Rick Green
Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's the Wall Builders Show where we take on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. You can learn more at wallbuilders.com and then also at wallbuilders.show. So if you want to just catch up on the archives of some of the programs over the last few weeks you might have missed, then go to wallbuilders.show. Super easy to listen to them there and share them with your friends and family. Or if you want to learn more about the organization and you want to get some great tools not only learn but also share with friends and family and get them educated then go to wallbuilders.com. Lots of great materials there as well, and you can learn more about your three hosts here.
I'm Rick Green, here with David Barton and Tim Barton. David's America's premier historian and our founder at Wall Builders. Tim's a national speaker and pastor and president of Wall Builders. I'm a former Texas legislator and we're just here having a good time. Guys, I don't think the nation should only have one-day birthdays. I think we should celebrate all through July. I mean David gets to celebrate Christmas all year long. So all through July, I mean David gets to celebrate Christmas all year long. So all I'm asking for is just July to celebrate America. I think that's fair. Can we declare that today, like is there some sort of executive order we can sneak into whoever signed Joe Biden's?
resignation letter and get them to sign it.
David Barton
I would object to that. I would object to that. I don't like that because I would go more than one month for heritage. I would go all year. It's like saying I'm only going to celebrate my wife on her birthday or on our anniversary. No, no, you do that all year long. When you've got something really good, you want to celebrate it all year long. And I don't just celebrate Christmas for one month, Rick, come on, I do that 12 months a year. All year long Christmas songs, all year long Christmas songs, all year long Christmas decorations.
Rick Green
That's right. Turns the AC down to 40 so we can have a fire going in the middle of the summer and feel like it's Christmas. I love that, though. I think that's awesome and we are we're patriotic around here, so we do celebrate America year round because we're always talking about what made America great. And guys, we were traveling so much we didn't really get to spend time together on the show. We played a presentation from each of the three of us throughout the Independence Day week and the week after, but really didn't get a chance to talk about it or get any guests on to talk about it. So Jerry Newcomb will be with us later today and we might even do some more of that next week. I think Bill Federer is going to be with us next week, but it is important not just to wave the flag.
Right, guys, we've got to know why the American flag is worthy of being waved, what it really stands for,
Tim Barton
yeah, and it's something that, Rick, as you mentioned, because we've been on the road so much and there's been so much happening, from assassination attempts to resignations, to usurping of power by oligarchs and propping people up in positions, there's been a lot going on. It's certainly a lot we've needed to talk about, but one of the things we have seen in culture is that most Americans are not getting a proper history on any level whatsoever, and so we don't understand the uniqueness of America. The founding fathers when they did the Declaration of Independence and they sign it in August. They're all putting their names on what would, in essence, be viewed as a death or really, I mean, I guess, a death warrant, because they are now opposing the king. They're committing treason. If they are caught, they're going to be executed, most likely. They pledge their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honors.
None of them in the midst of the hardship. None of them ever recanted, none of them ever changed their mind, none of them ever backed down. Many of them in the midst of the hardship. None of them ever recanted, none of them ever changed their mind, none of them ever backed down. Many of them lost their estates. Many of them lost their entire wealth. Some of them lost their lives, their wives, their kids, and yet none of them backed up on the promise they made for America to be a free nation.
And so we really do want to take a little time and let's just let's talk a little bit more about America and and why she's unique.
We have talked I guess man was it.
Earlier this week we talked about that that one of the foundations we have to have in America is religion and morality. Yeah, and so, even looking at the price of founding fathers paid the the foundation they laid of religion and morality with their sacrifice, there was several components working together that allowed America to be this unique free nation, and it's always worth spending more time on again, because the rising generation is getting almost none of this in their education. Unless you are homeschooled or in some Christian schools, you might get this. There's the occasional public school where there might be a really great teacher who will dive into this, but this is just not in standard curriculum anymore. It's not a Christian school curriculum or public school where there might be a really great teacher who will dive into this, but this is just not in standard curriculum anymore. It's not in Christian school curriculum or public school curriculum, and so we want to spend a little time revisiting some of these thoughts, ideas and some of the major players and people that helped America become a nation.
Rick Green
Well, we're going to do exactly that. Stay with us. Jerry Newcomb will be with us, executive director of the Providence Forum, author of many books, including George Washington's Sacred Fire, the Blessings of Liberty, and a lot of really great documentaries as well. Truth that Transforms is his radio commentary. So, anyway, fantastic to have him with us. We'll be right back. You're listening to the Wall Builder Show.
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Rick Green
Thanks for staying with us. Jerry Newcomb, good friend, back with us. We've got to talk about the foundations and how this thing got started in the first place.
Jim Newcomb
All right, thank you. Thanks for having me on.
Rick Green
Yeah, man, well, we love the birthday of America and, of course, knowing those truths and what actually created the greatest nation in history, I mean there had to be some good inputs, right? So what's that formula that got put in that made America so great? The?
Jim Newcomb
The key is the idea that our rights come from God and what God gives us is not up for grabs, it's not for the government to in any way, you know, interfere with. So the essence of America, as I like to say, and I say it often, is self-rule under God. And in fact, let's use one phrase from the Declaration of Independence the consent of the governed.
That's exactly what we have in America, thanks to God, that we, the people, and, of course, now that's jumping ahead 11 years later, to the Constitution, but still it's the idea that we get to decide what kind of government we have, and that's fantastic and it was revolutionary then and it's revolutionary now.
Rick Green
Amen, it is. I mean, you can't look at another nation anywhere on the planet that has had the same results that we've had and you hit on the key aspects of it and that's what you guys are teaching at Providence Forum. It's what Coral Ridge Ministries has done forever. I mean you guys are helping to preserve it, just like we do here at Wall Builders. But when you talk about this stuff, when you say the key elements are that our freedom comes from God, not government, that we, the people, have to continue to give or refuse that consent, what do you say to people in the culture right now that push back on that and say well, you're bringing faith into the public square, or you're a Christian nationalist or whatever nasty term they come up with? I didn't realize that they actually believe. If we believe our rights come from God, we're wrong. I think Jefferson would have a word. But anyway, how do you respond to them?
Jim Newcomb
Well, I respond that you just look at the actual history, even the you just brought up Thomas Jefferson. Obviously he was the chief author of the Declaration of Independence, but they you know the committee and the Congress made what Something like 88 changes to Jefferson's draft. But he still wrote the first draft. And he did say you know that our rights come from the creator. And in fact at the Jefferson Memorial it says the only sure way to make sure we, you know, maintain our rights is to recognize that the people need to understand that God is the source of those rights. And that's a bad, an awkward paraphrase, but he does say that and it's important to understand that.
It makes you act different, right?
I mean, if you know your freedom's coming from God and not your neighbor, you live it different, you live it differently and you live in such a way that God will hold us accountable one day, because God will hold us accountable one day, because God will hold us accountable one day. And you know, rick, the 20th century, the you know, obviously, what we passed 24 years ago and yet the same idea they're still in play in the 20th century. It was the bloodiest century on human record. The word genocide was coined because the phenomenon of killing whole categories of people was started to be practiced in certain places. And in all these different cases, you basically had a situation where, especially with the communists and then also with the Nazis and their distorted I don't want to say theology, but the distorted, weird views that were very anti-Christian. You know, Adolf Hitler said, for example, the heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. And so, anyway, these godless constructs that's the phrase that the great Paul Johnson, historian from Great Britain. He died about a year ago, but in his book the Quest for God he uses that phrase these godless constructs Sorry about the Soviet Union, the Nazi Germany, Maoist China and so forth.
They had a situation where, no, they didn't believe in God and they didn't believe that you have rights. You know, it's basically it's the state is God. And, as D James Kennedy once put it, if you're in a situation like that and you run afoul of the state, you have no higher appeal. But the founders had an appeal to heaven, meaning God. But the founders had an appeal to heaven, meaning God. In fact, for the rectitude of our intentions, to whom did they appeal In the Declaration of Independence? They appealed to the supreme judge of the world. And who was that? Well, the Bible says that Jesus Christ is the one to whom the Father has entrusted judgment. So the founding fathers being mostly Christians and Trinitarian churches and so forth. This is an oblique way of referring to Jesus in the Declaration of Independence itself, but bottom line is God-given rights makes all the difference in the world.
Rick Green
It does. It does Makes us live different, makes us treat each other different, makes our laws look different. So when we lose that by not teaching it right, that's the petri dish where bad government grows and the culture goes away is civic ignorance, biblical ignorance. We don't know these things. It's why, when you do the documentaries that you do, when you bring these things to life it's so important Does it surprise you how surprised people are when they watch these things and they begin to learn this foundation that they weren't taught in school? That they weren't taught in school and, at least from what I've seen, it gives them hope, it gives them joy to know that hey, oh, this is why that means we can return it.
Jim Newcomb
Yeah, exactly, the foundation of the nation is still there, the founding principles, if we could just return to them. They're still there. There are a lot of cracks in that foundation, it would seem, and the left has, you know, worked very, very hard to try and sandblast against the foundation, but it's still there and I think that's the exciting thing. And so at ProvidenceForum.org, where we've, you know, put all these different, you know, ways to look at these resources, including just lots of portions of these films that we've been making about America's Judeo-Christian roots. I'm thinking right now when we were talking about the difference that believing in God or not believing makes in terms of politics. I'm thinking about part where Dennis Prager says in our videos he talks about the contrast between the American Revolution and the French Revolution and with the American Revolution, essentially was built on the God foundation, the idea that, again, god is the source of our right. With the French Revolution it was a godless situation. In fact, there was a Catholic country and they killed priests and they killed nuns, they beheaded them through the guillotine and they did this with nobility, etc. And in some ways the French Revolution and the ideas of the French Revolution are still with us today, noted Prager, and he said God is the issue. It's kind of like there's a battle in effect between the American Revolution our rights come from God, and that's the key to understanding things versus the French Revolution. And he, and then also Oz Guinness, the great thinker, made the point in our film that, look, the French Revolution, its ideas are embodied in the Russian Revolution 1917. That gets back in effect in 1789, you know, when the French had their revolution.
By the way, Rick, as you well know, when you bring up and I bring up the idea that, okay, the Constitution was signed in the year of our Lord, 1787, sometimes people will just say, well, that was just a convention. That didn't mean that they believed in Jesus, even though of course, that means in the year of our Lord, Jesus Christ. I mean, that's what our time is in reference to. Well, the French were so opposed to Jesus, that is, the French revolutionary leaders were so opposed to Christ and the church and so forth, that they not only changed the year, so they made 1791 or thereabouts year one of the French Republic. They also even changed the week so that they wouldn't have any reference to the Sabbath or the Lord's day. They changed it to 10 days in the metric system and so forth. I mean, this is amazing.
By the way, Napoleon, after about a dozen years, napoleon changed all those things in France back to the original, to the Christian calendar. What a contrast. By the way, Cromwell combined the Sabbath of the Jews and the Lord's Sunday of the Christians into one nice package and it's called the Weekend, and I think we're all benefited from that concept from Cromwell. Now, that's going back to England in the 1650s, long before the French Revolution. But the bottom line, you know, ideas have consequences and, as John Stone Street likes to say, bad ideas have victims.
Rick Green
I was just thinking. I didn't mean to interrupt you. I apologize, but I was thinking when you said that about Napoleon changing the calendar back. I was like you know, eventually you figure out this is not working so well, right? And in the French Revolution, I mean, it leads to the guillotine, total chaos, total, you know whoever, law of the tiger and the shark, I mean. And then the American Revolution, with God as the source and everybody treating each other different. You just get a better result. I mean, don't you want to have neighbors that think murder and stealing is wrong? Don't you want to live in a city where they're raising their kids to honor their father and mother? I mean, it's just a totally different result.
Jim Newcomb
There's a classic anecdote about Voltaire, who was one of the intellectual forces behind the French Revolution, where he had a dinner guest over and they were discussing infidelism or total unbelief, not believing in God, and so forth, and Voltaire said to his skeptical friend hey, keep your voice down, I don't want the servants to overhear what you're saying and then turn around and steal my silverware.
Rick Green
That's right. The results, oh my goodness. Hey, before I let you go back up some for us and talk a little bit about the seeds that were planted well before the revolution, because you guys talk a lot about Whitefield and Edwards and all these guys that really were critical in laying the foundation that then the seeds of liberty were planted in.
Jim Newcomb
Well, John Adams said that the revolution that is the American War for Independence, occurred about a generation before the actual revolution in the hearts of the people.
Revival where, beginning with a humble minister from Northampton Massachusetts, Jonathan Edwards, beginning with him, and then sparking all over.
You know, all over, frankly, all the different 13 colonies, through the tireless preaching of George Whitefield, an evangelist from England who was preaching that you must be born again, and so forth, so many people became born again and it helped, you know, frankly, one of the things that it helped to do, not only causing all these different people to get back to church, get back to God, it changed so much of society, it helped grieve the skids toward independence. One of the things it did too was, in terms of independence, these different colonies that weren't necessarily always in touch with each other, they weren't necessarily always agreeing with each other. They started to communicate a lot more and become more united. That factor, the first great awakening, and then, in addition to the french and indian war, which lasted about seven years, and it was in the 1750s, those two things, more than anything single thing, helped unite and at least get the different colonies to communicate with each other. And so it did help grease the skids toward an independent america amen, amen.
Rick Green
So much there. I wish we had more time. I want to certainly encourage people to visit the website, and a lot of the videos are right there on the website. You can watch them there. Providenceforum.org. Providenceforum.org. Dr Jerry Newcomb always good to have you, brother. We got to start building now. This is the time to revive those principles of the Declaration. We're down to the wire in that 250th. That's the time to really really restore this and not fall apart like most nations do. At that time we need to rebuild. Amen, amen. Thanks, jerry, appreciate you brother. Yeah, you too. Thank you, you bet. Stay with us folks. We'll be right back with David and Tim Barton.
Break
Rick Green
Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. Thanks to Jerry Newcomb for joining us as well. Guys, one of the things I love right now in the country, even with all the pain and the problems and all that, people love this. Right now they're hungry. They're actually wondering what makes America great. So this is a great time for us to dive into those stories and those details.
David Barton
It is a great time and it's a needed time because if you ask most Americans, you stop on the street and say give me five things you don't like about America and give me five things you do like about America. I bet you you get the five don't like things faster than you get the do like things. People can tell you more of the negatives that are going on and it's like seeing an apple tree and it's got a thousand apples on it, but you see five that are spoiled and you can name those. You see the spoiled apples before you see the good ones, and we have just been trained in the nation. We hear people harping all the bad things America's done and that just kind of gets into us without us even recognizing it, and so it's good to go back and dwell on the good things. We're told in the Bible you overcome the evil with the good. Don't spend time thinking about the negative things Now you need to know they're there but you spend time thinking about and looking and investigating the good things, and that really is going to be key for us going forward.
To preserve the nation. We have to understand more about what makes us great than about the failures we've had along the way. Every nation has failures, but not every nation has the successes we've had and we don't need to be like every other nation by looking at what made us wrong and where our flaws were and our bad leaders. We need to know why it is that we've survived 230, some odd years now 240 something under the declaration, 230 something under the constitution. Why is it we've done that when no other nation's done that? And we need to know those foundations and preserve the foundations. We're told in Psalm 113, if the foundations are destroyed, what are the righteous people going to do? So we need to know the foundations and protect and preserve those foundations.
Rick Green
Yeah, in fact, if we go all the way back, David I mean, that was the original intent of starting wall builders right To rebuild the foundations and know what it is that made us great as a nation and a lot of people will look at the situation and go it's too big, everything's falling apart, and I think that's why God put Nehemiah on your heart all those years ago. And why we call it WallBuilders is because everybody can rebuild part of the wall. You may think it's a small part of the wall, but when you've got a whole nation lifting together and rebuilding, then it gets done. And so one of the things we do around here at Wall Builders is often talk about action items. What can you actually do? What are the things that you should go do? And that's why we have people on the program all the time talking about what they've been doing, because it inspires others to do the same across the country. But you've got to know the formula first.
Tim Barton
Well, and it's something too that we appreciate that Jerry Newcomb and Peter Lillebeck the book they did George Washington's Sacred Fire. It's a little bit like the Eric Metaxas Bonhoeffer book that it's such a thick, meaty, deep dive into this that so few people today really know the story of George Washington, the character, the sacrifice and certainly the influence of the Bible and Christianity. One of the things that we will often point people to just as an easy find, or at least easy indicator of maybe who he was when it comes to faith, is his adopted daughter was really a granddaughter, but Nellie Park Hustis said that if she was asked by Jared Sparks to recount some of what she knew about Washington's faith and his journey and anything regarding the influence of Christianity in the Bible, and she said sooner should you question his patriotism than question his Christianity. And a lot of people today are hearing the exact opposite of George Washington, that he was a deist and he really didn't believe in God, and they'll give a couple of instances or examples as they're evident. But you have to overlook the rest of the story and this is something that certainly in WallBuilders we try to spend a little time doing, maybe like the Paul Harvey approach of the rest of the story. But it's why we also appreciate people like Jerry Newcomb who are trying to tell the rest of the story but also have that biblical perspective and worldview.
Because as much as you study American history the two things we would say that are necessary to have a proper understanding of America you have to understand the Bible and then you have to go back and read their writings.
But the more you study history through original sources, through original writings and this is the big deal, because we wouldn't just encourage you to go read more of the modern professors' academic works on American history no, we'd say go back and study the original sources.
Go back and read the writings of John Adams, of George Washington, of Thomas Jefferson, go back and read the writings of John Jay or Noah Webster right, we can go down this long list of the John Hancocks and Sam Adams and John Witherspoons. But if you go back and read their writings and if you know the Bible, it's so clear the overlap between them. When you read James Wilson's law books, his law lectures that then became a three-volume set of law books, when you read those and you know what the Bible says, you read his writings, you see the easy and obvious connection. But so often we don't spend time studying history, we don't study the Bible and we don't see those connections. But then you have guys like Jerry Newcomb who very similar in our vein, our worldview, study history, have a biblical perspective, and it's so easy to see the influence and overlap of those things and by the way.
David Barton
Knowing the founding fathers is really important. Tim, you just mentioned James Wilson. Most people don't know that James Wilson was one of only six guys who signed the Declaration of the Constitution. He's the second most active member in writing the Constitution. He's an original Supreme Court justice. You need to know the people as well, because people have ideas and they implement those ideas. It's had a huge impact on us. So, going back and knowing the ideas and knowing the people, both of those are really important for knowing our heritage.
Tim Barton
Well, and you're saying knowing their ideas, it's when you learn their story right, people are motivated by different things and that we have different experiences and and there's different things that impact and shape us and make us who we are. And when you go back and learn their story, you learn about their, their faith and their family and their accomplishments, you learn about their journey and you read their writings. It really helps history come alive. But again, if you do this without having a biblical understanding, you would miss so much because they're so often they are quoting the Bible, but if you don't know the Bible, you wouldn't even recognize it, which is why the two things we encourage people the most is read your Bible and study history.
Rick Green
And we'll be doing more of it every day here on Wall Builder. So make sure that you tune in throughout the rest of the week as well and help us change this one day celebration celebration in America to year-round patriotism, year-round renewing, informed patriotism. Reagan called for it 40 years ago. Let's get it done. Thanks for listening today to the WallBuilder Show.
