Rick Green: 0:07
This is the intersection of faith and culture. It's The WallBuilders Show where we take on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. That means we're going to take whatever the subject is, and today we're going to be talking about money. Yes, we're going to be talking about debt. We're going to be talking about the national debt, but also personal debt and all of those issues, so we're going to be talking economics. Now, don't tune me out, don't let those eyes glaze over. We're going to give you a biblical perspective with real application, practical application to our lives, and that's what we mean when we say biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. The things we talk about here affect your life, and so we look at those three things in order to get the right answers, to get the truth, so that we can apply that truth to our lives and get good results by doing it God's way, because His way is not only right, it works best and you get the best results. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach, honored to serve here with David and Tim Barton. David is America's premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders, and Tim Barton is a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. Alright, David and Tim a little later in the program. We've got Steve Dulin with us from Gateway Church. He's been a great friend to the Barton family, to the Green family, to WallBuilders, to Patriot Academy. I've been doing stuff with us for a long, long time and also now a part of well. He's been with Gateway Church for a while, but full time with Gateway and on their executive pastor team and man guys talk about a church that is acting like a church should, meaning it's salt and light, not just in one area but all throughout the culture. They really are making the most of the massive growth that they've had and they're making a big difference in not only in Dallas there where they're based, but with other affiliated Gateway churches across the country.

David Barton: 1:44
Yeah, I think any way you cut the measurement, you would say that this is one of the major mega churches in the United States. I think just in the fourth Dallas area they've got like nine campuses, nine or ten campuses. They have what they call a network and arch network. There's eleven hundred churches affiliated with them. On the North Dallas campuses there's about ninety-two thousand people that attend church on a Sunday morning in those campuses. They are a very, very, very large church. Now, typically, you're going to have a hard time finding a mega church in the United States that has much impact on the local community. They may have great TV programs, they may have a huge following, but they generally don't have a large impact on their local community and that's characteristic for a lot of churches. We all speak at a lot of pastors' briefings and one of the things I challenge pastors with I said alright, pastor, let's say that this Sunday morning you stand up in church and you announce and say, hey, we're closing the doors of the church. This is the last Sunday. We'll be open. As of Sunday night, we will not exist as a church anymore. My question to you is how many civic leaders would be banging on your door on Monday morning and saying you can't close down, we need you, you're too valuable to the community, what you do in helping serve the people, what you do in keeping crime low, what you do in keeping education high, what you do in the other, how many civic leaders would say you can't shut down? Most civic leaders would never even know you were there. If you shut down, they wouldn't miss it because you haven't made an impact on the community. That is not gateway. This is a mega church that in the last cycle they brought 51 different churches together in the four Dallas area. They said you know, here's 15 school board seats. We really need something different. They won 15 out of 15 school board seats. Now local politics is where it can be the meanest and the ugliest and everything else. And they got involved and they made a difference there. And they do this in all sorts of areas. That's just one of many areas where they do it. So they're very conscious of what the Bible says. They're very conservative theologically, in the sense that they believe the Bible, they preach the Bible, they teach the Bible, but they're also very active in taking it outside the four walls of the church and taking it outside of the home. It needs to affect the community and those around them. And, Steve Doolin, as you pointed out, Rick, he's one of the senior leadership in this entire network of churches. He's one of the top guys there and he's been a great friend of all of us for a long time and he's really good in economics as well. He's the guy that he was a very successful business and he actually brought together 500 business leaders in the church to start with, and now I think there's 1500 business leaders, but they mentor other business leaders. We've been successful and they do it in discipleship ways. If you're a company with 10,000, then you'll have you mentoring a company that has maybe 8,000. The company with 8,000 mentor leaders from a company with 4,000. The company with 4,000 leader of those with the company of 1,000. So he hasn't really set up whether they're mentoring leaders all across the community. It's a huge, huge thing, and so we've just seen so many things going on with what's happening with finances in Washington DC. This is a group that understands finances. They're full of business leaders. They know how budgets work and just getting Steve's perspective on it as a leader of this group of more than 1,000 business leaders, how they see economics and what we can learn from that, is really a good counterbalance to what we hear on the news or what we see coming out of Congress with spending and the president etc. The $33 trillion now is deficit and growing. Steve's got a really healthy perspective on how to go at looking at that.

Rick Green: 5:27
Alright we're going to take a quick break, guys, we'll be right back. Steve Duel and our special guest today Stay with us. You're listening to the Wallbubbler Show.

Tim Barton: 5:38
Hey, this is Tim Barton, with WallBuilders, and, as you've had the opportunity to listen to WallBuilders Live, you've probably heard the wealth of information about our nation, about our spiritual heritage, about the religious liberties, about all the things that makes America exceptional. And you might be thinking as incredible as this information is, I wish there was a way that I could get one of the WallBuilders guys to come to my area and share with my group whether it be a church, whether it be a Christian school or public school or some political event or activity. If you're interested in having a WallBuilders speaker come to your area, you can get on our website at www.WallBuilders.com and there's a tab for scheduling and if you'll click on that tab, you'll notice there's a list of information, from speakers' bios to events that are already going on, and there's a section where you can request an event to bring this information about who we are, where we came from, our religious liberties and freedoms. Go to the WallBuilders website and bring a speaker to your area. This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders, with another moment from American History. The year after the American War for Independence ended, we began addressing the issue of Muslim terrorists in North Africa who were attacking American ships and killing and enslaving American seamen. Congress dispatched John Adams and Thomas Jefferson to negotiate peace, and when they asked the Muslim ambassador the reason for the unprovoked attacks, he told them that it was written in their Koran that it was their right and duty to make war upon them whenever they could be found. Sixteen years of negotiations failed and in 1801, America sent its military to crush the terrorists. When that war ended, in 1805, the first American edition of the Koran was published, urging Americans to read the Koran to see for themselves that its teachings were incompatible with the safety and peace of non-Muslims. To see the first American Koran and to get more information about America's first war on Islamic terror, go to WallBuilders.com.

Rick Green: 7:39
Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. Steve Duhlin, back with us from Gateway Church and just had you on recently, man, I'm starting to feel like we're going to call it the WallBuilders with Steve Duhlin program. I love you, brother, appreciate you coming back, man.

Steve Dulin: 7:52
Hey, thanks for having me on, Rick. Always a lot to.

Rick Green: 7:55
Well, you guys are doing so much at Gateway and your ministries are really, you know, in every area of the culture you're really keyed in. Obviously, you did, you know, very successful businessman most of your life and then now teaching other people how to do that and it's all Biblically-based, it's just doing it God's way. You know. It's not only right, it works best and gets good results. But, brother, we are not getting good results as a nation 33 going to be $34 trillion here in just a few weeks in debt. You know that can't be Biblical and but we love to blame politicians. So I wanted to ask you a little bit about what we can do personally to do better on this and if you think that will eventually be reflected in the government if we're doing better.

Steve Dulin: 8:37
Yeah, no, no, no question in that. Of course, you know, obviously the government controls a lot of what we do and the culture and the economy and control of it it influences that. But you know, our job is just to do what God tells us to do, to live according to Biblical principles and to try and sense what he's saying to us in our lives. My Mel and I have been out of debt since 1990. And you know, I think we paid off our car, our nose, our student loans in 1990. And it's just, it's such a freedom to be able to pursue things that God is telling you to do that and I feel like this is the destiny, this is the purpose for my life and when you do that, then God provides in supernatural ways to do that, because there's a freedom there, as opposed to, you know, when it talks about in Proverbs 22, where it says the rich rules over the poor and the borrower is the slave of the lender or the servant of the lender. When we owe people money, we're not free to do with our money, what, what we want to do, because it puts up, it limits our freedom and God wants us to be free. So we're free and free, and free to hear what he has to say, and then obviously go do that. And, by the way, gateway Church has no debt as well.

Rick Green: 9:51
And that's you know, just just looking at the national decisions right now, 40%, I think, of the revenue that's brought in goes to pay interest on the debt. So that means you've taken that money off the table to be able to do whatever it is. You know we could have those debates about whatever it is that government should be doing. Certainly you can't do that if you're having to pay interest on the debt.

Steve Dulin: 10:12
Or it just kind of shows us how this cumulative effect of not doing things the way God wants us to adds up over time. And there are so many things that the government spends that government was not designed to do, according to Romans 13. And so the government spends all this money and it makes all these commitments, that makes all these decisions that aren't biblical, and then, over time, that debt starts adding up. Now what's happening, of course, is that the interest rates have gone up so much that now, when they borrow money, instead of paying, you know, a half a percent, or basically 0% for a while, 1% or 2% for years, now we're paying, the government's paying 5% of their money, and then it's starting to accumulate. And now, you know, I always I was, I was telling my friends look, you know, right now the debt doesn't really cost us a lot because it's a zero interest. But, man, when he hits 3, 4, 5, 6%, now we got a real problem, because now it's accumulating in a very rapid rate.

Rick Green: 11:10
You know, and thinking about turning this around. It's not going to happen overnight. Obviously, these are big, big problems, but I mean your personal testimony. You turned your life around, you know. Thankfully, god brought you a wife that had a positive influence on you and I bring that up, Steve, because your testimony is so powerful and it's a personal story, but it's God's principles and applying that to the nation and saying, hey, you know what he's not done with us just because we messed up, and we can turn this thing around. You know, help me think about that in terms of how long that could take, but give me hope that we can in fact do that. You did it personally.

Steve Dulin: 11:47
Well, you know, yes, because God spoke to us to get out of debt, but he also spoke to us at the same time to increase our generosity. And when you give a cordon to God directing you, he's the one that pays for it. And that's really one of the problems of going into debt is, if you go into debt, but if you're doing it because God wants you to, he will pay for it. And so, you know, I've lived the last, you know, over 30 years now, no debt, because when God orders something, he pays for it. So what happens is is when we start borrowing money, many times it kind of cuts off God's provision. He says, oh, I was going to pay for that, but now, okay, now you want to pay for it, so go in and borrow the money, because you want to borrow the money instead of me providing. And so when we, when we started giving generously, and we started giving, you know, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, the last 15 years, we owned a business, we, we gave 50% of our income to the Lord. Well then he says, oh, oh, and I love this, this verse that says when we lend, when we give to the poor, we lend to the Lord and the Lord will repay.

Rick Green: 12:55
So when we?

Steve Dulin: 12:56
we gave and helped other people and gave, was God directed to us. The Lord repays and it's so fascinating to watch supernaturally how God does things in your life and what he does things supernaturally and did them so quick as well. So there is a there is a turnaround for America. If we'll get back to biblical principles, we'll start obviously spending less that we bring in and stop spending on things that God doesn't want our nation to spend, things paid, the things that he doesn't want us to spend our finances on. So now I could do something supernaturally, but it really takes doing things his way.

Rick Green: 13:31
I got to go back to what you said 50% you were given away. I remember reading Nogmandito's greatest salesman in the world, like I don't know 30, 40 years ago, and that was a principle taught in that book was giving 50% away, but you guys literally did it. I read about it in the book, but you guys actually did it. That's amazing.

Steve Dulin: 13:52
Well, it's just the principle that God told us to do it and he pays for what he orders. Unfortunately, our government and state governments and city governors are paying for a lot of things that God hasn't ordered. And I mean, I think the average American citizen would be shocked Number one, to realize that, at $33 trillion and 330 million Americans, that the average debt load is $100,000 for every person in the United States. If you have three kids and you're married, there's five in your family you owe $500,000. That's really not quite that, because not all the debt is public debt. There's obviously government debt, there's intergovernmental debt, but obviously other countries own our debt. But I'm just saying just that number is so big. It's so hard to believe that really that we owe that much money. But what's also what we need to understand is is how quickly God can also build our income and build what the money we need when we do things his way, man, so good.

Rick Green: 14:59
And just for those that might see that those big numbers and say it's impossible and all of those things, just another victory example. Sometimes we looked at the education system. We say it's so messed up, it's so bad, these school boards are so bad, nothing you can do. You guys at Gateway did there again. You said, hey, huge problem, yes, but we're going to step in, we're going to do godly principles took over a bunch of the school boards up there in the Dallas area turning things around. I mean it can be done. But, like you said, we've got to go back to the answer book. We got to be saturated in God's word and then live out his principles personally and then in the community.

Steve Dulin: 15:32
But here's the principle, Rick, that most people don't think of. The Bible tells us clearly don't be surety for someone else, right? Proverbs 11 talks about who hates being surety is wise. It tells us not to guarantee other people's debt. But here's the government forcing us into surety. When the biblical principle that we're not supposed to be surety, but we now are. Now, who's going to pay this money? Obviously it's going to be our children and our grandchildren, if they're ever paid. But the government has made our children and grandchildren surety for the debt that the government has been imposing. It's not biblical in any way.

Rick Green: 16:08
No, it's evil. It's literally stealing from multiple generations into the future and again, like we said earlier, taking away their decision making power. They didn't even make the bad decision to get in the situation of taking away those options and listen.

Steve Dulin: 16:22
I don't believe that borrowed money is sin. The Bible never says that, but sometimes it says it's not wise and we need a lot more wisdom in our government on what we should be paying for and what we shouldn't. I think it's a huge problem for America, and even all these rating agencies are starting to realize that they're starting to downgrade us little steps at a time, because the more we get into debt, the more pressure the government has to raise money. Which where's that money going to come from? What's going to come from people who want to buy P-bills and bonds and things they haven't had any raise the interest rates that they're paying people, so they'll buy these rates because they're not a secure. They'll buy these T-bills and buy these bonds, and it's just. I'm very concerned. We're getting in a cycle and we really need to cry out to God and ask for wisdom for our government leaders.

Rick Green: 17:13
Well, last thing and you've already said this a couple of times I mean you basically are talking about jurisdictions and saying listen, if the government was only doing the things it's supposed to do, staying in its lane, then it's a blessing, not a curse. Gets out of its lane, it's a curse. And one of the ways that that we get government back in its lane, of course, all the political solutions and things we need to be doing there. But when the church steps up and becomes the epicenter of the community again and meets needs in the community like it's supposed to do, not through government but through the church, then it's easier to get these things fixed. So that's another area again that Gateway's leading on and saying, hey, we're going to have all these different ministries to meet the needs in the community. So as we solve the problem on the government side, the church also has to step up and get back into its full role, right?

Steve Dulin: 17:57
Well, Rick, one of the things that we do at Gateway which a lot of people don't realize is that this year we'll spend about $25 million outside our doors, in other words, to the community, to other churches, that we give money to other churches internationally. Obviously, Rick, we're doing a lot of aid right now to Israel, but we also give in the past to Ukraine and we're doing that right now Ukraine and obviously getting Christian refugees out of Iraq and Afghanistan. So we give about $25 million this year to ministries that's outside Gateway Church. In other words, we spend money on ministries inside Gateway Church but it's not our money. We never feel like it's our money. It's God's money and we give as he directs it. A lot of times it's to build up we're nine campuses in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. It's just to build up the communities around us and to bless them and, obviously, take care of the poor. We now have a widow's ministry over 300 widows at Gateway Church that we bless and try and encourage and provide needs as they make those needs known, and there's a lot of things that we do for them.

Rick Green: 19:14
Man, I almost remember reading something about that as somewhere in the New Testament about taking care of. Isn't that interesting?

Steve Dulin: 19:20
God seems to care about the poor, the needy and the widows and the orphans. Man, that's powerful, bro.

Rick Green: 19:26
Yeah, amen, amen, good stuff. Well, and that just proves, man, if we could do it on the local level, do it within these communities and these churches, we can expand this thing nationally and turn this thing around. Steve, always a blessing man, appreciate you coming on and actually preview next spring I guess it'll be probably around May the business seminar. Are you going to do that again this year? Yeah, we are. We're going to do our.

Steve Dulin: 19:46
Accelerate Conference in May and we'll have John Maxwell there and Dan Cathy Chick-fil-A and Pastor Robert Morris. A lot of great speakers. It's going to be an amazing event. It's called Accelerate 2024.

Rick Green: 19:58
Well, come back and join us around February and March. Let's talk about that again when we get people geared up and ready to go. Steve, appreciate you, man. Thanks for coming off. Well, thank you so much, Rick, for having me. God bless, stay with us folks. We'll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

Tim Barton: 20:14
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 It'd 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: 21:19
We're back here on the Wild Builder Show. Thanks for staying with us. Thanks to Steve Doolin for joining us from Gateway Church just a great church, and just thankful for churches and leaders like Steve that have been involved with us at WallBuilders and Patriot Academy, as I said earlier, for years and helped us to do things like the Constitution Class as a Biblical Citizenship and all that and been the one that you know implemented in their churches and give us the chance to, you know, take this thing to the rest of the country. It's just great partnerships like that and the leadership of and the mentorship of folks who have been, for instance, with Steve being successful in business and then mentoring other people in business. I mean, I think we might just call that discipleship, guys. Well, guys.

Tim Barton: 21:58
One of the things I asked Steve before, on the break, before he came back, was what is a book you would recommend? Because I said, man, Steve, after everything everybody's listened to, there's going to be people going, okay, I want to do something, how do I do it? What's a book you recommend? And he, of course, there's so many out there. And I said, okay, but I know a gateway y'all have done the blessed life. What do you think? He said, honestly, if people want to figure out how to control their personal finances, the blessed life by Pastor Robert Morris would be a great book for them. I have it, I've read it, I've gone through it. It is a fantastic book. And you know, for us we grew up, Dad, I remember when at church, as kids, I think maybe even you were leading some of those courses from Larry Burkett, you know it's maybe some of the modern movement. People might know a guy like the name of Dave Ramsey, and of course there's lots of people out there. But there's people that are just giving some basic money, sense and advice, and it doesn't mean that you have to agree with everything they say, but they give you a biblical perspective and one of the things that I think is important for us to recognize, as we're looking at a nation that's in trouble, coming up on $34 trillion of debt, as Steve pointed out right, you're talking about basically $100,000 of debt for every single person, and for me, being married, having two kids right now, that's $400,000 of additional debt. And also, as he pointed out in Proverbs 11, that you're not supposed to be surety for someone else, and when you have the US government forcing us to be surety for other people, that's not a biblical idea. But the reason I bring this up is one of the things that's important to know is you can't solve a national problem when you have the 330 plus million people that have the same individual problem. You have to solve the individual problem before you can solve the national problem. It's similar to saying that if you have an individual who is a very unhealthy person mentally, emotionally, physically and then they get married, thinking that, oh, if I get married, then I'm going to solve all these problems, no, an unhealthy person who's unhealthy as an individual is going to have an unhealthy marriage because until you solve the unhealthy issues in your life, the marriage is not going to solve that problem Until we solve some of the financial problems we have as individuals. It would be kind of foolish for us to imagine that we're going to elect people that are going to solve these financial problems on a federal level if we have not solved them on an individual level first. And as Steve pointed out so many verses he referenced so many things from Proverbs specifically that there's so much wisdom in the Bible to help us live a biblical life when it comes to finances. We've talked about this many times that it's not a coincidence that the vast majority of parables that Jesus taught the example he used in those parables was dealing with money, was dealing with economics, was dealing with business. There's something very practical the Bible offers about us financially and, as we say this, this is not something we want people to live in condemnation, but we want people to find freedom. As Steve pointed out, that's what God wants forces freedom, and that includes financial freedom, and so I would again highly encourage or recommend for people to check out the blessed life by Pastor Robert Morse, and then, of course, there's many, many good resources out there by guys like Dave Ramsey, among many others, but we need to make sure that we do a good job of getting our own personal life in order. When it comes to these financial issues, instead of just saying, well, we're upset with the government, we need to make sure that we solve our own internal problems, and then the more people we get having a financial healthy, a financially stable position, it's easier to move the federal government in that direction as well.

Rick Green: 25:33
Alright, folks, you can get more of the WallBuilders Show at our websites. You can actually share this stuff with your friends and family. And then, of course, as we've mentioned many times, you can implement these things with your friends and family in a local class that you create right there in your living room or maybe hosted at your church. And maybe it is that Biblical Citizenship in modern America or Constitution Alive, or Foundations of Freedom, or American Heritage Series, or any one of the many programs that you can find at WallBuilders.com, and also, just, you know, just taking that to not just for yourself, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. It's, it's, there's something about, instead of just studying something by yourself, actually doing that with friends and family. That's why we created the Constitution Coach program to give you the chance to go through this with your friends and family and other people from your church. And we can tell you listen, after thousands and thousands of these classes happening across the country, we know what happens, we know how much it encourages each other and how much, after the video is done, the interaction and the sharpening, the iron, sharpening iron. You know you'll be sharpening the countenance of your friends and family and they'll be doing the same for you. So get started today. Start bringing people together. Be part of that leadership. We appreciate you doing your part to help restore America's constitutional republic. Thanks so much for listening to the WallBuilders Show.