Unveiling the Power of Holidays and Upholding Rights on Good News Friday

Rick Green: 0:07

You found the intersection of faith and the culture. It's WallB uilders, where we're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. Always doing that here with David and Tim Barton. And you found us on a Friday, which means we're going to jump into some good news here in just a second. But I want to encourage you to visit WallBuilders. com. Great place to make a one-time our monthly contribution, and we really appreciate you coming alongside us like that. It takes fuel in the tank for us to reach as many people as possible, and every time you make one of those donations it helps us to expand the message. Get more of this truth in as many hands as possible so that more folks can learn that truth, be inspired by it and whatever it is that God's calling them to. You know we don't expect everybody to go do the exact same thing. It's a little bit different for everyone, in fact. But what we do want to do is get that truth in their hands and then pray that God shows them in their particular community what to do. And that means for you as well, and it may mean a donation. It may mean, you know, becoming a Constitution coach. It may mean spreading the good news. It may mean bringing in one of us to speak at your church, or whatever it might be for you. Just pray that you'll be willing to take some action. Listen to the program, of course, but take action on the things that you're hearing about as well.

Rick Green: 1:13

I'm Rick Green, america's Constitution Coach and a former Texas legislator. Thank you so much for being with us today. David Barton, America's Premier Historian and our founder at Wallbuilders, Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of Wallbuilders and they have been doing research to get us some good news. Our fellows, let's jump into some of that good news today. It is it's the most important day of the week, I think, for keeping people motivated to stay engaged in the culture. They need to hear these victory stories and you're not going to get it from major media. You might get it in social media, depending on your personal echo chamber that you've tapped into on your particular social media feed, but the best place to come get some of the good news is right here on The Wallbuilders Show. David, what's our first piece of good news today?

David Barton: 1:53

Well, it deals with holidays and holidays I mean we celebrate holidays in America and they hold intent on holidays going back to the Bible with something you would stop and think about what that represents. So, as you guys point out, Christmas is my number one holiday. I can do that 365 days a year. There's a spiritual significance to it, everything else but if you go back to the Bible right at the beginning, as God is delivering his people out of slavery and helping them establish as an independent nation, He starts saying, okay, from here on out, you're going to celebrate this day as a national holiday. So, whether it's Passover or the Feast of the Tabernacles or anything else, it ends up with seven major holidays that God established. These are the days that I want you to set aside and I want you to remember what I did. I want you to go back over that history. I want you to teach every single generation what has happened and why this day is special.

David Barton: 2:46

So holidays had that background. They were for teaching, they were an instructive time and we used to do that in America. You know, the 4th of July holiday wasn't just a time for summer and barbecue and cookouts and baseball games. It was a time when we stopped and said, hey, what does this represent? It represents us becoming independent. It represents the lives that were lost. It represents the leadership of the founding fathers. It represents a document. We would actually go back and study that history. And that used to be Constitution Day as well. So now we've kind of, you know, morphed all these things around. Thanksgiving used to be a really big deal. We looked at the pilgrims and what they did and why we had a Thanksgiving. It was a time to be grateful to God for the blessings we had.

David Barton: 3:28

Well, now the left has turned that into what they call the day of mourning. It is a holiday for them, but the whole purpose is they see holidays as God saw them. That is a time for instructing the people. Now they want to instruct the people exactly the opposite of what happened. So they take these holidays, they hijack them and they come up with a new name. But it allows them to teach people that, hey, this is the day when we look at how all these settlers oppressed all the Native Americans and how they stole all their land. They're using it for teaching. It is a teaching time. So, giving all of that. And so in Arkansas, the governor now is Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who had been with Trump as part of the press office there and was spokesman for him for so many years. What she did was she issued a proclamation that there is now a state holiday in Arkansas. That state holiday will be celebrated every year on January 22nd.

David Barton: 4:25

January 22nd of 1973 is when the Supreme Court issued the Roe v Wade decision that gave the right to kill unborn children, and so what has happened now is Arkansas said hey, that's a day we really ought to remember, but not for creating abortions. That's a day of mourning. It's like a Holocaust date and they've called it the day of tears. On January 22nd, we want to stop and mourn and lament the fact that more than 16 million lives have been murdered. They've been extinguished. This is not a good deal.

David Barton: 4:57

Now the significant is that is that is a teaching tool.

David Barton: 5:00

So, all over the state of Arkansas, when flags go to half mass and the kids sees that and said, hey, mom, dad, why are the flags in half mass today? The answer is because of abortion, and so it again becomes a teaching tool, and I think that is a really good teaching tool to help people or remember things, and that's invariably why we had holidays was to teach the next generation and to teach values and to teach certain things. The left again is using that for their purposes, but I think this is a really, really good way to help teach about the atrocity of abortion, the, the genocide, the Holocaust of abortion and what is. So, kudos to Arkansas for that. I'm betting a bunch of other states jump on board with that and their states as particularly all these pro-life states that have passed the, the bands on abortion. I think that's a really, really good idea for what they've done and I kudos to Arkansas, the legislature, for thinking about that. And kudos to governor Sanders for actually enacting that and making that a state holiday.

Rick Green: 6:01

Well, and a good reminder for us too, guys, that that after Roe v Wade, of course, there's a statewide battle all over the country. So these kinds of victories like this help us to to win in as many states as possible, and of course, there are some states that are worse on abortion now than they were before. But that's why we have to keep winning hearts and minds and souls. But thank goodness for good governors like that. That's a that's a big turnaround in Arkansas. From think about it, Bill Clinton was governor there Just a few decades ago and then we got. Now we got, we had another Huckabee and now we got this Huckabee. And so, folks, you can make that happen in your state, but you got to stay involved.

Tim Barton: 6:33

I think it's worth noting that this is one of the really significant reasons that people should stay involved and understand, as dire as things might look at a given time we really can't throw things around. If you go back to the 1990s, California was Republican and Texas was Democrats. Things have totally right I mean totally changed and it's because, on both sides, it's because people got involved and they worked to change the nature of the thoughts, the beliefs, the understanding in those states and really of their fellow citizens, of their friends, of their co-workers. Dad, you actually were very involved in Texas helping become Republican because you were helping lead the state Republican Party at the time in Texas. You and Susan Weddington were the ones in charge and you were working very closely with a lot of the churches throughout Texas at that time. You had been on a lot of Christian television shows and and spoken in hundreds and hundreds and probably thousands and thousands of churches at that point and so you you were a fairly common name in a lot of the homeschooling Christian community and so when you got involved in the party, it really inspired and occurs a lot of Christians to say hey, we should get involved and that you were very Instrumental and active and helping see Texas become much more conservative when Christians got involved, and so I think it's something that's we're seeing some of these states really go positive directions.

Tim Barton: 8:01

Alright because you're alluding to Arkansas when it wasn't that long ago that Bill Clinton was the leader in Arkansas. This is something that's certainly in one generation, now we're talking that's a couple decades, but in one generation things really can change if we will get involved. Which is why, even if we look at places like California that we're giving a really hard time to OFTEN throughout our day and throughout our weeks. But we have so many good friends out there that the jack Hibbs, the Rob McCoy, so many great pastors but that are working to turn things around in their state, and these are possible. It is possible to turn these states around, even as overwhelming at times as the odds might seem the unlikeliness of it happening. But we have, we just in the last 20 or 30 years we have seen the major Republican and the major Democrat leading states in the nation transition from being Republican and Democrat and Democrat to Republican. These changes can happen if people get involved.

Rick Green: 8:59

Yeah, and you know, tim, I was thinking about as you were describing that. Take Arkansas, for instance. You know the population makeup didn't change that much, right? Like with Florida, we saw this massive shift in the last couple, you know, two, three years as, as a lot of liberals moved out, a lot of conservatives moved in. That didn't really happen in Arkansas. What happened in Arkansas was better education. People started learning about the you know, started teaching the principles, started teaching what that means. You know you had a guys like Clinton that were able to talk a good game but then pass really liberal education. But the more the people became educated, the more they wanted somebody that actually reflected their values. So what you're saying is so, so true, and there's many states out there that can be turned. People just don't want to invest an entire generation, but that sometimes that's what it takes. It takes time to win these battles long term, especially for big cultural change in an entire state.

Tim Barton: 9:47

And I think we even point to more recent examples like Colorado. It was not that long ago, a decade? Dad, How long ago was it that Colorado was a pretty solid, considered a very conservative state? Because there was a lot of mountain and outdoor people and and they had the basic, kind of biblical traditional values. And then when Governor Polis got involved then Democrats poured SO much money in Colorado trying to, Rick, as you're alluding, to re-educate people in a different direction and change that, state that, how long ago was that with Colorado?

David Barton: 10:16

That was really about seven years ago when they were still Republican. It's coming up on eight years but that point in time, so much of the Colorado Congressional delegates were Republican, the House, the Senate, the governor were Republican that was that was a pretty safe red state just a decade ago and it's been in the last seven or eight years when they've turned and it's really been the last three or four years when they have become rock solid blue and it is very difficult for Republicans to win there now. And that's not because we don't have a lot of Christians and conservatives in Colorado, it's just because, as you guys are talking about, they back down to the process. You got the whole East slope stuff is so conservative and so much of the West slope is conservative. But along the front range, along the I-25 quarter there they're pretty crazy wacky liberal and that's what's driving that. That is just that that I-25, i-70 kind of quarter and so much of that state is still conservative and Christian. They're just not as involved as they used to be.

Rick Green: 11:15

All right, guys, we get. Well, actually, let's try to get a piece of good news in Tim before we go to break.

Tim Barton: 11:20

All right, I'm gonna try to cover it quickly, even though this story deserves way more attention than probably the abbreviated version I'm gonna give it. But there was a judge from Florida who actually ruled in a case. There was a postal worker who was driving big trucks and the postal worker and as a truck driver, had a firearm. When you work for the post office, it is a federal law you cannot have a firearm in the post office. So right now, I'm not advising people to take their firearms in the post office. When I go deliver mail for WallBuildres, when we do those things, I leave my firearm in my truck or the office or whatever I need to do. I'm not I'm not trying to fight that Constitutional provision yet.

Tim Barton: 12:02

However, this individual had a different perspective, so he carried his gun with him. There were a Postal officials there who tried to arrest him. He ran. This was in 2022. So this becomes a big case. What's quite fascinating about this is the judge and this is US district judge Catherine Kimbrough Mizelle from the middle district of Florida. Well, she cited a 2022 Supreme Court ruling that was the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association in the Bruen case, so we kind of know it as the Bruen case. But in the Bruen case it was identified that people maintain the right to keep bare arms. So when laws seemingly arbitrarily are passed saying that you can't have a gun, that's actually unconstitutional.

Tim Barton: 12:45

What's fascinating about this decision as I'm reading through it, this is an article from the Epoch Times is she identified in this case that there should be for the government to show that you cannot, a postal worker or an individual can't have a firearm at a post office, they need to show that historically this has been a historic precedent, not a recent adaptation of a new standard. And if you go back historically I wasn't even thinking about this initially reading the article, but they point out go back historically. Who was delivering mail? Well, you can look at things like maybe the Pony Express? Did people delivering mail back then have guns? Yeah! If you were delivering mail via the stagecoach, did you have somebody riding shotgun? Yes! And what did it mean to have been to ride shotgun? It means you're sitting on top of the stage with a SHOTGUN protecting the mail. It goes through pointing out that you know, actually, the history and tradition of the post office was that the people delivering the mail ALWAYS had guns, even when it went to the railroad. You had your express agents on the railroad and they had guns protecting them, protecting themselves and protecting the mail, and so the judge actually rules in favor of this employee, identifying that it was incorrect to prohibit him from being able to have a gun.

Tim Barton: 14:04

So this is far from being decided. There's gonna be challenges, there's gonna be appeals. But, guys, this is quite fascinating when it appears like the first chink in the armor of saying that you cannot have a gun anywhere near anything government oriented or federal property. For the judge to say that we should consider the historic precedent! That is so encouraging, right, like music to my ears, so to speak. For a judge to say let's consider history in the face of this and again as the WallBuilders, individuals, that we are trying to restore the religion, the moral, the constitutional heritage as we look to history, to hear a judge saying we should look to history to find the proper interpretation of this, that is so encouraging.

Rick Green: 14:53

And that, of course, Tim, and we talk about this a lot the difference between looking at history and the Constitution itself, but, of course, the historical precedent, instead of just what some other judge said last month or two months ago or two years ago or 10 years ago or 50 years ago. Instead of just what some one judge says, what's that historical precedent? Just so good to see more and more of that happen. And this one wasn't even Supreme Court, right? This was a district judge or a court of appeals. Where was this one? Yeah, this was Florida and this was a US district judge. District judge, okay, great, and like you said, that actually said hey, wait a minute, Just because it's a post office doesn't mean you give up your Constitutional rights. So really interesting, good stuff here. David?

David Barton: 15:33

Yeah, let me jump in and add some more history to the gifts, even more good news for what I hope is the trajectory that Tim's talking about. I'm gonna go back to 1990, because that's the first time I got involved in the case of the US Supreme Court. And so that case came down West Side versus Mergans, et cetera and at that point in time we were dealing with religious liberties and arguing for religious liberties in public places. And one of the things that happened was we said, guys, the First Amendment guarantees you a free exercise of religion. And it doesn't, you don't lose that free exercise of religion when you walk into a government building, when you walk into a state capital, or when you walk into the US Congress, or when you walk into a government school. You don't lose those Constitutional rights just because you happen to be on government property. And we argued that for years and years and years. And now the Supreme Court has come over to that and said, no, schools can't stop their free exercise of religion, state capitals.

David Barton: 16:25

And so we're seeing all this change in the last three to four to five years, where the First Amendment is actually now being applied everywhere!

David Barton: 16:33

You have the right to express your faith, to express your religious beliefs and have the rights of conscience in all these areas, and I think that that's a good foundation, a good model for what may happen with the Second Amendment. Why is it you can have a Second Amendment unless you're in a government city? That makes no sense. The Constitution either applies to all aspects of life or it applies to no aspects. You can't pick and choose. And so I think even, Tim, what you're talking about there, that may be the first of what becomes kind of a wave that they follow the First Amendment practice of, hey, we just did the First Amendment, second Amendment's gonna be the same. Who knows? But again, that's some history that I think would really play into that. And maybe we're gonna see a whole lot more decisions like what we see out of Florida and that federal court there that say, hey, you don't lose the right, your Constitutional rights, just because you're a federal employee or a state employee or a school employee or anything else.

Rick Green: 17:27

Alright fellas, we're gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back. We've got more good news for you when we return your listening to the Wallbuilder Show.

Tim Barton: 17:34

Thank you. Hi, friends, this is Tim Barton of WallBuilders. This is a time when most Americans don't know much about American history, or even Heroes of the Faith, and I know often times for parents we're trying to find good content for our kids to read. And if you remember, back to the Bible, at the Book of Hebrews, it has the Faith Hall of Fame where they outlined the leaders of faith that had gone before them. Well, this is something that, as Americans, we really want to go back and outline some of these heroes, not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity and our faith as well.

Tim Barton: 18:01

I want to let you know about some biographical sketches we have available on our website. One is called the Courageous Leaders Collection and this collection includes people like Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, George Washington Carver, Susanna Wesley, even the Wright Brothers, and there's a second collection called Heroes of History. In this collection you'll read about people like Benjamin Franklin or Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Harriet Tubman, friends the list goes on and on. This is a great collection for your young person to have and read and it's a providential view of American and Christian history. This is available at wallbuilders. com that's www. wallbuilders. com.

Rick Green: 18:39

We're back here on the WallBuilders Show. It's Good News Friday, next piece of good news coming from David. Guys, actually, before you give us another piece of good news, David, I got to ask you guys, do you think that God gives us like I'm just feeling like we've got good news coming out of the court over here with these kind of cases? Then we get the two-tier justice system that's happening right now. You got all this bad stuff happening, but then you see victories at the US Supreme Court and I guess what I'm saying is, does God do that on purpose, maybe, where we just don't have everything go right all at once, so then we get lazy or everything go wrong all at once, so that then we just like give up? You know, is there a parallel to that with the children of Israel are in the Old Testament, where they just don't, they've never had it perfect or all bad. There's always some good, some bad.

David Barton: 19:26

I would say the answer to that is what God, Himself, told the people when they went into Israel. They went into the Promised Land. They've been out in the wilderness. Now they're going in and Joshua is leading them in. It's a young generation coming in and Moses says hey guys, I just need to remind you of what God is saying here. And so the book of Deuteronomy is really about a six-week history lesson that Moses gives on the mountain. And he says God's not going to let me go in, he's letting the younger generation go in, but you need to know all the things that we learned in those 40 years where we really goofed it up. And so he gives

David Barton: 19:59

the book of Deuteronomy is just kind of that history lesson, the old man telling the younger guys. And there are two significant passages I think are really really important. One of them is Exodus 23, verses 29 and 30, and the other is Deuteronomy 7: 22. And God tells the people going in and says look, guys, I am not going to give this to you all at once. I'll give it to you only, little by little. If you get it all at once, you won't be able to handle it. And so God told them I'm going to give you the land, but you don't get it all at once.

David Barton: 20:28

And so they had to fight for a number of years to finally take possession of the land that God had promised them, and it is a battle all the way. Just because God promised something doesn't mean it's going to come to pass without a big fight and they had plenty of big fights, whether it's the walls around Jericho or everything else. Just because God promised it doesn't mean that it's going to come in our laps without work. The Bible is really clear that it's hard work that brings profit. Proverbs 14:23. You have to work your tail off to get this stuff done. You're going to have losses along the way, as they did the battle of AI, and when they had the loss of the battle of AI and Joshua 7, after God had promised them they were going to win. They're going hey, what happened here? I thought we were going to win all this. There's a lot of setbacks, and that's just part of taking possession of God's promises.

Tim Barton: 21:12

Well, and you know one of the things I think is a great connection for us too as individuals, listening to this, recognizing that God strategically said I can't give it all to you at once because you wouldn't be able to handle it all at once. We're going to have to make some progress little by little. I'm going to give it before you. What's fascinating though, daddy I mean you're talking about the Joshua 6 and 7 kind of in that timeframe with one of your examples, one of the verses to look at If you afford a Joshua 14, Joshua 14. This is when Caleb asks for the inheritance. You know people are being given inheritance and it's so great. Caleb, at this point, he was one of the original spies that go and spy out the land from the book of numbers, and he and Joshua were the only two that came back and gave the positive reports. So they're the only two of those leaders that actually make it to the promised land. Caleb goes in. God tells him we're going to give you a little by little, you go ahead. Caleb goes to Joshua, and I think it's 14, I think it's around verse 12, where Caleb tells Joshua hey, there's a mountain out here, see that mountain over there? He says I want that mountain for my inheritance. Now, why would he pick that mountain? He explained that there were giants, the descendants of giants that were living there, and it may be there's some giants still there. He says I want to go and see if there are giants there because I want to fight and conquer them.

Tim Barton: 22:35

What is so interesting is that Caleb, at this point right a much older man, because he had to go through the 40 years and the wilderness and all that happened as a much older guy he is asking for more battles and I think one of the mistakes at times we can make is we are so interested in not having battles in the sense of we don't want drama. For so many people, we just want peace. And in fact, for many conservatives, right, we're like government, just leave us alone. We just want peace. This is ridiculous, and yet I think the mentality from Caleb shows the mentality that God gave victory to.

Tim Barton: 23:14

This guy was looking for the enemy to get out of the way for what God was gonna do, and I think sometimes we are hesitant to get involved because we don't want drama, we don't want a battle, and I think the reality is that for many of us, we have to be willing to roll up our sleeves and say, okay, where is the battle? What is the issue? Is it my kids in school and the fact that this school teacher is confused about how many genders there are and what bathroom we're gonna use? And okay, what's the battle? Let me roll up my sleeves and let me engage in what needs to be done. And I think we really need to go back to that attitude that Joshua had, where he's not asking for peace in his retirement. He's asking for something else that he can conquer, a difference that he can make and enemies that he can target to get out of the way, in the opposition of what God wants to do. I think that attitude from Caleb is a very important attitude for us to embrace today.

Rick Green: 24:10

Well, I sort of derailed y'all from another piece of good news, but I think all of that is good news, because it does encourage us to know that we can take them out and that there are other people doing the same thing. But, David, you wanna try to squeeze in one more piece of good news before we run out of time today?

David Barton: 24:23

Yeah, the piece of good news goes back to the piece we started with, where that Arkansas has declared a holiday, a state holiday, to remember all about abortion and how bad it was and what happened. Well, interestingly not surprisingly perhaps when you look at the rankings by pro-life groups Americans United for Life, one of the big national groups, they rake Arkansas as the number one most pro-life state in the nation. They come out with this every year. They rank all 50 states and so Arkansas is number one, Louisiana is number two, Mississippi is number three. There were a total of 59 new pro-life laws passed last year.

David Barton: 25:01

And going to something we talked about earlier in the program, how Tim was mentioning how Texas and California really kind of reversed. Texas used to be Democrat, now they're Republican and California's the other way. Texas has passed 57 pro-life laws since Roe v Wade and yet Texas is number 17 on the pro-life list. So it's amazing to see all these other states starting to move up, moving in the right direction. There's this great list, americans United for Life. You can go to the website, you can type in your state, see what laws have been passed, see where your state ranks, and that is one of those battles you can engage in. Tim was talking about Caleb, you know Caleb was saying, hey, give me a good battle to fight. I want a really good enemy to take down. This is something everybody can get involved with. It's helping move pro-life laws forward in your state and AUL has a really good resource for that.

Rick Green: 25:50

All right, we're out of time folks. David and Tim, thank you so much for the good news today. We'll have more good news for you next week. Be sure and tune in then. But also Monday through Thursday. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday typically good interview for you, somebody out there in the culture making a difference. And then Thursdays, of course, our foundation of freedom Thursdays, that's your chance to send in questions. You can send those to radio@ wallbuilders. com.

Rick Green: 26:11

But always on Friday Well, almost always. I shouldn't say that because sometimes we have special programming and either we bring you a Constitution class excerpt or maybe a pro family legislators conference speech that was really good that we want you to hear. But usually on Fridays it's gonna be a good news Friday, and so you can go back and get more of that good news at our website and just look for the Friday programs. It's wall builders. com, by the way. That's the place you can make a donation or you can go get some good materials to educate yourself and your family and folks in your community with. Check it out today at wallbuilders. com. Thanks so much for listening to The WallBuilders Show. .