00:00:01.000This is our conversation from Turning Point USA that we had at Dream City Church with Luke Barnett, a great friend of mine.
00:00:09.000At Turning Point USA, many of you know, we are working to educate the entire citizenry, but especially young people and also people of faith around the principles of liberty, American citizenship, biblical citizenship, freedom, things that really matter.
00:00:51.000If you're looking to get out of the cold and maybe get into the sun and really be filled up with the spirit at a beautiful conference in a beautiful place by friends of mine, go to dreamconference.net.
00:01:02.000I think you'll be really blessed by that.
00:01:04.000We're going to have a Turning Point USA presence there.
00:01:32.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:01:40.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:02:18.000So I'm going to talk a little bit about what's going on locally, but I do want to kind of do the proverbial kind of year-in review from the last year and talk about how I think things change in an unexpected and very positive way about halfway through the year.
00:02:36.000And, you know, you look back in 2021, the number one thing that we heard on our radio show and our podcast was that people were so glad for the year to be over.
00:02:54.000Besides that, it was pretty awful for a lot of different reasons.
00:02:59.000And I think that we look at one of the main reasons why we thought 2021 was kind of one that we don't want to go back to is that we felt as citizens of our country so helpless as we saw the unraveling of a nation we loved.
00:03:16.000And I think that was one of the main reasons why in 2021, we were just kind of just so increasingly angry and unsettled.
00:03:25.000And for those of you that are new here to Freedom Square and Freedom Night in America, as we're calling it, as we're branching out to more campuses, we exist here to create biblical citizens inspired for local change.
00:03:48.000It's not about even certain politicians.
00:03:49.000It's about empowering you to know what it means, what the Bible says about being an informed citizen.
00:03:55.000So we're actually branching this out to another new church.
00:03:58.000I'm going to be going out quarterly to Steve Smotherman's Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and some other churches are going to be announcing this as well.
00:04:06.000And so you look at this idea of what a citizen is.
00:04:10.000I think we need to take a step back and kind of appreciate how rare it is to live in a nation where you're considered to be a citizen.
00:04:19.000For now, citizenship is incredibly rare.
00:04:23.000Most human beings existed under a government as a serf or as a subject or as a slave.
00:04:29.000To be a citizen means that you're a co-owner.
00:04:32.000It literally is what the Greek word means.
00:04:34.000And whatever national or state or local project that you're in.
00:04:38.000It's a blessing from the Lord that you're able to be born into a country where you even have some form of a say.
00:04:44.000Now, if you kind of look at what's happening in the country over the last year, it really is the dying citizen, as Victor Davis Hansen would say.
00:04:53.000And the best attempts by the American ruling class in the year 2021 is they wanted to try and turn a nation that was once a nation of citizens into a nation of subjects.
00:05:06.000And that really was the tension point.
00:05:08.000And so things started pretty bleak in January of last year.
00:05:12.000There is the morale of those of us that love freedom and love the country, it was understandably low.
00:05:20.000And in kind of February and March of last year, you might think back to some of the big news stories as they unfolded.
00:05:28.000It seemed as if the people that were in charge, the rulers, were largely untouchable.
00:05:33.000Now, you know, we met here and we had our first gathering back in May of last year, which coincided with what I believe was one of the great stories of 2021, which was moms and dads starting to rise up and go to school board meetings across the country, including all throughout Arizona.
00:05:49.000And what was so special about this was that this was the only place where many of you felt that you could actually make a meaningful and measurable difference with the chaos, the calamity, and the catastrophe that was happening around you.
00:06:06.000And in some ways, the school boards had many years, if not decades, of complaints piling up that somebody's like, I'm not going to go to a school board meeting.
00:06:14.000But in 2020, it was like, you know what?
00:06:22.000I'm going to show up to the school board meeting.
00:06:23.000And it kind of became this kind of almost pressure release valve for so many of us that were like, you know what?
00:06:31.000I'm angry at a lot of different things, understandably, but I'm really upset with the fact that these school boards are putting masks on our children and mandating vaccines all the while that we know that the virus is not going to be a substantial risk to young people in any way, shape, or form.
00:06:46.000And so what happened in last year was, and it's really kind of interesting because you didn't feel the effects of what was actually happening in real time till months afterwards.
00:06:56.000And as you started to see citizenship start to become renewed last calendar year in August, September, and October, especially when you saw the Department of Justice issue their memo against moms and dads calling parents that show up to school board meetings domestic terrorists, all of a sudden, the game changed in a very serious way.
00:07:34.000It started as one where the people that were in charge, the rulers, they thought that they were going to be able to make you sue for peace, basically surrender.
00:07:46.000You're going to stop showing up at events like this.
00:07:48.000You're going to stop caring about the education of your kids.
00:07:54.000It was the ultimate kind of slow motion picture of Newtonian physics, which was for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction, which was that for every time that they raided some journalist department like James O'Keefe, or they called a mom a domestic terrorist, there was going to be another hundred people that showed up in that person's place to actually advocate for what was righteous, true, beautiful, and good.
00:08:19.000And this is one of the reasons why in 2021, and this is a great sign.
00:08:24.000If you want to see a sign of a country that wants to save itself, this is a sign.
00:08:28.000If you want to see a country that doesn't care, it'll go the opposite direction.
00:08:31.000When things get smaller, it's a sign that citizens want their country back.
00:08:38.000That means that when a country like the United Kingdom wants to leave the European Union and want to get out of kind of this internationalist type organization, that's a good sign.
00:09:04.000Congress has always should have always been an afterthought, but we've always been kind of so propagandized to believe what's happening in DC mattered more than what's happening in Chandler or Gilbert or Peoria.
00:09:15.000And so when things start to get in these smaller concentric circles, that's a sign of regular normal people, you saying, I might not be able to control what Chuck Schumer does or whatever, but I can't have a say here.
00:09:28.000And that's why in 2021, and you've all played a major role in this, you saw the rebirth and the re-emphasis of family-focused issues when it comes in political conversations and debates, which I thought was a really healthy reinvigoration.
00:09:43.000You saw the church matter more than ever before.
00:09:46.000And I just want to thank Dream City for what you guys did for the Arizona community this last year.
00:10:32.000And in some ways, I think one of the lessons of this last year, and this is a positive sign, this is the momentum that no one's going to stop, by the way.
00:10:40.000And it's only going to continue, is that I'm going to now focus on the place I drive by every single day.
00:10:48.000And then we're going to build up from that one kind of area from there.
00:10:52.000And that's what a republic always was supposed to be.
00:10:54.000And again, many young people in this audience, you know, and I'm being 28, I still remember the last gasp of like when America was this way, but it's been inverted the last 10 years and we're changing it back, which is I remember in America where the states were always given preference over the federal government, not the federal government over the states.
00:11:15.000And we must remember the states created the federal government, not the other way around.
00:11:20.000Would the founding fathers have some sort of weird fascination with states?
00:11:23.000No, they understood that when things fall apart, which they inevitably do, it's the second law of thermodynamics, that it's better to have people take responsibility for places they can recognize and hold accountability for them, not some far distant land of some person that runs some regulatory agency that you've never heard of.
00:11:40.000And so there is a tension point right now.
00:11:42.000And I believe that truth is going to win.
00:11:45.000And I believe the church is going to win.
00:11:48.000And we already know that Jesus has won.
00:11:51.000But I believe in this moment we know how this is going to end, which is the tension right now is that the rulers are increasingly paranoid with the ruled.
00:12:03.000They're kind of like, why do you guys care so much?
00:12:07.000And you're starting to see what we call this massive hedge.
00:12:11.000When you start to see people like Anthony Fauci go on television, not a big fan of his, if you haven't noticed, and I do pray for his soul.
00:12:50.000He'd say that because he's seeing the same thing so many other people are seeing, which is all of a sudden in the last 30 days, something profound has happened.
00:12:57.000And I want to thank all of you that showed up to AmericaFest, by the way.
00:13:19.000He had the most downloaded episode he's ever had.
00:13:21.000He's like 10 times bigger than even the top-watched cable show where he had Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Robert Malone on a show in the last month, and 60 million downloads.
00:13:30.000I mean, that's like a civilization, right?
00:13:32.000Of people that are now pursuing a separate narrative against everything that they've been told the last year and a half.
00:13:39.000And it's reflected in public opinion polling, where a majority of Americans do not feel that lockdowns, mask mandates, or vaccine mandates are necessary in response to Omicron.
00:13:49.000Yet they're doing it anyway in certain states.
00:13:51.000And so what you're living through, and we're going to be able to tell this story in a very, I think, victorious way, is, and this is exactly what we strive to do here at Freedom Square and Freedom Night in America and with Dream City and with Turning Point USA, is the rise of the citizen.
00:14:06.000That's what happened in 2021, is that the regime started to fall and the citizen started to rise up.
00:14:13.000And if you look at where we as Christians and the church need to focus, it's the empowerment of you as a co-owner of the national project, right?
00:14:23.000And by the way, that doesn't mean that they're not going to stop, obviously.
00:14:26.000And by they, I mean all the different mega, you know, kind of organizations, right?
00:14:35.000But there is an increasing unease that every ounce of energy they've put into this is all of a sudden going to be used against them in a very serious way.
00:14:47.000It's a tension between the ruled and the rulers.
00:14:49.000And so many of you have asked, well, what can we do about it?
00:14:53.000Well, let's go back to what is the sign of a healthy country.
00:14:56.000A sign of a healthy country is someone who first focus on their individual salvation with their creator, then on the health of their family, then on their church, and then their city and their community.
00:15:07.000And I'm starting to see the rebirth of that in a way that in 10 years of doing this, I've never seen before.
00:15:13.000More parents are homeschooling than ever before.
00:15:14.000The homeschooling population doubled in 2021, everybody.
00:15:24.000And I thought it would be a really fun way to kick off the year with our host, Luke Barnett, and I, just to kind of explore his amazing sermon he did over this last weekend and talk about this further.
00:15:36.000And also the kind of the blessing of fasting, which I think would be particularly fun as Luke is fasting right now.
00:15:43.000So you're not supposed to tease people as they fast.
00:15:48.000I know a lot of you are fasting as well, but if I, I'm going to have a direct ask that I think we should fast monthly every year, every month this year, as we head into this very important year for our country.
00:15:57.000We're going to talk about that in a second.
00:15:58.000But I'm going to close with this, which is that the founders believed, and this was explicitly written in Alexander Hamilton, John Jay's, James Madison's private journals, that only God should be able to have the executive, legislative, and judicial authority.
00:16:15.000This is why they intentionally separated everybody.
00:16:18.000They separated it because they believed that no person on this planet should have that much authority.
00:16:23.000But they realized that the true immediate authority needs to be invested in all of you.
00:16:28.000This is one of the great dangers of these independent regulatory agencies, of people that are largely untouchable, that run these bureaucracies in D.C., of which you've never met them.
00:16:38.000They're unelected, unknown, and have almost unaccountable power.
00:16:41.000But the trajectory of 2020 that we're on, if we keep it up, if you keep on praying, fasting, showing up to events, showing up to school board meetings, running for office, if you feel so compelled, consuming news and information, knowing what's happening around you, even though it might be slightly depressing at times, is that you're about to live through the greatest, most unexpected citizen movement in a generation.
00:17:07.000You're about to live through one of the greatest citizens.
00:17:09.000When all of a sudden they're going to look back and they're going to say, when it seemed bleak and it seemed so negative and so dark, and it was led by the church, I really believe that's where it all comes down to.
00:17:20.000And I remember the first thing that we said at this, you know, at this gathering was that it's always been the church that has been the one, like a trust fall that has caught America and brought it back into posture, right?
00:17:35.000You're seeing that in a very special way.
00:17:37.000But and here's the takeaway, though, is that in no way whatsoever is it time to disengage because you think you got everything all figured out.
00:17:46.000No, here's the time for us to put the proverbial foot on the accelerator for liberty and for righteousness, because we are in a much better, stronger position a year from a year ago.
00:17:58.000I don't know about you guys, a year ago on the calendar year, it was pretty dark for me personally.
00:19:20.000So, Luke, first, I just want to thank you again for hosting this.
00:19:23.000This is inspired, just so everyone knows, this has inspired dozens and soon to be hundreds of other pastors and churches across the country to do this very same type of forum.
00:19:33.000We're talking about pastors in North Carolina, New Mexico, Florida, where they look at the success of this and they're just blown away.
00:19:41.000Connor's around here somewhere, where if you count the podcast downloads, the YouTube views, the Facebook views, well over 10 million people have consumed the content of what has happened here in this room in the calendar year of 2021.
00:19:59.000And so, and you're all playing a role in that.
00:20:02.000So, Luke, you had a beautiful message this week on how to save a nation.
00:20:05.000Yeah, well, you know, first of all, I want to say thank you to Charlie.
00:20:08.000We're going back and forth here, but I truly believe that God has used this young man to inspire churches all across America to let them know they're not alone, that they have a voice in the public court.
00:20:21.000And we're so grateful for you and your love for the Lord.
00:20:24.000When I first met you, I really didn't know you too well, but I just thought, as I've come to know you, you are the real deal.
00:20:30.000You love the Lord, you love the church, and we're just so grateful for all you're doing to help the cause and spread the cause of Jesus Christ.
00:20:37.000You know, when Charlie called me today and asked me to share with him tonight, I said, You want me to share about my message on Sunday?
00:20:45.000He said, Yeah, you talk about how to save a nation.
00:20:48.000And I began preparation for my message thinking, Can one person really save a nation?
00:20:55.000Can one man, can one woman really save a nation?
00:20:57.000So I began to look in the Bible about people who have saved a nation.
00:21:01.000Of course, there's Esther, she saved a nation, but there's an obscure guy in the Old Testament book of Judges, and his name was Shamgar.
00:21:27.000He's a judge of Israel, but he killed 600 of these enemies of God with an ox goad.
00:21:33.000And so, if you know the book of Judges, during this time, people wouldn't even travel on the main highways and streets because there was such fear in the land.
00:21:43.000And the Bible tells us the reason why there was such fear and chaos in the land is because in Judges 21, it says that every man did that which was right in his own eyes.
00:21:53.000So, there was no absolute standard of truth, there was no governing power that was keeping everybody in line.
00:22:02.000So, people just did what they wanted to do, made up their own rules.
00:22:05.000And in that chaos, the Bible says that the Philistines saw the weakness of that nation and they invaded.
00:22:13.000And that's why there was no people walking on the streets.
00:22:38.000On one side was a very sharp tip, like a spear, and that was made to kind of prick or goad the ox to push him along as he was tilling the soil.
00:22:48.000Okay, the other side, the other end of it, was like a chisel-like tool that they would dig up the rocks or roots that would obstruct the tilling of the soil.
00:23:21.000So, in order to really make a difference, you have to start where you are, but have a vision for where you want to go in the future, a vision for your family, a vision for your business, a vision for how God wants to use you in your church.
00:23:38.000You know, back in 2013, my dad was a pastor of this church, and he was a great visionary.
00:23:44.000And he had a heart valve repair, and I became the pastor.
00:23:47.000And during that time, I had really no vision for the future of our church.
00:23:56.000A Daniel fast is when you eat nothing but bird seeds and twigs for 40 days.
00:24:00.000You know, you eat only things from the ground that grow.
00:24:04.000And in the meantime, during that fast, I climbed the mountain behind the church every day for 40 days.
00:24:10.000And I just began to seek God and ask, God, would you give me a vision for the future of our church?
00:24:14.000Would you show me what we're supposed to be doing in the next 20 years and how we can impact our city and help people and rescue hurting people and rescue people from human trafficking and all these different things?
00:24:26.000After 40 days on the mountain, God began to download something in my spirit.
00:24:31.000I know that sounds mystical to some of you here tonight because maybe you're not, you don't have a church background, but he just began to impress upon my spirit.
00:24:39.000He began to whisper through his voice.
00:24:41.000And I came down from that mountain after 40 days of fasting.
00:24:44.000I had very clear vision for the future.
00:24:47.000It changed the trajectory of our church.
00:24:49.000We went from one campus to nine campuses in just seven short years.
00:24:55.000We went from no human trafficking program to America's largest human sex trafficking relief organization.
00:25:02.000All that came from receiving a God-sized vision on the side of that mountain.
00:25:08.000I want to ask you, do you have that kind of a vision?
00:26:36.000So when I fast, you're not supposed to talk about when you fast, but I guess this is a safe space for that.
00:26:42.000It does say that in the Bible, not to, you know, kind of make a point of when you fast in like a way where you're a better person than somebody else.
00:26:48.000However, you always end with dinner, Luke, okay?
00:27:43.000And we've asked our people, starting today at lunch, eat breakfast, eat lunch, then after lunch, don't eat dinner tonight or breakfast tomorrow morning, but pick up eating again at lunchtime tomorrow.
00:27:55.000It's a 24-hour fast, but just two meals.
00:28:01.000And then come tomorrow night for our midweek church experience where we are going to, we've gathered hundreds, thousands of prayer requests for people who need breakthrough in some area of their life.
00:28:13.000Maybe they need healing for their body.
00:28:15.000Maybe they need a financial breakthrough for their business.
00:28:17.000Maybe their kids are far from God and they're praying for their kids to come back home.
00:28:21.000But they're going to have thousands of prayer requests.
00:28:23.000So we're going to meet here at 6:30 tomorrow night.
00:28:25.000You're all invited to come be part of this.
00:28:27.000And for 15 minutes, we're going to sing some songs of worship.
00:28:31.000Then we're going to teach you for 15 minutes what prayer is, how to pray, principles of prayer.
00:28:37.000And then we're going to turn the playlist on.
00:28:40.000And hundreds of people are going to just walk around the auditorium here and pick up these prayer cards.
00:29:25.000We're doing this every Wednesday in the month of January.
00:29:29.000And if you want to be a part of something that truly changes your life, our leader, Jesus Christ, said the difficult things in life only come through prayer and fasting.
00:30:04.000And fasting is so special for me personally.
00:30:08.000And, you know, in the Bible, it says, you know, fasting is a way to deny your flesh and a way to reorient yourself to God.
00:30:16.000And in a world where everything is so fleshly focused, it is an intentional way to all of a sudden say no to an immediate need that your flesh is saying, like, hey, let's eat.
00:30:29.000And I mean, good luck even watching a football game without 10, 12, 15, 20 commercials, you know, that try to make food just look like, you know, so alluring and that you need it immediately, right?
00:30:42.000In some ways, it's almost like a hypersexualization of food.
00:30:47.000And but what fasting does, I say this to young people a lot, students, you know, especially students that feel as if they're going through maybe a bout of darkness or uncertainty or anxiety or depression.
00:31:00.000I always ask, I say, when was the last time you fasted?
00:31:13.000And the neuroscience behind fasting is really interesting.
00:31:18.000So you know this, Luke, that when you're on hour 20, 21, 23, 24, you're probably thinking the most clearly that you have.
00:31:26.000There's a reason for this, which is going back to when our ancestors in the wilderness and they didn't have food all the time, that God gave our bodies the ability to adjust that when you really need food, your body's going to redirect any remaining calories to mental clarity because you're like, you got to go get food right now, right?
00:31:44.000And so at that moment, all of a sudden, instead of worrying about digestion, because there's not much action happening there, right?
00:31:49.000All of a sudden, your body's like, okay, we are now going to put our energy output towards seeing, hearing, and thinking the world around you.
00:31:57.000For me, you know, I just fasted last week.
00:32:00.000The mental breakthroughs that happen at our 21, 22, 23, 24 are incredible.
00:32:05.000And I know, at least from my own personal perspective, it's some of the greatest prayers that a person can have.
00:33:05.000And that's when Jesus said, the hard things, the difficult things in life, the breakthroughs, the healing for our body, the breakthrough with our family, the marriage coming back together again.
00:33:17.000The hard things come through prayer and fasting.
00:33:21.000So that's why we encourage you to be a part of tomorrow night.
00:33:40.000Well, Charlie is speaking at our dream conference.
00:33:42.000And we are thousands of pastors from all over America are going to be gathered in this place, learning how to grow their church, ideas for ministries.
00:33:56.000And we're trying to challenge, encourage, fire up, even, you know, prod them a little bit to take a stand in their city because we really do believe that the hope of America is strong churches in cities, you know, two-fisted men and women of God who will stand up without apology and preach the whole truth and nothing but the truth from the Word of God.
00:34:19.000And so that's something we're going to be praying about: is that we would see, you know, new churches rise up and do what we're doing here.
00:35:47.000If you build your life on the shifting sands of human speculation, then your life is going to crumble, Jesus says.
00:35:55.000But if you will build your life on the rock, solid foundation of my work, then your life's going to hold up.
00:36:10.000So you're all invited to come to Dream Conference 2022.
00:36:13.000So in closing, before we take some questions, Luke, you and I were talking backstage.
00:36:17.000We said, you know, we really just want to kind of for anyone here that's watching online or listening on the residual podcast or here to kind of just make the case for Christ to talk about in this new year.
00:36:28.000You know, a lot of people make New Year's resolutions, but there is one resolution you can make that will last forever.
00:37:16.000And I get a question every so often, which is, Charlie, how can someone who seems intelligent, you see how they word that, believe in Jesus?
00:37:38.000I mean, you just open up a physics textbook.
00:37:41.000You know, there's three very basic laws in Newtonian physics or the law of thermodynamics I mentioned earlier.
00:37:45.000There are laws that make the world go around, and we live by them every day, whether we like it or not.
00:37:50.000You know, you have to live under the truth that force equals mass times acceleration.
00:37:55.000Even the most ardent atheist agrees that the universe began at a specific moment.
00:38:01.000Well, then, if there was a moment, was there not something that created that moment to begin?
00:38:05.000And so, by using reason, which God gave us, as it says in Isaiah 1, we can come to this very, very understandable conclusion that if there is a natural law, then there must be a natural lawgiver.
00:38:16.000And there must be someone that designed all of this.
00:38:19.000You know, C.S. Lewis famously said, he said, you go look at this beautiful building as we're in.
00:38:24.000You don't doubt that there isn't an architect because you've never met the architect.
00:38:28.000You look at the building, you say, wow, this must have been thoughtfully put together.
00:38:41.000There is no book, there is no piece of literature ever in the history of the planet that will tell you more about what you're dealing with and where you're headed than the Bible.
00:38:49.000It's very simple, that we're sinful, broken people that have a soul that needs to get back into communion with our Lord and Savior only through Christ Jesus.
00:39:00.000And then you just look at the irrefutable, unmistakable evidence of the actual resurrection itself.
00:39:05.000And even, and this is something we can go into at different, you know, at a deeper level if anyone's interested.
00:39:11.000But I encourage any skeptic, any atheist, any agnostic to go through a legitimate historical analysis of what we know about the resurrection and Jesus' life and tell me that without a greater chance than not that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
00:39:28.000From reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Acts, the Acts of the Apostles, from their travels across the Mediterranean, to their ministry, to the price that they were willing to pay to the empty tomb, to female witnesses, to the 400-plus people that saw Jesus after he was resurrected, you all of a sudden build this case and you say, there's something here.
00:40:03.000You know, I've always said if you want to put your ultimate hope in something, you never want to put your ultimate hope into something that can change or be taken away from you.
00:40:15.000And there's an old song that we used to sing when I was a kid.
00:40:17.000We don't sing it too often anymore in church.
00:42:02.000Just say, Heavenly Father, today I give you my life.
00:42:09.000You said in your Bible, if I would ask you that you would forgive me.
00:42:16.000And so I ask you now to be the leader of my life and the Lord of my life, to direct my life, to show me how to live, to make me more like your son, Jesus.
00:42:54.000And what's so amazing is that when you're born again, you know, it says in Philippians 4, 6, a lot of young people, and this is a very serious thing.
00:43:03.000It says well over 65% of people under the age of 25 say they have serious anxiety issues.
00:43:09.000And it says in Philippians 4:6, do not be anxious about anything, but instead through prayer, thanksgiving, and supplication, let your requests be known to God.
00:43:17.000And it says, for the peace of God which transcends all understanding, will guard your heart and mind through Christ Jesus.
00:43:23.000And then, obviously, Philippians 4:8, for whatever is good, true, beautiful, noble, think on these things or dwell on these things.
00:43:31.000Those three verses, for those of you that are born again, or if you're in that 65% of young people that are experiencing that anxiety, I encourage you, really pray over those verses.
00:44:14.000I'm trying to get some more monitoring.
00:44:17.000She goes to Colorado Christian University, and she asked, what would the biblical response be to the homelessness issue, which is plaguing Colorado and increasingly hurting Arizona?
00:44:40.000If the church would be the church, we wouldn't have a homeless problem in America today.
00:44:45.000And the church, in so many ways, has failed to be the church.
00:44:48.000It's become a bureaucracy of people who come and they sit in seats and they sing music and go home.
00:44:54.000But we believe if Jesus Christ were walking on the planet today, he would be out there helping the hurting, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked.
00:45:03.000And so we here at Dream City, we just say we're going to be a blue-collar church.
00:45:07.000We're going to be out there on the streets.
00:45:08.000We're going to buy hotels and open them up and recover people.
00:45:12.000We're going to try to get people off of drugs and alcohol.
00:45:15.000And so I really believe if the church would be the church, that's our role in making a difference in our cities.
00:45:21.000And I have a view that I believe the church should adopt, which is I do not think we should tolerate the open-air homelessness, meaning that I don't think that it's good for the society.
00:45:33.000I don't think it's good for children to be raised in a city that has panhandlers or homeless individuals.
00:45:40.000And it's not good for a variety of reasons.
00:45:42.000I think it's just, I think it actually demoralizes the population.
00:45:46.000I think that it creates a messiness to the local city and community, which you can see easily in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
00:45:54.000I think it allows for communicable diseases that very well, you know, could have been thwarted.
00:45:58.000So those are kind of the, you know, kind of the very obvious ones.
00:46:01.000But then also, I also think, I think it creates kind of this kind of apathetic posture towards people suffering.
00:46:09.000I mean, in a way that we as a very sophisticated and wealthy society can't get our act together with this, I think is rather ridiculous.
00:46:18.000Now, for those of you that have worked in homeless ministries, you know this a lot better than I have.
00:46:24.000I'm by no means an expert, but I grew up helping in a local church in this.
00:46:28.000There's many different categories of people that are homeless.
00:46:31.000There's people that are legitimately, you know, they'd lost their job.
00:46:34.000They're dealing, almost 95% of people are dealing with addiction issues that are in that category.
00:46:40.000There's some people that have very serious mental health issues and need treatment and they need counseling and they need to be in a place where they can be hopefully in an environment that can get them towards healing.
00:46:51.000And then there's a different portion that are people that unfortunately don't want to stop being homeless.
00:47:18.000It's not going to be like your open-air living room.
00:47:22.000It's not good for that person, by the way.
00:47:24.000It makes them prone to, especially if they're a female homeless person, prone to rapes, prone to be taken advantage of, and other things.
00:47:31.000And so, but I think this Dream City deserves so much credit for this, but it's a big issue for me.
00:47:37.000You know, I was just meeting today with someone that was running for governor of this state, and I told her, I said, you know, I really need the leadership of the state to take homelessness more seriously because I think that it's this open-air acceptance of the citizenry not caring.
00:47:54.000And I don't want to live in that type of country at all.
00:47:57.000And I don't think it's the biblical approach at all.
00:48:50.000Japan is not a very Christian country.
00:48:51.000It's a very Taoist, Eastern, secular society, which was really cool.
00:48:55.000Listen to our podcast and literally travel all the way from Tokyo to come there.
00:48:59.000And so what you're talking about is a picture we posted on our Instagram where we had our first ever winter retreat with like 55 students six years ago, and then we get to 10,000, right?
00:49:10.000It's all thanks to the Lord, first and foremost.
00:49:13.000And I'll say a couple things: that when we first started Turning Point USA, I was wrongly encouraged by secular people to not talk about God publicly.
00:49:24.000Now, as soon as I started talking about God and Jesus, two things happened: the attacks increased, and the persecution was ramped up, and the blessing also increased dramatically.
00:49:56.000The vision is a picture of your future that creates passion in you.
00:50:01.000And it's just a way that when you get up in the morning, if you see something, it almost pulls you into your future.
00:50:07.000It almost causes you to cast off restraint.
00:50:10.000The Bible says without a vision, the people perish.
00:50:12.000One translation says they cast off restraint, which means they just start living like every other Tom, Dick, and Harry out in the world.
00:50:19.000And there's nothing God in their life.
00:50:21.000And so I would really encourage you to seek God to give you a real fresh vision.
00:50:26.000Yeah, and aim for things that matter, right?
00:50:29.000And if you're doing it for the right reasons and you prioritize the correct things, your life will start to naturally order itself.
00:50:37.000This is a lesson that I try to impart on our students as much as possible.
00:50:42.000It's obviously difficult because you're dealing with a very highly pressurized society when it comes to this.
00:50:48.000So you're kind of fighting gravity in some sense.
00:50:51.000But the earlier that you realize that self-control as a fruit of the spirit is something that you're going to want to try to desire, it's an incredibly important thing.
00:51:01.000And so I imagine you gave your life to Christ already, but you also must understand that the spiritual attacks do not stop as soon as you give your life to Christ.
00:51:12.000Sometimes it intensifies, especially if you're a leader in a church, if you're an elder in a church, tells us that in Titus, especially.
00:51:18.000But Satan would love nothing more than, even though you gave your life to Christ, try to take you kind of out of the equation, like try to de-emphasize you, right?
00:51:25.000To try to make you question what you're doing.
00:51:30.000and understand the spiritual weapons that the Bible gives you to deal with that.
00:51:33.000But then also, at a young age, if you're trying to grow a business, you're given the ability.
00:51:41.000This is why I'm a big believer in young people delaying going to college, is take the biggest risk you possibly can because you literally have very little to lose.
00:51:50.000Now, by risk, I mean try to start a business or obviously reasonable and virtuous risk, right?
00:51:57.000Not like, you know, I'm going to see if I can fly, like not exactly smart, right?
00:52:39.000Oh, it's like the same stuff over and over again.
00:52:41.000And so one of the things that I've been trying to focus on is like facts, stats, and history, which is something that you have done a phenomenal job at, by the way.
00:52:49.000You're kind of the guy that I look to when I'm looking for that stuff.
00:52:52.000So what is the way that we can, I guess, shape the conservative movement in that way?
00:52:58.000Because sometimes I feel like I'm alone in that sense, where it's like I'm the only one trying to like explain and talk about the things that people aren't talking about, right?
00:53:08.000Yeah, first, I want to compliment you.
00:53:59.000So I want to caution you on one thing.
00:54:02.000I want to caution you because I can understand what you're saying, that you go to a lot of these events and that you're a little bit bored with some of the rhetoric and all that.
00:54:09.000Not everyone's going to be as deep into this as you are.
00:54:12.000And when I was 18, I had the same sort of belief.
00:54:15.000And the advice I'd give to a younger self is like, hey, it's okay if the 45-year-old plumber who's trying to keep pay rent, it's okay if he doesn't know as much about economics as you.
00:54:44.000Where it's that we, and I am, again, one of the things I meant to mention in my opening remarks is that I have seen a new desire and a thirst to go deeper in the citizenry than any other time.
00:54:55.000You know, we talk about our partnership with Hillsdale and obviously, you know, Lakewood, which does an amazing job and all these different types of, you know, places to learn and to dive into, which I just want to encourage everyone here to try to prioritize to dive deep into the books and the issues and the ideas that really matter.
00:55:16.000And to know the road ahead, just ask those coming back.
00:55:19.000And if some of you are like, Charlie, where do I start?
00:55:22.000You know, there's a phenomenal, I mean, obviously the Bible is a great thing to study, pretty obvious.
00:55:27.000The Hillsdale online courses, we've plugged many times, Charlie4Hillsdale.com.
00:55:31.000But if you have a commute, let me just kind of tell you, if you have a commute, try to pick an audio book a month that you're going to spend 10 minutes every single day to listen to.
00:55:41.000And there's some phenomenal books that I think that would really bless you about a variety of different topics.
00:55:47.000And I could tell, I went through a whole list of ones that I read or listened to.
00:55:54.000But I just encourage you to keep that balance, right?
00:55:58.000And I could say this as someone that used to be that person, and I pray that I never will, is don't be the guy that's 20 years old that walks into the room that thinks you know more than everybody else, right?
00:56:11.000Instead, be like, okay, I might know more facts, but I want to try to find the wisdom of, you know what I'm saying?
00:56:18.000And I'm not saying you were imparting that in your question at all, but at least that's something I would tell my 18-year-old self, right?
00:56:24.000Because you have a high IQ, obviously, and you have a desire to learn, and you're like uploading all this information, and you kind of go to these tea party meetings, you're like, what do you mean you don't know Federalist 51?
00:56:46.000Okay, so I've been reading a book called Lawless.
00:56:51.000And in the first few chapters, it talks about the one world government that will be present in the end.
00:56:57.000In those chapters, it talks about the UN, the EU, and the former League of Nations.
00:57:02.000It also talks about the globalists and climate change, COVID, and how each of those are being used in order to twist our minds to put together this one world government.
00:57:15.000The scripture tells us that this will happen.
00:57:55.000And it was a real wake-up call to us here because we thought to ourselves, we could see that the spirit of the Antichrist, even though he may not be alive right now, is operative in the world today.
00:58:08.000And of course, we know what the Bible says.
00:58:10.000There will be a day when one man will rule the world.
00:58:15.000When I was a kid, I thought, how in the world could one man ever rule the world?
00:58:19.000Well, now through technology, every kid on the planet has one of these phones and they're hypnotized by it almost all throughout the day.
00:58:28.000And we can see how an electric, handsome, charismatic personality could rise up and turn the minds of millions, billions of people all across the planet.
00:59:11.000It's not my focus, but sometimes I find that people that are very focused on Bible prophecy, it ends up in a place of almost an inevitability of decline, and therefore let's do nothing, right?
01:01:06.000We tell other people about Jesus because when the whole world hears the gospel, he says, then I will return.
01:01:12.000So we can help the return of Jesus Christ and hasten it, like Charlie said, by being busy, not sitting our hands, but being workers for God.
01:01:21.000What do you want to be caught doing if Jesus returned?
01:01:23.000That's an important thing to think about, right?
01:01:26.000So with the new year, we've been talking a lot about vision.
01:01:29.000And so my question to both of you guys would be with the partnership between Turning Point USA and Dream City Church, what vision would you guys have for this next year as these are two very different organizations, but with any partnership, there are effects that they will have on one another.
01:01:46.000And so with Freedom Square in particular, for Charlie, what would you want Freedom Square to affect turning point through this next year?
01:01:52.000And for Luke, how would you want Freedom Square to affect Dream City Church in this next year?
01:02:03.000Charlie came to our church, sat in the front row, and I just saw God working in his life.
01:02:08.000I saw him sitting there during the prayer time at the end, just trying to get your head around what God was wanting to do with his life and through our church.
01:02:18.000And then he had his turning point event here, and he told me a few weeks beforehand, President Trump is coming.
01:03:04.000But after that, after that, I begin to pray.
01:03:08.000I said, if we have staff members who are so weak that they'll leave their call because their pastor kept their word, you know, for the president of the United States, you know, something's really wrong.
01:03:22.000So I thought there's something wrong in the churches of America.
01:03:26.000So I began to pray, God, would you bring, somehow, would you use our church to impact churches all across America?
01:03:45.000And we got together and came up with this idea of Freedom Square.
01:03:49.000And then we said, hey, we had this gathering of pastors who come to Dream Conference and we had their ear for three days.
01:03:56.000What if we showed them what a strong, biblically based, uncompromising church really looked like?
01:04:03.000And so now we're going to have the ears of pastors from every city of America in about a month sharing the vision for what can happen in their city.
01:04:12.000So from my standpoint, God has made the vision very clear.
01:04:16.000He's going to use his church to really kind of spark a revival spirit in the hearts of many pastors that we can only affect Arizona, but affect America.
01:04:28.000I've told this story a couple of times, but when I got the call during kind of all the, you know, the pressure that was happening in that moment, and just to kind of take you back, this was in the summer of 2020.
01:04:41.000It was in the midst of the uncertainty of the pandemic.
01:04:44.000Local city was not exactly fun to work with, you know, no insurance for the event.
01:04:49.000And I remember I got the call from either Angel or Luke, and I had been conditioned as an event host to be let down, right?
01:04:59.000And that's just kind of, you just, I was like, all right, here we go.
01:05:50.000And my prayer is that hundreds, if not thousands, of those pastors that attend that conference get motivated by the success that we've been able to have here and want to kind of export this to their church.
01:06:02.000That would be my prayer for this year, at least in this spring, that at that dream conference, they come here, they hear about the attendance, they hear about the 10 million people, they hear about the lives that are changed.
01:06:39.000If this is God and this is the church and this is the world, if we're not careful, we will keep our distance from the world.
01:06:49.000But as the world moves further away from God, we'll keep our distance from the world, but we'll keep moving further and further away from God.
01:06:56.000Okay, and so that's what's happening in America today.
01:06:59.000Oh, we're still separate from the world, but they're further away from God.
01:07:02.000So I just, I, my response to anyone who says, Why have you changed?
01:07:22.000So I'm a student at Liberty University and I'm a nursing student.
01:07:25.000So, Charlie, you just recently spoke with Dr. Zolenko last week discussing the hydroxychloroquine pill.
01:07:31.000And I was pretty taken aback by that podcast.
01:07:34.000But that stops COVID before it progresses to the threatening stages.
01:07:38.000And I myself cannot prescribe those pills, but I can definitely bring God consciousness, as you guys talked about, and hope to as many people as I can.
01:07:47.000So with that in mind, what advice, honestly, what advice would both of you guys give to nursing students going into that field?
01:08:01.000I have to be careful with how the COVID question, or else we're going to lose all of our stream.
01:08:06.000So let me answer it more generally, but everyone will understand what I'm saying.
01:08:10.000The fact that people are not being educated properly about azithromycin, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, vitamin D levels, and the correlation with COVID treatments is one of the great injustices of my lifetime.
01:09:05.000I told him just some very basic things.
01:09:07.000I shared with him a study that shows that aspirin can greatly reduce hospitalization.
01:09:12.000Not exactly hard to get aspirin in America, thankfully.
01:09:14.000Melatonin can greatly reduce hospitalizations.
01:09:17.000Vitamin D, it might have been too late for D because that's more of a prophylactic to do to get your D levels up, but it doesn't hurt at the time.
01:09:54.000And if anyone here has a spirit of fear, understandable given the propaganda networks, if you're uncertain, you're like, what happens if I get it?
01:10:02.000Please listen to our podcast, one of those three.
01:10:04.000I think you'd be blessed by that type of information.
01:10:06.000Now, your question, though, is what do you do going into that field, right?
01:10:25.000They're part of this new free thinking network of medical professionals, of people that are willing to look at more homeopathic, less corporate, more wellness kind of measures.
01:10:37.000And so, what my answer to you is, you're going to have to do residency.
01:10:41.000But beyond that, maybe your career, maybe God will be calling you to not work for Banner, not work for Anthem, but maybe go towards some of the mid-level kind of doctors that are pushing back against the norm.
01:10:52.000They have a nurse, there is a nursing shortage right now for doctors that are looking, that maybe do things a little bit differently.
01:11:09.000We need more people to go into nursing.
01:11:11.000And it's going to be very difficult to go through residency and have to deal with a lot of that.
01:11:14.000But on the other side of it, God might be bringing you through that trial to then go work for a community of doctors that are willing to actually look at wellness and do the right thing.
01:11:25.000So, I just want to encourage you with that.
01:12:37.000The federal government is now going to tell me that I have to sit down with my employees and ask them about their intimate medical details.
01:13:11.000But just so you understand, we're so propagandized in like this, what Robert Malone would call a mass formation psychosis that we would somehow believe this is even remotely acceptable that your employer is going to come and ask you about your intimate medical details.
01:13:24.000I'm going to ask you first to pray, James 1:5.
01:13:26.000Pray for wisdom, God will give it to you generously, right?
01:13:28.000It's one of the few things that God will give you generously on demand, right?
01:13:31.000Pray for wisdom and do what's best for your own.
01:13:34.000And maybe there's another employee, maybe there's another job waiting for you.
01:13:37.000Thankfully, there's one good thing for you.
01:13:39.000Everyone's looking for workers right now, and wages are going up, right?
01:13:42.000And so, that's the one good thing about people that are being forced to get vaccines is that there is a phenomenal job mobility opportunity right now.
01:13:50.000And that's easier said than done because you might have a very specific skill, you might have benefits that you've worked to accrue.
01:13:56.000But I would also, I wouldn't go down easily.
01:13:58.000I would challenge, because if you're right at that 100 threshold, they are wrongly capitulating to a mandate, which, by the way, is likely going to get overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, God willing, right?
01:14:09.000And so it's been stayed in federal court, it got unstayed.
01:14:14.000It's going to go up to the Supreme Court.
01:14:16.000There was a great ruling out of a district judge, I believe, in Texas that came out today, praise God, that told a group of Navy SEALs they don't have to take the vaccine.
01:14:26.000And so, the momentum is going against these mandates.
01:14:30.000And also, let me just add another wrinkle to it, is that even in the medical profession, they're backing away from it because this is looking, I got to be careful what I say.
01:14:39.000Actually, I can't say this on the live stream.
01:14:41.000Just do your research on whether or not it's working or not.
01:14:44.000So that's all I can say about that because that's the tyranny I have to live under, the tyranny of the tech companies.
01:15:39.000And then Dream Conference, especially the young people, I encourage you to register because you're going to hear some of the greatest speakers in America today talk about visions and dreams and how to get a hold of a great dream for your life.
01:15:50.000So if you don't know what God's calling or God's vision for your life is, come, you'll be really, really inspired.