Chris Grainger: 1:10

Welcome to the Lion Within Us, a podcast serving Christian men who are hungry to be the leaders God intends you to be. I'm your host, chris Granger. Let's jump in. All right, guys meet episode time. Let's get right into it, okay? So the scripture of the week is in Jeremiah, first chapter, fifth verse Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you, I appointed you a prophet to the nations. Fellas, spend some time to unpack this in our spiritual kickoff episode. So go back and listen to that, okay, for sure. And again, we do SKO every day, monday through Friday, within our Lion Within Us community. Head over to thelionwithinus to get that started today.

Chris Grainger: 1:47

Now, this episode is probably I will rank it easily top five ever for the lion the most raw as well Seth Gruber. Seth Gruber came in and he brought down. The house fell. So he founded the White Rose Resistance in 2022. This is the fastest growing pro-life ministry in America. He launched the 1916 project last year and this book absolutely rocked me on my heels and, to go along with it, he has a vital documentary. That is just. It's unbelievable, guys. It's an awakening to the church and the role that we play today against this cultural war. So he's a young guy, fights for the pre-born. He's all about just sharing information and knowledge. He's a he's a breadth of knowledge.

Chris Grainger: 2:36

First and foremost, this episode is different. We didn't put ads. I didn't think it was appropriate to stop him, so I just I let him go. Okay, I didn't have a lightning round at the end. We went for like an hour and 15 minutes and I said you know what? Let's just keep this one on the topic that matters. So you'll notice a little bit of a format change, but I encourage you to lean in, to listen up, because Seth is getting ready to drop some incredible knowledge bombs that hopefully, will equip you to start fighting back against the evil that is surrounding us everywhere we turn. So, guys, sit back and hopefully enjoy this conversation with my friend, seth Gruber. Seth, welcome to the Lion man. How are you doing today?

Seth Gruber: 3:25

Good Chris. Hey man, Love the show, Love the branding. We use the lion branding and some of our stuff too. In fact, I got this epic lion right here Kind of bad focus, but in my office. So I appreciate you, Chris, and thanks for your bold voice.

Chris Grainger: 3:40

Amen, brother, amen. Full disclosure. I found you. I was listening to Pastor Gary out of Cornerstone Chapel. Oh yeah, so I listened to him weekly. I just love his teachings. I had a bunch of pastors I listen to. He's one of them.

Seth Gruber: 3:54

Gary's great.

Chris Grainger: 3:54

He had this guy named Seth on. I was like what is this? I almost skipped it. I was like I don't know he's not preaching. But then I listened. I was like bro, this is legit, so hats off.

Seth Gruber: 4:03

That's how I sound morning just recently.

Chris Grainger: 4:14

It was a conversation I think you were teaching, but I don't know if it was a sermon. He was on stage too, because I listened to the audio podcast yeah, yeah, yeah.

Seth Gruber: 4:19

Yeah, that was January, the day before our annual Life or Death Con conference in DC and two days before the National March for Life.

Chris Grainger: 4:28

And so we actually brought.

Seth Gruber: 4:29

Pastor Gary Hamrick to my conference and he's been a warrior for a long time in the IRS Hate him. They've tried to come after his church because of how bold he is on the issues.

Chris Grainger: 4:38

Yeah, yeah, that's kind of why I like him. Yeah, that's awesome. I've leaned in because as he gets going, I'm like all right, let's go. So I found out about you in 1916, brother. I was like all right, we got to make this happen. So I'm super pumped and before we get into it, I always like to start a little light. What's?

Seth Gruber: 4:59

something fun about you, Seth, that maybe not many people know about. Oh gosh, let's see. Well, I used to actually travel and play competitive spike ball.

Chris Grainger: 5:10

Really yeah, that's a thing, huh yeah. Competitive spike ball Really yeah, that's a thing, huh.

Seth Gruber: 5:14

Yeah, spike balls, people have seen that round net that sits a foot above the ground with a little ball.

Seth Gruber: 5:21

It's like if volleyball and four square had a baby. So during college and fresh out of college, I actually was nationally ranked. We traveled around the place. This was right when spike ball was taken off and ESPN was starting to show. We traveled around the place. This was right when Spikeball was taken off and ESPN was starting to show the games, the competitions, and it was kind of a weird thing. People some of my staff still don't believe me. They're like demand to see pictures.

Chris Grainger: 5:44

Do you still play now?

Seth Gruber: 5:47

Every once in a while. We moved to the Midwest from California a while back to be closer to the wife's family, and so now there's not a culture of California beach fit people that like to play very exhausting beach games. So no, sadly I don't play much anymore. I just buy guns and travel and speak.

Chris Grainger: 6:13

That's awesome, that's awesome. Well, just keep that in mind. If we ever run together, I'm not going to play you against Spikeball because I'll get destroyed. Anyway, well, man, I tell you what I get pitched. A lot of books, a lot of authors Ran across this one 1916 Project16 project, but this book, so this past weekend I just I just pounded through it. I always try to read, oh gosh, and. But we were, I was on a trip in two days yeah, bro, but it was.

Chris Grainger: 6:42

I was on a trip with my wife that's exhausting well, we were at the beach with our kids and I and I told my wife I was ever, ever. I felt like every 10 minutes I'm like you're not gonna believe this and like you're not gonna believe this. And then I said you're not gonna believe this and I kept going through this. So now she's, she's, she's reading it next, because I just had so many like you got to be freaking, kidding me moments, right, yeah, when my chief of staff finished my book, he said he told me.

Seth Gruber: 7:07

He said I feel like I understand why Seth is always pissed off all the time now about something. And for those listening it's not exhausting because it's long. It's not a particularly long book. It's exhausting because of how heavy the material is and the things you learn. I'm pretty shocked that you did it in two days.

Chris Grainger: 7:25

Yeah, Well, I mean part of it's like to serve you well, Like I want to make sure I get through it, but two, it's just I couldn't keep. It was like one thread led to the next thread and it's like, wow, where is this going?

Seth Gruber: 7:35

Yeah.

Chris Grainger: 7:36

And I'm just curious, so, like what's obviously I know from the book, but just share with the, with the listeners out there, what sparked you to even dive into a topic this heavy, to this level. I mean the research. I can only imagine how long it took you to pull this together, this level I mean the research.

Seth Gruber: 7:52

I can only imagine how long it took you to pull this together. Yeah, well, so I mean, bro, I've been in the pro-life fight and space for many years. My mother ran a pregnancy resource center in the late 1980s in los angeles county. So that's one of those wonderful centers that just loves on moms and and dads but often it's you know, the deadbeat dad's not in the picture. That's why the moms go into a pregnancy center for help and assistance and classes, because the dad's a deadbeat and they just help moms choose life and they walk alongside them. But there weren't very many of these in America. There's probably been 80% more growth in pregnancy centers from the mid-1980s to today. Actually there's about estimates are 2,700 to 3,000 pregnancy centers from the mid 1980s to today. Actually there's about estimates are 2700 to 3000 pregnancy centers in America. And so this was the late 1980s in Los Angeles, of all places, and my mother had the heart for the unborn. And then I was born in 91. My mom homeschooled me and my sisters but we remained involved in pro-life stuff and then I was homeschooled high school.

Seth Gruber: 8:53

I go to public high school and I do my senior project on abortion and my high school tells me, public high school. They tell me I can't pick the topic of abortion. So I threatened to sue them for viewpoint discrimination. They didn't know that they had a homeschooler on their hands, memorized the entire Declaration of Independence and the entire preamble of the Constitution by the time I was 11. And so they backed off and I did whatever I wanted to do. I did my topic of abortion for my senior project and I volunteered at a pro-life ministry in Orange County because you had to do fieldwork, volunteer hours.

Seth Gruber: 9:26

Like I don't know if they still do this because of all the gay porn and in the schools, schools in the sex set and all the reduction in standards. You know what I mean, but at least I was that last generation of high school students that had like a semi-normal high school experience. Like you could be friends with people on the left if you were conservative and they didn't want to throw you in a bernie sanders like gulag. You know what I mean. Like I, I like I graduated high school in 2010 and anyone listening to this who's, I would say, is like early 30s to 40s, kind of knows that.

Seth Gruber: 9:56

Like it wasn't shortly after that where so much of the political division began on almost every topic where it's like you were supposed to hate people who had a differing opinion and and and all the crt and the porn and the schools and all this insanity, and so I kind of was able to escape that. But I had friends who disagreed with me and I realized, as a pro-life kid raised in the church with a mom who ran a pregnancy center, I didn't have very good answers to a lot of my pro-choice friends and I was convicted by that. I was 18 at the time and I was like man like this should be like second nature to me and so I just I did the deep dive and the organization I volunteered at they had me. Actually their job for me was to scan 200 images of first trimester mutilated, emaciated, aborted baby photos on a high quality scanner and categorize them in their database for use in their educational projects to show people what abortion looks like.

Seth Gruber: 10:51

Right. So for the Christian it's pretty simple. Ephesians 5.11 have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. That's all they were doing. They're saying if abortion is such a great idea, here's what it looks like.

Chris Grainger: 11:01

Right.

Seth Gruber: 11:02

Here's what health care looks like. But I had never seen those images before, chris, and at 18 years old, christian home, christian parents, mom who ran a pregnancy center, I had never even seen what abortion did to little babies. And these were all first trimester, emaciated, mutilated, aborted baby corpses. So that was a turning point in my life because I was like, oh my gosh, like this is happening, you know, 3000 times a day or something in America. So that's the background as to why I care so much about it. The other answer to your question is well, why don't you listener? That's the other answer. It's like don't ask me why I'm so passionate about this. It's a flipping genocide. I mean like I have a shirt right now saying you know, abortion kills 200,000 babies every day. Now, that's worldwide. Of course that's worldwide numbers, not American numbers, but that's roughly the estimate. Like worldwide, if I'm remembering my numbers, since 1980, there's been over one and a half billion babies killed through abortion worldwide. If that's not a genocide, I don't know what is. And, of course, the commonality of all forms of genocide, by the way, of course, are the denial of the personhood status of your victims. They're not actually persons. They're not actually persons, they're not actually people, and that's exactly what Roe versus Wade said in 1973, actually it said that the term person is used in the Constitution does not include the unborn. And so that's my background, and then fast track, skip a bunch of stuff. I launched the White Rose Resistance right after the overturning of Roe versus Wade. We're three years old now. We're the fastest growing pro-life organization in the country.

Seth Gruber: 12:36

The book you're talking about is also a film the 1916 Project. More people have probably seen the film than read the book. It'll break your heart and boil your blood. It's beautiful aesthetically, and any church can host a screening of the film by going to the 1916projectcom. Any church in the world can host a screening of the film by going to the1916projectcom. Any church in the world can host a screening at their church for their people by going to the1916projectcom, and the DVDs are available for sale now on our website as well, the1916projectcom. And hopefully, by the time this comes out on your show, we'll have announced where the film is streaming online streaming, because we're very close to our distribution deal for where that will be streaming. And so this was screened in over a thousand churches between middle of June 2024 and the end of 2024. Some people think it probably helped stop the Florida abortion amendment. Actually, because hundreds of churches in Florida screened it in the lead up to the DeSantis' and the pro-life fight against the abortion amendment, and we barely won, thank God.

Seth Gruber: 13:39

So then something crazy happened, chris. In the somewhat fiery, mostly peaceful summer of love of 2020, as some people like to call it, as every major Democrat, blue run city was on fire because of George Floyd and BLM and all this insanity. And you guys will remember, if you're culture people like me and Chris, you'll remember that you know BLM and the entire liberal establishment or left wing academic revolutionaries. They all mobilized and went after any kind of corporation, company, university institution, privately owned business that they said or argued had a history of racism. Do you remember this? It was do the work, reckon with the past. Silence is violence. That's what they said. And white people, you need to shut up and listen to black voices. And we don't care if you, you know, were raised by a black mom or whatever. It doesn't matter. You're white, so shut up, right. And this was the whole thing of 2020. And so, like any family owned business, it's turned into this massive corporation or company if there was a history of racism in your company, which is true in a lot of American history, of course I'm not saying none of that's real. Then they were canceled if they didn't do every single little thing that the left demanded. They do. Bring in Ibram X, kendi or Robin DiAngelo and pay them $50,000 to give an anti-racism talk to all of your employees. Right, Hire more black people just because of their melanin, not because they're more qualified. Ok, we remember all of this. Ok, that's why Aunt Jemima got canceled, right, if you, if you liked Aunt Jemima syrup. Now you're a racist, right, ok. So in all of this heated environment, guess what happened, guys? The left went after Planned Parenthood, that's right. Blm, black Lives Matter and the left-wing wild kooky weirdos and Antifa. They went after Planned Parenthood because the revolution always eats its own and they said hey, your founder, margaret Sanger, she was a racist and a eugenicist Dude.

Seth Gruber: 15:55

I was like front row seats. Give me my VIP tickets. Extra large popcorn, lots of butter, extra large Dr Pepper, I'm here for it all. This is the most hilarious form of entertainment. I love it and maybe it's a little bit sinful of me. Maybe I shouldn't enjoy watching the revolution eat itself quite so much. But I'll be honest with you, chris, I was really enjoying it. I was like you idiots should have been listening to Pat Buchanan, okay, and you should have been listening to Bill Buckley, and you should have been listening to Glenn Beck and you should have been listening to Rush Limbaugh. And now the snake is eating itself and it's hilarious.

Seth Gruber: 16:28

And so, of course, you have to remember these aren't pro-life people attacking Planned Parenthood, chris. These are pro-abortion people. Blm is pro-abortion, the organization and the movement, and they're attacking pro-abortion people, planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the world and one of the best-funded 501c3s in human history. Because they're saying you haven't reckoned with your history of racism and your founder, who was a racist, eugenicist pile of poop. And so guess what happens? The director of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York comes out, karen Seltzer, and she says you're right. Basically, she goes Margaret Sanger was a racist and a eugenicist and we're not making excuses for her anymore, which is a strange thing to say. So you're saying that you're fine with it now I don't know what that statement even means. Right? And they took her name off of their mega flagship Planned Parenthood clinic in New York, which, by the way, thanks to Trump, cutting a decent amount of funding to Planned Parenthood. That clinic's now closed. Planned Parenthood can't afford to operate it anymore. Really decent amount of funding to Planned.

Seth Gruber: 17:31

Parenthood that clinic's now closed. Planned Parenthood can't afford to operate it anymore, really, but we filmed outside of it for my film, the 1960 Project of 2023. And we opened the film and book with this story of BLM everything's racist. So the left attacks Planned Parenthood, the left attacks Planned Parenthood and then Planned Parenthood goes you're right, she is a racist. And so they take her name off of their building. They renamed the building New York City. On the corner right there where that abortion center is, it was called the Margaret Sanger Square. So New York City had named the square after her. Planned Parenthood had named the building after her and they gave out the Margaret Sanger Award every year, and folks like Nancy Pelosi have received that. And now they don't give out the Margaret Sanger Award anymore. They renamed the building and the city took down the sign that called that the Margaret Sanger Square.

Seth Gruber: 18:15

So I'm watching all this unfold in 2020, chris, and I'm like yo, if there's so much rotten history here that even Planned Parenthood has to acknowledge it and start doing cleanup. That was their form of tearing down the statues, right, they're basically tearing down their own founder statues. I'm like no, you can't get away with it that easily. You can't just say, yeah, our founder was sort of a racist, eugenicist pile of human vermin, but we took her name off the building. Kay, now leave us alone. No, no, no. You're not going to get away with that easily, and I decided I'm going to blow the freaking top off of the entire history of who you are, what you came from, what the seed was, what the beliefs and ideologies were when you were founded, who your board members were, who your funders were, who your founders were, where you had your centers, where you had your clinics, what kind of initiatives and projects you were launching, and what was the proposals in those projects. To tell the whole public what the goal of that was. Why was your founding board member invited by Hitler and the Nazis to visit the Third Reich in 1939? We're going to blow the top off of this entire thing. And so that's what we did.

Seth Gruber: 19:22

And so we made a film and a movie about it. It's been wildly successful. In fact, we had organizations calling us, like Focus on the Family going. How did you do this? How did you get this film into this many churches? Teach us how we can do this. Sure, and so we're working on our second film now, but the film is still screening all around the country you can see the screening schedule at the website the1916projectcom and I would challenge any one of your listeners to challenge their pastor to host a screening of this at their church and to begin educating and informing their people about these ideas. Because my contention is this Chris Planned Parenthood and its founder, margaret Sanger. She's probably the most successful leftist, secular moral revolutionary of the 20th century. And how could I say that? Because of her impact. I'm arguing that her impact on our current insane, upside down, kooky, perverted, pedophilic, trans insanity, baby killing culture is greater than any other revolutionary of the entire 20th century, and I think once you read this book, you'll agree with me.

Chris Grainger: 20:27

I've got something big to share. We're making a major shift because we know the battle is real and it's time more men had access to the support they need. For too long, guys have been trying to carry the weight alone pressure at work, tension at home, wounds from the past in a world that demands strength but offers no place to rest. We see it, We've lived it, and that's exactly why we built our community. It's a stronghold, a place where warriors can find rest, truth and a band of brothers standing beside them. And starting now, we're making it easier than ever to step in. We've lowered the barrier to just $15.99 a month. That means, for less than the cost of a drive-thru lunch, you can join a brotherhood that's centered on Christ and built for growth. Inside you'll find access to our daily spiritual kickoffs every Monday through Friday, our Lion Lunches, our Bible Studies, our Friday Forge Gatherings all that and so much more.

Chris Grainger: 21:20

Every man needs a stronghold and you don't have to fight alone. If you've been waiting for the right time to jump in, this is it. Go to thelionwithinus and join the community and see for yourself what happens when iron truly sharpens iron a hundred percent. I'm super curious because so much of the book was a history lesson, so I was. This. I feel like how did you find some of these granular details? Were they open, just public knowledge that just people just had suppressed and just put to the side? Or did you have to do a ton of digging to get to this granular level of insight that you share here?

Seth Gruber: 21:57

Yeah, it's a little bit of both, but I would be remiss if I did not credit a lot of the initial research to my now mentor, dr George Grant. I believe he's the best kept secret in Christendom today. He's like some ancient from another era. He's almost like a polymath or something, and he wrote a book in 1989 called Grand Illusions the legacy of Planned Parenthood the legacy of Planned Parenthood Grand Illusions. It was the best-selling book in the pro-life category for years, maybe decades, and he was everyone's saying like Seth, how do you know all this stuff? Where'd you get all this from? This is bombshell. Well, a lot of it's not bombshell actually. Dr Grant did that work in the late 80s and everyone was telling him that at the time.

Seth Gruber: 22:54

But we forget our history, right, and so what I wanted to do with the film and the book was to tell Americans, particularly American Christians, like you're not stupid. It's not that you forgot this history, it's that it was hidden from you. There has been an attempt, chris was hidden from you. There has been an attempt, chris, to sort of refine the rougher edges of the history of secularism or liberalism in America, to bury certain really concerning details and aspects of that revolution, and I'm treating it as one thing, obviously, like when I refer to the secular moral revolution, like that entails no-fault divorce laws, the redefinition of marriage, gender identity, john Money, alfred Kinsey, you know Freud.

Seth Gruber: 23:36

Okay, like Margaret Sanger, I'm treating it as one thing, because it is one thing. They're all on the same team. They all have the same underlying ideologies and worldviews. They all want the same things. They all walk in lockstep together when any of their core pagan sacraments are compromised. So the history of that movement and revolution, the more disturbing, disgusting aspects of it, have been hidden and you'll notice this with Margaret Sanger's varying biographies over the years. Okay, like the early treatments of Sanger and her organization from, let's say, the 1930s and 40s, 50s even, are pretty open about those very concerning aspects in history of who she was, what she wanted, what she believed and what her organization was doing. But over the years you watch the treatment of Sanger over the decades become more and more nuanced, more and more refined and more and more curated and some of those bombshell, like the things that you were reading in my book, chris, where you're going what the heck.

Seth Gruber: 24:34

A lot of that stuff gets slowly edited out and removed from the biographies of Planned Parenthood and Sanger over the decades. So there has been an attempt to whitewash the witch of the 20th century, and so the subtitle of my book is the Lying, the Witch and the war we're in yeah, yeah, I love a little shout out to cs lewis there, yeah, you got it I love it.

Chris Grainger: 24:56

Love it and I'm curious, kind of pulling back something you said at the very beginning that kind of bothered me. It's not bothering me, but I resonate with you. Grew up in a christian home. Your mother was very pro-life you you were sound like you grew up in church. You had a drug problem, right you? When the church was open, they drug you there no matter what.

Seth Gruber: 25:13

So it sounds like you were always there.

Chris Grainger: 25:16

Yet you didn't have any teaching from the pulpit on this area and, as someone who follows a lot of pastors, Pastor Gary is an exception. I'd say Pastor Joby is another exception. He's very pro-life, very pro-life from the stage from the pulpit. Yeah, pastor Joby, martin, yeah, he's been on the show three times oh yeah, four times.

Seth Gruber: 25:35

I was on a phone call with him a few months ago. Good guy, awesome guy.

Chris Grainger: 25:38

Awesome guy but outside of these few couple like they're little spots you don't hear about it on a church pew on a Sunday morning.

Seth Gruber: 25:58

And I'm just curious like why do you think that's such a gap for pastors to touch on this topic? Oh gosh, yeah. I try to answer that question to some extent in a couple chapters in my book, one chapter six Woke as Wolves, which is quite. I mean yikes when you learn about Rick Warren.

Chris Grainger: 26:12

Russellren russell moore of the southern baptist convention and now the editor-in-chief of christianity today of tim keller when you said officially when I got to tim keller chapter on the beach, I had to hand it.

Seth Gruber: 26:24

I'm like whoa, whoa, whoa, and it's hard for people to go.

Seth Gruber: 26:26

I'm like oh, here we go yeah, so I try to answer those questions. Which is like and that's the question most podcasters and good folks like you have for me is like why is the church not speaking on these issues? Why are they so silent? Why, even after 2020 and five years hence, are the pulpits still so silent? How is this not obviously a biblical and theological issues? And the answer is probably four or five or sixfold, and we probably don't have time to get into all of it.

Seth Gruber: 26:56

But I'm struck from a line from CS Lewis in the Great Divorce, and the character is speaking to this sort of academic who's, you know, very focused on having all the right ideas and questioning everything and just kind of the pursuit of intellect for its own sake, right, and not for the sake of truth, right, right and not for the sake of truth, right. And in the great, everyone should go read the Great Divorce, of course. But you know you have the guy traveling through and then he's coming into contact with these people who you know they don't want to be taken up to heaven and they're disembodied. And this guy says, he says we simply found ourselves in contact with a certain current of ideas and we jumped into it because it seemed modern and successful. You know, we started automatically writing the kind of essays that got good marks and saying the kinds of things that won applause. We were afraid of a breach with the spirit of the age, afraid of ridicule, allowing ourselves to drift unresisting, accepting every half-conscious solicitation from our desires. We reached a point where we no longer believed the truth or the faith, and that line always struck me as just, powerfully explanatory as to how the church got to this moment.

Seth Gruber: 28:33

I think at some point in the early 20th century, chris, perhaps during the fundamentalist modernist split, is probably the best place to place this split, if you will, or this new way for the church to engage the culture. That, by the way, is totally foreign to the history of Christendom, totally foreign to the history of the church, actually, over 1900 years. It's probably somewhere around the fundamentalist modernist split, right where the fundamentalists are, you know, trying to protect the purity of Christian doctrine from every new wave of heresy attacking the church, and so they focus. This is maybe where we get like just preach the gospel. They focus on, like we need to preach the truth of the scriptures, verse by verse uh, theological purity, christian doctrine, undefiled, against these waves of heresy and these progressive attacks against christian orthodoxy.

Seth Gruber: 29:21

But they completely pull back from the culture war. They completely pull back from cultural and political issues. And then the modernists just become your leftists, right, but your modernists just become your leftists right, but your modernists just become your Jim Wallaces like Sojourners Magazine, if anyone knows who. That is total idiots. They're actually apostates, right, but the modernists just begin to create a hip, sexy, relevant Christianity. That's actually just apostate, because they want to get the applause of the world right and they want to be like the world.

Seth Gruber: 29:51

But because the fundamentalists weren't offering any substantive rebuke to what was happening, or Christian understanding, or worldview application of what your faith means in this kind of culture and how should Christians stand, we get the early seeds of this new sort of cultural engagement within the church that says you know what the way to end abortion is, to save souls? Right, because people are people, are going to do evil things. But if they're, if they meet jesus and their hearts change, then maybe they'll stop doing these wicked things. In fact, tim keller was famous for this sort of engagement to the culture, and I'll give you an example that I actually use in the book.

Seth Gruber: 30:33

By the way, but, I think the reason I'm going to do it is I think it's a perfect screenshot and it's sort of indicative of how the church today chooses to engage the culture, and I'm going to say it's all stupid nonsense, basically. So Tim Keller has this essay from the late 90s, I think, in Christianity Today. This will be hard for some people who love Tim Keller. Listen, I've got some Tim Keller books on my shelf. I've benefited from them. I'm open to rereading them. Okay, I think God used him in many ways, but I think he did a ton of damage in the last 10 or 15 years of his life. I think no one moved the Overton window further left in American evangelicalism than Tim Keller actually is what I think. And so he writes this essay and he tells his story. By the way, good luck finding a Tim Keller sermon where he calls abortion child sacrifice to bail or Moloch. Find me a sermon where Tim Keller preached against abortion from the pulpit. I don't mean in some podcast when he was asked are you pro-life? Okay, that's ridiculous. I mean as the shepherd, okay, of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. Find me a Tim Keller sermon where he preached boldly against abortion. I have not been able to find it in years of searching. Okay, that should be your first warning sign, by the way. And he writes this essay and he says you know, this woman you know came to our church one day and she was an ACLU attorney, right, aclu, radical pro-abortion. By the way, guess what? In Margaret Sanger's early gatherings, chris in Greenwich Village, new York City, where they were, you know, her friend, mabel Dodge, was holding court in these French-style salons where they would have talks about sex and how to overtake the world. And guess who was some of those early gatherings with the founder of Planned Parenthood, roger Baldwin, the co-founder of ACLU. So they were plotting this stuff.

Seth Gruber: 32:17

You're not a conspiracy theorist or a QAnon Alex Jones weirdo listener. You're not that, if you think. You know what? Maybe they hatched a plan for how to destroy Western civilization and maybe it was taught to professors who then took on tenured positions at American universities to shape the minds of the next generation. And maybe that strategy of cultural degradation, of tearing down the fruits of Christendom and replacing it with neo-pagan revivalism, maybe that was actually hatched long ago and it was taught to generations of young people who then lived out those premises in their life. You're not a QAnon weird theorist. If you believe that, that what has happened, okay, and we can get more into that if you'd like. And so, anyways, no shocker there.

Seth Gruber: 32:55

The ACLU has been radically progressive pro-abortion from basically its inception. And so this ACLU attorney starts attending Tim Keller's church, right, tim Keller, who was called at one point the CS Lewis of the 21st century. He was dubbed, and she's pro-abortion, and he tells this story in his Christianity Today article. And she ends up getting saved, praise God, right, and she comes, she gets involved in, I think, a Kathy Keller Bible study and she ends up coming to Pastor Tim Keller one Sunday and says Pastor Tim, is abortion wrong? Because I'm starting to think, maybe it is. Because I'm starting to think maybe it is. And Pastor Tim which, by the way, the fact that she didn't know the answer to that question is another indictment on the ministry and preaching of Tim Keller. If she had been going there for years and gotten saved, why had she never heard anything about the slaughter of children in the womb in the name of radical feminism? The fact that she had to ask the senior pastor that at all is an indictment on Pastor Tim Keller's ministry and preaching, by the way.

Seth Gruber: 33:52

So, okay, anyways, get back to my story. So he says, yes, it is wrong. Okay, he says it's wrong and she goes. Okay, yeah, and she goes. I just want to tell you, pastor Tim, that had I seen any references to the pro-life movement and the unborn child when I began attending Redeemer Presbyterian Church, I would have never come back. But if abortion's wrong, she tells Pastor Tim, you should certainly say it's wrong, but I'm glad about the order in which you did it, meaning I'm glad that you never challenged people who are visiting or your own believers. Like I have to wonder how many believers at Redeemer Presbyterian Church before pastor Tim passed. I have to wonder how many of them were pro-abortion and voting for pro-abortion Democrats. Why? Because pastor Tim was a registered Democrat in the state of New York. Pastor Tim Keller was, but, by the way, that's proof, like I can show you that. Okay, um, and so I'm wondering how many of his congregants are voting for Democrat politicians who run on the platform of child sacrifice, because he never disciples his people from the pulpit on these matters.

Seth Gruber: 34:58

And so Pastor Tim uses this conversation with this ACLU attorney who got saved at his church as an example. I'm not ripping this story out of the context of his article. If your listeners would like to go find it. He uses that as a screenshot or an application or an example as to why we should not preach moral truths before elevating Christ. He uses this as an example as to say we shouldn't be like saying you shall do this and you shall not do this. Right Meaning what Like don't kill babies, rather we should be preaching Christ. Right, meaning what Like don't kill babies, rather we should be preaching Christ right, and then, when people get saved, then maybe they'll stop killing their children, and so maybe that's how we'll disciple the nations.

Seth Gruber: 35:41

Of course, I always wanted to ask Pastor Tim the question did you apply that same evangelistic cultural engagement model to racism? And of course, the answer is no. The answer is no, chris, and I give that example in the book right, he has this sermon from 2020, or a Facebook post or something, and he says that to not speak is to speak, that to not vote is to vote, so I'm not going to vote for or against slavery and he says those people were essentially casting a vote for the status quo, which was protecting slavery by their decision to not vote. So he calls them morally culpable and insinuates that they were sinners, that it was sin to not vote against slavery, but then he tells his own congregation through his writing, through this Facebook post, that you have spiritual license to vote for the same party that believes a different class of human beings aren't persons today, because that's just good, wise, strategic, evangelistic engagement with the culture, which just goes to show you that he doesn't have the same burden for the lives of the unborn who are being slaughtered in the name of radical feminism that he allegedly did for the lives of those being defined as non-persons by the Democrat party and treated as property. Okay, so like that, that's sort of a screenshot or an example to answer your question.

Seth Gruber: 37:07

Like why does the church not speak boldly on these issues? Where are the pastors right? Why do we even have the phrase the pro-life movement? That's a good question to ask, because do you want to know what the pro-life movement used to go by another name, chris, christendom, christendom. Before there was a pro-life movement before 1973, it was the local church standing against infanticide, the sexual mutilation of children, the raping of little boys, the sexual abuse of women and the killing of babies in the womb. Yes, abortion has been mainstreamed and culturally normalized in the West in a way that we've never seen before in history, but abortion has always been around. There are early church fathers from the second, third and fourth century publicly decrying abortions and calling for the criminalization of all involved in the killing of a baby in the womb.

Seth Gruber: 37:56

Okay, the church has always stood against abortion and infanticide, and they were involved in rescuing infants abandoned to die outside of Roman infanticide walls because they were deemed unfit or the wrong gender or they had a cleft lip. And early Christians would rest. They set up what were called life watches. It was basically the first iteration of sidewalk counseling. Well, maybe it was actually the Hebrew midwives and the rescuing of Moses, maybe it was that right, here's a baby we're going to kill, we're going to rescue them. But basically, first century Christians set up life watches outside of the perimeter of the old Roman infanticide walls where infants were abandoned to die from exposure to the weather or from animals eating them alive. And early Christians would set up believers to watch for when Romans would abandon their infants and then they'd go rescue them, raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord and adopt them into a Christian family.

Seth Gruber: 38:48

So, like before, there was a pro-life movement. This was what marked the early church. This is what marked the church for 1900 years was their opposition to the same sorts of evils that today, bro, we can't even get most pastors to preach against from the pulpit, much less have a ministry at your church where you mobilize believers to go, stand outside of abortion centers and say baby's doomed to die, or tell your people you have an obligation to vote for the pro-life candidate and you have an obligation to know who you're voting for and to weed out rhino Republicans who run on the platform of protecting the unborn but then betray the unborn when it really matters. You have an obligation to vote in such a way that would end the slaughter of children. How many pastors will say that from the pulpit?

Seth Gruber: 39:29

And I'm telling you that that's not asking for much. What would be asking for much would be asking the church to reclaim their spiritual mantle of Christian resistance, which is that the local church would be the ones outside of abortion centers. They would be the ones running men in their church for the legislature to ban abortion. That would be the William Wilberforce model of cultural engagement. That would be what marked the church. And so, again, there's many answers to that question, but I think it's the idol of cultural respectability. To sum it all up, I think that Pastor Tim's pathetic excuse for why he doesn't preach moral truth or morality from the pulpit, because that's legalism, that's lifting up moral truth before elevating Christ. I think the real reason he did that and why he defended that is because he had a church in New York City, one of the most leftist, progressive cities in the entire country.

Seth Gruber: 40:23

And so it would have been very damaging to his tithing numbers to preach like that in the city where Margaret Sanger hatched her agenda.

Chris Grainger: 40:38

We're making a big change that I think you're really going to enjoy. I spent a lot of time thinking about our spiritual kickoffs and, honestly, I love doing them each week so much so we started doing them live every Monday through Friday inside our exclusive platform. And here's the best part we decided to give full access completely free, so now you can join our daily spiritual kickoff space at no cost. Every day, we go live to read the word, to encourage each other and find simple and powerful ways to apply God's truth to our lives. You'll even have the chance to engage with me directly, and if you missed a live stream, don't worry, the videos are posted the same day so you can catch up whenever it works for you.

Chris Grainger: 41:27

This is exclusive behind-the-scenes content that is not available anywhere else, and now we've removed every excuse. So if you're ready to get started, head over to the lion withinus and grab your free access today. Let's grow together. And how much of this always comes back, says to follow the dollar. I mean, I feel like so much of it becomes there as well.

Seth Gruber: 41:51

Idol of mammon, yeah, yep. So what I'm saying, I guess, brother, is that the church has two options, two archetypes of biblical engagement of the culture Lot or Gideon. So Lot, when that culture of death comes to the front door of the righteous. So that culture of death, right, that Sodom culture isn't just targeting the city, it's targeting now the church. Right, because Lot is called righteous, so he might be the one remnant in Sodom which is sort of damning with faint praise, I guess.

Seth Gruber: 42:29

And the mob comes to his door and says bring out those angel guests you have in there. Because they say well, we actually, we want to do angel rape on the sidewalk right here outside of your porch, lot, we want to. We like angel rape. By the way, that's what's happening in that scene, listener, if you're offended by that, you shouldn't listen to this podcast. That's in the Bible. And then Lot says hey, I've got some daughters in the back, let me go. Get my daughters and you can rape them instead. Get my daughters and you can rape them instead.

Seth Gruber: 43:00

So when the sexualized mob culture of death comes now to the Christian family, rather than standing as a bulwark between evil and the next generation and saying you're going to have to go through me first. He hands over the next generation and his own posterity on a silver platter to the demonically inspired culture of death and says here you go, have your way with them. Just remember, invite me to your parties. And how do I know this? Because you know, when Lot walks out into his front porch, chris, when they say, bring out the angels so we can rape them, the first thing he says is not, I hear my daughters. The first thing he says is my dear friends hi, that's the. Depending on the version of the it's. It's my brothers and sisters or dear friends.

Seth Gruber: 43:38

Um, let me just say something, chris, I don't know about your listeners but, speaking for me personally, I generally don't refer to people that want to bang angels on the sidewalk as my brothers and my sisters. That's sort of a personal conviction for me. You do, you, I guess, listeners of the lion within, but I generally don't refer to those people as my dear friends. I don't have a ton of dear friends that like angel rape on the public sidewalk, shocker, believe it or not. They're not your brothers and sisters, lot, they're not. And I'm not calling for like sort of like a nastiness or a hatred of the unbeliever. Like the Bible says, such were some of you.

Seth Gruber: 44:11

My point, chris, is that here's a dude Lot who can't even differentiate anymore between who are his brothers and who are his sisters. So how will he know to whom to preach this gospel of salvation in the first place? The culture of Sodom is so crept into Lot's heart that he can't even differentiate anymore between who are his brothers and sisters. Lot was the Christian influencer of his day. It says that he was positioned at the city gates to determine the flow of traffic and to decide who gets into the city or not. He would have been invited to all the right parties, bro. He would have been a politically elevated and influential individual in the city, kind of like Tim Keller, bro.

Seth Gruber: 44:48

I guess what I'm saying is that he would have been Rick Warren's plus one on the private jet to Klaus Schwab's World Economic Forum every year. And, by the way, rick Warren is invited to the World Economic Forum every year. Now Klaus Schwab's no longer the director. It's that guy with the weird eyeball who looks like another villain out of a Bond film, which is like, I think, just God's humor to tell us stay away from the World Economic Forum. There's a reason why all their CEOs look like a villain straight out of a Bond film, by the way, anyways. But like, why is? Why is Rick Warren invited to, to Klaus Schwab's event every year, chris, and not Gary Hamrick or Jack Hibbs, I guess, is what I'm asking. Why? Because the former is a hireling and the latter can't be bought. That's the spirit of lot. That's what represents the modern day churches, evangelistic, strategic model of cultural engagement, and it's a pile of excrement. It's the idol of cultural respectability. So, anyways, lot's wife becomes in death what he should have been in life a pillar of salt. But salt's supposed to preserve and conserve something.

Seth Gruber: 45:54

And if I've read the Bible and I've read the Old Testament, chris, I'm pretty sure correct me if I'm wrong here, but I feel like God's most colorful language. Can I say on your show when God's the most pissed off? I feel like it's when they're like having sex with everything and killing babies. I feel like that's when God's the most pissed. In the Old Testament, psalm 106 says you sacrificed your sons and daughters to demons, and the land is desecrated with blood, and so I give you over to be ruled by those who hate you. That's the end of Psalm 106, meaning I don't care anymore. Here are pagan hordes to rule you later. And why? He said because you sacrificed your sons and daughters. Okay, yeah.

Seth Gruber: 46:37

So what does God care the most about? Conserving and preserving? Children, the voiceless, young little babies Can't speak or defend themselves. Women, the weaker vessel. I feel like maybe that's what God cares the most about conserving and preserving. I thought that's what salt's supposed to do. Locke can't even conserve or preserve his own family or daughters, but offers them up as sex toys to the cultural mob so he can remain relevant. I'm saying that the modern day American church is right now in the process of offering up the next generation on a silver platter to the cultural demons so they can remain relevant and get the ties of their registered Democrats who attend their church that they refuse to call to repentance. That's one archetype and I think that represents most of the American church's cultural engagement.

Seth Gruber: 47:29

Or there's Gideon, who tears down all of the sex idols and all of the baby sacrifice idols and judges sex, burns it and lights it on fire, which is like not very tolerant, by the way. Uh, to burn down the midianites, um, gods, and then uh, like, like I guess like god likes the the scent of burning demon flesh, god tells him to chop up the asherah poles, light it on fire as a sacrifice to me. And then, when the Midianites wake up in the morning, they go what did you do? What did you? Where are our gods? And they knew that it was Gideon, which, by the way, is a total, epic sign of his character. The first thing they say is hey, jehoash, gideon's father. The first thing they say is your son, Gideon, did this.

Seth Gruber: 48:18

Like, don't you want to be the kind of man who, like, when you tear down all the demon baby sacrificial idols, the culture goes Dang it. It was probably Chris Granger. Like I'm telling you what they're not going to go dang it. It was probably Rick Warren or Russell Moore. Like, no, no, no, it's because they're writing sponsorship checks to Christianity Today so that they'll prop up theological liberalism from their magazine. Like, go read my friend Megan Basham's book Shepherds for Sale. Like, most of these Christian institutions are getting checks from left-wing pro-abortion billionaires, okay. Like the culture is not going to think it's them tearing down the idols. Like the first thing that goes it was stinking Gideon and they call for his head. Okay, but this is before Gideon's armies, before Gideon's 300s.

Seth Gruber: 49:01

Before God conquers the pagan hordes, he says deal with the idols in your own land first. Stop tolerating the sex idols of Asherah and the baby sacrifice idols of Baal. Tear it all down, then we'll talk. And Gideon does it. He tears it all down. That doesn't represent the spirit of the American church today. We're much more like Lot. And how does Lot's story story end, by the way? Um well, the kind of sexual idolatry that he tolerated in his city. He ends up imbibing in his own family. Isn't this the guy who later has sex with his own daughters? I'm saying there are consequences to tolerating these kinds of evils and doing nothing to stand against it, and it's time for the American church to wake up A hundred, 100% and that kind of is a great segue to the white rose resistance.

Chris Grainger: 49:51

I mean, I definitely when I read the 1.0, again, never got taught to me in my history classes and it was a history lesson there on the beach of what that was. And now, because there's probably guys listening, you know 45 minutes in they're like all right, I got to do something. So this White Rose Resistance is where it all is headed. So give us a little breakdown of what that looks like.

Seth Gruber: 50:14

Yeah, so yeah, there's a reason why I named the ministry the White Rose Resistance. I didn't come up with that title, I sort of adopted it from the first White Rose Resistance in Nazi Germany, and this was a collective of young christian students in their 20s. There was a professor involved, professor hubert, who I think was in his 40s or late 30s, but the rest of them were all kids in their 20s. They were christians by and large, most of them right, and they were horrified at what was happening. And this is one of the least known but most inspirational stories of like christian courage, christian resistance against the culture of death. Um of the 20th century, um. These people are national heroes in germany, but they're less known in the american church today. And I believe one of the ways that we get courage and inspiration for the future and for the fight before us now is to know the stories of the heroes who came before us. Sure, right, those who don't know their history, as Churchill said, are doomed to repeat it. Psalm 87, if I'm remembering correctly, psalm 83, says something like righteousness cannot be done in a land of forgetfulness, and so Francis Schaeffer once said the ignorance of the church is more dangerous for a culture than the decadence of the world Right. Hosea 4.6,. God says my people are being destroyed for lack of knowledge. Okay, so I just gave you like two or three Bible verses, gave you like two or three Bible verses.

Seth Gruber: 51:55

Jill Pohl in the Silver Chair, the penultimate Narnia book. She finds herself on Aslan's mountain after Eustace has fallen and been taken away to Narnia. And Aslan tells Jill Pohl you're going to go to Narnia and I have an expedition or a job for you. But to pull this off, to free the prince and break the spell and save the land, you need to remember the signs I'm going to give you. Remember them, repeat them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night and whenever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs. For when you lie down at night and when you wake in the middle of the night, and whenever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs. For when you go down into Narnia, the air will thicken and your mind will begin to fog, and if you don't repeat the signs, you'll forget them and you'll miss them. So remember, remember, remember.

Seth Gruber: 52:44

Forgetfulness and remembrance are perhaps the measuring rods of faithfulness in the Bible and reveal to us that there are only two kinds of people forgetful hearers and effectual doers. Righteousness cannot be done in a land of forgetfulness. We have forgotten who we are in the American church. We've forgotten the stories of the saints and heroes before us. We've forgotten why we have high holy days and Christian festivals to remember how God moved on that day, way back then, and to teach it to our children. And so we're lost at sea, without moorings being beaten about by every wave. Lost at sea without moorings being beaten about by every wave. This is just one attempt, my attempt to elevate one story to help the church remember who she is and what she's called to.

Seth Gruber: 53:39

And in 1942, a young 21-year-old named Sophie Scholl and the namesake of our third child, by the way is walking the sidewalk of Munich, germany, and she finds a leaflet, a pamphlet, on the ground and it says leaflets of the White Rose. And she starts reading this and it's explicitly condemning the crimes of the Nazis, asking good people to wake up. They said things like if you know, why do you not act? They said we are the White Rose resistance. We are your bad conscience and we will not leave you alone. And she's reading this leaflet and this is 1942, yo. So like people are already being murdered, okay, like the ashes of those the Germans defined as unfit and undesirable are already falling on the steeples of local churches whose pastors are more like Rick Warren than Gary Hamrick. I mean, this is late now in this fight. And Sophie's reading this leaflet and she thinks you know what this sounds a lot like my brother Hans. He talks like this at dinner all the time. It sounds like something he could have written. Well, come to find out.

Seth Gruber: 54:44

The White Rose Resistance had not only been co-founded, it was being run by none other than her older brother, hans, a 24-year-old who was just trying to protect his little sister. You know he knew how dangerous Christian resistance was to the Third Reich at this late hour and he didn't want his sister involved. But Sophie demanded to join and she became the youngest member and the only female of the White Rose Resistance. And she became the youngest member and the only female of the White Rose Resistance and for the rest of 1942, they would stay up late, writing, printing these illegal leaflets and shipping them to German homes. They would take trains in the middle of the night to major German cities and drop these off everywhere. They became graffiti artists and they would spray paint on the walls of German-owned buildings the words down with Hitler and the Nazis hated the White Rose Resistance. But they didn't know who was behind it. They would come and paint over it the next day. So in 1943, they take things to the next level.

Seth Gruber: 55:37

And on February 18th, 1943, so what are we now, 82 years? Um, hans and Sophie walk onto the campus at the university of Munich. Now, um, if you know anything about this era, it wasn't just the churches that had been co-opted by the Nazis, it was the universities as well. Sure, and during class time, when the halls were silent, hans and Sophie walked the halls of the University of Munich and they begin to drop off their anti-Nazi leaflets in the university, in the hallways, and right as the bell rings releasing class, sophie runs three stories or flights of stairs up to the third floor balcony and she throws a hundred leaflets three stories down to the atrium below. I mean, it's a pretty baller BA kind of act. Like you know, when you throw paper it goes everywhere, right, and the janitor actually caught Sophie in the act called the Gestapo and had Hans and Sophie arrested. This was February 18th 1943.

Seth Gruber: 56:42

They spend the next four days in prison being brutally interrogated and physically abused. I think Sophie's interrogation lasted for something like 13 or 14 hours. They refused to rat out or implicate any of their other friends, although Hans had tried to eat the last leaflet on him to bury evidence. But they found half of it. They matched it to the handwriting of a man named Christoph Probst, who was part of the White Rose Resistance that they did not want at the university that day because his wife was in the hospital recovering from childbirth Now for a daughter he'd never meet. They met, they arrested Christoph Probst hours later, on the same day, and the three of them were in prison in Stadelheim prison for four days, were in prison in Stadelheim prison for four days. Their bravery and courage and calm in the face of death even disturbed the prison guards, who ended up relaxing the rules to let Hans and Sophie meet with their parents in a side room right before being taken to the guillotine. That would be the chopping block.

Chris Grainger: 57:51

Because it was a trial with no, it was like they.

Seth Gruber: 57:53

It was well this is, yeah, this is, yeah, this is total kangaroo court. Yeah, I mean, you know there's a jury, but uh, the roland fryser, uh the the presiding judge, he's an interesting guy to history and that guy was a whack job. That guy was insane. He was one of hitler's favorites, I think, frazier um, so basically this guy just screams at the jury and tells them how to vote. I mean, it's a kangaroo court, right? Yeah, uh, during, actually during the court proceedings, this was pretty cool. Uh, I think hans and sophie's father broke into the courtroom, yeah during the proceedings right and as he was escorted away by the Nazis.

Seth Gruber: 58:26

He screamed out you will one day stand where they sit. Now you go. Whoa, meaning the judgment seat, the judgment seat. And Sophie and Hans refused to recant or apologize for any of their deeds, deeds. And in this meeting with her mother, right before she was beheaded, 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.

Seth Gruber: 59:01

Thanks to her prison cellmate Elsie Gebel, who later wrote a letter to Hans and Sophie's parents telling them every final moment of their daughter's life, we have some sense of where Sophie's mind and head was at and her final thinking and speaking. And allegedly towards the end of her life in this prison cell, sophie said how can we expect righteousness to prevail when there's hardly anyone willing to give themselves up individually to a righteous cause? And she looked out her cell window and she said such a fine sunny day and I have to go now, but what is my death matter if, through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action? I think she was sitting in that prison cell asking herself the question that many American Christians are asking today, chris, which is something like this what the heck is happening to my country and how did we get here? I think most good common sense, especially patriots or Christians post Fauci who I'm still waiting to be hung in the public square, I think are just saying like what is going on? How did this happen so quickly? Of course, the answer is it didn't happen so quickly. It happened gradually for decades and they're wondering how did we get here? How do we stop this? What's happening, mike? I think Sophie was asking those kind of questions as well. Where is the church? How did this happen?

Seth Gruber: 1:00:30

And she said the real damage this is a 21-year-old bro. The real damage is caused by all of those millions out there who just want to survive. You know, it's the honest men and women who just want to be left at peace, those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves, those with no sides and no causes, those who won't take measure of their own enemies, those for whom freedom, honor, truth and principles are just words, just literature. Those who live small die small. She said. It's the reductionistic approach to life. If you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the boogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too. You know those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe From what? Life is always on the edge of death. Narrow streets guess what lead to the same place as wide avenues and a little candle burns itself out, just like the flaming torch does. But I choose my own way to burn.

Seth Gruber: 1:02:11

Bro, who talks like that at 21? That sounds like gk chesterton or tolkien or cs lewis. That's a young woman with the lion of the tribe of judah roaring inside of her. The lion within, if you will, saying get off the battlefield, get off the bench, and you'll find strength in time of need and hope and rest for your souls and join the lion of the tribe of Judah on the battlefield who's already moving before you.

Seth Gruber: 1:02:39

That's the kind of hero that the church celebrates for caring more about obedience and faithfulness and righteousness and courage than accolades and attaboys and tax-exempt 501c3 write-offs. That's the kind of story to teach to your children. That's the kind of heritage and legacy to remember and celebrate and to try to claim for our own today. Their courage and their movement was so powerful that it caught the attention of a German pastor who was engaged in similar Christian resistance by the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was supposed to meet with Hans and was waiting for him in a coffee shop in Berlin, and Hans didn't show up for that meeting because he had been beheaded some days before and was waiting for him in a coffee shop in Berlin, and Hans didn't show up for that meeting because he had been beheaded some days before.

Seth Gruber: 1:03:40

This is just one story of Christian resistance and courage against the same kinds of ideas and the same kinds of evils and the same kinds of worldviews that not only brought us the Holocaust but have brought us eugenics, darwinism, obergefell, roe versus Wade, transgenderism and the sexual mutilation of the next generation.

Seth Gruber: 1:03:55

There's differences between some of those ideologies, but by and large they share the same fundamental core common denominators. The church begins to realize and reckon with these ideologies as fundamentally false religion, not as an alternative politics, but an alternative religion that sets itself up against the knowledge of God that this is man's attempt to create a Christ and a gospel and a world in their own image. Until the church begins to see that for what it is and to preach boldly against it and disciple the next generation to fulfill their cultural mandate in Genesis 1, then none of this insanity and evil is going to go away, and so we're rebuilding the White Roads. Resistance, chris, for this generation, against our silent but far more deadly holocaust of abortion, before it's too late. According to the executioner who murdered Sophie Sophie, yes, he was interviewed later Sophie's final words, with her head on the chopping block before the blade fell, was the sun still shines, and Hans' final words, like William Wallace, was freedom.

Seth Gruber: 1:05:08

And over the next few months they found the rest of their friends and they murdered them as well. So ended the White Rose resistance. Because no one listened to them.

Seth Gruber: 1:05:16

No one joined their movement and the church remained asleep at the wheel and Hitler's genocidal, maniacal Holocaust continued for another two and a half years. But we believe while rose blossoms may perish in the fall, bro, they reappear in the spring. And while all of the members of the White Rose Resistance were found and executed, their sacrifice has planted the good seeds of Christian resistance in the hearts of millions, whose actions keep alive the legacy of the White Rose. And your sacrifice, listener, will water the seeds of resistance. So one day, maybe we too can say the sun still shines, but perhaps spelled S-O-N.

Seth Gruber: 1:05:59

So the White Rose Resistance we are a digital media activism organization. We produce films, books, literature, activism tools, training videos, masterclasses, education. We have a White Rose app for all of our donors at $35 a month or more. We do a book club at $70 a month where we read books together, we talk about it live on Zoom with supporters from all around the world, and then we launch resistance chapters around the country.

Seth Gruber: 1:06:25

Some are full-time paid regional coordinators, some are volunteer resistance models, and we get the local church back engaged in the public square against these evils targeting the family before it's too late, but first and foremost that of abortion. Because if it's true that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, then it is equally true that the hand that wrecks the cradle ruins the world, and this is why abortion functions as sort of the sacrament of satan, or the sacrament of secularism, if you will. And that's what we're trying to get the local church to wake up and realize, and hopefully they won't wake up too late, because the church did wake up too late in nazi germany. They've woken up too late too many times before, and so we're living in this sort of season of the last stand. So the next film and book I'm working on are called the Last Stand. So that's who we are, that's what we do, and thanks for letting me share my heart, chris.

Chris Grainger: 1:07:24

Life can feel heavy and, too, we try to carry it alone. At the Lion Within Us, we build a Christ-centered community where you can go, connect, grow and be encouraged by brothers who get it. And now joining is easier than ever. We've lowered access to just $15.99 a month. Inside you'll unlock our daily spiritual kickoffs, our Bible studies, lion Lunches, friday Forge and, most importantly, a space to be real. Remember, every man needs a stronghold and you don't have to fight alone To get started. Visit thelionwithinus. We'd love to welcome you in. That's thelionwithinus. We'd love to welcome you in. That's the lionwithinus. I'll see you inside, man. This has been incredible. I mean just as a parting message. What would be one thing you hope the men listening remember the most from the conversation today Seth.

Seth Gruber: 1:08:22

Yeah, we're in this position because of men, and that's not to say that the feminazis aren't responsible for destroying the culture. I think the feminazis are responsible for destroying the culture. I've done whole shows on my podcast, the Seth Gruber Show, which you can watch on YouTube, rumble or any audio podcast platform. I have whole episodes on the history of feminism, going back to Mary Wollstonecraft during the French Revolution and how first wave, second, third wave feminism all flowed seamlessly into one another. That brought us transgenderism Like. Believe me, the feminazis destroyed our culture as well, but men stood by and did nothing Similar to Adam in the garden. We are still standing by and watching the women make the bad decisions and we're not speaking up. So we're culpable as well. I know there's people like to joke in the church like it was Eve who brought sin into the world, but it's really it's. It's, it's really not true. I mean, it says Adam was standing right there next to her, and the men of the West are still today standing next to the women of the West watching them eat the fruit, and too many of those men aren't just taking bites of the fruit themselves, they're cheering on the rotten fruit that's being eaten by the next generation, and so I believe that men are crucial to the solution because they're called to be protectors and providers. Probably your men were fuming listening to this when we were discussing Lot, because every man feels that sort of protection of their own children. You know, can you I mean imagine saying, here are my daughters, rape them instead, like we love to rap on Lot, because he does nothing to protect his own children. But what are you doing, man, to protect your children and your grandchildren, who are not here yet, who will inherit the culture that you live in now? It was Bonhoeffer who once said the ultimate test for a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children. The culture we hand to our children will be the culture that we created. A culture is to us what water is to a fish. It's all we know. It's what we swim in, and we help control the environment that we swim in. And so I guess the call to men is to stop making excuses and don't stand by the sidelines anymore.

Seth Gruber: 1:10:36

There's many things you can do. I mean, if you're living in a blue Democrat state, you should try showing up at an abortion center sometime, where they're still killing babies through surgical abortions and you should graciously try to plead with moms driving in to talk to you and to choose life and to offer them the help and support of your local church. That would be a pretty bold first step of action to take. Begin to inform yourself about the political landscape of your state. We got a lot of people who run on a conservative, pro-life platform, who are Republicans, but then they end up betraying the cause of the unborn when it really matters. So you can't just say vote Republican. You have to find the right people. Maybe your church needs to start running the right people, spirit-filled men who feel called by God to run for office to protect the children. There's so many things you can do. Our ministry offers some training and mobilization and some inspiration and some tools. You can bring me out to speak at your church. I can host a screening of my film, the 1916 Project.

Seth Gruber: 1:11:28

Begin with knowledge. If we're being destroyed for lack of knowledge, then seek knowledge. Begin to understand how we got here, so that you're fired up to do something and you understand how to reverse, engineer the sexual revolution. But GK Chesterton once said the true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him. Chesterton said that we're perpetually being told that what is wanted is a strong man who will do things, but what is really wanted is a strong man who will undo things, and that will be the real test of strength. That's Gideon. Gideon undoes reverse engineers what had happened with the Midianites and the Israelites. He tears down the statues, he destroys the norms and God bless all that is normalized and celebrated. And simply learn to say no. Sometimes, showing up and simply saying no is enough.

Seth Gruber: 1:12:33

Right, we did a rally outside of the abortion center that was due to open in Beverly Hills in 2023. And my buddy Pastor, jack Kibbs one of my earthly heroes put out the word as well, and we ended up having gosh. I think over a thousand people shut down half the street. It was a Washington DC based abortion center called DuPont. They specialize in full-term abortions, third trimester, full-term full-term Meaning there's like that baby could just be delivered and put up for adoption. But these mothers want to kill these full term children and DuPont was expanding to Beverly Hills because of the overturning of Roe v Wade and California had codified abortion into the state constitution. We got wind of this. Our friends at Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust did most of the legwork. We helped provide the crowd and pull people out and I spoke. We had speakers, pastors and worship. In the middle of the event, one of the event organizers got an email from the lawyer representing the building owner saying that the building owner had just rescinded the lease to DuPont and was not allowing them to open in that facility.

Seth Gruber: 1:13:44

In the middle of our protest, with just a thousand believers in Southern California where we should have had like 10,000 believers I mean there's more Calvary chapels South of Van Nuys than there are Dunkin' Donuts Okay, in Southern California, like my gosh. Okay, this is one of the most like church saturated areas we only get a thousand. That's kind of pathetic if you think about it Right, and the center shuts down. The building owner shuts down the lease in the middle of our prayer and worship and speakers, and they're still trying to find a building to operate in. Now the pessimist in me says this Chris, well, what's the big deal? It's California. Abortion is still legal through point of birth. A woman who would have gone there will find somewhere else to go. That's the pessimist in me. But the takeaway lesson from that is this what if the local church in Southern California had been showing up that often, that loud for the last 50 years, amen, we wouldn't be in the position that we're in at all. That's the takeaway.

Seth Gruber: 1:14:50

Men need to learn how to stand up. Go find where you buried your testicles, reattach them. Find yourself some testicular fortitude, which is a biblical concept, maybe not by that term, but find yourself some testicular fortitude. Find yourself some courage. Don't wait till you feel courageous. Don't wait till you feel as burdened for the unborn as I am. It's like CS Lewis said don't wait until you feel love for your neighbor to begin loving your neighbor. Begin loving your neighbor and you'll come to find that you love your neighbor. Don't wait till you feel the same fire in your belly that I have Though I'm kind of concerned if you don't but go anyways in obedience and you will come to find that you are righteously indignant against this kind of evil. That's right. Men need to learn how to stand up, speak up, push back and show up, and just learn to say you know what? No, and men who are called to lead the church ought to be the ones doing that, locally, all across the country.

Seth Gruber: 1:15:52

But we've read too many tim keller books. We've read too many rick warren books. We have the spirit of lot and unless something changes, I'm saying right now, you will lose western civilization. Now, okay, maybe that's god's plan, right? Right, I mean, the blood of the saints is the seat of the church, chris. Maybe God's plan is for the church to go into real persecution in California, I mean sorry, in America. By the way, earlier this year, let's see, I think it was May the gay married, quote unquote. You can't be gay married because there's no such thing. But the governor of Colorado just signed a bill in May that functionally would allow the state to kidnap your minor, gender confused kid and sue any parent who's non-gender affirming under child abuse statutes and remove the kid. Okay, that's happening under a Trump administration at a local state level in Colorado. Okay, you can't go too much further off that cultural cliff before you lose your civilization forever.

Seth Gruber: 1:16:59

And of course, we haven't gotten into all the like immigration stuff which connects to all this stuff. That is sorry. The illegal invasion immigration, because the Democrats plan is to make all those people voters and history has shown that illegal immigrants who come here tend to vote Democrat for two generations at least. So good luck. Abolishing abortion church when the Democrat party has fundamentally changed the voting block so that they imported illegal aliens and foreign voters, gave them citizenship, knowing they'll all vote for Democrats, and just ruined the voting sort of red landscape of South Dakota or North Dakota or Tennessee. Good luck getting good legislation passed when now you have, out of nowhere, illegal people suddenly given citizenship who are going to vote for abortion. A lot of people don't like it when I speak about other issues that aren't abortion, because they say, seth, stay in your lane. But all this stuff connects. Like, how are we supposed to abolish abortion at the state level because Roe v Wade sends it back to the states, when the Democrat Party right now are trying to give citizenship, therefore voting rights, to a bunch of illegals who they know will vote for Democrats, that is, for abortion? How are we going to do this? Like? You have to consider all these things. We haven't even got to any of that, of course, but until the local church begins to speak into these issues and disciple the next generation, none of this is going to stop.

Seth Gruber: 1:18:13

Jd Unwin, in his book Sex and Culture, studied 86 civilizations, 86 civilizations over 5,000 years, and found a 100% correlation between sexual insanity, kooky, weirdo stuff like that we see through the West right now and the decline of that civilization and a 100% correlation between sexual, monogamous, heterosexual, marriage-based cultures and cultural advancement. That's not like a Christian theological truth. That's observable historical fact that when civilizations and societies go the way that we're going and what do I mean by that? I mean cutting off the penises and genitals of minors. That's what I mean. I mean hiding the gender identity from parents of a 12-year-old at the junior high school, upon the wish of that 12-year-old who doesn't want his parents to know that when he gets to school he changes into a dress and he asks them to call them Sally, him, sally.

Seth Gruber: 1:19:12

I'm talking about the state of Colorado kidnapping kids. I'm talking about a documentary I was in called the War on Children that my friend Robbie and Landon Starbuck put together. That you should go watch right now thewaronchildrencom. Thewaronchildrencom, where a mom is interviewed in that documentary as one of the guests alongside myself whose daughter in California was kidnapped from her by the state of California, who was gender confused, and they were hiding her from the mom because the mom wasn't going to be gender affirming until that daughter stepped in front of a train and killed herself. The state of California kidnapped a minor to protect her from her non-gender affirming parent and that daughter, who thought she was a boy, killed herself by stepping in front of a train. That's the kind of stuff I'm talking about. Okay, I'm talking about like three gay dudes whose story I just looked at recently who are living together and having sex with one another and they're raising children in the same home. So these moms have, these kids have no mommies, but they have three daddies and they're being taught that that's normal. So children don't have no longer have a right to a mother and a father.

Seth Gruber: 1:20:14

I'm talking about children who are bought and sold in third-party reproductive technologies.

Seth Gruber: 1:20:16

Shall I continue, chris? I'm saying that those kinds of things can't continue for too much longer, until you reach a cultural cliff that you won't climb back out of. And I'm not smart enough to tell your listeners when that is. Is it five years out, is it 10 years out? Is it 40 years out? I don't know, but we all sense it, don't we? We all sense that we're living in that season of a last stand.

Seth Gruber: 1:20:35

I would prefer Western civilization to preserve, to continue, for the sake of my children and grandchildren, for the sake of kids who are not my own but whose genitals I don't want chopped off because of some Gnostic dualism heresy called transgenderism. That the church is silent about that convinces them that they're trapped in the wrong body. For the sake of human flourishing and the family in America, I prefer for Western civilization to continue, and it will not if the church does not wake up and begin to contend against these ideologies as false religion, preach against them as such and disciple the next generation. If this continues for the next 30 or 40 years, I'll leave your listeners, and the men particularly, with a little bit of hope. If nothing changes and we continue to go off this cultural cliff, one of the ways we might win in the end is by outbreeding them.

Seth Gruber: 1:21:27

Hmm, this is sort of a dark thought and we should never rejoice too much is by outbreeding them. This is sort of a dark thought and we should never rejoice too much. When the wicked fall into a pit, although the imprecatory Psalms, I pray, oh God, that they would fall into a pit and everyone else that follows after them. That's totally biblical. But we shouldn't like get excited about the left like aborting, transing and vaccinating themselves into extinction. But if you know, we shouldn't like get excited about the left, like you know, aborting, transing and vaccinating themselves into extinction. But if that continues, they are, they are putting themselves extinct. Like you know, who's having the most babies? Like by the numbers, conservative religious people are having the most babies in America.

Seth Gruber: 1:22:05

I guess what I'm saying is is go back to Genesis one, fill the earth and subdue it, have a bunch of babies and raise them to be little dragon slayers who fear God and God alone, uh, and outbreed them and take back the reins of political power because we outnumber them and preserve Western civilization. Um, uh, former Indiana governor, um, uh, oh, man, what was his name? Mitch, was it Mitch? Daniel Was once asked governor, how do we defeat the libs? And he said well, it's sort of tricky. I mean, you can outthink them, outstrategize them, but that's difficult because they're pretty crafty, or you can outbreed them, and I recommend the latter because the latter is more fun, definitely, definitely, seth.

Chris Grainger: 1:22:52

This has been incredible. Where do you want to send the guys? Obviously to get connected with the 1916 Project for their church. But just all your resources, all your content, white Rose. What are the links?

Seth Gruber: 1:23:03

Yeah, thewhiteroselife is our main website. Thewhiteroselife we're of course. We're of course on Instagram. I'm on Instagram, I'm on X. I have the Seth Gruber show anywhere. You get podcast two episodes a week. Host a screening of the film at your church by going to the 1916 projectcom. Pick up the book. Get the book from us and not Amazon, cause then the money goes to a good ministry and not baby hating, christian hating Amazon. You can go to the1916projectcom. The book is the 1916 Project, the Lying, the Witch and the War we Are In. Don't read it too late, right before you go to bed. You won't be able to fall asleep.

Chris Grainger: 1:23:34

It's very, very gnarly reading.

Seth Gruber: 1:23:40

And then, if you guys want to support the ministry, thewhiteroselife, sign up as an ally we call that at $35 a month, and you get a battle box in the mail in the next six weeks to welcome you to Christian resistance and to equip you for that battle. And then you can join our White Rose app where, if you're $35 a month or more, you can actually watch the 1916 Project. You can go through curriculum, pro-life apologetics, activism, training, a pro-life masterclass all this really cool stuff that's on there. Communities, resistance chapters $70 a month, we call that air support and that's our Books in the Barracks book club. So you read books with yours truly and we talk about it every other month. Live on Zoom and, of course, if you're super rich you can give more, but that's how people can support the ministry or learn more. And thanks for letting me ramble, chris.

Chris Grainger: 1:24:19

Seth, this has been awesome. We'll get those links up for you guys, and we got to have you back on at some point, for sure.

Seth Gruber: 1:24:25

Awesome. Well, let's do it.

Chris Grainger: 1:24:29

Most men are fighting battles. No one sees Strain marriages, silent wounds, pressure to lead without a place to rest. That's why we created our community to help build, strength, sharpen and support brothers just like you. And now it's even easier to join than ever. We've lowered access to just $15.99 a month. Immediately, you'll get our daily spiritual kickoffs, our Bible studies, lion Lunches, friday Forge and so much more. Every man needs a stronghold and you don't have to fight alone.

Chris Grainger: 1:25:02

Join today at thelionwithinus that's thelionwithinus and get started today. So, guys, I told you it was going to be great. So thankful for Seth, for just the way he shared. The question for you is how are you defending the voiceless in today's culture? You got to be able to answer that question. Now, if you need help, if you need support, if you want those resources Seth mentioned, go, check out the show notes, connect with me, send me an email. I'd be glad to send that stuff to you. I want to make sure you get what you need so that you're ready to push back All right. So, again, so thankful for him. Head over to thelinewithinus for all our resources as well.

Chris Grainger: 1:25:42

We're definitely we're looking to even Seth and I talk. We may even be starting a chapter or something to just equip you guys as well. So if this sparks you and you really are like Chris, I got to do something. Send me a note, chrisdelanguazanus. I want to hear from you. We'll get connected, we'll talk and we'll see how we, together, can go fight against this formidable opponent. But we have the Holy spirit and, as Seth revealed man, there's, there's some powerful things that we can do to truly take action. So thank you guys for listening. Please, please, please, please, share this, share this, share this. Okay, Send it to your pastor, send it to your associate pastor, send it to your worship leader. I don't care who you send it to. At the church, they need to hear this and there is not a listener to the lion that doesn't need to do. All we can do to at least get a viewing of the 1916 Project in your church. Take action Time to go right now. Let's unleash the lion with them.