't really want you to hear.

At the same time, though, what I've wondered is whether or not the messages we're hearing now about spirituality are largely driven by this hunger to push against the elites, the censors, the institutions that control, whether or not they've just been lying to you.

And so the motive here is whatever they don't want you to hear, well, that must be the truth, which is not quite a correct assumption.

You might be right many times if you assume that, but you're not always going to be right. And there's a clip from last year's

Heritage Action Conference, which is put on by the Heritage Foundation, where Tucker Carlson is answering a question.

And the question is about the First Great Awakening. The question is about George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, what they did.

And they were bringing people to faith in Christ by telling them the message of salvation, that you're a sinner, that you are actually damned, you're on your way to hell.

And if you do not repent of your sin and put your trust in Jesus Christ, you will be punished. But if you do put your trust in Jesus Christ for salvation from your sin, you will escape the punishment of God and you will have the

Holy Spirit dwelling within you. And the Holy Spirit will help you to empower you to live the life of a

Christian. Now, this is a message that transformed our country. Of course, there were counterfeit, revivalistic style things that happened during that time.

I think the devil often does that kind of thing during a true revival, a true move of God.

But overall, the First Great Awakening had a tremendously positive impact. And Christians recognize it as this, outside of even

America, that this was a great move of God. Now, Tucker Carlson has asked a question about that.

Hey, are we in something like that? Is something like that on the horizon? And I want you to hear Tucker's answer. This is a little long, but it sets the stage for why we're talking about Russell Brand's book, why

Tucker might be interested in Russell Brand's book, and whether or not Russell Brand, who thinks that he is part of this awakening, that his conversion is part of this renewed sense of spirituality, whether or not this is a true spirituality or a false spirituality.

Check this out. The revolution of 1776 was either at the same time or preamble to or followed the

Great Awakening in America. Is there an opportunity for a new

Great Awakening for a spiritual revival like that guy who healed that man who lost his ear?

I mean, we are in the middle of it. We are just in the middle of it. And I am like the last person to ask on this subject because I'm just from such a, what's the phrase used, different religious tradition.

Um, so I'm like not an expert on this stuff, but I just see it all around me everywhere.

It's unbelievable. The one thing that, as I said in my remarks that we never talked about in my family or the culture

I grew up in was religious faith or spirituality. I mean, that was like, we have religious cousins in Texas and we would always make fun of them.

They all turned out to be like happy and prosperous and long married. And now I'm spending Easter with them this year. But like, I just didn't grow up around that.

And so now I find every single day, someone will come up to me and start telling me about God, sometimes in like halting, you know, in the way that people who haven't grown up talking about God talk, well,

I guess like me, you know, in this sort of slightly awkward, stilted way, they're trying to explain something whereas an evangelicalist come up and like fluently tell you what you're, you know what

I mean? Oh, that's Ephesians 9. But what I'm saying is people who didn't grow up with it, who haven't spent their lives thinking about God are all around me.

It's insane. Are clearly responding to something they're hearing inside.

And the last thing I will say is that that is the divide. It really is. That is the divide.

You were wondering like what happened during COVID when totally reasonable people became like filled with hate and angry.

And then some people became like braver and bigger and kinder and less about themselves and more about other people and just sort of glowed with this holy joy.

I'm sure you saw that. We all saw that. It was the dividing line. It was like no one was in the middle. And that has not decelerated.

It's accelerated not because of COVID or any political issue, even because of Trump. It's just this great divide is going on.

You can feel it. When I was literally pulling out this morning, this is so dorky in my golf cart because I'm in Florida and I raised the guy who's trimming the trees and he stops me.

He's like, oh man, I've been wanting to talk to you. And I've been reading the Bible. It's like random guy. My father just died.

And he's like, I heard your father died. I'm so sorry. All of a sudden I was like, oh, I was so emotional. I had this wild connection with this crazed landscaper from Wisconsin.

And anyway, I'm not exactly sure what I'm saying other than that happens to me every single day. And that's never happened to me for the first 53 years of my life.

What is going on? And so maybe the last great awakening was famously symbolized by the tent revival.

I think that's not happening now. Maybe it's the X revival. You know, I don't know.

Like it's a cliche, but it's true. God works in ways that we don't anticipate and that we don't recognize at first.

But we know that something really wild that we're not creating is happening. And I definitely, definitely see it every single day.

Now, listen to what you're hearing in that clip. You're hearing Tucker Carlson articulate a position that we are currently in a great awakening style revival.

And what's his reason for it? Well, I have people coming to me. They're telling me about things. Did you hear the gospel? It's articulated in that.

Is it about repentance? Is it where sin? Where's the punishment and wrath of God and escaping that?

Do you hear any of that? Or is it just, hey, there's an uptick in spiritual interest right now. And is that related to directly what happened during 2020?

And in fact, it is. It's related to COVID. It's related to those who are on one side who are pushing what happened in 2020.

And those who are on another side who are against what was being pushed in 2020. That's the fault line. That's the fracture line in Tucker Carlson's mind that connects to whether or not there's a spiritual awakening.

Now, I want to ask you, as an Orthodox believer in Jesus Christ who believes the Bible, is that the dividing line of humanity?

For those who are in Christ and those who are outside of Christ, those who are children of God, those who are children of the devil, those who are sheep, those who are goats.

Is there a dividing line that says, well, we can identify the same dividing line according to a sociopolitical perspective?

Now, you may say, look, born -again Bible -believing Christians are going to be more likely to take conservative views because of their religion, because it dovetails, it actually inspires the conservative views that we find in our political spectrum.

And they are less likely to trust the government because of instincts that have been born and bred into conservative

Christians for centuries related to the depravity of man and not trusting man with power. I mean, you can look at all those sociological things and say, look, there's going to be overlap.

But to say that is the dividing line, to say that is the spiritual awakening, to identify people who are suspicious of COVID and might have some kind of perspective of spiritual faith in God, but there really isn't even an articulated gospel, to say that must be it, that's the dividing line.

Well, that's pretty vague, and that's on the best day. I'd say there's actually something more dangerous to that because you might think that you are following God, you might think that you're in Christ, you might think you're on the right spiritual track simply because you're just not believing what the elites, quote -unquote, are telling you, and you're going the opposite direction in your mind, or according to the new podcast you follow, or you didn't get the vaccine, and so this puts you in good spiritual standing or something like that.

None of those things are true. The truth is that we are divided between those who are sinners and those who are redeemed, those who are in Christ, those who aren't.

If you are in Christ, you are a sinner, but you're a sinner who's been forgiven through the faith that you have in Jesus Christ, which is only by his grace.

So it is repentance, it is faith, it is a humility that you have before Jesus to say,

I need you to forgive me because I cannot please God. Nothing can please

God in me, even my righteous deeds. I come to you with empty pockets. I have nothing to offer. I cast myself on the mercy of God.

It's that heart posture, and it's the awakening that God does within you as a spiritual being who is dead in your trespasses and sins, as Ephesians says, and you are now made alive in Christ.

Christ is now, he's taken your place, he's taken the wrath of God for you, he did that on the cross, he did that through his death burial, and then he was resurrected, proving his promises to be true, and he transferred to you the life that he lived, which was perfect.

So, on your account, you are credited with Christ's righteousness. When God looks at you, he doesn't see your sin, he doesn't take that into account, he takes the righteousness of Christ into account.

That's what conversion is. After that process takes place, which is instantaneous—it doesn't take seven days, like Russell Brand seems to indicate in his title—you are now a follower of Jesus Christ, and the

Holy Spirit empowers you to live the Christian life, to be more and more and more like Jesus Christ every single day.

It's called sanctification. Now, Russell Brand, I think, has a very different understanding of all of this.

And those who don't have a theological understanding, they haven't read the Bible, and thankfully, Russell Brand says you should read the

Bible, which is a really good thing he does, by the way. He says, look, if this is keeping you from the Bible, go read the Bible.

I think that's an excellent thing he does say. But if you don't read the Bible, if you don't understand the Bible, and you just read

Russell Brand, you are going to walk away with some bad, flawed assumptions about everything that I just said. And so that's what we're going to jump into.

That's why I think this is important. Russell Brand frames his conversion experience as part of this global Great Awakening.

And if that's true, we may be in trouble, if that's representative. So I published all of this.

If you're more of a reader at my Substack from the desk of John Harris, you can go to johnharris .substack .com

or go to the link in the info section of this video. And I'll skip through some things and add some things here and there.

But one of the things that I think is important, perhaps, for me to mention off the top is that Tucker Carlson doesn't even mention this in his advertisement.

There's a subtitle to the book. It's How to Become a Christian in Seven Days May Take 50 Years of Sin and Serious F -Ups to Get Started.

Now, this is one of the things that I have a problem with. There is a lot of profanity in this book.

In fact, hell does not come up except as a cuss word in the book. You might think a book about becoming a

Christian is going to mention hell in some way, because hell shows you the character of God, that his wrath and his justice are so great that he can't turn a blind eye to sin.

He's got to punish it. That gives you a sense of why you need forgiveness. Hell doesn't come up. The term hell is only used in this book as it relates to cussing.

It's not the only word that is used that is profane in the book. Now, if this is someone who's regenerated in Christ, that's not something that you would expect.

They're going to try to stay away from salty language, and especially language that makes the wrath and justice of God into a simple phrase or saying.

That's something that they're going to want to stay away from, you would think at least, especially if they're being thoughtful and they're trying to persuade people.

Now, I understand. Look, everyone who comes to Christ, your language doesn't immediately clean up.

There's people who are Christians who are still sometimes using language probably they shouldn't use. I think it's important to maintain standards.

I think we have to be careful of the language we use. Course jesting is a sin. But at the same time, if you're literally putting the

F word in your subtitle for your book, and you're only bringing up hell as it relates to being a cuss word that should arouse your suspicions, they should at least be a yellow flag that this person's saying they're leading me to Christ.

Is this the kind of language Christ uses? How does Christ think about hell? Christ doesn't. Christ takes it very seriously.

So, just FYI, now, I say that Russell Brand himself sees his conversion, like I said before, as part of this global awakening.

I do have a hope that God can use the article that I'm presenting to you, but also use

Russell Brand's book. There might be people who read it, and the truth that is in it is something that they hear, it lands well, and the

Lord uses it. That can happen. But it can also lead you astray. So, I want to give you the basic themes in his book.

First of all, I put these under subtitle.

So, I have Escaping the Matrix, The Great Awakening, and Sin and Evil, and The Gospel and Salvation. So, these are the categories we're going to be looking at.

But I start off by just giving you a general feel for the book. I could never recommend this book, guys. It's not well written.

It is all over the place. It reads like a chaotic stream of consciousness that makes it difficult to follow.

If it were a video, it would be a series of shorts, not a comprehensive movie. Brand jumps from various thinkers like Carl Jung and Rick Warren, to Alcoholic Anonymous' 12 -step program, to the creation account in Genesis, to the climax over his son's heart condition, to indicting the elites, to a repetitious and consuming defense of his innocence over charges related to rape and assault.

So, this is one of the things that annoyed me, is in the book, randomly, out of nowhere, after telling us multiple times that he's innocent and people are going after him for things that he didn't really do, he just inserts it over and over and over again, and impugns the motives of the people that are accusing him and charging him with these egregious acts.

Now, I'm not going to weigh in on whether these, on the charges, right? Let's just give him the benefit of the doubt here.

At the same time, it consumes the book. It just is all over the place in the book. There's one portion of the book that I made a note.

Actually, I'll read you my note. I said, this sounds like a drug hatch stupor. I sometimes will talk to myself by making little notes in a book.

And this was all over the place. Let me just read for you. This is one paragraph from the book, just to give you an idea of the language in this book.

We have created a type of consciousness, and consciousness, it's not even pollutes, it's pollulates.

Pollulates, okay. With archetype and myth, time itself is flexing and fluxing under the weight of conscious and unconscious attention.

When you consider that neither time nor attention can be reliably measured, we must hear, except that we are in a new realm.

Indeed, Charlie Kirk and Erica Kirk have probably accrued in a year, an epistemological freight, bought in typed bytes that Jack Kennedy and Jackie O acquired in heavy tomes and Hearst's spilled ink in over half a century, all oozing forth in an online instance.

We see how she quakes under its unholy weight. Now, do you know what that is talking about?

If you sat down and you really, really took the time to try to understand what he's saying, maybe you could arrive at an answer.

In fact, what would my answer even be for this? What he's trying to say is, we have created a mindset that is false, okay, and it's really draining people, this mindset.

I mean, the way that he talks, though, in the book, it is so stream of consciousness.

The word choice, the examples, the squirrel, we're gonna go over here for a time and then come back to my point, it is just all over the place, very hard to follow.

So I read the book so you don't have to. I'll put it that way. I read it so you don't have to because it is a little difficult.

Now, Brand tells us what his purpose in writing the book is. He says that he writes it to lead people to Jesus, to offer his testimony, and to do so by distilling

Alcoholic Anonymous' 12 Steps into a seven -day program with exercises and questions. So that's why he says he's writing it.

The book also continually veers into how global elites are controlling us and Jesus helps us escape their trap.

So he calls the place of their influence the world. Now, this is kind of key because if the world, as described by 1

John, right, the lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, the boastful pride of life, if that is the global elites and what they're trying to push down on you, it's a top -down thing where they're imprisoning you with their mindset, we are technically talking about different things.

But Russell Brand seems to equate these two things. And this becomes, I think, a big part of the book, is top -down what the elites are trying to impose upon you that isn't really part of your authentic self, the self that, if I were to map out what

Russell Brand thinks of anthropology, there would be like your deep authentic self, which seems to have a spark of good in it.

And then there would be sort of your outer self, which is sinful. And then there's your actions, which are not sin in and of themselves.

They're just expressions of this sort of deceptive outer self that you have, which is partially, perhaps the majority of it, impressed upon you, given to you by elites.

That's the impression I walked away with. But his intentions, his stated intentions seem good, right?

But we have to get into what he's actually saying. Brand wants people to reject the world, which he perceives to be a trick, a distraction, a scam, controlled by the devil.

Page 16. He is technically right about this. The world system described in 1 John includes the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, boastful pride of life, 1

John 2 -16. These things obviously deceive people into living for themselves. They are blinded by the

God of the sage, according to 2 Corinthians 4 -4, and they need spiritual understanding, for a natural man does not accept the things of the

Spirit of God, according to 1 Corinthians 2 -14. However, it is very interesting that in Brand's conception of the evils of the world and its binding influence, he indicates elites are somehow in control.

He states in the same paragraph, where he is describing the dangers of the world, how the world's most powerful elites benefit from crisis that punish the common people.

This is different from a biblical understanding of the evils of the world, in which everyone outside of the Christ is blinded by their own sin and the mechanisms that reinforce its grip.

If the world represents economic or cultural oppression, but not sin, he is not talking about the same things

Scripture talks about. So, the conflation between authoritarianism, as represented by guys like Steve Jobs apparently, and demonic movements is a persistent problem in the book because it fails to separate between spiritual salvation and political liberation.

This conflation runs through Brand's treatment of sin and revival as well. And I want to say this, I studied social justice pretty deeply, and that was the problem with liberation theology.

Liberation theology is all about political liberation, but it masks itself as a spiritual liberation.

It says that what it's doing is actually the same thing Jesus was doing. It's doing what the Bible says we should do, but it's a political liberation against the elites.

It's against those who have, promoted by those who have not. It's those who are in economically advantageous positions that become the substitutes for universal evil.

Everything really traces back to them—their lies, their control, the things that they're doing to benefit themselves.

And one of the things that I think we need to say regarding the first Great Awakening and what's happening now, since now they're so often compared—Glenn

Beck's actually been doing this for years. We need an American revival, just like the first Great Awakening. Well, you're a Mormon. What do you mean?

Well, what they are talking about—they meaning people like Tucker Carlson, people like Glenn Beck in different ways, people like Russell Brand, people like, frankly, and I mentioned this at the beginning, people like Alexander Dugan.

He literally wrote a book, and I read it at the time, in 2021, called The Great Awakening. I don't know if I've ever said this on the podcast.

Yes, I've read Dugan, and I've read him because I wanted to understand what he was saying.

I kept being told that his influence was within right -wing circles. I didn't see a lot of it. I saw what potentially could have been some of it.

Now I'm seeing a lot more of his ideas. But I read that at the time in 2021, and I thought, well, this has some major problems because in Dugan's Great Awakening, you have different religions that accompany different national identities, and he doesn't want to mess with those things.

He thinks Russia should be Orthodox, China should be Buddhist, Iran should be Muslim, that kind of thing.

These are particular truths for particular regions. And if there's a universal truth, it's nationalism versus globalism.

Now, in reality, what Dugan's doing is, I think, he is trying to bind together a global resistance against the

West. He wants Russia, Iran, China, et cetera, to be in a powerful position to resist the forces of the

European Union. And he sees America as kind of up for grabs, as America's kind of back and forth as to whether they're going to be with Europe or whether they can join in a resistance effort against the forces of globalism.

Now, this isn't about Dugan, though. I just wanted to let you know that Dugan also uses the same language, that there's this

Great Awakening happening. You have the Great Reset versus the Great Awakening. That's the title of his book. Now, all of these figures who are political, sociopolitical, if you will, when they talk about the

Great Awakening, they're talking about social and political things that translate into spiritual things. The First Great Awakening, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, that was different.

John Wesley, that was spiritual things translating into sociopolitical things.

OK, what do you mean by that, John? Well, there's a lot of historians that say the First Great Awakening led to the American Revolution, or at least the

American Revolution could not have happened without the conditions that the First Great Awakening allowed to take place.

Was that intentional? No, that was simply just preaching the gospel. People were saved.

People came to, in the colonies, an understanding that they were

Christians, and this helped bind the colonies together. They gave them a moral posture.

This was helpful in also the resistance against what they thought was happening in Canada. This was one of actually the reasons that we even had an

American Revolution was they felt, they thought, they feared that Canadians were going to have an official

Catholic church, and they didn't want that. They didn't want that on their border. They were Protestants, freshly suspicious of Rome.

Well, the First Great Awakening set the spiritual tone for what came later. It was a spiritual movement, though.

It had sociopolitical ramifications. It had fruits that made their way into society.

In fact, one of the things that just came to my head, because in reading Thomas Kidd's book about all this, one of the things

George Whitefield tried to impart to those who held slaves is you need to catechize.

You need to teach the gospel to your slaves. You can't just neglect that duty, and you shouldn't abuse them.

These were the kinds of social things that were changing as the result of a spiritual movement.

This is not that, as far as I can tell. I am hopeful that there will be spiritual things, spiritual conversions, fruit that does come out of this that is spiritual post -2020.

People that saw there's real evil, I need to be close to God, and they do, in fact, find

God because God's drawing them. At the same time, there is,

I think, a concerted motivation here that the sociopolitical move against whatever it is, vaccines, government control, the

AIPAC now, the medical community, Turning Point USA, whatever it is that people are wanting to, quote unquote, red pill others to, that this is the prime factor, the prime motivator that is going to lead to spiritual fruit.

It doesn't work that way. That's not an awakening. That's not a revival. It starts spiritually and then works itself out.

It's always been that way. There's nothing wrong with cultural Christianity, okay? There really isn't anything wrong with people who behave in Christian ways outwardly who are not

Christians. In fact, we want that, but we would much prefer people to actually become Christians, and without actual

Christians, you don't have the cultural Christianity either. You need that core. So all that to say, getting back to Russell Brand here, this conflation between a spiritual awakening and what's happening politically is, frankly, dangerous because you have to ensure that people understand spiritually what their duties, responsibilities, and condition is, and if they don't understand that, if they just think, well,

I am dodging the COVID stuff, and I'm dodging government coercion here, and I'm not believing the narrative, then

I am good. I'm good to go, I guess. I'm spiritually superior. I have some kind of spiritual level that I've attained.

No, you haven't, actually. Brand sees the world as on the cusp of a great revival, which he equates with the quickening, the reckoning, the awakening, and Brand says his own conversion is part of this global revival.

It's on page 13 of the book. In order to escape the elite's plans, we need to understand the spiritual realm, which

Brand presents as a mysterious, secretive, and hidden thing. For Brand, the Bible contains the secrets of the universe.

We must remystify Jesus. He presents God in unorthodox ways, such as saying he was in wave form when he created light.

He is the divine energy and quotes a Tony Robbins prayer that refers to God as the divine mother.

Now, some of you are already out. You're just like, that's it. And I don't blame you one bit.

I'm out too, actually. I saw that and I was like, this is wrong. God's a person. He's not a force.

This is, at best, someone who hopefully is saved being very inarticulate and ignorant, and that is the best hope that I can give for this kind of careless language.

To catch a peek behind the spiritual curtain, Brand sees faith as necessary. He states that faith is an entry point into another reality.

It is ontological alchemy. He goes on to describe how we can all achieve what he sought through drugs in the new age and enter into a spiritual condition through faith in Christ.

In contrast, scripture refers to faith in more concrete terms like assurance and conviction. That's in Hebrews 11, right? Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things hoped for, the assurance of things not seen.

Or rather, I got that backwards. The assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen. It is not so much about unlocking a euphoric spiritual dimension as it is clearly understanding the truth about God and depending on Him as a result.

Faith allows believers to see divine purpose and is the mechanism by which they are saved by grace apart from works,

Ephesians 2. Brand appeals to mystic Emmett Fox's teachings on the Sermon on the

Mount, which reveals its coded methodology wherein we are taught how to become a living, breathing extension of Christ and of God.

So, Emmett Fox is not a Christian. He is a mystic, and he is telling you his own interpretation of the

Sermon on the Mount, and that's what Russell Brand, unfortunately, is believing is true. Now, if you had someone come to you and they said, hey, you know what being born again is like?

You know what being a Christian is like? It's like that drug trip. You'd be like, why don't you flesh that out for me, okay?

I understand do not be drunk with wine, be filled with the Spirit. There is an element of control the

Spirit has on you, and you can compare that to other things that would control you. Are you saying that what you're seeking in a drug trip, a euphoric experience of some kind?

What are you saying exactly, right? Now, if he just said this in an interview,

I probably wouldn't have thought it was a big deal. He's saying this in a book that is supposed to be edited and fine -tuned to help people understand what a relationship with Jesus is like and how to come into that relationship.

To say, well, it's just like this drug trip that I used to have. That's what I was really seeking in those drug trips was

I was seeking faith in Christ and that it's becoming a living, breathing extension of Christ and of God.

Living, breathing extension of Christ and of God. Again, I can come up with ways in which, okay, if I define that according to, you're the hands and feet of Jesus because you're doing his will, the good works that he's prepared for you.

Okay, you're using figurative language. I got it. But if you really think that you are the living, breathing extension of Christ, some kind of consciousness,

Christ consciousness, which I think is a term he also uses in the book, no. This is, at best, very, very close in the way it sounds to the new age movement.

I admit that. I said, look, the whole thing feels new age. At one point, Brand talks about how mystics are able to live in the present or not to be, as if that's a good thing.

Now, compare that to 1 Peter 5 .8. Be of sober spirit. Be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.

The Bible wants Christians to be aware and engaged, not simply empty or existing.

Now, to me, that's enough already to say, I can't recommend this book. Russell Brand, I'll pray for you, man, but you should have never written this.

This is confusing. I don't even know where you're at. But the more egregious problems

I actually think come later, and it's in this stuff. Brand's perspective on sin is partially correct.

So he does say some things that are true. He teaches that sin starts in the mind. That's true. But he also implies that humans are innocent and sin is forced upon them by their environment.

Brand misses Christ's point about childlike faith in Matthew 18 and interprets Jesus as teaching that we must return to the innocence of childhood and repudiate worldliness to become a child of God.

I would love to ask Brand if he believes children are in need of salvation from sin in the same way adults are.

Brand also states that some dormant part of him was alive in Christ even before his conversion.

That makes no sense. If Brand is referring to his conscience, this language is sloppy. Everyone has a conscience, but not everyone is alive in Christ because we're dead in Ephesians 2, and then we're made alive.

Now, I am extending much grace to Brand that probably is undeserved. I am trying to bend over backwards to read this in a charitable fashion.

Well, maybe he meant this. Maybe this was his conscience he's talking about. He doesn't say that.

He thinks that part of him was alive in Christ before his conversion because he was prevented from doing the full extent of the evil that he wanted to do.

We call that providence. Some Dutch reformed theologians call that common grace, which

I'm not as big of a fan of, but we call it providence. God prevented you from doing something that would have been bad, and maybe your conscience was pricked in that moment and you thought, this is not a good idea.

That is not Christ living in you, though. That is not the same thing at all.

To misinterpret Matthew 18 to say that it's not childlike faith that's being talked about here, it's the innocence of childhood.

It's this sort of uncorrupted spirit that children have. That is definitely not true.

Brand's overall perspective on evil dovetails with his opposition to global elites who are controlled through acute conspiracy and masterful entrapment.

They are the true villains, but their influence trickles down to culture. The members of the propaganda class,

Brand says, are all compromised with their snide attitudes and USAID dollars. It is very much a top -down perspective in contrast with Jesus' teaching.

I remember what Jesus says in Matthew 15. He says, evil comes from within the heart of man.

You know what corrupts man? It's his heart. It's the filthy thoughts he has. It's the evil desires he has.

That's what corrupts a man. It's not what goes into a man. It's what comes out of him. That's Jesus. Russell Brand over and over tells us that it's the control exerted by elite forces that imposes evil onto us.

And we get in their system, that world system, and that's what makes us evil. So this brings me to a lingering question that did not dissipate in the book.

Because Brand repeatedly presents himself as this victim, not a culprit as much as a victim. There are some culprit language, but it's much more emphasized that he's a victim.

And this is a guy who, I mean, he admitted recently, look, he did have a sexual relationship with a 16 -year -old when he was 30 years old.

And this is something, at one time, Megyn Kelly was just so upset about. And now, apparently, it's all fine.

She likes him now. I mean, it's insane to me what the Grifter podcast class, the levels to which they will stoop.

It's amazing to me. I just saw a video this morning that was just all of the crazy contradictions

Tucker Carlson's made in a very short period of time. And it's like he thinks you're stupid or something, right?

It's like, you know, so Megyn Kelly did this with Russell Brand. He had Russell Brand on and Russell Brand admits to this. Or Russell Brand, I mean, he talks in his book repeatedly over and over again about his sexual exploits in details you shouldn't know about.

It reads like a youth group testimony where the guy gets up there and he's like, I was really bad before a Christian. Look at all the things

I did. I was living for pleasure. I was having fun, but I realized I needed Christ. And so I, you know, and we all see through that.

We all see that. Look, that's your, you need to talk about what Christ has done and how wonderful it is to be in Christ.

Not just 90 % of it being how the details of how bad you were, because what's the message it sends?

Well, it says the message you can go sow your wild oats and then after you sow your wild oats, then you can have faith in Christ and keep your, you know, you can have your cake and eat it.

Russell Brand's book kind of reads like that, to be quite honest with you. He did all these, these terrible things.

And, uh, you know, little did he know these were all wrong at the time, but why, why are you giving us all the details and Russell Brand, right?

So he was a bad guy. And so often though, it's, it's, he frames it like he was a victim of all this bad thinking and elite power systems.

And, uh, he, he's now broken free from all this and you can break free from all this, but he, he,

I don't know that he actually sees himself as the chief villain in the story, which is,

I think how every true Christian should view themselves. We're the villain. Paul viewed himself that way.

I'm the chief of sinners. We're the villain in the story. And Christ is the hero.

We're not the hero who broke free from the matrix, from the lies, the deception. Christ is the hero who came in and rescued us from our own sin and depravity.

That's actually the message, but that's not really the message Brand gives you. The reader is left wondering.

So, oh, so I was talking about my lingering suspicion, right? That didn't dissipate. And the suspicion is that I don't know how seriously

Brand takes sin, right? Using filthy language, talking about his exploits. The reader is left wondering after finishing the book, whether the pro, the problem they face is the demonic nanny state and its bureaucratic asphyxiating grip or the sin that resides inside each of us.

Brand does believe sin resides inside humans, but he also thinks that actions themselves are not sin. He quotes

Ruth Burroughs, a Roman Catholic nun who said that sin is the inner state that leads to active transgression, not transgression itself.

This only works if sin is first redefined by something other than missing the mark and thoughtward indeed, as Orthodox Christians believe.

Sin seems to be a blinding condition imposed on us that dictates certain actions rather than a default moral condition and expression.

At one point, he says, we are in a war. The world's institutions have been captured by evil and without Christ, the devil will capture you too.

The problem, of course, is that we are already captured. Now, I mean, we as in our fallen state before Christ, we're already captured.

If you're talking to sinners, they're already captured. It's not like turn to Christ or you're going to be captured. You're already captured.

And that might be the key to the major problem in the book is basically good guys.

And it's just evil system. And it sort of embeds itself in us and our actions. That's just because of this evil system that's embedded itself.

And we don't want to get captured. We don't want to escape. So escape what?

Hell is only used as a cuss word. What are we escaping? The wrath of God doesn't talk about it. You see the problem.

We're escaping the totalitarian regime. We're escaping those lies. That's what he's interested in helping us escape.

The gospel and salvation. For those wondering, yes, the book does contain rudimentary presentations of the gospel. Brand says the definitive

Christian idea is that God came to earth, lived a human life, Jesus of Nazareth.

He went about doing good. And then, and this is an understatement, necessarily died on the cross to reconcile man to God.

He states the gospels describe how atonement was achieved through the birth, life, and resurrection of Christ. He also describes the

Christian life well when he says, I am transformed, still broken, still a sinner, still wounded, but saved. I trust him like I tried to trust me.

This works. Brand insists that his book is not about how human endeavor will triumph over evil, but how Jesus Christ has paid the price for our sin if we accept him and we will be saved.

Now, these are all really good. And if you are an orthodox believer, if you're bringing all your definitions, which are orthodox, which are biblical to what

Russell Brand's saying, you'll think there's no problem. You think this is great. The problem is the definitions he has, as we've already gone over some.

If you don't understand what sin is, if you don't understand the condition of man, if you don't understand the justice and wrath of God, atonement for what?

What is sin? Why is that a problem? You don't have answers to these questions.

You have to go and find greater context and ignore some of what Russell Brand says for those statements to actually be meaningful, which makes this book actually somewhat dangerous.

Because if you have someone ignorant who's reading it, they are going to hear

Russell Brand's understandings of these concepts and import them into that statement. I'm confident that through God's power, these statements alone can be used by the

Holy Spirit to transform a sinner, even if they're muddy. Will his readers understand what true faith actually is?

Brand says that faith is love. Love is in all things in this numinous thin space. What does that even mean, guys?

Whatever it means, it is not the kind of confident assurance the Bible refers to when it talks about faith. Hell is only used as a curse word.

I already said that. Will his readers understand why they deserve the wrath of God and what that means? If faith is in everything, because faith is love, faith is not love.

Faith is confident assurance. I have faith in my chair right now.

I have faith that this broadcast is being viewed by you right now, because I have a confident assurance.

I have a reasonable understanding that these things are functioning in the way they should function.

I have a reasonable understanding that when Jesus paid for my sin, that he actually did it.

That's faith. Russell Brand says faith is love and it's in everything.

If faith is love and it's in everything, then does that even mean they're sin? What does that mean? Is there just a spark of good in everything?

So where does the evil come from? And if it's just love,

I mean, there's a lot of things that I love that I don't have faith in. There's people that I love dearly and I would never trust them with anything.

Trusting Jesus and having love for Jesus are two different things. Now, they go together because of Jesus, because his character is one that's worthy of love and trust.

But I don't necessarily just trust anyone out there just simply because I love them.

And I don't love them simply because I trust them either. There's people that I trust that I don't really have a deep affection for.

I don't know them that well, but I think they're going to get the job done. I think there's a police officer. I'm going to choose to trust that police officer or that fireman.

I don't know the guy. I don't love him. You know, this is a problem that Brand just plays fast and loose with these very theologically rich definitions that we have to understand in order to understand salvation.

All right. Brand leaves the whole understanding of salvation through faith and salvation through faith alone and grace alone in contrast to through faith and human effort an open question.

He doesn't really tell you. Brand leaves this an open question, but veers more towards a gradual process idea.

So I contrast two things. I say, look, you can have faith in Jesus Christ and through grace, you can, in a punctiliar moment, meaning instantly, you're a

Christian and now you've started the Christian life. Brand thinks it's more of a process. It's just, hey, seven days.

How to become a Christian in seven days. He says for himself personally that he went through Alcoholics Anonymous, his 12 -step program in 2002 and credits

Carl Young's views, which helped inspire the program with helping him see that life was about more than his own pleasure.

This is presumably the beginning of a spiritual awakening. God can certainly put things in our path like this that lead us towards salvation, but that is not the same as the process of becoming a

Christian. We are either in Christ or we are not. And at one time,

Brand even talks about those who are half Christian as if that's a category.

No, half Christian isn't a category. You're, it's not a great, you don't get installments of Christianity.

You're either in Christ or you're not. This is a problem. If you, cause you, you might think that because of the way

Brand frames it, that you are gradually becoming a Christian because of the good works you do, because of the right understanding you have because of something within you.

And that's not true at all. You become a Christian because of something that God did to you in one moment.

And that thing he did to you was he inspired you to repent.

He awakened the dead man because you were dead in your trespasses and sins, and you put your trust in Christ.

And that's what led to the life that you now live if you're a Christian. It's all of God's work.

That's the gospel. It's good news that what God has done. It is not something that you do in stages as you become more and more good, quote unquote.

You can say that sanctification, when you become a Christian, now you're capable of doing good things, but a dead man can't do anything.

Not with good motives, at least. All right. So the conclusion here, Brand genuinely seems to realize his hedonistic life was not working, and he needed to keep himself within divine boundaries.

And I am hopeful that this did lead him toward a born again experience through faith in Christ finished work.

But I have more doubts after reading the book than I did before. To be fair, parts of the book contain some beautiful imagery.

So he describes Christianity as coming home, not a faith or a religion. Now, of course, it is a faith and religion.

But yeah, sure. It is like coming home. It is living in the way God intended.

It addresses mankind's greatest problem and invites man to return to God. But at the end of the day, there are a lot of true things that cult members can also say about Jesus.

It is heretical poison to watch out for, even if there's true things.

And Brand includes just enough ambiguity to be dangerous. This also gives people a window into Tucker Carlson, who published and promoted the book.

Let us continue to be hopeful, but not lose our discernment in the process. Brand obfuscates on sin and conversion, and we should not give that a pass.

A sociopolitical movement cloaked in Christian terminology is not necessarily the same as a revival. And it remains to be seen whether a revival is imminent or not.

That's my conclusion on this book, guys. Don't promote it. Don't get it. I read it so you didn't have to.

This spells doom, honestly. If they keep going with this, this is doom for people who think that they're

Christians now that aren't, that haven't actually been born again. But they're now calling themselves

Christians all over the place. They're saying Christ is king. They're saying they're part of this revival of Christianity.

You're not part of any revival of Christianity if you are not a Christian. You could be part of a revival of some kind of cultural

Christianity if you're embracing some of the moral things and traditions associated with Christianity.

But even for that, there has to be a Christian core. There has to be actual people coming to faith in Christ that see the purpose of it.

It's meaningless. There's no power in that kind of religion. There's no substance in it.

It's the form of religion without its power. I am more and more convinced that's what's happening.

Do you think Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Nick Fuentes—the list just goes on and on with these podcasters—do you think that they are representative of true

Orthodox biblical Christianity that can frame itself the way that Paul framed his own sin?

I'm the chief of sinners. I'm the villain. Jesus is the Savior. Or is this something else?

I think there's something else going on that's much more prevalent. The sad tragedy of all this is

I believe Charlie Kirk truly was a Christian, and he was truly growing in his understanding of Christianity.

I understand that Tyler Robinson's bullet was intended to end

Charlie Kirk's influence. I think there's perhaps an element of judgment to this as well, that someone who was in the podcast sphere had a very big podcast, who was very influential and politically very astute.

But he was going in a very good direction when it came to his understanding of religion, and getting better and better.

Listening to John MacArthur, there seemed to be an articulation of the gospel and more of an understanding of what that actually meant.

For him to be taken out at such an early stage in that process and to have people like the mentioned supposedly filling the gap,

I see judgment. I don't know, but that is my suspicion, that God is judging us still.

A false revival would be a judgment. I'm hopeful that there are people actually becoming

Christians. I'm hopeful that this uptick in spirituality does lead to really good places. I'm hopeful that God is at work, because I know he's always at work.

But I'm also seeing there is a very prominent false kind of Christianity being promoted as well.

We shouldn't include that as part of a legitimate revival. It's not. Time will tell where this all goes.

If you have a new relationship with Christ, you're going to have a new relationship with sin. You're going to talk differently. You're going to act differently.

I think there are some things. I'm going to just assume Russell Brand is correct, that he has acted differently when it comes to his sexual exploitation, we'll say.

It's going to change other parts of you as well. Time will tell. That's all

I can say. I'm really hopeful that there is a new relationship with sin. I'm even hopeful for Russell Brand, that he's in an early stage.

He's ignorant. He's got bad advice. He's saying things he shouldn't, and that he's going to grow out of this and realize what he did.

That's my prayer. That's my hope. But I'm not going to call this a revival or an awakening.

I am going to call out when there's false things that are being promoted out there that just are damaging and not good for the body of Christ, certainly to promote.

There you go. That's the podcast. Let's keep praying for our country. Let's keep promoting true spirituality, the true gospel.

That's the only thing that can save us. There has to be a spiritual move which translates into the socio -political sphere, because it's the fruit of that, not the other way around.

God bless. More coming. By the way, last but not least, pray for me. I'm going to be traveling this week quite a bit doing documentary film work for the mini doc on the woman pastor issue in the

Southern Baptist Convention. Pray that those interviews go well. Pray for the Southern Baptist Convention. I mean, it's shrinking in size, but it is still the biggest

Protestant denomination in the country. It has tremendous influence. I really would like to see this get on a better track.

It's in that effort that I do this work. It is to see our country, the United States of America specifically, get on a better spiritual track, because I know, we all know, if we're on a better spiritual track, the fruit of that is going to be great in the political and social sphere as well.