Answers to Prayer and Fasting, part 2

Rick Green

Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. This is The WallBuilders Show, taking on the hot topics of the day From a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. We're sort of in the middle of a presentation. Actually, I take that back. We're right in the middle of a presentation from David Barton on answers to prayer and fasting. Yesterday we began that presentation, today we'll get the middle and then Monday we'll get the conclusion. So let's just dive right back in where we left off yesterday with David Barton teaching on answers to prayer and fasting.

David Barton

I want to show you a two-minute clip that Glenn and I did on that prayer proclamation.

Glenn Beck

The change in him. Gettysburg. He really, 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?

Speaker 2: 1:21

I’ll show you. This is a timeline of the major battles of the Civil War. There are a lot 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.. Then they get over here they win Gettysburg.

Glenn Beck

Where does the thing happen? Where does the 

David Barton

I’ll Come back to that? 

Glenn Beck

Okay, 

David Barton

Vicksburg, they win Chettysburg. 

They win Chattanooga. They lose Spotsylvania. Cold Harbor, they win Petersburg. Richmond, they win on Sherman's March, they win Atlanta. They win Mobile Bay. They win Nashville, they win Appomattox, and that's the end of the Civil War.

Now, pretty clear difference. That's where he had the National Day of Fasting and Prayer, right there. That's before, that's after. And again, he wasn't praying for an outcome. He wasn't praying for an outcome. He wasn't praying for when he was praying thy kingdom, come thou will be done. Get me in line with what you want to do. And that's where the retuning and the reset, the, the, the things we talked about. This is a lot of times what happens with fasting. Now, it's interesting Lincoln was in the white house at about this time and there was and, by the way, and that's Lincoln over there on that side there was a group of pastors in the White House talking. He heard them and they were saying man, we sure hope God's on our side. And they turned to him and they said, Lincoln, we trust, sir, that God is on our side.  And Lincoln's response is really profound. Lincoln said that's not what I'm after. He said it's more important to know that we are on God's side. My concern is not whether God is on our side. My greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right. So he did not fast for an outcome, he fasted to get connected to God and hear right and have the right perspective, right feelings. So that's part of that reset, that's, that's part of getting back on the right frequency. That's what you see in that illustration with Lincoln is I want to be on God's side now. And, by the way, just to finish up, the story of Lincoln, that's the story of the fasting prayer. But this book down here is actually the Bible that was given by the Lincoln's to Pastor Smith. This is 1857, four years after Pastor Smith has been mentoring Lincoln. The sign in the front here Mary Todd Lincoln. And they gave this an appreciation for all he was doing to help Lincoln grow spiritually. So this is the Bible that was given. That's what you see here on that illustration right there that 1857.

Now, interestingly, the day that Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theater, he had been in a carriage ride with Mary Todd earlier in the day and he was talking about what he wanted to do because he said the war's over, my whole focus has been this war. He said it's now passed, we can look at other things, we can do other things. And what did he want to do? This is what Lincoln told Mary Todd. He said we will visit the Holy Land. We'll see those places hallowed by the footsteps of the Savior. There is no city on earth I so much desire as Jerusalem. That was his plan, and he was shot that night and so he passed away that night, which was good Friday that's. You know, this is one of the focuses he had. So his plan was to go back Jerusalem. So even with Lincoln, we find that connection back to Israel, his heart, way back to that point in time.

Now, this is just one example out of the 1800s, that prayer and fasting, and there are a lot of other examples. So let me shift that century. Let me take an example out of a different century. Let's go to the 17th century, which is the 1600s there.

Let's talk about the pilgrims for a minute. It's interesting with most of the old paintings of the pilgrims like this. This is the painting that hangs in Rotunda, the US Capitol. You nearly always see them gathered around a Bible. That was characteristic of this.

They weren't just professing Christians, they were biblical Christians. They spent time in God's word and they grew up and they were at that time living in England. Now Queen Elizabeth was Queen, but her father, henry VIII, had started the Anglican church and most of Europe that time had what they call state established churches. So if you're in Great Britain, you have to go to the Anglican church because that's what the king and queen said, and if you're in France, you're going to go to a Catholic church. If you're France, you're going to go to a Catholic church. If you're in Germany, you're going to go to a Lutheran church. The government told you what churches you would attend, and so the pilgrim said that's not right, that's not biblical, that's not what God did at all.

Look at Joshua 24, the stuff there in Joshua. Joshua talks about you have the choice. He said we're about to enter in the promised land. He said now you can serve the God of the Egyptians, from whose land you left, or you can serve the God of the Amorites and whose land we're going. But as for me and my house, we'll serve the Lord. But he had a choice. You can choose which of those. And that's the way it was with Elijah. Elijah got the false prophets, 450 false prophets, prophets of Baal. He said, hey, let's have a competition here. My God against yours. You guys take all the time you want, you do everything you want to invoke your God and then just give me my shot. See, we're not scared of other religions. We'll take free market competition anytime we want people to have choices, god will always show up right. It's not an issue God did with Elijah, but it was never the thing that they forced someone to take a religion. You always had a choice. God always gave choices. But that's not the way it was at the time of the pilgrims. You didn't have those choices. These guys believed you should have a choice.

Now, the pastor of the pilgrims at that point in time is a guy named John Greenwood. He was their pastor and he said you know, what the queen is doing here is not biblical. He said she's not the head of the church, Jesus Christ is the head of the church. And he specifically said there can be but one head of the church and that head is not the queen, that is Christ. Jesus Christ is head of the Christian church. Pretty simple. We all agree with that, except at that point in time, she had him executed for denying Her Majesty's ecclesiastical supremacy and attacking the existing ecclesiastical order, Simply for saying that Jesus Christ was head of the Christian church. He was executed. Now, at that point in time, God Cullens now don't have a pastor anymore.

But she didn't stop there. She came out with another law to make sure this never happened again, passed a law that says if any of Her Majesty's subjects deny the Queen's ecclesiastical supremacy, they should be committed to prison without bail. Anybody who says I'm not the head of the Christian church, I will put you in the deepest dungeon vermin infested dungeon, rodents, and you will never come out of there. So this is now what the pilgrim, the entire congregation of pilgrims, is facing. And they said maybe England's not where we want to be. So they left, then went to Holland. From Holland they come to America. This is where they set sail for America.

And coming to America, their 66 days at sea in the Mayflower, they finally arrive over in Massachusetts and Massachusetts they spend the next two or three weeks going up and down the coast trying to find, because they had planned to get out in August, but they were months late getting out and so they've now arrived in Massachusetts in December. It's December in Massachusetts. They're out of food, there's no place to live. It's a complete wild wilderness and they're not prepared for it. This is not how they lived in Europe. So they're looking, they go along the shore trying to find a good place to settle, and they finally decide that we found this place. It's what we call Plymouth. They landed at Plymouth Rock and so they came ashore and started building their cabins. Now we're into January. We're talking about starting to build your cabins in January.

It is frigid, it is rough, it's Massachusetts in January and as a result of how bad it was, they lost half the settlers in that winter. So half of them died from starvation and exposure and cold, et cetera. But half of them survived. And the half that survived, they were very grateful. They were very thankful and they were thanking God that half of them survived. When they had their first experience with a Native American Native American named Samoset came wandering the camp Now over in Europe, they'd always heard that all these Indians are savages, they're wild, they're, they'll kill you every chance, and so they're scared to death and they don't know what to do.

And here they are in the wilderness and Samoset says starts talking to him in English. Now how do you pull that off? And they're pretty amazed too. And they go. You speak English. And so he says what are you guys doing here? Well, we're trying to find a place to live. And he said well, I think I can help you with that. He says, actually, I know a guy that speaks English better than I do. And so he went and got Squanto and introduced him to Squanto.

Squanto comes back because he had lived in that region what a bunch of rookies. You guys have no clue what you're doing. And he took them on. He adopted the pilgrims as his mission from God to help them survive in the new world, and so he showed them about hunting and fishing, how to do it in the new world and how to live there. And, as a result, the pilgrims have great relations with the Indians. They actually meet Chief Massasoit and make a treaty with him. The longest lasting treaty in American history between Native Americans and Anglos is between the pilgrims and Chief Massasoit. They got along great, it was really good, and so now they're learning to live in the wilderness. They got great neighbors. The neighbors love each other, and so what happens is that's the fall.

They said let's have a Thanksgiving, and so you have Samoset and Squanto and Massasoit all get together with the pilgrims and this is what becomes the first thanksgiving. So the first thanksgiving, what you have in that first thanksgiving, you have 90 indians and 50 pilgrims joining together for three days of festivities and food and athletic events and thanking God and praying, and so this is the first thanksgiving and that is what starts our thanksgiving holiday. The celebration was that event right there? Now there's another event that goes with that that we don't celebrate much in America. That really is significant. It's just as significant as that event.

And the governor, William Bradford Pilgrim Governor talked about it. He wrote his records and he grabbed this. This has got to be a record. He was reelected their governor 30 different times. Now I will point out the term of governor back then was one year, so they elected him 30 years. So they liked this guy. He was a great Christian leader and he wrote about it.

He said you know, we had the great Thanksgiving, we had time with our friends, we made it through the winter and then, as we came in the next year, we planted our crops and the corn was growing. It was, it looked like a good crop. We've learned from Squanto how to make the corn produce and so he had it planted and growing, and what happened was a drought set in. They got no spring rains at all, and so their corn is all dying. It's dying there on the ground, and if they don't have that corn, they're going to have another rugged winter like they had the year before, and they're going to lose lots of lives. And so they thought you know, what we need to do is we need a time of fasting and prayer. And so families gathered together on that day, they fasted, they prayed the entire day, they committed everything to the Lord, they asked for his guidance and leadership.

Rick Green

Stay with us folks. We've got a quick break. We'll be right back on The WallBuilders Show.

Break

Rick Green

Welcome back to The WallBuilder Show listening to David Barton teaching on answers to prayer and fasting. We're going to jump right back in where we left off before the break. Here's David Barton.

David Barton

It's interesting. They've prayed and fasted all day and the records show that late in the day clouds started rolling in and gathering over their crop field. These clouds start rolling and gathering and soon it starts raining on their crops and it's a very soft rain and it just falls and keeps falling and it rejuvenates the crops and it's significant. The Indians watch this because they're not used to seeing people pray like this and praying fast like this. It's the first time they've ever seen it. And so one of the Indians is an Indian named Habbamak, and Habbamak looked at this. He told the pilgrims and this is what he said. He said I just watched you guys pray. Clouds roll in, it starts raining. He says now I see that the Englishman's God is a good God, for he hath heard you and sent rain. And the kind of rain he sent is not what we're used to in the spring. He said it was rain without storms and tempests and thunder which usually we have with our rain, which breaks down our corn. When we get spring rain, we get storms and we get hail and we get tornadoes. It's not a good thing, he said. But your rain came and it was gentle and it brought everything back to life. He said yours stands whole and still it's still good. Still good, he says surely your god is a good god. Now it was incidents like that that caused the indians to start saying, hey, we, we want this Christianity stuff you've got. And then he's literally started coming to pilgrims and saying, whatever that religion is you got, we want that because we've never seen this before. Well, that's interesting.

Effect from fasting and praying is that people start wanting what you've got. They start wanting the way you live. They start seeing what's happening with your family or your life or your business. I want to be able to do that. That's another good thing for spiritual growth and spiritual life. And this event right here with Pilgrim is what started the annual day of fasting. Did you know that in New England up until the 20th century, they had an annual fast day? Every April 15th was the annual day of fasting and prayer in those New England states. So we celebrated fasting as much as we celebrated Thanksgiving. Not today, we got the Thanksgiving. We can stuff ourself on Thanksgiving. We can't fast on Thanksgiving, but we can stuff ourselves. Back then they had a day for prayer and fasting and a day for Thanksgiving. They knew that the two went together and so that's part of what we give for the pilgrims is the tradition of thanksgiving and the tradition of an annual fast day. So fasting was significant, as I mentioned.

About any picture you see the pilgrims, you'll see with the bible. They were called the people of the book and if you look at that picture, you'll see them with the Bible. They were called the people of the book and if you look at that picture, you'll see nearly every one of them is holding a Bible. They carry that Bible with them as part of what they did. That's what directed their thinking, what directed how they did. So you have examples from and there's so many others I can show you out of the 1700s. So the 1600s, the 17th century, the 1600s, and let me jump now into the 1700s, the 18th century, jumping into the 18th century, the 1700s.

This is when we talk most about the founding fathers. The first time the founding fathers ever got together was in 1774. Prior to that there were 13 different nations. They were a lot like Europe. The guys from Virginia had never met the guys from Georgia and the guys from Massachusetts never met the guys from South Carolina. We were 13 different nations, just like Europe was. But we now have this thing going on with England, where that maybe we need to come together and cooperate. And so to look at cooperation, this is the first time that we had a Congress the first Continental Congress, 1774. And when these guys got together it's interesting the first thing they did was pray, but it wasn't the dinky kind of prayer that we might pray over a school board meeting today. God bless the school board and those here. They opened Congress with a two hour prayer session. It was two hours of prayer that they prayed, and that's. You find this throughout the records. And it's interesting.

John Adams over here, he's one of the many people who wrote about what happened that two hours he wrote his wife Abigail. They have eleven hundred letters back and forth between the two of them. Two hours he wrote his wife Abigail they have 1,100 letters back and forth between the two of them. He told her everything that was going on. She would tell him everything because they were often separated because of the war. And so he wrote Abigail and he said Abigail, you're not going to believe what just happened today. And he goes through and he explains. And he said in addition to praying, we studied four chapters of the Bible this morning in Congress he said and God spoke to us out of Psalm 35.

For the first time we think we actually might have a chance against the British because of what we saw in Psalm 35. So he told Abigail. He said, Abigail, I must beg you to read that Psalm. Read the 35th Psalm with your friends. Read it to your father. Let everybody know what God showed us out of Psalm 35. Now, first you read it, then read it to your friends, read to your father. Her father was a pastor of church. Reverend William Smith was a pastor. He said everybody needs to know what God showed us this morning out of Psalm 35.

And then he continued. He said but you know what? We didn't stop there. He says we've appointed a continental fast. We've called all 13 colonies to a time of fasting and prayer. He said millions will be on their knees at once before their great creator, employing his forgiveness and blessings as smiles on American council arms. He said, Abigail, we've got 3 million people in America. Can you imagine the impact of having 3 million people pray and fast?

Now, this is the first of 15 times that Congress called the nation to prayer and this was the time of prayer and fasting. Half of the times of prayer and fasting, half of them are Thanksgiving. It's kind of like we saw with the pilgrims. This is what we've set up, because you pray and fast and then, after God answers your prayers, you need a time of Thanksgiving. Oh, but it's getting rough again. We need prayer and fasting, and after God answers your prayers, we need a Thanksgiving. Oh, it's getting rough again. We went back and forth 15 times. It goes back and forth. It's significant that if you look at that time, by the time you get to 1815, there have been fourteen hundred government issued calls to prayer in America by 1815. I'll bet you guys can't name six calls to prayer in your lifetime in the current generation that have come from the government. Not much we can. Back then. There's a lot of these.

You see this guy right here, Josiah Bartlett. This is a proclamation from Josiah Bartlett. Josiah Bartlett is a signer of the declaration of independence. He was the governor of new Hampshire. This is a proclamation right here from John Langdon. He's a signer of the constitution. He's the governor of New Hampshire. He was a general in the American revolution. This is by president John Adams. This is a national call for prayer and fasting as a president, not just Congress. This is the president.

This one is by Samuel Adams, the father of the American Revolution. Sam Adams, sign of the Declaration, governor of Massachusetts, calling Massachusetts to a time of prayer and fasting. This is Oliver Wolcott. He's the governor of Connecticut. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence calling for a time of prayer and fasting. All these founding fathers understood how important fasting was and they called the people do it see, even John Hancock. John Hancock, these are two proclamations from John Hancock. You can probably, even from your distance, read John Hancock on top of the proclamation. So these two from John Hancock the time of fasting and prayer. Now take this one right here. You see this proclamation right here. You can see it there. It's a time of public fasting, humiliation and prayer.

What in the world would John Hancock have the state of Massachusetts fasting and praying for? Read the proclamation. He says we need to fast and pray that the kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, may be established in peace and righteousness among all the nations of the earth. That's a pretty good prayer request. He actually issued a number of fasting proclamations. Others say we need to pray and fast that all nations may bow to the shepherd of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the whole earth may be filled with His glory. And another one. He said we need to fast and pray and confess our sins before God and implore His forgiveness through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, our lord and savior. Another one he said we need to fast and pray that the spiritual kingdom of our lord and savior, Jesus Christ, may be continually increased until the whole earth shall be filled with his glory. And on he goes. So Hancock issues 22 of these.

And what do we know about history? We know our founding fathers, agnostics and deists, and this is what we're told in history today. This is why it's so important to actually know what happens. And with Hancock, as you saw, with the others here's times for this is a day of Thanksgiving and here's fasting for Proclamations we understood that was part of the Christian life, that's part of who we were as a people. And, by the way, I've mentioned that we've got tens of thousands of these.

We actually have two museum locations here in DFW. I'm inviting you to come see this stuff yourself. It's stuff you've probably never been exposed to. We have a museum over at Las Colinas where we've got really big stuff, space capsules and, by the way, space program. Maybe you didn't get this. You know, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon with Apollo 11, before they got out of the capsule, they had communion on the face of the moon, dedicating that to the Lord. And do you know, when you get to Apollo 14, apollo 14 carried 100 Bibles to the moon on Apollo 14. And they built an altar on the moon and left a Bible on the moon from Apollo 14.

Now you probably haven't heard that stuff, except we've got the chalice signed by Buzz Aldrin from Communion on the Moon. We've got one of the Bibles we have three of the Bibles that went to the moon out of those hundred. We've got all sorts of stuff that show us a different picture of who we are as people. So if you're interested, this QR code, this is for the museum over in Aledo. It's where we keep a lot of the documents and books. You're welcome to set up tours and go there. This is for the one over in Las Colinas where all the big stuff is really super cool stuff. So those you're welcome to sign up for tours over there. But going back to this time of prayer and fasting, remember that first one that John wrote Abigail about. He told Abigail, he wrote her again, said Abigail, you're not going to believe what's happened in this time of fasting and prayer that we've had. And so what he does, he explains what's going on. He said I mean, for example, he said Colonel Smith and a group of his men just captured a British fort and we go. Well, that's what we're supposed to do. I mean, our guys are supposed to beat their guys.

Back then, in 1774, we didn't have a military. We were still British citizens. We had nothing. We had school teachers and farmers and shopkeepers and ministers and Colonel Smith. Who's Colonel Smith? Now, I've got two kids in the army right now. So if you're military, this is no disrespect. If you're an officer In the American Revolution, when they're trying to build an army, here's the deal. They said if you can get 20 of your neighbors to enlist with you, you get to be the colonel over that group. The easy way.

So when John Adams said Colonel Smith and a group of his men had just captured a British fort, what he's just said is Farmer Smith and a bunch of his neighbors just captured a British fort. That's impressive because the British are trained military, professional military. And he said in Abigail he said we've captured a 20 gun. We said we've captured 20 gun British man of war and a 64 gun British man of war, which is really impressive considering we didn't have a Navy at the time. Now I take that back. We did have a Navy. If you ever want to see the American Navy, we had gunboats. If you go to Smithsonian Museum of DC, go up on the third floor, you can see the gunboat Philadelphia. It's a rowboat with a cannon in each end and we just captured a 64-gun British man-of-war.

Now what happened? John said you know, a bunch of us were sitting around in a tavern talking about what we're seeing, and so they're sitting there eating a meal and talking. He said and here's the conclusion of this he said one of the guys said it really well. He says it appears to me the eternal Son of God is operating powerfully against the British nation. Yeah, I'd say so.

Again, time of fasting and prayer, unbelievable results that came as a result, and so this is the way that they talked about it. So when you look at that point in time, congress issues so many calls to fasting and prayer. I mean, there's time after time throughout the revolution, and you'll see here it's a time of fasting, humiliation, prayer to Almighty God. This was a part of who we were as a people, this is part of the way Christians grew up, this is part of our life. And show you three other examples of the American Revolution, of miracles that God performed after some of these times of fasting and prayer.

If you go to the Battle of Long Island, this happened only four weeks after we signed the Declaration. So we still don't have a military. It's still a bunch of volunteers taking on the British and we got our clock cleaned in that battle. That was a huge loss and a British historian he kind of recorded what it looked like. But we're up in New York City area where we were backed up against the river and the problem was there were 30,000 British soldiers, there were 9,000 American soldiers, all right folks out of time for today and we're going to pick right back up on Monday.

Rick Green

All right folks out of time for today and we're going to pick right back up on Monday.

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