Rick Green
Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's The WallBuilders Show, and we're taking on all the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. If you've been listening long at WallBuilders, you know that we're all about rebuilding the foundations of America, and, of course, an essential part of that is to be a biblical citizen. And to be a biblical citizen, you got to know what the Bible says about how to treat your neighbor, how to form a society, what your government should look like all those things, and then how to do that under our particular constitution. And, of course, one of the things we greatly value in this nation is our freedom of religion, freedom of expression. But what good is the freedom of religion if you're not living out your faith? What good is the freedom of expression if you're not expressing your faith, expressing your beliefs?
And so we've got a three-part series coming up today, tomorrow and next Monday we're going to be sharing with you a presentation that David Barton just did recently on the amazing answers to prayer throughout history. This is going to be phenomenal. I hope it's going to encourage all of us to once again, as a nation, return back to acknowledging God and having the opportunity not only for us personally to pray, also to fast and to actually do those things that we're commanded in Scripture to do anyway, and then get to see the incredible results. Let's just jump right in. This is David Barton. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show.
David Barton
The call to prayer and fasting. You heard about the Daniel fast. George is missing that again 21 days and in the King James Version it says that Daniel fasted the dainties. And, as George points out, that could be your Dr Pepper, it could be your Coke, it could be your coffee, it could be your social media. But in that period of time you turn your heart toward God. You set that aside, something you would normally do and say in that period of time, instead of doing what I want to do, I'm going to focus on God. And so, in that period of time and talking about the Daniel fast, I'm going to just point out real quickly two benefits of fasting.
I'm going to be covering this all morning, go through a lot of history, but two benefits of fasting. I think one of the biggest ones. If you think about the electronics we have we live in a very electronically oriented world. You finally get to the point where things just don't always work the way they're supposed to and you have to do a reset. And fasting is very much like a reset. It's like a hard reset. It gets the static out, it takes the craziness out and you go back and things start working the way they're supposed to and as that stuff happens over time, you don't notice that it gets out of kilter. But you do a reset and it gets back. And the same thing remember the old transistors or even the new tuners. Sometimes the frequency gets just a little bit off. You get a little static, you're not quite hearing as clear as you want to and you get at the edge of the signal and it's really a way of getting tuned back in. Your frequency comes back on, you get to where you can hear a lot clearer and things are a lot brighter than they should be. So those are two of the general benefits of fasting.
But I want to give you some of the history of fasting as well. There's some lessons from history that I can show you that George has already been covering over the last few weeks. You've got the fast that has happened with Daniel, and when you think about history and the things that happened with history, there's a really important passage in 1 Corinthians 10. 1 Corinthians 10, in the first 10 verses of that passage, God just ticks off all these historical incidents that happened in Israel. He reminds them about what he did with crossing the Red Sea and what happened to the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud and the fire in the mountain where He gave the law. He reminded them also what happened when He brought forth water from the rock and he gave them manna and quail. He gave them what they needed, but that was good stuff. And on the other side, He also reminds them that they rebelled against his leaders and said we don't like the system you're setting up. So he sent serpents among them. In the same way, they got into revelry and party making and here's what we want to do and self-gratification. That didn't work out well at all and they started grumbling about what they had. He sent a destroyer Angel among them. So he goes in 10 verses. He just ticks off all these Old Testament stories that are there, and then verse 11 is very, very significant. Verse 11, he says this. He says these things happened to them as examples for us and we're written down for our instruction.
So that's one of the things about history is history is written to teach us how to respond. You know, there's two ways you can learn about the stove being hot. You can be told don't put your hand on a hot stove, you'll get burned. Or you can go put your hand on a hot stove and figure out, you'll get burned, and history is the way to keep us from having to go through those bad experiences. If we study history and learn what's back there, we can learn what works, what's right and wrong, causes and effects, consequences, etc. So the passage there in first Corinthians is a real key passage.
And so when you look at the history of fasting George had been doing this over the last several weeks you can look at the fasting that goes with Daniel. You can look at the fast of Moses. What can you learn by studying the fast of Moses? Or what can you learn by studying the fast of David? That David went through in the same way, Elijah fasted, and then you also have Mordecai and Esther when they were in Babylon all the fasts that happened in Babylon. You've got Jesus, who enters in the fast. What happened when Jesus entered in the fast? Why did he enter in the fast? What was the result of entering in the fast? Same thing with the apostle Paul. So many times he talks about fasting and all the disciples do so.
As you go through the scriptures, fasting is really heavily emphasized throughout the scriptures. It's not necessarily heavily emphasized throughout the Christian life, but it is throughout the scriptures. And so as you go back and look at all that history, this is where all those fasts are written down for our instructions, so we can learn things from these. And bible is so much in the history that you'll see all these passages where God says look, recall the former days, remember the former times. And passage after passage after passage after passage, it don't do what they did remember here? And it's all about history.
So when you look at history in the Bible and, by the way, matt point out that in American education today, this is the biggest casualty we have is history and it's the most important course I would say all academic education, the two most important courses. Number one is reading. You need to know how to read, because if you can't read, you can't read the Bible, you can't read any other thing you can't. You can't learn about history except what somebody tells you. You have to rely on everyone else. If you're a read, you can be a self-feeder, and that's why we're staying God's word.
So we need to be able to read. We're not doing very well at that if you've not kept up with it. In the 1960s, America was number one in the world in literacy. By 1970, we were number 67 in the world in literacy and we've come back up to about number 42, 43. So most third world nations have a better reading level than we do. As a matter of fact, if you look nationally where we are with reading, the elite colleges and universities in America come out every year in US News and World Report and there's 60, 80, 100 of them. It depends on the year, but in 90% of the elite colleges in America not a single course on history is required as part of graduation.
We don't study history anymore at all. We've evolved past that. We're progressives. We don't need what's in the past. We want to do something different. And then even in Texas we have the STAR Test which is the end of the course kind of studies here in Texas Right now we have 61 percent of our kids here in Texas that can't read at grade level and they're the ones in school. Sixty one percent can't read a grade. But that means they want no history. We don't teach history. We work, we have an organization, WallBuilders, that works with about a thousand state legislators. We monitored about 152,000 pieces of state legislation last year and it's amazing over the last three years. How many states have passed laws that in those states that say for the next 10, 12, 14 years, whatever the period is, the students in our schools will not study the American War for Independence, or the civil war, or world war one or world war ii or the holocaust. Those have all gone out by state law. We we're getting rid of history.
Rick Green
Hey, quick Break. Folks stay with us. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show.
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David Barton
When you get rid of history, you now see what we see on campuses 1,100 American campuses a year hold an anti-Israel day on campuses in America. You wonder why Harvard and University of Pennsylvania and all these places were so pro-Hamas when Gaza hit. Because that's what we've been teaching, and so this is where reading and history are the two biggest courses I think you can have in education, and the emphasis that we have in America right now in getting away from history. Why would you read? If you can't read history, you don't need to read anything else. Just listen to what we tell you in the media. So all the emphasis on history. This is where, just as we can learn what God has done in Bible history God works in all nations, all people and all generations you can also learn a lot about what God's doing. When you look at American history and I want to do that this morning pertaining to fasting. Show you some stories out of American history that maybe you've never heard before when it comes to fasting. I want to start in the 19th century, which is the 1800s. I'm going to go through different periods and epics and again, I think you'll find these stories are very inspiring, very compelling and probably you've never heard them before, because we don't teach history much in America anymore. So I want to go back to start with Abraham Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln is a young man. He grew up in a Christian family, his father professing Christian. They would go to church, but the problem was his father was a professing Christian, not a biblical Christian, and so throughout the week he would get drunk and he'd beat the wife and he'd beat the kids and he was abusive and it was just not a good situation. And young Abe says you know, this is what it means to be a Christian. I want nothing of that. And so he became an atheist early on. He became an atheist. So he leaves home when he can. He grows up as an atheist, he's committed to atheism. Uh, he, he doesn't like anything about Christianity because he's seen it, he's lived it, experienced it. And so what he does? He memorizes much of the bible. And he memorized the bible so that he could argue with Christians to show them how stupid they were, how dumb they were, because most Christians don't know the bible. He knew the bible better than they did and so he could tear them up, because most Christians really don't study the bible well. So he learns about the bible. And so as he gets a little older, he he's growing, he becomes an attorney and as he an attorney, he enters into a law practice with a guy named William Herndon. This is Herndon Lincoln Law Firm, and they're in Illinois and Herndon wrote a biography about Lincoln after Lincoln's presidency, because Herndon knew him, they'd been partners for a while and Herndon talked about how that throughout those years Lincoln had a lot of mental instability, a lot of mental breakdowns. Well, he continues and in addition to being an attorney, he finally becomes a legislator, he becomes a judge in Illinois.
And at the same time that Lincoln is moving up in his life, there's a guy named James Smith, pastor James Smith. He's pastor of Presbyterian Church in Springfield and in 1841, he has a big public debate against a noted atheist. The atheist is a guy named CG Olmsted, and so this big public debate happens between Christians and atheists and instead of Christians looking like they're anti-intellectual. Pastor Smith really does a good job. And so what happened was in 1843, he came out with a book, the Christian's Defense, a Statement and Partial Examinations of the Leading Objections of Infidels and Fidelis. So he took all the arguments of the atheist and very logically disproved them, and it wasn't just a matter of half-faith. He had reasons why the atheist's arguments were wrong and Lincoln had never seen anyone with that kind of intellectual capability actually defend the faith.
And so Lincoln apparently got a hold of that book. He read that and, by the way, this is 1 Peter 3.15. 1 Peter 3.15 says be able to give a reason for the hope that's within you. This is what we call apologetics. This is where most Christian kids today cannot handle what goes on in university. If you're unaware of it and if you have a kid raised in a Christian home that goes to a university. Statistics show that right now, between 81 and 88% of Christian kids deny their faith while they're at university. Because they get there to university and they can't handle the arguments of professors. And I've always been told Christianity is right, but I've never heard this before. And so we're seeing them lose their faith as a result. We don't have the apologetics, we can't defend why we believe what we believe. But this is what this book was all about. And so Lincoln apparently got this and, as an atheist, he read he it. He says that's pretty compelling arguments. Hadn't thought about that.
And so, as Lincoln is going through and still developing. He has a son and his son named Eddie. And when Eddie was three years old in 1850, Eddie died. And so this is a tragic loss for Lincoln. He's lost his son. And he actually reaches out to Pastor Smith and said would you be willing to do the funeral for my son? And so Pastor Smith did. He did the funeral.
And then Pastor Smith reports in this letter right here this is the actual letter. We own tens of thousands of original documents from American history, so what I'm saying, what I'm showing you, is not something we just read, we actually have it. This is the letter that Pastor Smith did talking about the first time he met Lincoln, 1853, Lincoln comes to his door and he says look, I'm an attorney, I'm a judge. I know there's a defense and a prosecution. I know both sides argue and you try to find the truth. He says, and I've studied enough evidence to know that there really is a God. He said but I need help coming back to faith. Can you help me come back to faith? And so Lincoln is, and this is what Pastor Smith explains.
Lincoln says I want to come back to faith. So Pastor Smith starts mentoring him and taking him and helping him and going through the objections and leading it on and he finally gets Abe to the point where he says Abe, you need to be publicly speaking about your faith, you need to do a sermon, you need to do some bible studies or something late, no way, I'm not going to speak publicly. Oh, I can't. I can never do a sermon. And pastor smith said he said look, Abe, there's a county bible society that meets here once a month and their, their meeting is coming up. Just do a sermon for the county bible society. It's a small group here. And so Lincoln did. And Lincoln did a sermon on the ten commandments, to show how the Ten Commandments are relevant to life today. And he took the Ten Commandments, showed all ten, how they apply to life, how they apply to law, etc. And Pastor Smith said that was the best sermon I've ever heard on the Ten Commandments is done by Lincoln.
So Lincoln, this is 1857, 1858, Lincoln runs for national office, us Senate. He did not win 1860, he runs for president of the United States and he did win in that run. So because now I said he became president, he was elected in November, you did not become president until March. There's a four-month period of lame duck. That turned out to be really bad, which is why we amended the Constitution to say when you're elected in November, first week of January, congress comes in. We don't want lame duck Congresses, we don't want four months for people to undo what the election was. So Lincoln had four months and when Lincoln was elected president he had not become president yet not sworn in South Carolina came out and said not us, we're leaving.
This guy ran on a platform of ending slavery and we don't believe that's wrong. We will not be part of any nation where he's present. So this is the first secession. Lincoln's not president yet, he's just been elected. Mississippi follows along. Uh, you can see in Mississippi’s secession ordinance they said our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, the greatest material interest of the world. Eventually the other states say we can't be part of any, any nation that's going to end slavery. He said he's going to it's. He said he was going to it's in the platform. And people today say, oh, the Civil War wasn't about slavery. Well, maybe, but we've got the documents and their documents say that it is. This is what they said. Now we've had a lot of people say, oh, that wasn't what it was all about. It was about states' rights. Well, maybe, but the state right they contended for the most was right there, and that's in their documents
Rick Green
Stay with us. You're listening to The WallBuilder Show.
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Rick Green
Welcome back to The WallBuilders Show. Jumping right back in with David Barton teaching on answers to prayer and fasting.
David Barton
What happens is the union is dissolved. After the union is dissolved, the Confederacy, before Lincoln becomes president, writes their constitution. The constitution of the Confederacy says you cannot be part of this nation unless you embrace slavery and protect and defend slavery. So in the Constitution it makes it all about slavery. This is about. This time is when Lincoln is sworn in as president. He becomes a president, and when he becomes president, the South declares war. And so this is what he's just inherited. He was elected as president and in those four months the whole nation has come apart. It's a polarized nation like we've never seen in politics. We say it's polarized today. It was really polarized back then. And so he inherits this and it's a difficult situation for him. He's now in charge of a civil war. That's the first thing he inherits. He didn't start this thing, didn't create it. Now his beliefs apparently created based on those who went the other direction. And so what happens with Lincoln? You think about this.
We've been a nation, a united nation, for nearly a century. We've been Christians, a Christian nation, for nearly a century, and we've all split. As a matter of fact, when the South split from the North, most major denominations in the United States also split. The Baptists split over who were pro-slavery, anti-slavery. Presbyterians split, methodists split. We had a complete split of Christianity in the nation over the issue of slavery and civil rights. Whole nation is torn up.
And so he's supposed to preside over something like this. There's no precedent for it. He's got to take a divided nation. And he talked about how bad it was. He says both sides read the same Bible. Both sides pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the others. Both sides pray to the same God and each invokes his aid against the others. One side of Christians is praying against the other side of Christians. What do I do with this? And he continues. He said the prayers of both cannot be answered and that of neither fully answered. There's no way God can answer the prayers of his people when they're opposite, like that, and when they're contradictory and with both sides have their own agenda. God can't answer those kind of prayers. And so what you see with Lincoln. He talks about the fact. He said I've been driven many times by the overwhelming conviction I had nowhere else to go. I have no precedent for what I'm facing now. This is something I don't know what to do. And the spiritual growth of Lincoln was still developing at this point in time. Pastor Smith had done a really good job with him, but it's still growing.
And Lincoln, about the middle of his presidency, talks about a change that came, he told an Illinois clergyman. He said I really changed in the presidency. He said when I left Springfield I asked people to pray for me. So he's been elected president. He's on the train to Springfield, said I'm headed for Washington DC, you all pray for me. And they did but he said I wasn’t a Christian, he said. And then he said when I lost my son the severest trial of my life and his son this was another son, this is Willie. Willie in 1862 died while he was in the White House and so this is the severest trial he's had. He said but I wasn't a Christian then Lincoln said but when I went to Gettysburg, and when I was at Gettysburg and I saw there the graves of thousands of our soldiers and there were 51,000 casualties of American killing Americans just in one battle, just in one battle there was some 620,000 total killed, almost a million. That were casualties, he said when I saw the graves there, he says I then, and there, consecrated myself to Christ. Yes, I do love Jesus. So he talks about that as being a turning point in his spiritual life and I think we can document that because, literally, when you look at what happened with a second inaugural address, this is later that he's now four years in his presidency, so his second inaugural address. When you read that and I encourage you to do so it is the most spiritually profound address ever given by any president. It is a. It's not long. It's actually engraved in stone inside the Lincoln memorial. It is really profound because again you got the situation of Christian against Christian, the civil war going on, and the way he handles it is so, so different. So what happens is they're in the middle of the war.
As Lincoln is having this change, he issues a proclamation and, as you can see on the proclamation, it's a proclamation for a day of humiliation, fasting and prayer. He's calling the whole nation to fast and pray. Now this part here I want you to, Pastor George, would you come up? And this is the actual proclamation that Abraham Lincoln issued right here. That's the proclamation and this is what deals with fasting and prayer. Pastor George, would you read that part that's up here? Listen to what Abe is saying.
Pastor George
And whereas it is the duty of nations as well of men to own their dependence upon overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord, and insomuch as we know that by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now dissolutes the land, may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins to the needful end of our national reformation of a whole people.
We've been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We've been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown, but we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious land which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness. Now, therefore, in compliance with the request and fully concurring in the views of the senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer
David Barton
So you'll notice he mentioned the civil war one time, but he didn't have anybody praying about the civil war. Thank you, George, appreciate that. He was not praying about the civil war, not praying about who wins, who lost. He's praying about us. We've become too dependent on ourselves, we don't listen to God, and it's all about reconnecting with God and it's a very unique request. That's a lot of spiritual maturity, because a lot of people pray for an outcome. We know, we think we want, we know what we think God wants and we pray for the outcome. He didn't, he just prayed. Let's connect to God. Now I have a good friend. Glenn Beck is a good friend. We do a lot of media stuff together. I want to show you a two-minute clip that that Glenn and I did on that prayer proclamation
Glenn Beck
The change in him. Gettysysburg, he, he really, um, he says now, now I am a Christian, now I get it. Um, and I don't know how many of us can really say that. I mean, we all say we're Christian or we all say you know, oh, I believe in God, but how many of us can say no, no, no, and for all these tragedies, I still didn't get it. Now I get it. And he calls people to fast and pray and says this is it right? What happens?
David Barton
I’ll show you. This is a timeline of the major battles of the Civil War. There are a loot of other minor battles; you’ve got Pea Ridge you’ve got Stone river, you’ve got all these other battles. But let me show you, as the Civil War progresses, how the Union was doing. The Union won Fort Henry and Fort Donaldson, they won Shiloh and that's it. Everything else belongs to the Confederacy.
Rick Green
All right, everybody, we are out of time, for today it's going to take two more programs to get David's full presentation. So be sure to tune in tomorrow and then next Monday for the conclusion, and then, as always, you can go to wallbuilders.show to get David's full presentation. So be sure to tune in tomorrow and then next Monday for the conclusion, and then, as always, you can go to wallbuilders.show to get the archives of the program over the last few weeks. Thanks so much for listening to The WallBuilder Show.
