Rick Green

Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's WallBuilders, where we're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. And whether it's a hot topic or not, today is Good News Friday, and actually I think most of the good news they are hot topics and actually it's kind of nice to know we can win even the ones that are really controversial in our country right now. That's what happens when you take a stand, so thanks to all of you out there that are participating and being good biblical citizens and giving us a bunch of this good news that we get to share on Fridays. I'm Rick Green here with David and Tim Barton and they got stacks full of good news, so I'm going to shut up and jump in.

Here we go, David first piece of good news today. 

David Barton

Well, it's not a piece of good news, but it's a remembrance of good news. Us Senator Jim Inhofe from Oklahoma recently died, and that's not the good news, because he was a really, really good guy. It might be good news for him.

That's true.

That's true Because he was a solid believer. There is no doubt in my mind he's in heaven.

Tim Barton

So good news for him. He gets to avoid all the drama that we're going to be living in during the election and, you know, however long after.

Rick Green

So, yeah, what a great news for him I remember all the way back, uh, wow, when, when I first started with you David, I think he was uh, maybe in no, he was already in the senate, I think, and I remember him even sending a video, uh, for that dinner we did for wall builders, way back when we started the legislators conference. Um, so he was, he was with us way back and a champion on so many different pieces of legislation.

So you're right, good good news, great life, great legacy, and good news for him that he's graduated 

David Barton

yeah, he has graduated and he was mayor of Tulsa, then he was a US congressman, then he was a number of terms in the senate. And the thing about Jim was he never, ever, ever divorced his faith from anything he did. He he didn't hide his light under any kind of a bushel. And I remember specifically with him one of the things that he would have me do real often was every year on the National Prayer Breakfast he would bring in all these delegations from Africa and he'd have me do tours through the Capitol for those guys from Africa saying, hey, here's what made America great, here's who we are, here's how we got here, here's what you need.

And the thing that was really interesting about Jim talked to him several times but he if you remember Gaddafi, gaddafi back in the days when Gaddafi was a terrorist, jim Inhofe actually prayed with him and led him to Christ in Africa and after that he was the one who helped us find Osama bin Laden and other things. He had a turn. He was still a rough guy, but Jim, as I recall, over the course of and I think he took 130 or 135 trips to Africa he said, as a US Senator, I can get in to see any king in Africa, any African leader, he said. But when I get there, I tell him hey, I'm not here as a US senator, I'm here as a Christian and I want to share something with you. And I think he told me that he led 26 African national leaders, kings, to Christ in the trips that he took. I know for sure that there were three different occasions in which civil wars in Africa were stopped, because he got both sides to come to the national prayer breakfast in Washington DC and kneel down and pray with each other.

And so Jim, just really remarkable guy. His faith is not all that known, probably by most people, because that's just not what media covers, but that's always who he was. We'll miss him in the Senate. He was a really, really, really strong believer, carried his faith with him everywhere he went, and so just great to have that kind of a guy in the Senate. We'll see what Oklahoma does now to replace him, but Jim was a good guy.

Rick Green

Well, you know, sometimes people look at what's been going on in DC for decades and think there's no heroes. So I love it when we remember these guys or when we talk about them. There's been a lot of champions, and I'm embarrassed to say how often it is Oklahoma that sends them right. I mean, we're that's hard north Texas.

Rick Green

Hey, it's north texas, north texas that's right.

But they do. They send so many good members of congress and and the senate vote and anyway, uh, great, remembers there, david, all right. So, uh, do you? Do you also want to do a good piece of good news or tossing over to tim?

now I'll throw to tim.

David Barton

That was my piece of good news.

Rick Green

All right, Tim, what's up first for you?

Tim Barton

Well, this one is something that was probably much more relevant a couple of weeks ago. It's actually good news from last month. But the headline is poll confirms Trump supporters appreciate biblical values. Biden supporters don't. So this isn't as relevant anymore because there's no Biden supporters anymore. Come to find out once he's out of the race. Nobody really liked him. Anyway, they were all Kamala fans, as we are now hearing on the Democrat side.

No, with that kind of big picture, thought it's just very interesting. Pew Research did a study and they identified that 69% of Trump supporters aka primarily Republicans they believe the Bible should have at least some level of influence on the laws of the US, and the same number 69% of Biden supporters, primarily Democrats said the Bible should have no influence or little to no influence on the laws of the US. So what's interesting is you do see a biblical gap in distinction, and it is very encouraging that when people are looking at President Trump and one of the things that we are hearing so often is especially from the left is he doesn't have the right kind of morals and values, he's this terrible person, etc. Etc. Etc. One of the ironic things to me on some level, but then one of the really good pieces of news in this is the majority of people that are saying the Bible needs to have an influence in our nation, it needs to have an impact on our laws, it needs to make a difference. They're actually the ones behind Donald Trump. So even if you argued which many people are, I think they're wrong on some level. But even if you argued that Donald Trump is this really bad person, he doesn't have the right kind of personal values. And again, I disagree with some of those thoughts for a couple of different reasons. But the reality is the majority of people that are supporting President Trump, the majority of people that are around President Trump, do recognize the Bible, should have some kind of impact and those values from the Bible should be part of our national laws and guys.

This is where, if we back up historically, we talk about this so often. This is a part of all of our presentations the biblical foundation of the nation, to some extent right. Depending on if we're talking about the second amendment, we're probably not spending as much time on the biblical foundation, although we might point to some Bible verses regarding self-defense or protecting the innocent, etc. There's always a biblical foundation to some extent of what we're talking about, but especially when you go back to the founding of the nation, the very framework of our laws, the laws of America, used to be known as common law, which actually goes back to the laws of England, the laws that were widely accepted in England that became widely accepted in America. That was known as common law and it's very well documented. The common law was based on the Bible.

When you go to the early colonies in America, there's virtually no colony anywhere in America that did not have the Ten Commandments as part of their legal code. And actually, again, maybe it's a little ironic on some level if you look back historically to address this, but the violation for breaking one of the Ten Commandments in most of the early colonies was the death penalty. Now we can look back and go. That was so extreme. Oh, it was extreme, there's no doubt. But there was not a single colony where there was more than 15 crimes where they had the capital punishment that you could be put to death. So if there's only 15 crimes, you can be put to death and the Ten Commandments are, you know, maybe up to 10 of those things in a colony? Are you know, maybe up to 10 of those things in a colony.

It goes again to kind of verify the significance, the impact of the Bible, of biblical values, on the laws of America.

And as you track through from the pilgrims up to the modern era, the Bible has been the number one foundation for moral law in all of America you could argue all of the Western hemisphere. But again, the reason I'm even kind of explaining some of this historic background is, as we are looking at people saying, hey, we should actually include the Bible more in our laws going forward. We should have the Bible as a framework, a reference, a moral foundation going forward. That's a very attitude and idea that helped America become a nation. That helped America lay its foundation upon which we've become one of the most successful nations in the history of the world. And if we're going to be successful going forward, it will only again be through that biblical foundation. So it is very encouraging to me that 69% of the people that are supporting President Trump say they believe the Bible should have some kind of impact, those values should be reflected in the laws in America and overall that is very good news.

Rick Green

Well, it also goes to the heart of what we do here at WallBuilders. Right is getting people aware of those things. That education is critical for the citizens to know and get that foundation. Because right now people are kind of going well, I want freedom, I don't want my freedom of speech infringed upon, I want the ability to think like I want to think and all that. But they don't know where that comes from and they can't trace it back to the Bible, so it becomes unmoored from anything that actually lasts. So very, very good news.

All right, david, your first piece of official good news today

David Barton

 this goes to a couple of federal court rulings that have come out in recent weeks and it deals with Title IX. And Title IX is we talk about it most often today in terms of protecting women's sports Riley Gaines and others, a swimmer, leah Thomas, who's the biological male who says he's a woman, who competes in women's sporting events and wins them, and we have this going with wrestling. We've talked about all these different sports where guys are jumping in and saying, hey, I'm a female and winning these things, and so we go back to Title IX. That was enacted in 1972, and it was to prevent discrimination against women in higher education. Well, that included sports as well, and so it's really been an issue the last four, five, six years with Title IX and women's sports. I think half the nation now has passed a law saying that they are not going to allow biological males to compete in women's sports. Well, we have a very different administration in Washington DC with the Biden and Harris administration, and so they have gone back and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, which is Xavier Becerra. They've come out with this new thing that says, hey, we want you to take gender and interpret gender as gender identity. So this is not just to protect women's sports, it's to protect anyone who identifies as a woman, even biologically or not. So, as this thing has been moving forward, this new rule that came out of HHS, there were initially 16 states that jumped on this and said no, no, no, that's not right, because we have state laws saying it's biological stuff. It's interesting One of the federal court cases was filed in Kentucky and there were 16 states that jumped on that and the federal judge issued a preliminary injunction saying now this cannot be enforced, the federal government can't do this.

We got to go through trial on this. But the judge's ruling he says in the states of Kentucky, indiana, ohio, tennessee, virginia and West Virginia, you can't enforce this rule, the federal government cannot enforce this rule. And here's the way the judge said it. He said right up front he says this is his ruling. He says there are two sexes, male and female, and he just makes that pronouncement right at the very beginning and it's like you guys in the federal government have lost your brains essentially. I mean, he didn't quite say that, but he clearly made it that we're not doing this gender identity. There's only two genders, male and female. So other cases were going in other states, because all these other states that have passed this law they don't like this either. And so here's a Mississippi judge that jumped in, federal judge and said not just six states, we're putting an injunction on this for the entire nation. So they have blocked the enforcement of this new rule on gender identity rather than sex rather than gender. It's been blocked for the whole nation. But here's what really struck me I had not read the rule at all that the federal government does. It's not like I have time to read 15,000 pages a week of all their new rules that come out, and I was really surprised in what the rule said.

Now Secretary Xavier Becerra, who's over HHS. This is how he explained the rule when they issued the rule. He says this rule is to help the nation's health care system and social service programs for people with disabilities and their families. So wait a minute. You're telling me that if you're transgender, that's a disability. You're now acknowledging this is not normal, that this is a disability. And then he goes further, and this is the one that really surprised me. He identified this as gender dysphoria. In other words, you have a real problem. You're really confused. Therefore, we're going to protect your gender identity rather than helping you come back. But the fact that the federal government under the Biden-Harris administration, acknowledges that trans is gender dysphoria and that is a person with a disability, that is a fairly significant mission when they've been trying to make this look normalized for all these last years.

Tim Barton

Well, it's interesting, even as you started this article, I wasn't listening for the first couple of minutes you going through it, because when you said Leah Thomas, I thought what was his real name? Yeah, and so I mean, we've we've heard Leah Thomas forever and I thought, you know, there's this thing out there where people say, hey, don't dead name somebody. If somebody changes their name, changes their identity, and you refer to them by their biological or their given name, whatever it is, and you're dead naming them. Well, I just wanted to know what was this individual because this is a male pretending to be a woman and what was the real name? And so I did a real quick search online and I had to go to the second page before I could find an article that actually said it was William Thomas who then transitioned to Leah Thomas and Dad.

To your point, as you're closing out, identifying what even the team from the Biden administration acknowledged. It used to be known up until like five years ago. This gender dysphoria was a mental disorder. It's the way it was viewed, because if you think your body is something that it is not, if you look at your body and see something that is not there, then you're not seeing it correctly. You have some kind of mental challenge in the way you are seeing it.

David Barton

So when I look in the mirror and see Schwarzenegger body. That's not quite the way.

Tim Barton

Well, no, I mean that's because, before you went in there, I painted the outline of Schwarzenegger, yeah, and I left a hole for your face, yeah.

David Barton

My 140 pounds. Yeah, schwarzenegger, that's me right.

Tim Barton

Oh wait, a second Arnold, oh no, okay. Yeah, I was thinking of his daughter, who's much smaller, but no, oh.

David Barton

Oh, oh, wow, oh man slam.

Tim Barton

I mean, when you said 140 pounds, I was like well, there's only a lady I know there's 140 pounds. There's no male schwarzenegger. I mean maybe like a left leg, that's 140 pounds right.

One thigh on schwarzenegger, that's right but it's interesting that what used to be the, the self-evident acknowledgement from this if somebody is seeing something that is not real, we would say they're having some kind of mental challenge, and that was known as a mental health issue. And so, even though the modern Democrat progressive movement has gotten away from using any kind of mental health conversation when it comes to transgender, it's super interesting that it's there, and it's certainly not something that we've heard reported or even from the conservative side. People have not acknowledged that and again, maybe it's because it was buried in however many tens of thousands of pages that have come out over the last couple of weeks. But that is really interesting.

Rick Green

Well, of course, it wasn't that long ago that the whole country, and certainly the medical profession, considered it a mental illness. One of my favorite media clips of the last couple of years I think it was in man, was it Sweden? Somewhere else, some guy was protesting outside the legislature and that was exactly what he was saying. He was saying we're not going to normalize you, we will not let you normalize your mental illness, and that's essentially what's been done. So this is a good step back in the right direction to at least acknowledge that it is not normal. Quick break folks. We'll be right back. We've got a lot more good news for you. Stay with us.

Break

Rick Green

Welcome back to the WallBuilder Show. Thanks for staying with us looking at some more good news. Next up is Tim.

Tim Barton

Well, this is an article highlighting some of the fallout from in a positive way from the US Supreme Court. It says that the title says fallout continues from US Supreme Court, january 6th ruling. And the January 6th ruling was the Fisher v United States, in which the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision they said the US Department of Justice could not use the felony obstruction charge or they could only use it if it could prove defendants impaired the use of documents, objects or other things used during counting of electoral college votes at the US Capitol January 6th. And so, of course, when this came out it was a big deal. A lot of outlets were talking about it, because this changes some of the conversation of what the left has been saying and what they've been trying to charge people with.

When you're saying that if somebody walks through an open door in the Capitol building right and this is different than people that came and they were breaking windows and breaking glass and getting in a fight assaulting a police officer no, this is not everybody that came into the Capitol. There were literally people that saw an open door, that saw a crowd going in. They hadn't seen what happened before, or maybe it was one of the locations where it wasn't a violent location, where, for all of our understanding, there were some locations where law enforcement literally opened the door and people walked in and there were people that did nothing wrong. For all available information and evidence and all that, it was walked through an open door and they were being held without bail, delayed trial, all of their due process rights were suspended because they were identified as terrorists and insurrection and all these things. And then when the charges finally came against them, when they finally had their trial and all these things, and then when the charges finally came against him, when they finally had their trial, the attorneys that were bringing these charges against him were bringing some very arbitrary things and one of the charges right against him was obstruction, because they were obstructing the proceeding of the election and the electoral college votes, et cetera. And this was such a big decision from the US Supreme Court to say that unless you can prove that they were actually impairing the use of documents, objects or quote other things used during counting of electoral votes at the US Capitol January 6th, and you can't charge them with obstructing the proceeding and what's going on. Well, because of that, there are now several people being released and that's what this article goes through is several of those that were arrested that were in jail for months and months and months and months before there was ever charges brought against them. And then charges were brought against them and they're given whether it's a year, 18 months, two years up to it could be up to 20 years is what this article highlights for a sentence for this obstruction charge, depending on what they thought of that person. So, overall, this is really good news and we've talked about good news coming from the US Supreme Court.

We haven't had time to go through all of the different cases and the good news and what it actually means, but this is a scenario where we have seen so often prosecutors and different agencies and departments in the US government do what would be considered over criminalization, overcharging in certain situations, and this doesn't mean that people that did wrong should not be charged. But we see such an arbitrary standard where, for example, just very recently, washington DC, there were protests, people at Union Station that were vandalizing monuments and statues, and you didn't see this massive law enforcement presence come and arrest them, and the question then of course, came up is are we going to track their cell phones and see what phones are pinging and be able to track down and arrest all these people that were damaging and destroying property. And, of course, the expectation is that they're not going to do that, just like in some of the riots and looting that's happened in cities. We've not seen the law enforcement or attorneys generals, et cetera, pursue these criminals to the full extent of the law, like they did on some of these January 6th defendants, who, many of them again, were not the ones doing the wrong, just walked into the Capitol through an open door. We're being peaceful on the inside.

So this is really good news that the Supreme Court's at least upholding a standard that you can't arbitrarily charge someone with something and not be able to prove they did it, which for so many of the lower courts, they were so ready for these people to be prosecuted, to be punished, to send a political message that was not carrying out actually equal justice under the law, and so for the US Supreme Court to recognize it's a miscarriage of justice to overcharge them with something different than what they actually did and then to criminalize, to arrest them and imprison them for that. Certainly that was wrong. So this is one of the really good decisions from the US Supreme Court. We haven't had a lot of time to talk about it, but the Fisher v United States the 6-3 victory against the US Department of Justice. This is a really good case and really good news 

Rick Green

the right direction.

We've talked about a lot here on the program right that we've got to get back to a good justice system blind justice, biblical justice and that the law is equally applied to everyone and that you actually apply the law, that you have discretion as prosecutors, where you don't try to make up statutes or try to apply statutes that should not apply. But of course, you know, we've reviewed all 44,000 hours of the footage at the Capitol and there were definitely paper shredders surrounding the Capitol, a big circle of them, and everyone was using those paper shredders and that's why the Section 1512, you know that the DOJ was applying was appropriate. Of course, I'm being facetious, there were no paper shredders and therefore, when they applied that Section 1512, they were literally taking a statute meant for Enron. That was, you know, just absurd, the absurdity of what they've done. So, yeah, Tim, this decision from the Supreme Court one step in the right direction.

We've seen some lawsuits won on the civil side on some of the forced vaccinations. So there's just a lot of bright spots that I'm seeing, where for a while there was a drought and it felt like man. The justice system is just being destroyed. So I'm really glad to hear these positive reports. All right, David, you're taking us home, man. What's our final piece of good news today?

David Barton

Well, the one I have deals with polling that shows title says Republican support for same sex marriage drops almost 10 percent in two years. So over the last two years what you've seen is that Republican support for homosexual relations be they male or lesbian, female those numbers have fallen sharply. Now they're still really high Democrats and independents, but in Republicans you're seeing a real turnaround, which is significant because, if I'm going to say from a spiritual standpoint this type of indication in the Bible, there are three revivals you find in the Old Testament. I think they're Josiah, jehoshaphat and Asa.

It's interesting that as the Word of God starts being restored, as people come back to God, their view toward morality changes, their view toward what is right and wrong sexually changes and it comes back in line with what the Bible says and those three segments in the Bible. There are specific descriptions that their view toward homosexuality became more negative. They no longer saw that as something acceptable. They said no, no, no, this is not right, this is not what is traditionally moral, this is not what God intends for sexuality, and we're now starting to see some of the first vestiges of this in almost 15 years. For almost 15 years the nation has been going the wrong direction. Among Democrats, 80% of Democrats and nearly 70% of independents say that same-sex relations are quote morally acceptable. Well, they're not if you have a biblical standard for morality.

But that's what they say in current terms,

Tim Barton

 and this is also where it's always worth asking what moral standard are you using? How do you determine right and wrong? Because if it's, everybody can do what they want. Obviously that's not going to work long term. You're going to have people go and shoot schools and you can't say they're wrong if they thought it was right. There has to be some kind of standard, and so what standard are you using that says you can have sex with whoever, whenever, however, or are there parameters? What are the parameters? And what you find is that, if these are man-made, these will not work long term and they will not be successful. 

David Barton

And yet the majority of, as you mentioned, democrats and independents are saying nope, we are accepting this arbitrarily formed standard of what human sexuality is and should be, and so when the Supreme Court back in 2016 said, hey, homosexual marriage is legal, you can't stop that, and in 32 state constitutions it did Things really rose.

But they're now turning around, at least among Republicans, and so while the Democrat numbers are at 80 percent, independents are at 70 percent, republicans it has has fallen to only 40%, and that's the lowest in a long, long time. So hopefully that means something spiritually good is happening.

Moving back to biblical morality, the things that America had been founded on, 

Rick Green

yeah, guys, I've also noticed just you know, paying attention to social media posts that even a lot of the secular community is starting to say this isn't natural what's happening. So the natural law, right, the laws of nature, nature's God. Even they are starting to recognize it, and I think that's contributing to those numbers as well. If more churches spoke up about it, obviously those numbers would improve even faster. So that's why we get truth out there and you can help to share it. Make sure you go to wallbuilders.show today and catch up on some of the programs you might have missed, and then wallbuilders.com for all of our other information. You've been listening to the WallBuilder Show.