Rick Green: 0:09
Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It's WallBuilders where we're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach, getting to hang out here with David and Tim Barton, David's America's Premier Historian and our Founder at WallBuilders. Tim's a National Speaker and Pastor and President of WallBuilders, and all three of us appreciate you listening. We encourage you to go to our website today, WallBuilders.com and WallBuildersLive.com. Make a one-time or monthly contribution and you are coming alongside us, putting fuel in the tank, making it possible for us to do the good work we're doing here at WallBuilders. We appreciate you listening and being a partner of ours in that way. Alright guys, later in the program Dr Rick Scarborough will be with us. We're going to be talking about his new book, America in the Balance American Dream versus Woke Nightmare. Definitely summarizes where we are. We are in the balance, but that's you know. Reagan said I'm glad I don't live in pale and timid times. We get to make a difference in what we're doing and we still get to be happy warriors throughout this fight. But man has the culture slid a long way. You know, yesterday we were just getting into a good topic and we ran out of time, but we were talking about the fact that so much had changed so fast, or not so fast, honestly. You go back to the cases we were talking about yesterday, from 93 and 94, and even the Democrats were pro-religious liberty and now they're anti-religious liberty and, man, you just see how far the Democrat Party has fallen. But actually the culture has changed a lot.

Tim Barton: 1:34
Yeah, Rick, as you mentioned we talked to some yesterday the reality of how far culture has gone, that when you look back in just the 90s and I guess we talked about 2000 a little bit as well but specifically where Democrats were advocating for religious liberty, for defending what at that time was considered just a basic American idea, that the philosophy of American politics and government education, you defend religious liberty, this wasn't all that complicated and maybe that's not always consistent with Democrats, because you can back up to the 60s where you had the Supreme Court saying that we couldn't have prayer in schools, you couldn't have the Bible in schools in 1980. They said you can't display this in commandments in schools. So certainly the Supreme Court had been maybe an early version of woke, they had gone very secular. But certainly, looking at our culture, when the idea of defending religious liberty and freedom was not all that controversial in the 90s and early 2000s, to where it is today, culture has shifted and changed so much and we've talked about it a lot on this program, a lot at our different events that we believe we really are seeing an awakening happen in the nation right now. All over the nation there are people waking up. But the reason that we need an awakening. The reason that's happening is because for a large percentage of Christians, a large percentage of churches, they've kind of gone to sleep with a wheel. They have not been advocating for biblical values and families and culture and communities and churches and their states and government and education. We can go down the list where the church has not been salt and light. And maybe I guess one of the ways we could articulate it is the churches tried to be light in a lot of respects, saying hey, look at Jesus, right, he's a light of the world. We should be light like Jesus. Maybe you could argue that many churches have been trying to be light but they haven't been salt, because salt is a preservative. Salt impacts what it touches and impacts what's around it and the church has really not done a good job of being salt. Certainly there's some churches have done a good job of being light and the reason we've had that deterioration of culture is because the church and the Christian community in general has been pretty apathetic. We've been pretty complacent and sitting back, and this doesn't mean certainly everybody. We know that in America I think George Barnett identified there was 384,000 senior pastors in churches in America and this was a couple years ago from that number, so certainly there's been some change in that number. But when you look at 384,000 senior pastors in churches in America and George Barnett did a study and survey where he identified that 72% of the churches and senior pastors in America did not hold to some basic biblical beliefs he went through a list of what should be basic biblical beliefs Do you believe that the Bible is real? Do you believe there is a God? Do you believe Jesus lived a sinless life? Is salvation something that you earn as a free gift? But he went through some pretty basic things and 72% of these churches and senior pastors said that they did not agree with all of those basic tenets of Christianity found inside the Bible. And so when you have 72% of the church of senior pastors disagreeing with basic biblical reality, right, and it should not be controversial things like yes, the Bible is true, yes, the God is real, the devil is real, Jesus was real. Salvation is a free gift of God. We don't earn salvation. These should not be controversial things. But when you have the majority of churches and senior pastors not believing basic biblical truth, it's much more understandable of how we've come to a crazy place in culture and certainly why we are in such desperate need of an awakening. And I mean guys we've talked about it a lot we have the benefit as we travel of seeing people all over the nation. And we are seeing people all over the nation wake up. And and I mean guys, we one of the questions we hear so often from individuals in their communities, in their churches, are about the rest of the nation. Because if you don't have the opportunities, like sometimes, that we have to travel and hear from different groups and different people around the nation, you might not have perspective to realize that there are people waking up all over the nation and it can be easy to be discouraged, to be a little downhearted over the challenges that we see before us. But as we travel the nation I mean we we have the evidence all around us that that God is waking people up, that God is moving on the hearts and minds of people, that that we're seeing incredible salvation, incredible transformation all over this nation. And if we look historically at some of what great awakenings have been, if you look at the first and second Great Awakening that those were not unifying times in those eras, over those several decades of these awakenings. It was actually a very divisive time. In the first and second Great Awakening there was a lot of arguments. There's a lot of battling inside of inside of churches and the second Great Awakening, virtually every single major denomination split during the second Great Awakening over the issue of slavery. It wasn't the second Great Awakening wasn't a unifying time, but it was a clarifying time and people began to debate what, what was true and what was moral. And that's a very healthy thing when you have a culture. That's a drift, being able to debate and identify what is true. Where does truth come from? Where what's, what is the origin of truth? How do we determine what is true? And therefore, how do we know what is right and wrong? How do we know what is moral? As, as we are now having those debates over truth and morality, what is a boy, what is a girl, what is an unborn child? When? When does life actually begin? As we are having some pretty basic debates over truth and morality, this could be even another indication of a great awakening happened, because this is certainly what happened in the first and second Great Awakening, but definitely God is moving, God is stirring and there's a reason to be hopeful in the midst of the challenges and frustration, and I actually think this is one of the things that's pretty neat about the book from from Dr Rick Scarborough, as he highlights some of the challenges but also some of the reality of where is there hope? And that hope is found inside the church, inside the word of God, inside of Christians, and so I'm I'm anxious to hear what Dr Scarborough is going to say about this Alright, quick break folks.

Rick Green: 7:56
We'll be right back. Dr Rick Scarborough, our guest today. You're listening to WallBuilders.

Tim Barton: 8:10
This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders, with another moment from American history. Many today assert that religion is something private, that it has no place in the public square and that it is incompatible with government. But the founding fathers believed exactly the opposite. They held that religion was absolutely necessary in order to maintain our free system of government. For example, John Adams declared we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. And Siner of the Declaration. Benjamin Rush similarly affirmed without religion there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all Republican governments. The founding fathers understood that limited government required public morality from the people and that public morality was produced by the Christian religion. For more information about the founding fathers views on religion and public life, go to WallBuilders.com.

Rick Green: 9:08
Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. My good friend Dr Rick Scarborough with us. Just an incredible pastor and a great patriot. He's one of these Black Robe Regiment guys that's been preaching truth for decades and influencing the culture in a great way with a new book we're going to talk about today. Rick, appreciate your brother. Thanks for coming on, man.

Rick Scarborough: 9:25
That's a privilege, so appreciate all you guys have done and continue to do for the kingdom. I'm blessed to be a part.

Rick Green: 9:32
Well, the Bartons and I both appreciate you greatly Love the title of the new book America in the Balance the American Dream versus Woke Nightmare. You wrote it with Steve Feasel and got it forward by Mike Huckabee and all kinds of great recommendations Matt Stave or Tim Wildman, Tony Perkins, Dr Ed Young, a bunch of our friends there. You know, listen, Pastor, you've written a lot of books, You've given a lot of speeches. You've been fighting this fight for many years. Why this book, this theme at this time?

Rick Scarborough: 10:05
Well, I tell you what and you know this, Rick in the last five years there's been an incredible turn toward evil, where what once was whispered or perhaps even snickered at has now become a commonplace. This nation is under demonic assault. Unlike anything in my lifetime and I've lived a lot of lives I like to tell people I'm the oldest I've ever been, but ten years ago I couldn't have. I couldn't have in my wildest imagination envisioned the kind of things that are happening now with our elementary age, school children, on our televisions and especially through the internet and the garbage that we're seeing. I felt compelled that I need to stand up and confront this, and had a very good helper in my co-author, Steve Cazelle, who's written a number of books as well. I'm praying that God gives this book a wide audience, because it's full of information that Christians have to have before this next election.

Rick Green: 11:09
Well, you break down. You know, first of all, what America was intended to be and what it was for the first couple centuries, and then how the left attacked it. You know a lot of the things that you point out in the book. It's not like you just started warning about those things. You've been speaking against a lot of these things for a long time, but people seem to be almost eyes glazed over in past decades when guys like you and me and the Bartons and others would talk about it. Have you noticed a shift, even in just a live audience? Can you see it in their body language and in their eyes that they're listening now because they've been shaken out of their slumber?

Rick Scarborough: 11:44
Well, exactly, you know, most people sitting on the pews of our churches didn't want to hear this message. I remember when I first started speaking out as a pastor on the southeast side of Houston, I had people literally not literally but figuratively put their fingers in their ears and say I don't want to hear this. I've had members of my own family in the past that would say Dad, that may all be true, but I don't want to hear that. But now they're so confronted with it on every hand that people are listening and hopefully it's not too late, but at least they are now listening.

Rick Green: 12:19
What would you? I always, you know, I always try to come back to you, know, solomon, nothing new under the sun. And I try to think about the children of Israel and times when they went through something similar to what we're going through. What would you draw as the best parallel for where we are right now and how we can overcome this evil?

Rick Scarborough: 12:38
Well, I'd go to Jeremiah in the first place, that incredible passage to the second chapter of Jeremiah where God just straight up says has there ever been anything like this before, where a nation has exchanged its gods, but not real gods at all? They've viewed out for themselves sisters, broken sisters, that can hold no water. God seems to be holding a heavenly council and asking his people how could you reject such clear divine truth and turn away so quickly? I think that's where we are as a culture now. People have literally just turned their back on God. And the other thing I would add to that is you know, and I know Stripford tells us prophetically that the time will come when he who restrains no longer restrains it. Well, we know that ultimately that's the Holy Spirit, but his restraining powers, exercised through a vocal search, through an alive and invigorated church, we have witnessed in the last five to 10 years a shrinking back. I think the whole COVID, the Astro, revealed just how weak the church had become and how quickly we would lay down rather than suffer any kind of consequence or criticism, but in the so doing, the church of the living God has withdrawn the presence of Holy Spirit through preaching the truth and faith has come in like a flood and, you know, continue to. I remind people all the time faith never gives back any ground that he's taken. It has to be taken back by force, and by force I don't mean with a gun or with a sword, I mean with a divine revelation of truth, prophetically preached. The Bible says the culture that has no prophetic preaching flowing from spirits and spirits will soon cast off all restraints. And that's what's happening now. Because of the lack of prophetic preaching in our pulpits across America, that restraining force of the word of God, the truth of God in the anointing of God, is being withheld and faith is finding less and less resistance. But, bless God, WallBuilders and people like yourself are raising up a banner. You and I and others are working together through the remnant of life to put forth this truth. And you know what we're discovering. We're discovering so much of what we fear is nothing but a paper tiger. Faith shrinks back when men of God boldly assert the truth of God. That's what the book was written to train and educate people. That we don't have to lay down and take it. We can take back this culture if we've got the guts to let God be God.

Rick Green: 15:25
Amen, oh, powerful America in the balance, American dream versus woke nightmare. If you've got a few more minutes, I want to hit some more details. But while we're at it, where do you recommend for folks to go get the book?

Rick Scarborough: 15:38
Well, we sent up a website just for that, Americainthebalanceus. You go to that site and you just have to check a couple of boxes and we'll send the book to you, Americainthebalanceus. I would recommend that be the best place to go. You can get it on Amazon Prime. You can get it through our website, which is recoverAmericacom. You can order the book right there, or you can go to Americainthebalanceus Either of those websites. You can get the book by checking a couple of boxes.

Rick Green: 16:12
Alright, we're going to do links to both websites recoverAmericacom and then also Americainthebalanceus. Rick, you cover in the book and it seems like this is you've got a whole chapter on this, but it seems like the one that finally the left finally pushed too far and a lot of those people that had refused to wake up finally are and you title it in the book. It's something like let me make sure I get it right puppies and dolls to drag queens and gender mutilation. It almost had to get that bad for a lot of our I try to say this in a nice way, but basically our lazy, spoiled Christians to realize that the evils we've been warned about for years. When you get rid of moral absolutes and any truth, this is where we end up. You point that out in the book and how bad that has gotten, but also that's been a wake up call for people.

Rick Scarborough: 17:06
You bet you know, rick. When you and I first began interacting years ago, I was pastor of First Baptist Church of Paraland back in the early 90s and we ran into all of this craziness. In the high school we found out that Satan had infiltrated a high school curriculum with every kind of sort of the emorality you could imagine. In fact, I got involved by confronting a speaker that our school hired to come in and teach kids how to avoid AIDS at that time called GRIDS, gave Related Immune Deticiency Syndrome, probably more accurately named even today as GRIDS. But I recorded in high school assembly, I made it public, I confronted the evils and we pretty well pushed it back. And lo and behold, 30 years later I'm finding the same garbage, only worse. But now it's in preschool, elementary school. I've got a stack of 20 books that I've taken off library shelves right here in Houston and Harris County. That is so pornographic that if you and I were to open them up in a public place we could be arrested. But because they're artistically designed and they're not actual photographs, they show every sex fact you can imagine, many that you should not imagine, and they're made available for pre-school-aged children and are legally protected because of the way our laws are written. Technically, our Texas legislation is beginning to address some of that. But I'm telling you, in 30 years time we have descended to the very gates of hell. But the greater the darkness, the brighter the light. I often tell crowds that God does his best work right after occlusive fiction and man. We're at the door. It's time for God to do his work, and he will if we stand courageously.

Rick Green: 18:58
Amen, amen. Ah. Such good stuff, brother. I appreciate you so much. America in the Balance American Dream versus Woke Nightmare. Two websites you can get it at today, folks. You can go to recoverAmericacom or Americanthebalanceus, and I encourage you to go to recoverAmericacom especially. We got a lot of listeners in the Texas area and in the Houston area. Rick's got a great dinner coming up with our friend Charlie Kirk on the 17th of October, so it's coming up quick, just a few days away. But you can learn more about that at the website as well. Pastor, I appreciate you, brother. I am so thankful for what you're doing, glad to lock shields with you on all the different things going on and just look forward to man, I mean storming the gates of hell. Let's go kick the devil in the teeth with this book.

Rick Scarborough: 19:39
God bless you, Rick. My blessings to all of your audience.

Rick Green: 19:43
Stay with us folks. We'll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

Tim Barton: 19:54
Hey guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called the American Story. For so many years people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that's just not known or not told today and, we would say, very providentially, in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not the statement Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we're against everything that America was built on and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There's so many things attacking America People. Is America worth defending? What is a true story of America? We actually have written and told that story, starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln. We tell the story of America not as a story of a perfect nation or a perfect people, but the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It's a story you want to check out, WallBuilders.com the American story.

Rick Green: 20:57
Welcome back. Thanks for staying with us here on Wall Bullers. Thanks to Rick Scarborough for joining us Again. The book is called America in the Balance American Dream versus woke nightmare. You know, one of the things I take away from these types of discussions, David and Tim, is it's up to us. I mean not meaning we can control everything. But you know, if we're in the balance and we're teetering between liberty and tyranny, that's when we get to make a big difference and we get to be involved. But to shirk that responsibility as a church or an individual would be a dereliction of duty.

Tim Barton: 21:26
It would be. It would be very short-sighted to do that. One of the things that, as he was mentioning, I thought was interesting as he talked about that nearly 30 years ago, he had to be the one to stand up and address some of the issues that were happening in the local school and he said now, 30 years later, we've seen these same issues and by the way.

David Barton: 21:44
that was a lot like what happened three years ago with Loudoun County and Fairfax. It was news national when he stood up and addressed just here in Texas just on a moral issue like that. I mean it was national, it was a big deal and man today that wouldn't even make the news. What he addressed back then.

Tim Barton: 21:58
Well, in the sense of you're saying it wouldn't make the news because of how little that would have been in modern culture, right? Some of the things he was arguing how bad it was back then, in modern culture they're like that's not a big deal, but what was going on back then was a big deal. But Dad, you and I talked about just recently a Bible verse where Jesus talked about if there's a demon that is inhabiting somebody and that demon gets cast out, the demon goes, and so that house, where the demon was occupying the house, is now clean. But if that house is not filled up with good, eventually that demon comes back and will bring seven other spirits. Worse in itself and one of, I think, one of the challenges in battles. When Dr Scarborough was talking, about.

David Barton: 22:40
By the way, anybody that doesn't know that, that's Matthew 12 and Luke 11. You can read Jesus' own teaching on Tim. What you just said, that's not you making that up, that's you repeating what Jesus said.

Tim Barton: 22:50
Well, and one of the things that I thought was interesting, as Dr Scarborough was talking about 30 years ago saying, hey, we shouldn't have this content in public schools I think one of the things we also have to recognize is if all we are doing is trying to stop the evil that's happening and we don't inject good back in, then ultimately we will not solve this problem long term because, even though you might remove some bad, wicked evil, sinful things now, if we don't start teaching and promoting the good, we'll never ultimately solve this problem in the long run.

David Barton: 23:18
And part of what Rick was doing back then was really the front end of what has turned into a flood. And today, as we mentioned earlier, most people would look at what Rick said and, wow, that's not bad. Well, that's because we're now being told there's 150 different genders and you kids make sure you don't tell your parents about what we're telling you, and I mean all the stuff that's gone, what we're seeing in the libraries and what's in there, with so much, what would have been, even in that day, prosecutable kind of stuff that's never going to get prosecuted. I mean, it really has been like seven demons have come back in and every one of us need to be offensive minded. Instead of just getting the bad stuff out, we need to put the good stuff back in. Tim, you're right, we need injection pasta stuff. I mean, the apostle Paul tells us in Romans 12, 21,. You overcome the evil with the good. You don't overcome the evil just by taking it out. You got overcome by putting something back in there, and that's what we need to be doing in schools While we're going to school boards, getting elected. Make sure we're not just taking the bad stuff out. Start putting the good stuff back in.

Tim Barton: 24:12
Well, as he mentioned too, as this is happening with your pre-K I mean, you're talking three and four year old some of this nonsense is happening. This is one of the reasons now we're telling more and more parents you need to wake up and see what's going on and don't think, as you live in a rural area, doesn't happen to you. Last week I was with Congressman Cloud down in Corpus Christi and he talked about he went to his conservative school to meet the parents and he went to meet the teachers. It was a conservative district, it's a public school, but conservative district, a lot of conservative teachers there, and he thought let me just go to the library and see what's there. He said I'm just going to look at the end caps because that's what they're promoting, and on the end caps was a lot of these books that were promoting sexuality, very graphic material. And so he went to the principal, said, hey, what's going on with this? The reality is, even if you are in a conservative area, even if you think, hey, all of our teachers right, they're good people, they're Christians or whatever else, you need to understand this is a broken education system and leaving your kids in this system is not a healthy thing for your kids. This is why there is a boom and growth in the homeschool community, because we have to protect our kids.

David Barton: 25:14
You know, here in Texas we're having a fight right now in the legislature or whether we're going to have universal school choice, and the rural districts are the most opposed to school choice. They don't want competition. They say our schools are really good, they're great. Here in Texas we found that in the rural areas, 80.9% of citizens vote Republican. But in the rural school districts, of contributions that are given to candidates, 92% of teachers contribute to Democrats, 92% of teachers Democrats. 81% of the people vote Republican. Hey, don't assume that because you're in a rural area, the things are good. That's just not necessarily the case.

Rick Green: 25:48
Alright, folks I mentioned at the top of the program, go to the website. Let me encourage you once again to do that WallBuilders.com and WallBuildersLive.com. We have a lot of great material and tools available to you there to equip and inspire you. It'll educate you, give you some great action steps and then, of course, you can help us by making a contribution there, one time or monthly. Maybe for you it's five bucks, Some of you could give $5,000. Make that contribution there and help us get to more people, teach more truth and restore America's constitutional republic. We really do appreciate you listening. I hope that you're sharing the program with your friends and family. Help to get that truth out there and we've got to wake up a nation folks. We are teetering between liberty and tyranny and you can be a difference maker, putting us back in the direction of liberty and away from this tyranny. Thanks for listening to WallBuilders. Really hope that you enjoy this program.