Rick Green:
This is the intersection of faith and the culture. We're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective, and we're going to do that this week with a talk by David Barton at the Pro Family Legislators Conference. It's called A Tale of Two Cities. You're going to love this. It's going to be today, tomorrow and Wednesday, and then we'll return to our regular programming later in the week and then hopefully, over the next few weeks, bring you some more of these Pro Family Legislators Conference talks, because these are great speakers coming in with a great group of people that are legislators, reps, senators and others that are in public office. These are patriots, not politicians, but they're good people serving in public office, sharpening each other's count and exchanging ideas and just having a great time together, learning from these speakers that are coming in. So let's jump in. Here's David Barton on A Tale of Two Cities.

David Barton: 0:53
If you're not aware, in the 50 states together last year we're 152,000 pieces of legislation introduced. So we'll monitor those throughout the year and we'll try to pick 13, 15, 17 things that we think are probably going to appear in most states this year, just based on what we saw last year, and we'll try to match those issues up with some of the best national policy experts on those issues. Equip you to go back and handle those things as they arise in your states. Some of the things may have already been handled in your states, Some may not have been, but I think you'll find plenty of challenge over the next three days. For those of you that have not been here, I want to start tonight with the Bible verses Tim says. We do kind of a spiritual emphasis in the evenings. It's also an intellectual challenge as well. But I'm going to start with Revelation 1, verses 5 and 6. Revelation 1, 5 and 6 says and Jesus Christ has made us kings and priests unto God and his father. What does that mean? We have good illustrations of how that works out. When you look really at the story of America, when you go back to the story of the American founding, you can see what that verse meant to be a king and a priest. How does that look? And you can see it in the two cities that founded America Jamestown and Plymouth. There's a lot of history in those two cities and there was a book done in 1859, a guy named Charles Dickens. He did a tale of two cities and that, literally, is the title that describes how America was founded. It was a tale of two cities. It was the tale of Jamestown and it was the tale of Plymouth. So let me start with the first city. Let's look at them for a bit and then we'll go to the second city. And, by the way, in both of those cities back up for a minute, with both of those cities, what you have is each of those cities became a colony and each of those colonies had a direct impact on the rest of the nation. They had very substantial impact. So America overall, all 50 states it is a tale of two cities. So when you start with Jamestown, Jamestown was founded in 1607. And as those first settlers came, and they came to shore, they landed on the shore, they landed at Cape Henry, what they called Cape Henry, and they erected a cross there and dedicated that land to the Lord. Now it's significant that if you look at the Virginia Charter, there is no question about what these folks were, very what we would call today evangelical professing Christians. If you just look at the Charter, the Charter says that we have done this because it tends to the glory of God's divine majesty and propagating to the Christian religions, such as people who yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God. That's a very Christian declaration and that's in the Charter of Virginia. So that's what they say. Now there's no question. Based on documents like that, it's easy to say these guys were evangelical professing Christians, and evangelical is not a term they necessarily use in that day, but that's the way we use the term today. More dedicated, more fervent in their faith. These are people that really appear to be really committed to Christianity. The strange thing about Jamestown is they're very much evangelical, professing Christians, but they're not very biblical at all. Now, that's a weird thing. Can you be a professing evangelical, dedicated evangelical, not be biblical Absolutely? And Jamestown proves it. So when you look at Jamestown and you see where Jamestown was, this is that the problem is with Jamestown is really why the 1619 project is named the 1619 project. You know over the last three years, critical race theory and all the things that happened with that. But 1619, the year is picked because they said that's Jamestown. That's when slavery started in English colonies in America. Jamestown is the story of America. What you see in Jamestown was slavery that defined America, and so the 1619 project is all about Jamestown. Now, as these guys usually are, progressives are no good at history at all and they're no good with this history either. It should not have been called the 1619 project. The settlement called the 1653 project because in 1619 slavery was illegal in Jamestown. But in 1653, in a court case, one black man, Anthony Johnson, sued to own another black man, John Kasar, and the court said yes, you can own it. So the first account of slavery in English colonies in America is 1653, when a black man sued on another black man. Now that's not the way 1619 project presents it, but they're not after an accurate presentation of history, they're after a tone that they can use to move an agenda forward. And, by the way, if you want to say slavery started in 1653, that would be wrong as well, Because you got to go back to the Spanish Carolina colonies in 1526 that had slavery, and the Spanish Florida colonies that in 1545 had slavery. So you got to back up nearly 100 years before the English if you want to say where slavery started in America. And by the way, let's go back earlier than that 1492, Columbus lands in the Western world. Archaeologists and anthropologists have proven that at the time Columbus landed in the Western world, between 20 and 40 of Native Americans were enslaved by other Native Americans. So you got to go back a long time before any white man shows up to you on by. See, slavery is a human problem. As long as you have humans, you're going to have problems with that. We have more slaves today than we've had in four centuries of the African slave trade. There's 40 million active slaves today. Slavery hasn't gone away. As long as people are there and they have a sin nature, you're going to have sin problems with. Slavery is one of those. So back to Jamestown. So they say slavery starts there in 1619. That's not all the problem with Jamestown. Jamestown, all these people came from Europe and in Europe you had kings and queens running everything, and so if you kind of describe the situation in Europe, everybody worked for the government, because the government is the king or the queen, they own everything. They own all the land. If they don't like what you've done, they'll take it from you and give it to somebody who's pleased them. Everything about it is big government. You don't work for yourself, you work for the government. The king queen will give you back what they think you need, and so everything is about them. So, by all accounts, that would be a definition of socialism. These guys in Jamestown, they were pro-socialistic. They came here and they had the same caste system that you had in Europe. They believed that there was lords and aristocracy and there was nobility and there was the business owners and then there was the free yeoman and there was the laborers and there were the slaves. They had the caste system, same thing, and everything was about the government providing for me. So they get here in Jamestown and they're waiting for the king to send them the supplies they need. And in the first two years they didn't have enough supplies and the Indian neighbors were good enough to say, hey, we'll help you. And so for the first two years the Indians actually supplied a lot of the food for the Jamestown College. The Indians just been good neighbors, and so after they do that for a while, the governor says this is not going to work. You guys are going to have to work some point. You can't guarantee that the king is going to get all the food here on time. You can't guarantee it's going to arrive. None of that. You need to be working. And so what happened? Their governor, John Smith. He actually quoted, and this is the phrase he said to them. He says he that will not work shall not eat. Now, that is 2nd Thessalonians 310, but that was the new policy. You are going to work if you're going to be here. It was so bad that one of their governors, Thomas Dell, actually had to whip the people to get them to work. They were so lazy they would not work and they had to be whipped to work. Well, they didn't like a governor telling them they've got to work, not in a socialistic system where the governor's going to provide for you. So they decided they needed a different message. So what they did? There was an interesting accident that happened. There was literally a gunpowder explosion that blew up the governor. Well, I don't know how that happened, because he just must have been having matched clothes. No, the guy got blown up. He has to go back to England. He goes back to England when he gets there back in England they've got a new governor now, so they're back to their other policy, so they're doing what they want to do. They've got this guy out of the way. And the third year that they're there, the Indians don't supply them with the food and then say no, no, we're having a tough time providing for ourselves. You gotta have to work at some point. You're going to have to do this. We can't keep providing for you. And so in that third year, which is the winter of 1696, it's called the starving time. They went into winter without enough supplies and the king did not send them what they needed and they couldn't get any more from the Indians and they weren't working for themselves. So that starving time becomes a very black chapter in Virginia's history Alright, folks, hang on.

Rick Green: 8:34
We gotta take a quick break interrupting David for just a second Speaking at the Pro Family Legislators Conference. We'll be right back on WallBuilders.

Tim Barton: 8:51
This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. America is a special and unique nation. The average length for a constitution in other countries is only 17 years, but we've had ours for over two centuries, and our 4% of the world's population produces 24% of the world's gross domestic product, and every year we produce more inventions and technology than the other 96% of the world combined. In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville of France came to America, traveled the country and, in his famous book, democracy in America, reported. The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. This is the origin of the phrase American exceptionalism and affirms that America is unique because of the distinctive ideas on which we have been based, including in alienable rights, individualism, limited government and the importance of religion and morality. For more information about American exceptionalism, go to WallBuilders.com.

Rick Green: 9:47
Welcome back to Wild Butters. Thanks for staying with us. We're listening to David Barton speak at the ProFemi Legislators Conference. Let's jump right back in with a tale of two cities.

David Barton: 9:55
They entered that winter with a total of 490 colonists and they came out with only 60 colonists on the other side. So 430 colonists starved to death. Now, as they go into that winter and they're short of food, what do you get food? Let's get the rats and the mice and snakes and frogs and anything we can find, and did that, but it didn't last through the winter. So then you kind of move up to the next level of food and that was the dogs and the cats, what we would call the pets, and that didn't last long enough. And so then you move up to your own livestock. You eat your own cows, you eat your own horses and your own sheep, and that's supposed to be reduced for you. But you've eaten it all now and that didn't work out for them and they still got a long time to go into winter and they're out of food again. And somebody has this bright idea that they said look, we've had dozens of people die and they're buried over in the cemeteries. They probably still have some meat on their bones over the cemeteries. So they literally go dig up corpses to eat the flesh off the corpses. One guy, his wife was pregnant. He ended up killing his pregnant wife and eating the unborn child and then eating her and, as you can imagine, they executed him for that and then they ate him after they executed him. If you look at archaeology there, what they found in Jamestown, this is called Jane Doe. They don't know who she is, they just call her Jane Doe. They call her Jane and that's her skull. And they've looked at her human remains and they say it's got the same butcher marks on her bones that would be with a cow or a deer or a sheep or anything else. She was butchered and eaten so literally they were into cannibalism in Jamestown. So as you look at that starving time, it's not a good time. They come out of that winter and we're not going to have another bad winter like this. So they really start attacking the Indians, trying to get an inch to provide food. They actually kidnap Pocahontas, hold her hostage. We're going to hold Pocahontas and as long as you keep supplying us food, nothing's going to happen to Pocahontas. Everything wrong about these guys, everything wrong about the way they thought, the way they acted. And yet they're professing evangelical Christians. They've got a very Christian declaration and their behavior doesn't match it. And so what you'll find is that these guys, literally they were elitists, they were socialistic, they were pro-slavery, they were big government, they were group conscious and that's who they were. That's Jamestown. So Jamestown is glamorous, that they were the first colony, but this is why the 1619 project can focus on them, because they've got a lot of flaws. Now again, 1619 project is completely historically inaccurate. But that's not what they're there. They're not trying to be a history story, as they say on their own website. They want to reframe American history. So this is not about presenting history. It's about reframing history for our narrative. It helps us with where we want to go. So we could say that there's another city there. We talked about it. Let's call it the 1620 project because that's the second city, 1620, and this is again the tale of two cities. There are two cities there. So let's go to the pilgrims. Pilgrims arrive here in 1620 and it's interesting that virtually any old portrait, painting, drawing, lithograph you find in the pilgrims you'll always find the Bible centered to what they're doing. As you see here. This is the portrait that hangs inside the US Capitol. This portrait is 20 feet wide. It's 14 feet high. Literally is a life size for these folks and that you see the Bible that they have right there. That is called the world's first pocket Bible. Now, I don't know what size pockets you have. That's not going to fit in any pocket. Why would they call this a pocket Bible? Because all the Bibles before that, for about 1200 years, were called pulpit Bibles and they literally were chained to the pulpit of churches. They had changed on the Bibles to make sure you didn't walk out with a Bible for yourself. It's got to stay there. If you want to go there and read it, you can, but you probably can't read anyway and generally we keep the Biblical language you don't understand. So if you're English speaking, it's probably Latin and you don't have a clue what that is. But we're sure not letting you take one with you. So what happens out of these pulpit Bibles? To understand why we had these pulpit Bibles back then, you can see the change on those Bibles. So to understand why we had those Bibles, what we did, you have to go back earlier in world history. You have to go back into the Roman Empire. You have to go back to Emperor Theodosus I, who is the Roman emperor and essentially, as far as he's concerned, he rules the world and Roman Empire, the way it stretched across the world. Back then he probably thought he did. He didn't know about China and other stuff, necessarily, but he thinks he's the ruler of the world and a good thing happened to him in 380 AD. In 380 AD he became a Christian, which is a really good deal. But because he's emperor, he says announcement, I become a Christian, the entire empire is going to become Christians or I'm going to kill you". And that was his announcement. And so he told everybody that this is what starts, the combination of state leaders and church leaders being the same leader. And so what happens? This is where you have the birth of the state-established church. And if you've got a state-established church, he's telling you what you're going to believe, what your doctrines are, what your beliefs are, how you express your faith. It's all up to the emperor on what that's going to be, and if you're not a Christian, we're going to kill you. Why do you need a Bible at that point in time? Because you can read it any way you want to, but if you don't read it the way he reads it, you're going to be in trouble. So you really don't need a Bible. And that's what started in that period of time was with the state-established church. We're telling you what to believe, and this led to a period of widespread biblical illiteracy. It was known as the dark ages, so what we call the dark ages. We were biblically illiterate. We did not know how to apply the word of God to anything, because we didn't know what the word of God says. Our leaders will tell us what God wants us to do. This is when you find all the atrocities that occur in the name of Christianity, particularly advancing God's kingdom by force, because if you don't read the Bible yourself, you're going to have what happened in 1096. In 1096, in the Rhine Valley, the church and state leaders which are the same they got together and said you know what guys? It was Jews who killed Jesus. If you want to make Jesus happy, kill a Jew. And so what happened in that point in time in the Rhine Valley? There were about 12,000 Jews that were slaughtered because they were told that this would make Jesus happy. Now I've got news for them. Jews didn't kill Jesus. Our sins killed Jesus. It had nothing to do with the race or people. It was our behavior. That's why Jesus died. That's why we needed a savior to take care of what we did, not what anybody else did, but this is what's going in that period of time. So this is what leads to the Reformation After about 1,200 years of this. The Reformation is a back to the Bible movement. Guys, we got to get back to reading the Bible. Those of us that can read Latin, those of us do have access to Bibles. The government's all wrong, the church leaders are all wrong. Here's what the Bible says. And so across Europe, you have about 23, 24 different Reformers and seven different nations, and they're saying the same thing in their language and their nation. Guys, we got to get back to the Bible. The Bible is the basis of what we have to have, and at that time there's famous Reformers like Wycliffe. For English people, english speaking people, John Wycliffe is one of the first guys to start translating the Bible into English and trying to get it where people could read it. This is his translation of the first chapter of John, and so it was a capital offense to create a Bible in the people's language. So he would put three or four or five sheets in sacks of flour and get them out of the country, and they would reassemble those sheets and create Bibles in other parts of Europe that would be English speaking Bibles. It's really elaborate what he did to be able to do that. It was capital offense to have a Bible in your own language. And you have the same thing with William Tyndall. Tyndall comes later, he also. This is John 1 out of Tyndall's translation of the Tyndall Bible, and so he's now a little later in the Reformation. But it's all about getting the Bible back to people where they can read it for themselves. So what happened with these guys? They got burned at the stake. For doing that I mean specifically William Tyndall for trying to put the Bible in the people's language he was taken, executed. He was burned alive at the stake. Because that's what happens if you try to go against what the state established church told you to do. Same thing happened with John Huse. He's in Czechoslovakia. He was trying to do the same thing in Czechoslovakia that Wycliffe is doing in England. He's trying to get the Bible in the Czech language for the Czech people to be able to read the Bible for themselves. And then, of course, what happened back up for a minute with Wycliffe Wycliffe? They forgot to burn him at the stake and after they remembered that, they dug up his bones and burned his bones at the stake. So they're just fixated on. We're going to make a public example of anyone who tries to get the Bible back available to people. So what happens is this is a new book by the time the pilgrims get it. The first English language Bible came out in 1516. That is in the lifetime of these pilgrims. So when they get this book and it's called the Geneva Bible because it was printed in Geneva and in Europe when they get that book, they start spending hours a day in it. Man, we've never seen this. That's not what we were told. And so they're dedicated to getting back into God's Word. And so, as you look at these pilgrims interesting thing about the pilgrims they were a congregation coming to America. They were not political dissidents coming to America, they were a church group that was coming to America. Their pastor, John Greenwood, had been executed in England because he made the mistake of saying Jesus Christ is head of the Christian Church. Queen Elizabeth said no, no, no, I'm head of the Christian Church, and she beheaded him for saying that Jesus was head of the Christian Church Alright, folks, hang on.

Rick Green: 18:38
We got to take a quick break. We'll be right back. You're listening to WallBuilders.

Tim Barton: 18:48
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. Well, is America worth defending? Well, 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, wildbuilderscom the American story.

Rick Green: 19:50
Welcome back to Wall Bullers, jumping right back in with David Barton speaking at the ProFamily Legislators Conference.

David Barton: 19:56
So the pilgrims have lost a pastor to the state established church for saying something that is no brainer today for those in the Christian community. But back then it was pure heresy. So they get chased out of England. They go over into Holland. They're at a congregation in Holland and they have a printing press and they're printing all this stuff. And as they're printing they said guys, here's what the Bible says. We now have the Bible, we can tell you what it says in English. And as they would take the Bible, they would criticize what the government was doing. The government didn't like that and that's why they went to Holland. And in Holland they continued to publish their materials, publish their pieces. And so the king actually sent agents to Holland to harass them out of Holland. And they finally reached an agreement. The king said if you will get the heck off of my world, then I'll never see you again, I'll let you live. And so for them that was going to the new world, because there was just virtually nothing there. And so they went to Virginia Colony. But these guys are so far away from Virginia Colony he says you get completely away from me because nobody over there. You can publish anything you want to on that side of the ocean. Nobody will ever hear it over here. So they are a congregation that is going to the new world. Now they went in two boats. One of the boats developed a leak Speedwall and it's argued that some of the sailors didn't want to go and they developed an intentional leak. And the other boat was the Mayflower. And so John Robinson is our pastor. He's the pastor of the congregation. He's talking to them before they come. They've been reduced to one ship. He plans to get a ship and come with the rest of the congregation later, which did not happen. But he said guys, when you get over there, he said, do not take with you the darkness, the anti-Christian darkness that we've had here in Europe. You get over there, you do a new start. You've got a Bible. You can read it. Do what it says, don't do what we've been doing here in Europe for the last 1,200 years. So what happens is, as they get over here, before they get off the ship, they create what's called the Mayflower Compact. That is considered the first civil document ever done in American history, and the Mayflower Compact. If you look at the Mayflower Compact, it too is very Christian. In its declaration it says having undertaken for the glory of God the advancement of the Christian faith, avoids the plant, the first colony in northern parts of Virginia and, by the way, northern parts of Virginia. If you look at a map back then of this continent, Virginia went from the Atlantic to the Pacific and Mexico to Canada. It was all Virginia. So they're in the northern parts of Virginia, which puts them up in Massachusetts, but it's all Virginia, it's all the King. King owns all that. He says, he does, and so that's what they say. But again, what you see here is that's a very evangelical declaration. But their behavior is very different. They say look, we're doing this for Christian purposes. And because they were reading the Bible, they said you know, the Bible has a lot to say about government. I'll show you more about how many verses are on government later. But it has a lot to say about government and one of the verses you can look up instantly is Exodus 1821. Exodus 1821, the Bible says choose leaders of tens, fifties, hundreds and thousands. You choose your own leaders and do it tens, fifties, hundreds. That's like us saying local, county, state and federal. You have your own leaders and you choose them at the local level, the county level, the state level, federal. And then the Bible says choose able men such as fear God, men of truth, dating covenants as men who rule in the fear of God. Choose God varying leaders. So that's the mandate they have. And it says OK, we see, we're supposed to have elected government. And so they've got elected government. But you know what the Bible may talk about choosing your own leaders or having elections. How often do you do that? And so, yeah, how often do you do that? Well, the answer they came up with was well, let's have elections every single year. So they had annual elections for their civil leaders. Every every year they elected a governor. They had a governor election every year. It turned out William Bradford served 37 years as our governor, so he re-elected 36 times, and there were lots of people in between it. He would go three or four years, somebody else would go two or three years He'd be back for. But the people chose their governor every single year. They chose their civic leaders every year. And they also said you know something else we see in the Bible when God created the nation of Israel, he gave them 613 civil laws. The civil laws God gave Israel deal with everything from finances and economics, to criminal justice, to consanguinity, to immigration, to anything you want to name health codes, it's all there. And that's how that nation of Israel, who had been a slave for 400 years, became the premier nation of the world. They had 613 laws that gave them their legal code, their government code. And so when they looked at that, they said, you know, when God gave those laws, he said to Moses you be over the civil stuff. And he said to Aaron you be over the spiritual stuff. So God said, hey, both of these institutions are mine, but I want separate people running. I don't want one person running, which is what we had with the emperors and all those 1200 years of state established churches. We had the same person running both church and state. And so they say, no, that's not the way God set it up. And not only did he not set it up that way. When you look at 2 Chronicles 26, king Uzziah, who is a very godly king, praised highly in the Bible. He came in and said you know, I'm going to be both, I'm going to be in charge of both the temple and the government. And at that point God personally individually struck him down in 2 Chronicles 26 for having tried to combine both of those into one. So for the pilgrims it's a really clear message. So what they did was they said you know what? And, by the way, there's King Uzziah. So the pilgrims said we're also going to elect our church leaders every year. So they elected pastor every year. Who's going to be pastor this year? They could change it or they could have the same one, but they had. They had their choice of church leaders and government leaders and they made that choice every year. This is what ended. The state established church. This is the first time you really see the end of government trying to control religion and this is where you see the rise of the rise of conscience and the rise of religious toleration. Once government can't punish you for what your belief is, then you start seeing this, this flourishing, and this is where all the denominations start popping out and you get all you know. You get the Baptist in Rhode Island, you get the congregations in Massachusetts and you get all the different groups, because now you've got options, you've got choices. So we can look at the pilgrims and say, hey, these guys gave us elected government. This is something we enjoy in America today. We have the concept that they set forth, they practiced it. The other thing you find from these guys is they came up with a free enterprise because when they came they were a congregation and they were much what we'd see in Acts 2 and Acts 4, whether the people had everything in common and their governor, william Bradford said, called it communitarian. We're like a community of believers, we're sharing everything together. But he talked about how some of them worked harder than others, and there were some in the church that didn't want to work hard at all, but they got the benefit of what everybody else was doing because they took what they had. They broke it up among all the different families and so everybody got the same amount. And he said you know, we need to provide everyone for his own household. And that is out of 1st Timothy 5.8. It says if you do not provide for your own household, you're worse than infidel and you've denied the faith.

Rick Green: 26:22
Alright, folks we're out of time for today. We're going to pick up right where we left off. We'll jump right back in tomorrow. So be sure and tune in to WallBuilders where we take on those hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective.