Igniting the Flame of Biblical Citizenship Wk 8: Steering the Nation's Future, part 3

Rick Green

Welcome to the intersection of faith in the culture. This is WallBuilders. Thanks for joining us today. We're diving right back in today to biblical citizenship in modern America. As you know, if you're a listener to WallBuilders, we're always looking at the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. This week we're really combining in all three as we bring you this biblical citizenship course. The course, by the way, has exploded across the country. If you want to know more about the biblical, historical and constitutional perspective, you can find the link in the description below. For more information, go to biblicalcitizens.com. You can sign up as a coach for free. You can host classes for free. You can pick up the DVDs and the workbooks at WallBuilders. There's so many great things in this course. I really encourage you to take it. You know, if you have to take it by yourself, that's fine, but it's much more fun to bring people over into your living room or get people together at the church. The interaction that takes place after you play the videos, that's the most powerful part. So check it out at biblicalcitizens.com. But for now let's just pick up right where we left off yesterday with biblical citizenship in modern America.

David Barton

By the time you have a house and senate debate and by the time you see if you can get 38 states to come together on this. This is going to be thoroughly vetted through the people. We will have had discussions extensively on this. And, by the way, the notion of being able to wipe out the Constitution at such a convention and it doesn't exist

Rick Green

 Yeah, that's a totally false premise. 

David Barton

I mean, remember the current polling is right now, nearly three-quarters of the nation respects the Constitution. They don't think it's being used right, but they respect it, so they're not going to be willing to wipe this thing out.

Rick Green

Well, and specifically to that, I've heard people say, well, what if they, if you had a convention of states? And they do the same thing that they did in the first runaway convention. That's not possible because again, it's still whatever they do has to come back to the state it's got to come back to us and you've got to have 38. That's the proof.

David Barton

And it's interesting, Article 5 actually limits that by saying amendments to this Constitution, that's right, that's right. It doesn't say you come out with a new Constitution. It says well, that's, you know the original Constitutional Convention. They just met there to revise the Articles of Confederation. They came out with a whole new document. No, because had that violated what the state sent them there for, the states would not have ratified it. The states knew that they probably could not revise the Articles of Confederation. You go, try it, but you know what, Get us a document that gets us into a nation. And that's what they did. And it's interesting that you have examples through that process, even back in the Continental Congress, that the states were explicit with their delegates. For example, when we signed the Declaration originally, when we were debating the Declaration of Pennsylvania told us delegates, you do not sign a separation of Great Britain. As the debates went on they changed positions. So they sent word of the delegates sign separate from Great Britain. Well, half the delegates refused to sign individually. So the state legislature popped them all out of there, sent new ones back. That's how Benjamin Rush became a signer of the Declaration. He replaced one of the guys who refused to separate, like the state legislature had told them to do. So the question of well, what kind of delegates might Congress have appointed delegates? The states did. The states controlled the delegates, and if the delegates start doing something the state didn't send there to do, the state will just call them back home. Really easy. So the history is there. I mean, history answers all this, and so, again, I mean we need to have open debates on this because it is a big issue. But this is I'm not scared of using the Constitution. 

Rick Green

Yeah, Use the Constitution to save the Constitution. It's not going to destroy it. Many of us are going to scratch the imagination.

Speaker 

So one of the major powers that states have is Article 5. It's right there in the Constitution. It is fully one-seventh of the Articles of the Constitution. So to forget about Article 5, you're saying I got six-sevenths of a Constitution, which means I've got basically no Constitution at all, because I have no way for it to balance and reflect the conditions of the nation. Article 5 is a power specifically to the states, where they have complete control. Two-thirds of the states can call a convention on a specific subject. The states meet, they meet in a convention for proposing amendments, and that's all a convention does. If a convention meets and it proposes amendments, then it goes back to the states for three-fourths of them to consider whether or not to ratify it. So you've got two methods Congress can propose amendments, the states can propose amendments. Whatever is proposed, it requires three-fourths of the states to ratify it. There's some people out there, Rick, that think Article 5 is too dangerous. We're not good enough. We're not good enough to use the Constitution. We can't meet and discuss, we can't even have a convention. Well, I would propose that then we shouldn't have legislative committees anymore. You know, legislative committees meet, they take evidence, they discuss, they hear witnesses and then they decide proposals that go to the legislature. Can you imagine if somebody said we can't have the Transportation Committee meet anymore? They might make decisions for the whole state. Article 5 provides a committee process of the states to consider issues, consider evidence, consider the conditions and consider proposals. And if they agree on a proposal, they send it out to all the states to consider whether or not they want to ratify that by a three-fourth majority. It's an incredible opportunity that we simply haven't made use of as the states to look at how we clarify these roles and responsibilities.

Rick Green

Alright, it's time to dive in to citizen activism. What do we do as citizens, as biblical citizens, to actually take action, not just talk about it. Well, we are going to talk about it, but let's talk about what you've been actually doing. We are joined by three great Americans that are true biblical citizens. They don't just talk about it, they do it. One of our great Constitution coaches, Scarlett Lanny, is here with us. One of our very first I mean literally pioneering Constitution coaches with Constitutional Alive in his churches in Colorado, Ken Davis, and he has been there on the front lines for years. We actually did events together more than a decade ago. He's run for office, serves on the school board, has a radio program and helps others run for office as well. Y'all welcome Joe Messina. Alright, this is our final week together and we have been laying the foundation. We've been talking about the Constitution, we've been talking about how to be biblical citizens. Now it's time to actually take some action on these things. A lot of people that are watching this class are maybe thinking I might wanna do that. I'm not sure if I wanna do that. Ken, you were one of the pioneers. I mean, you did this before anybody suggested you do it. In fact, I didn't even know people were hosting classes and you just kept coming back and saying I need more workbooks, I need more work. I'm like why is he buying so many workbooks? And come to find out you were talk about force multiplier. You were teaching people like crazy. What gave you the idea to do that? Cause? We didn't even suggest it, you just did it.

Ken Davis

Yeah. So in 2012, I'm probably like a lot of people. I was sitting there and watching TV and I keep hearing these people say, well, that's not Constitutional. Well, that's Constitutional. And I was going. I don't know if they're right or wrong, so I probably should find out. So I decided I was actually going to start a small group in my church learning the constitution. So the first couple of weeks I was trying to design my own curriculum. Two weeks in, I go to a business conference that I attend every year and Rick was, of course, one of the main speakers and he's got a curriculum so novel, great idea. I was like huh, divine appointment. They really was. So two weeks in, I buy a Constitution Alive and I buy a few extra workbooks. At this point, I have myself and three other people literally in a closet with a TV and a DVD player and we are diving in using Constitution Alive. At the time, I'm so glad to see what we're doing now and we have now More people. It was you and three other people, me and three other people, and then a couple of them brought a friend. In fact, we have people from outside the church. And now here we are, eight years later. This past Saturday, we just wrapped up our session. I've pretty much done this on average three times a year, every year since 2012. We do it in 10 week blocks, yeah, which is that's why all the extra workbooks that I'm always ordering and we've seen amazing growth. This past session finished, we had just over 60 people participate and, in fact, the church had to give me one of the smaller auditoriums to host the class in. And truly, God has moved, and I told them this past Saturday because I believe that this is what God has me doing. If it was still just four of us in a closet with a DVD player and a TV, I would still be doing this. Amen.

Rick Green

Amen. Yes, if I were on social media, I would be saying more period of period, this period. I mean, that is exactly that's the deal, man. I mean, no matter what you start with and that's after. I mean that's 60 in this class. There's no, I don't know how many. You've had hundreds that have gone through the class over the years. What have you seen as a result of that? Not just they went through the class, but what happened afterwards?

Ken Davis

Yeah, so a couple of things. We've actually had someone and if you didn't catch it, I live in Colorado. We've had someone that was driving down roughly 40 miles every Saturday I host the class on Saturdays. They ran for city council and won their city council seat in what's called Woodland Park. We've had some folks run for school board and one of the things that we actually started that was launched from this was we actually began what's called a culture impact team in our church, and so I heard Pastor Rob talk about the seven mountains of influence, and really we believe that the church is called to influence and be at the top of those seven mountains, and so we've created a team of people. We've drawn people from all over the city, some from all over the state, and we are plugging them in. So we give them, we feed them information, we tell them hey, here's a bill that's being presented up at the state house. We need people to show up in force, and we are kind of a driver of some of those things and we bring in speakers. We've actually had, we've held school board forums. We held a DA. We had a new DA voted for this past year. We held a DA forum as well, where I get to stand up and grill them, ask them questions. We take questions from the crowd. It has been amazing what we're seeing from people who are saying you know what they're finding out. It's my job to make the difference and I told my class this last time. Like I'm going to say to all of you you are the solution.

Rick Green

Amen, amen. Well, hey, that encouraged me so much I mean you've got an army of biblical citizens I mean you really do that are living out that citizenship. Scarlet very similar. You started your first Constitution class. What two years has it been? Two years already?

Scarlet Lanny

In January it'll be two years.

Rick Green

In January, it'll be two years, and you had never done anything like that before Never.

Scarlet Lanny

I am the unexpected Constitution coach. Yes.

Rick Green

Unexpected Constitution coach. So what was your catalyst? I mean, what was the driver for you to decide to do it?

Scarlet Lanny

That I'm obedient and so when I get a call, I do it. And it came out of nowhere. I just stumbled upon you and you were offering a free webinar. He said you're launching a new program and I said, well, I can do free and I can watch. So I did. And then I just loved you and the other coaches that were talking about what they were doing and I said, well, these seem like good people and actually, you know, it costs a little money to do it. And I said, oh, that's very doable, and I think I'll just teach my kids this stuff and keep it to myself. But then you followed up and you said we have a training webinar and it was free. So I said I'll do that too, and once. 

Rick Green

Anybody since the theme here?

Scarlet Lanny

So once I did that which is smart because you get hooked because then I was like, oh, I could do that, I could do that. But then I said I don't know if I will, though, because I'm busy and I don't want to take attention away from my kids. But the seed was planted and, like I said, there was a call there and for some reason I said I want to learn this and I want my kids to learn this. And hey, if we're doing it, why don't I invite a few more friends to learn this? And I don't do anything small. So I ended up not doing it in my living room which is actually a great way to do it because it's nice and cozy but I got a room at my church my former church and invited people and everyone thought five would come, but we had 30.

Rick Green

30 in the first one.

Scarlet Lanny

In the first one we probably had 24, 25. And then we worked up to 30, 34, as it went along. So instead of this is what's great about this curriculum is, instead of having attrition and people just like falling off, they stay and they want more and you gain more people because they hear about it and they want to come and learn.

Rick Green

And then you did one right here in this room and had I don't know...

Scarlet Lanny

This was so amazing! We had 160 people for 10 weeks in a row, yeah, in this room, in this very room, and I kind of think that, with everything, it's just amazing that this is being filmed in this room.

Rick Green

Amen, Amen. I want to ask you real quick about because you said you didn't want to take time away from the family and it became a family project. Your boys actually get up and quote from the Founding Fathers and the Declaration. You engaged the whole group, the whole family, and that, I think, inspired others to want to do the same and get their family involved.

Scarlet Lanny

Yeah, because what you want to do is you want to make it work for you, and so that's. I made it work for me with doing that, and what's nice about it is I took it on for us to learn, but I wanted others to learn, and I feel like when you're blessing others, you'll be blessed. We were so blessed by doing this on so many levels, from my kids really just blossoming in their public speaking skills, in the buy-in. They love what they're learning and they love their nation. And it goes deeper than just saying I'm a proud American. They know their Founding Fathers, they know the Declaration of Independence and the tie between that document and the Constitution, and I'm so filled with pride. And we pulled other people's kids into it because we're trying to train up the rising generation. Did I foresee this happening when I started this? No. When you take a leap of faith, you will be rewarded. That's what I just love about this curriculum.

Rick Green

Amen.

I think the free part is a great idea. I feel like I'm like a Liberty drug dealer. It's like you know here, try this little bit of Liberty and then everybody keeps coming back for more. So that seems to be working. I think that's working okay. Okay, one thing I love to hear you talk about is you had some apprehension. You know it didn't want to have to know everything, and so part of what helped make it work for you was you don't have to be an expert. You just get the people in the room and say, hey, let's learn together.

Scarlet Lanny

Yeah, it's called just fake it till you make it. And it's so easy to do because you have Rick Green and David Barton and Tim Barton, and now Kirk Cameron and Mark Mechler all these amazing people in the biblical citizenship curriculum that they're the experts. So, like we say, if you can press play, you can say hi to everybody when they come in the room. Welcome, press play, you're good.

Rick Green

Well, one more thing before we bring Joe in and start talking about running for office as another way to be active, Because part of what we're doing here is saying look, this is a way you can start to build that army of biblical citizens in your area and it's so easy to do to get people together. But it will also give you hope and you'll find people running for office out of these classes. But I think what I enjoy the most is how people, when they leave the class, they've got a hope for the nation that they haven't had in a long time. They've got a feeling in their gut that you know what this is worth saving and it can be saved. Tell me a little bit about that and what you've experienced with the people that have come through the class with you.

Joe Messina

It's interesting that you bring that up one of my good friends. I mentioned earlier that we had a couple of members bring friends. One of the gentlemen that came started coming. He was very crudging. He really thought this…

Rick Green

It's all over. Gravy guns, the canned food go hot out at the ranch.

Joe Messina

He was that guy, carried his gun in every time I saw him, you know, and over the course. Now, this gentleman has virtually not missed a single class since 2012. And yeah, and he is a very different person today, because the first year or so, I would always go Terry, trust me, we can win this. Trust me, we can make a change. Trust me, we have the authority in this earth to change everything that we see in front of us. Don't worry, God's got you over and over and over. And now he's smiling, he's happy. He still has his gun, that's all right, I got mine too, that's right, he still has his gun. But a completely different person than the one I first met in fall of 2012. And really that is because I just pressed play, because I was one of those people that didn't know a thing. Now I bring in smarter people, by the way, that's the key. Bring in smarter people than you to help you explain the things that the videos don't necessarily break down for you, and I've done that over the last couple of years as well, and it's worked out great. And I love to see people encouraged, because we always leave them with what the duty of a citizen is and they walk away going. I see myself in that I can do that.

Rick Green

Yeah, okay. So now, Joe, we're talking about getting people together and learning, getting the education factor, equipping them to make a difference, but then, where the rubber meets the road, actual campaigns. A lot of people today think the system's rigged, you can't win. We're sitting in California and you were on the school board in California. How did you do that?

Joe Messina

Because my God's not dead. You're going to bring out the Boston in me. I ran. I don't know whether I'm stupid or stubborn, but I ran four times to get on the school board, Wow. And the fourth time I got on, Thank you. But as you get on the board you start to learn about what's going on there and then the real power that you have to make a change and I didn't care what they thought about me with our is that right wing Christian guy or not? I, you know, every time I, every time I went to the school board meetings, I prayed before I went into that God would give me the, the guidance and the wisdom to know how to vote, to show me the things that I needed to speak up about and what to say and what have you?

Rick Green

My friends, very quick break will be right back. You're listening to WallBuilders

Tim Barton

Hey guys, it's Tim Barton and I want to tell you about our new book, the American Story Building the Republic. We start with George Washington as president and we've already become a nation. So really now it's how do we function as a nation? And if we look back in American history, the stability, the prosperity, success we enjoyed as Americans is because of the foundation that our early presidents laid, because of the examples they set. How do we live in America under the Constitution? What is the role of federal government and really what part did each one of these early presidents play? We go to the first seven presidents and a lot of people probably know the names Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison. Very few people know about Monroe or John Quincy Adams or Andrew Jackson. Now, we might know some of their names, we really don't know their stories. We want you to relearn, rediscover American history and see how it applies to today. Go to WallBuilders.com and get your copy of the American Story Building the Republic.

Rick Green

Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. We're doing that four part series for the rest of this week, covering week eight of Biblical Citizenship. Let's Dive right back in where we left off before the break.

Joe Messina

The thing that really was interesting at first about all the Christian teachers and administrators that wouldn't say anything. They were stricken with fear. Isn't that sad that our Father owns every blade of grass on every piece of land on this planet and we're afraid to open our mouths to protect our kids? I mean, Jesus said that basically we're supposed to take care of our kids. Bring a little kids to him after they've been brainwashed by Caesar or before you have a lot of power in this from his parents. So as I started reaching out to the community and I made more friends through the prayer breakfast and what have you and you start to realize the lay of the land and the politicians, once you can fill a room with four or five hundred people, all of a sudden they become your best friend. They want to come, they want to speak at these events or what have you. So you got to learn about the politicians and what they wanted and what they were looking for. After a while, the bottom line was you started getting just power by osmosis. I started reaching out to the pastors of the churches. I started reaching out to the men's groups in towns. We have 81 houses of worship in the Santa Clarita Valley for 300,000 people. I can barely get four or five people to run in an election cycle for sometimes up to 15 or 20 seats. There are 65 elected officials and their answer every time is I have a family, I can't go through what you go through, and all I say is praise Jesus that our founding fathers didn't say that, hey, I got a family, all right, I got a delivery stable to run. I can't get involved in this stuff. So, and the most precious commodity we have, the most precious product that we have, is our children? Right, we send them the Caesar to be trained. That's what we do when you send them to a public school. I'm a public school official and I'm telling you this. They're not interested in what your kids are learning when it comes to God, or the Constitution, for that matter. Matter of fact, because of Mr Green over here am I meeting tonight. I was thinking about you as a Texas legislator and I said you know what we need to get back and we need to find a history book or create a history book that actually has our kids know what the Constitution is, know what it says, know what it stands for, and it can't graduate that class. It was the answer to his question. What the reality is that who better? God tells us in his word that we're supposed to go out and find Godly men, men that love God and that fear God to rule over us. There isn't a heathen on this planet that's going to go look for a Godly guy to rule over them, is there? So who better than us? Who better, to shine the light on these kids and these school systems and make sure your kids don't get the curriculum that they're trying to shove down from Sacramento?

Rick Green

Hey Joe, I've got to remind the people watching that's in California.

Joe Messina

Yeah.

Rick Green

He's winning those battles in California. Don't tell me, you can't do it in your community. Go ahead.

Joe Messina

Go ahead. We look, we as Christians and again I'm from Boston we don't know how to be quiet, ever, all right, and we as Christians, have hidden in the corner. You know, years ago I said when the homosexual community came out of the closet, we went running in, okay, five at a time, because we didn't want anybody to feel bad. And what about us? We shouldn't feel bad. We shouldn't be putting our kids through that. We shouldn't be subjecting our kids to what you see in these schools nowadays. And I'll tell you, as a school board member, the worst thing I could see is a room filled with parents because they're mad that we just canceled a football season. That is the most uncomfortable thing a school board member can have. Why aren't we in there on a regular basis holding those books up and saying why are you teaching my kid this? The first vote that I had, you guys would appreciate, was on a book that was required reading that had descriptive rape scene in it. But this was great literature, so we tried to make it so they would simply set the permission slip home to let you parents know it was in a book. Parents should be able to choose. That's simple. Put it in the book. And what happens? We, the teachers, come unglued, a lot of the administrators come unglued. So I said, all right, no problem. I pick up the book, I open it up to the page where the descriptive rape scene is and I start reading it from the dais and everybody says, oh hey, whoa, whoa, what are you doing? Well, hey, if my 14-year-old daughter can read this, you bunch of adults can't handle a little bit of this. What's the problem? And I still lost four to one. But I made my point. All right, that's good. You need fighters, you need warriors and you need to make sure, when you're holding somebody up or you're trying to get somebody elected to a position, please don't vote or support somebody just because they have an R on their name or just because they go to church on Sunday. You need to see them in the community. You need to see how they act. You need to see how they respond when the heat's on, if they stand for God, if they stand for your kids, if they stand for you know, as we do. We took planned parenthood out. So we took a stand for the unborn and you can do that at a school board level. But we need your support and we need your help, even after we're elected. Don't abandon us. You need to be there to support us. You need to be there to help us out. 

Rick Green

If you want to prevent the Marxist, socialist indoctrination that's been going on for the last 50 years, we have to take over the school boards. If you want to prevent the defunding of the police, we have to take over the city councils. So we are believing big. We're believing for 10,000 new candidates for school board and city council all across the country to come out of these biblical citizenship classes. So we're asking you, when you start your classes, have that conversation as those classes go on. 

Okay, folks, at a time for today we're going to get the conclusion of biblical citizenship in modern America tomorrow on WallBuilders. So be sure and tune in tomorrow. If you want to get the whole course, go to biblicalcitizens.com. Thanks so much for listening to today, to WallBuilders.