Rick Green: 0:08
You've found your way to the intersection of faith and politics. WallBuilders Live also found online at WallBuildersLive.com and WallBuilders.com, and also on Facebook. You can follow us there as well, and we also encourage you to let your local station know if you'd like to hear us locally. We're not on the station there close to you. If you're not familiar with which station we're on close to you, then go check it out at WallBuildersLive.com. Here we go to Building on the American Heritage Series with David Barton.

David, revival is something that pastors talk about. We, as Christians, all say we want it. What exactly is it? How do you know when you're in one and what should we be praying for?

David Barton: 0:40
Well, I'll tell you that is a big focus in America right now is revival. I've never seen the type of prayer I'm seeing now. We have the National Day of Prayer. We've had that for decades. Days of prayer go back hundreds of years, but in the past several National Days of Prayer there have been over 50,000 prayer groups on each National Day of Prayer, not 50,000 people.

Rick Green: 0:59
You're talking about 50,000 different groups and civic arenas.

David Barton: 1:02
I mean they're meeting at courthouses, they're meeting at police stations, at fire stations, they're meeting at school 50,000 groups praying, and a big emphasis has been praying for revival. We're praying for revival. What's it look like? And the best answer to that is well, let's go back and look at some previous ones and see what's common to them. The first thing that's common to all revivals and you have several biblical revivals. You have several American historical revivals and you have the first great awakening, the second and third great awakening kind of running to each other. You have the turn of the century revivals. You know these revivals in American history. What's characteristic is they always last for decades.

Rick Green: 1:35
So it's not that, and I thought revival was something that happened quickly. You had a move of the spirit, that's right. The nation was in revival and that's it.

David Barton: 1:42
People think if God answers our prayers for revival, he's going to swoop in and fix every problem in the nation.

Rick Green: 1:46
Well, I grew up in a weekend revival.

David Barton: 1:47
This is not what you're talking about. It's not a historical sense. That's not a revival. The first great awakening went from 1730 to 1770. It's 40 years. The second great awakening and Bob's up against the third great awakening, but that goes from 1801 to 1878. That's 77 years. You could have been born in 1802. You could have lived a full 75-year happy life, died in 1877, and never knew you were in a revival because your whole life was through the road.

Rick Green: 2:14
Yes, your whole life was part of that revival.

David Barton: 2:15
Yeah, let's go back to the first great awakening, because historians agree, without that there was no United States of America. It took that revival to lay the political landscape, to lay the spiritual landscape that allowed America to become an independent nation, create a form of government, create a bill of rights, et cetera.

Rick Green: 2:31
So help me get this in the timeline then.

David Barton: 2:32
So the first great awakening is before the revolution 1730 to 1770 is the great awakening, the first great awakening. 1776 is the Declaration of Independence. 1787, Constitution's written. 1789, the Bill of Rights is written.

Rick Green: 2:45
And that's where we start this revival you're talking about. This is where all the seeds were planted.

David Barton: 2:48
This is where, all for 40 years, all this thinking was changed and then it manifested itself politically in the next several years after that. Because all this stuff that's been talked about over here it's like, wow, now we've got a chance to do this in policy. We've never been able to do this before. We've always been under the British monarch. We can do it ourselves. Whole different approaches.

Rick Green: 3:06
So if there was such a good result, meaning our nation being born and all the great things that happened with our document how did we get the revival itself then? That's what people want now. We want to have a revival like that.

David Barton: 3:15
Well, you go back to someone like George Woodfield. There's a lot of preachers in the first Great Awakening Gilbert Tennant Gilbert and Willem Tennant were big preachers. Jonathan Edwards that famous sermon on sinners in the hand of angry God. You got Samuel Davies, you got Samuel Cooper, you got Jonathan Mayhew. You got all these famous preachers, but probably the best known is George Woodfield. And, by the way, here's some of Woodfield's original writing from the first Great Awakening and here's some sermons from Matthew, who was also part of the first Great Awakening. Here's Wesley Sermons and all these different sermons. Here's Davies a bunch of sermons by Samuel Davies. All these guys in the great awakening. What's significant is George Woodfield was 34 years of the 40th in the great awakening. He made seven missionary journeys to America. He traveled from Maine to Georgia and back, preaching as he went. Now, in that 34 year period, he preached 18,000 sermons.

Rick Green: 4:06
Wait, wait, wait. That's 1,000, almost 1,000 a year. Quick math, that's three a day. That's not an easy thing to do. Well, I get worn out if I speak a couple of times a day. He does that every day.

David Barton: 4:16
He does that every day.

Rick Green: 4:17
He averages three sermons a day for 34 years and I'm guessing he's not doing this flying American airline? Oh no, no he's on horseback.

David Barton: 4:25
As a matter of fact, one of the neat things is he had a portable pole pit he carried with him. They still have that pole pit, but he would stick that pole pit on the back of his carriage and he would go to the next place. Unfold that pole pit, crawl up in it, preach a sermon, fold it up, head to the next place. How do you physically do that? Did this on horseback Seven times main Georgia. What are you doing? Weather's tough, what are you doing when you come to a tornado or a hellstorm? This is not inspirational work he's doing here. This is hard, hard hard work.

Rick Green: 4:51
What level of commitment does that take on his part for him to be?

David Barton: 4:55
I'll tell you, revival killed him. He didn't think revival was all that fun. The last two years of his preaching he would get up in that pole pit and preach. He'd get out of the pole pit, go over, spit up his guts and cough up a bunch of blood. Get in his horse, ride to the next place, sit up that pole pit and go preach. Get out of the pole pit, go over, cough up a bunch of blood. It was not easy work, but if he hadn't done that, we don't have a revival. We don't have a country.

Rick Green: 5:17
So yeah, it was his sacrifice, his investment. You bet you it was.

David Barton: 5:20
That was an investment of his life, you bet it was his time and do you know how effective he was in that revival? 80% of everyone that lived in America heard him physically preach a sermon. Wow, oh, no broadcast back then. That means you got to be on the spot. You know how many communities he had to go into For 80% of Americans, did it? Anybody that thinks it's this great spiritual inspiration, God's going to sweep it and fix all this stuff? Look at what he would feel. This is the other fun thing about revivals. Fun thing Revivals are always characterized by lots of opposition, but not from the secular folks, from the spiritual folks.

Rick Green: 5:54
Shouldn't we be? You think it'd be the spiritual folks saying, hey, this guy, great, we're so glad you're doing this. He was the preachers that attacked him.

David Barton: 5:59
He was the opposite. And see, revivals nearly always involve old wine skins, new wine skins. Jesus told that story. You don't pour new wine old wine, scan it, it'll bust and you'll lose all of it. But they said, whitfield, we've never done it this way before. No, we're used to doing it this way over here. And so Whitfield comes in with a whole new way open-air meetings, not just in one denomination, he was messing with all denominations. He had what was called his Father Abraham sermon which brought people together rather than divided them. And they said Whitfield is wicked, he's evil Because he's messing with their old wines, he's messing with their tradition. And that's always the characteristic revival. Charles Finney comes along in the second grade, awakening. Now what do you mean? An altar call? We don't do altar calls. We don't have open-air brush-arbor meetings. We do it inside of churches. Now he's out in the middle of the community doing stuff and they said, whoa, finney is wicked, look at him, he's changed and it's always a transition of doing something new. God works in a different way and a lot of people can't get on board with that. Now, what happens today is we remember Whitfield, we don't remember his critics. Back then they were alive and they ate his lunch. They chewed him up. The other thing about a revival is it's not just a spiritual thing. But you know, whitfield is really the father of the American military. He's the guy who designed the first American military flag, came up with a military motto, military banner. Now Whitfield died in 1770 up in Newburyport, massachusetts. They buried him below the church there down in the basement sarcophagus. The first Massachusetts regiment that went out to fight the American Revolution all stopped by that church, had a sermon about what was happening as soldiers going out into war. They all went downstairs, opened the sarcophagus, cut off a little piece of his robe to take with him, because he was the inspirational father of the military.

Rick Green: 7:33
So you know, we didn't think of the preacher, a great awakening preacher, being the one that did that.

David Barton: 7:37
Oh, it's not just that. 1765, when we had the Stamp Act in America now that's an economic thing America sent two people to Great Britain to argue against the Stamp Act. One was Ben Franklin, one was George Whitfield.

Rick Green: 7:48
No kidding.

David Barton: 7:48
What's he doing in Parliament? What's he doing in politics? What's he doing with taxation issues? Because revival covers all aspects of life. It's not just spiritual stuff. It affects the way you live, the way you think, the way you act.

Rick Green: 7:59
That's characters and so. So everybody's praying for revival. Now you're talking hard work, hard work. You're talking it's going to take a long time, a lot of opposition.

David Barton: 8:06
A lot of opposition. It'll last decades. It's not fast. And the other thing that's really significant is it's always transgenerational. There's a revival recorded back in Judges 13 where that the God's people were under the oppression of the Philistines and that they prayed and prayed. God delivers from the Philistines. We need a revival. God answered the revival In verse 5 of chapter 13,. God so answered the revival. He said an angel to err to tell people I've heard your prayers, I've answered, you're going to have a revival. The way he did it was the angel went to Manoa and said Manoa, God's heard the prayers of his people. He's going to deliver you. You're going to be free people. You're going to have a revival. Here's how it works your wife's going to get pregnant and when that kid grows up he's going to be the national deliverer. Time out it's going to take 20 years for that kid to grow up. I thought you said you answered our prayers. God often answers the prayers of revival by sending a new generation that does it differently. Great example Back here Samuel Davies. He's considered the greatest pulpit preacher in the Great Awakening. He had a little kid running around with him when he was doing all this preaching. And, as a matter of fact, samuel Cooper, another great preacher in the Great Awakening, had a kid running around with him all the time. And Gilbert Tenor, another preacher in the Great, had a kid running around with him. It's interesting. You know how the kid was running around with Samuel Davies Little guy named Patrick Henry.

Rick Green: 9:18
No kid.

David Barton: 9:18
I wonder where he learned to be such a good speaker. He heard the greatest pulpit orator in American history preach and preach and preach and then he became the greatest orator. And you have a little kid running around with Sam who's John Quincy Adams, that's who it is. And this guy named Elias Boudinone, the president of Congress, decided to peace treaty in the revolution. Oh, you mean, he was baptized by George Whitfield in the Great Awakening and Benjamin Rusk considered one of the three most notable founding fathers. He ran around with this preacher named Gilbert Tenant and William Tenant. See, what happens is you have a new generation. I think we're there now and, for example, in America, America's finally become 51% pro-life. It's taken us decades. We're now a majority pro-life nation. Isn't that really cool? When you look at the stats for our teenagers, teenagers are 72% pro-life 20 points more. Only 19% of teenagers believe that abortion on the man should remain. Now, how did our teenagers get 20 points more pro-life than anybody that teaches them?

Rick Green: 10:12
Has to be revival.

David Barton: 10:13
How'd they get more pro-life than the culture? How'd they get more pro-life than the teachers, their parents? Because God says I've been hearing your prayers, Let me send you a new generation that'll do some things differently.

Rick Green: 10:22
You know, in the examples you use I mean in Bible days or even the founding era they seem to be a little more patient than we are. We're a real immediate grab.

David Barton: 10:28
We're a microwave generation man. Yeah, we're a microwave generation. I mean, we watch the news all the time. We've got a crisis going in some nation and in 30 minutes they'll get the experts on and tell us how to fix it. Right, right, right. Well, we've had these two nations fighting for 400 years, but we've got 30-minute program and told us how to fix the problem. Yeah, so how much harder is it for us to say it's generational, it's generational and see? This is the question. Is we pray for revival? How serious are we about revival? Are we willing to expend the work and the time and the effort and the discipleship and the mentorship of the next generation that it's going to take to do this? Because that's what a real revival looks like.

Rick Green: 11:01
Okay, David. How about some questions from the audience about revival? Sounds good.

David Barton: 11:04
What are we going to take to get revival in America?

Rick Green: 11:06
Well, we're praying for it, we're asking for it. How do you get there?

David Barton: 11:09
That's the starting place. You have to ask for it. You have not because you asked not. And you have to start by asking. Which means prayer? I love what Founding Father John Hancock said about this. He said I urge you by all that's honorable, by all that's dear, by all that's holy, not only that you pray, but also that you act. So it takes both. Faith without works is debt. It's an interesting thing that if we start praying and the Lord tells us a number of prayers to pray in the scripture, you pray for laborers to go out in the harvest. If you get really dead serious about praying for God to send out workers in the harvest, your heart gets turned that direction. I'll go do it. And so what happens is the more you pray for something, the more your heart gets into it, the more you're likely to start taking action on it. It's why I think it's significant that we're told in 1 Timothy to pray first of all. And, by the way, there's nothing else in the Bible where we're told to pray first of all, but we are told to pray first of all leaders, those in authority.

Rick Green: 12:07
So that's regardless of which leaders and who it is that's elected. You pray for the ones you agree with and the ones you don't.

David Barton: 12:13
But if you pray for leaders in those in authority, before you pray for yourself or your church or your job or your kids or anything, that's only first of all in the Bible related to prayer, pray for leaders in those in authority. If you start praying diligently for leaders in those authority, you're going to start saying, man, look what's happening in the country. We got to change this. Your heart will start taking you in that direction.

Rick Green: 12:32
How do you pray for your leaders if you don't even know who they are? I mean, I guess you could pray in general with the leaders of the country, but you almost have to do it. Start doing some homework and find out who they are.

David Barton: 12:39
Well, if you start praying for your leaders, you'll have a desire to know who are. My leaders are, and there are a number of prayer networks out there that now provide guides on. There's a great prayer calendar, for example with Heritage.

Rick Green: 12:50
Alliance yeah, but in Texas you get a daily. They'll give you two years' strength.

David Barton: 12:54
You really have a national calendar too. You get to pray on this day for your senator, on this day for your state rep, on this day for your US Congress, on this day for your governor, on this day for the secretary of the state, on this day for the supreme.

Rick Green: 13:05
It gives you a little summary, so you know something about it. I'll pray for their family, that's right.

David Barton: 13:09
And every day it gives you a leader and someone in authority to pray for. So Heritage Alliance is a good place, but there's a lot of prayer groups that do that.

Rick Green: 13:16
Is it okay for me to pray? You know, not only pray for that person, but pray that God sent advisors to them.

David Barton: 13:22
If they're not believing, from a biblical point of view, that He'll send advisors that'll influence them, that He'll change their heart, I mean actually pray for that leader and the policy they're implementing, and you pray for the staff as well, because even if you have a rotten scoundrel like Ahab, ahab had a righteous guy named Obadiah working for him, and Obadiah, despite Ahab and Jezebel trying to kill all the God's prophets, obadiah over here is able to get a hundred prophets of God and save them, put them in a cave and take care of them. So you can even have really good people and a really wicked administration. And you want to pray not only for their counselors, because they need counselors, they need people giving righteous input.

Rick Green: 13:55
That sounds like too, though, that when you're praying for those kind of things with your leaders, you recognize that revival does come through the hands and the feet of the people. I mean, god does do it through these people, in these positions.

David Barton: 14:06
You can pray for revival all you want, but if you're not willing to do something with your prayers, it's not going to happen.

Rick Green: 14:11
Staying with this subject of revival, let's get another question from the audience how do we measure revival? Well, I have to admit I have no idea. How do you measure? I mean, we're praying for it, we want it to happen. We want it to happen if you're in it or if it's happened, and whether it's a good one.

David Barton: 14:24
Well, revival is a little different when you pray. I mean, if we pray for rain, we know when that prayer is answered. You know if somebody is sick and you pray God heal them, you know when that prayer is answered. It's a little different with revival, but the Bible does give us a lot of indicators, and so does history, and one of the things that you'll find that happens with the revivals is you have changes in individuals, you have changes in culture as well. You look in the second grade, awakening. One of the reasons we knew it was a revival was because all of a sudden you can get hundreds, thousands to show up to pray Ten years before who wants to pray and it's a waste of time or too busy, but suddenly there's an interest in spiritual activities, there's an interest in doing something spiritual. Now it doesn't stop there. I mean you can't say we have a revival because we get so many baptized or so many join the church and that's not it, because it's not just what you say spiritually, it's how that works out through your life. If you have a real conversion experience with the Lord, your lifestyle is going to change. And if your lifestyle changes, what you will tolerate around you and what you demand to be around, you will also change.

Rick Green: 15:26
So it's not just your spirit, it's not just your heart, not just your heart. It's how you act after that and what you're willing to put up with around you in the culture.

David Barton: 15:33
And that's a great way of saying what you're willing to put up with, because if God's really hit you, man, you think a lion's an abomination and you're not going to let all these people that used to be your employees, that are liars, say, guys, you got to cut that out. Or you're going to say, no, wait a minute, I can't have liars in office either. These guys made all these promises. We got to get these guys out, get out of somebody with character. In there you start wanting and demanding different things around you. You'll demand more from the places where you go and what you patronize in the way of dining and establishment. There are certain things you want to all write. You start working that up to the culture and you can always measure revival by what it does to change the culture.

Tim Barton: 16:13
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 16-19 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 the 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.

David Barton: 17:19
The Westleys had a revival in England back in the early 1700s and it was measurable, because suddenly nobody wanted to go to the bars anymore. They'd rather go to church than go to bars, or they'd rather be at their family than go to bars. I love what happened in New York in the second great awakening. One of the founding fathers, James Kent, talks about it and they were appalled that in the entire state of New York over a 16-year period they had eight murders in New York. 16 years, Only eight. That's a murder in New York In New York. Chicago's got a murder every eight hours. See, you can measure statistical results saying wait a minute, God's changed people's hearts. They're not one to kill each other anymore. They act different. They act different. So anytime you have a revival, it's not just spiritual measurements, it will affect the culture. If it doesn't affect the culture, it's not a revival. There have been revivals gone on all over America. People say, oh, come see this great revival at this church. It's not a revival unless it gets outside the church and affects the culture. How about another question?

Rick Green: 18:16
from the audience. Would a national revival really make a difference in our government? Well, we're back to this question. If it's a revival, spiritually there's a change. But then how does it work its way up to where we see that reflection in government?

David Barton: 18:28
Let's take the system policy for a minute, because as you look in the Bible, there are several revivals that occur in the Bible. You have a revival of the nation under Jehoshaphat. You have a revival of the nation under Josiah. You have a revival of the nation under Asa. Now that's just three revivals, but let's take those. They've been away from God. They came back to God. You take those three revivals. They're recorded in two parallel books. They're recorded in the Kings and they're recorded in the Chronicles. Now there's a difference in these two books. The Kings, that's compiled by Jeremiah. The Chronicles are compiled by Ezra. Now Jeremiah is a prophet and in Bible times a prophet was part of the Kings staff. You remember even Ahab said hey, we can't go out to war unless we get a prophet in here. Let's get a prophet. And they bring a prophet and say I hate this prophet. He always tells me bad things, but he's still got a prophet in it. The prophet spoke directly into policy, directly into the King. So you got Jeremiah, he's got a very political view and if you read the book of Jeremiah you see that he's interfacing with the Kings all the time. They throw him down in that myriad pit. He sends word to the King and the King says I want to meet with you in private. Don't anybody know we met? There's always this stuff where the prophets are working with the civil leaders.

Rick Green: 19:37
They had no hesitation in speaking out. That's right.

David Barton: 19:39
And the civil leaders were raw, spoke very clearly at its precedent of God's ministry speaking in the civil arena. Now, on the other hand, you have Ezra, who is the scribe, the priest, he's the guy who is back of the temple doing all those hours of prayer and fasting. And it's interesting that when you read the same incident in the Kings that you have in the Chronicles and the Kings you get a political viewpoint of it and the Chronicles you get a spiritual viewpoint. Here's an example and the Kings will say that the king so-and-so died and was buried with his fathers. And chronicles say king so-and-so sinned against God and God struck him down and he died and was buried with his fathers. Well, you got a spiritual perspective over here. You didn't get in the political. So when you look at a revival, you can read the chronicles and get the spiritual perspective. What's really cool is read the kings and get the political perspective Every time there was a revival. This is the striking stuff. Every time there was a revival in the Bible, you know what changed with every revival their attitude toward homosexuality, really in the.

Rick Green: 20:38
Old.

David Barton: 20:38
Testament They'd been tolerating it, they allowed it, and it said that when the revival came, that they chased the sodomites out of the temple. So revival brought moral clarity and they acted upon it. And it brought policy. Suddenly, the church is not tolerating homosexuals in the temple and with a revival it's a political position, wow. But it's a result of a spiritual change. So as you go through and read revivals in the Bible, yes, there was a spiritual component to them. There's always a political component that goes with it as well.

Rick Green: 21:09
So if we have a revival in America, then we should see changes not only in our attitudes but in the policy you bet issues like abortion and marriage Well, that's why, historically, these are what were called common law offenses, because this was common to nations.

David Barton: 21:21
This was common throughout history that this behavior is not acceptable and that's why in common law offenses it listed everything from burglary, from arson, from murder to kidnapping, to theft, to rape, to homosexuality, to prostitution, and that's why it was always in the common law offenses and that was incorporated into the constitution through amendment seven of the constitution. So, but I say that because common law goes back hundreds of years before the constitution. They just took that body and put it into the constitution and that's why it was part of the statutory laws for all the states.

Rick Green: 21:50
Alright time for one more question on revival. Sounds good.

David Barton: 21:53
America is so far gone it seems we have only a few years left. How can we get revival in such a short time?

Rick Green: 22:00
Well, you do hear this quite a bit. I mean some people are out there saying it's all over, grab your guns. Can food go hide out at the ranch? I mean they want to give up on America and they don't believe a revival would work.

David Barton: 22:09
Well, what happens is those people are not very familiar with history because there is nothing new under the sun. But this also gets somewhat into eschatology. And as we get into eschatology we see the end times and I believe the Bible is the inspired and errant and fallible word of God. I also believe, because I believe, that Peter said he was living in the last days. Timothy said Paul told Timothy this is the last days. John said twice I'm in the last days. What does that mean? That means the last days must last at least 2000 years, because we're still there. See, every single generation since Christ was here thought that Christ would return in their generation. Now eschatology is divided in a lot of ways. In the church you have the pre-trib, the post-trib, the mid-trib, the a-trib, the pan-trib, the pre-millennial, the post-millennial. You got all these positions. The simple way to look at this is exactly what Jesus told his disciples when they were thinking about this Wednesday master coming back, kind of stuff. Luke 1913,. He said occupy till I come. If we think it's time to pick up and get out of here, because it's just too hard, just too rough, we don't have Christian character yet. Yeah, that's when you dig in your hills and say I'm going to be the last one standing. I love in the Old Testament as it talked about the three chief warriors for David and you look at what those chief warriors did. You crawl down in the snowy pit with a lion now on a snowy day. But the guy I really enjoy is the guy who went out there and defended a bean patch. And he stayed there and kept the enemy out of the bean patch so long they had to pry his fingers off it. Who cares about a bean patch? Give it up. No, no, I was told to stay here and defend this bean patch. This is my place on the wall and I'm not moving. My commander put me here to do this bean patch and you ain't getting me out of here. And so he stayed and defended that silly bean patch or little field. He defended that bean patch till they had to pry his fingers. He was one of David's mighty men, see, and that's the kind of people God wants. Now I will tell you historically, as you look back into the diary of Christopher Columbus. Christopher Columbus says I've talked to every major theologian across Europe. They all agree every prophecy necessary for Christ to return has been fulfilled. They all think Christ will be here in the next 70 years, and that's in the 1400s. That's in the 1400s and that's why he wrote in his diary. He says that's why I'm compelled. God has shown me out of Isaiah that there are owls of the sea that haven't heard the gospel. I've got to get the gospel there because there's only 70 years left, 500 years later, a little bit 500 years off there, as you move into the founding era, founding fathers like Sam Adams. Sam Adams said we talked to all the theologians. They all agree there's not a prophecy left being fulfilled before Christ returns. They think he'll be here by 1800. And Sam Adams said maybe, but I've still got stuff to do. But they were believing by 1800. We've had, across every single generation, every prophecy has been fulfilled since a long time ago, every single one. There's nothing left in return except the father to say okay, returned. And that's all we're waiting on. Who knows how long this is going to be. That's not our business. It doesn't matter when he returns. We got to be occupied until he comes.

Rick Green: 25:13
Yeah, because isn't it much easier to give up on the culture if you are saying, look, God's going to be back two weeks or two years, whatever, why should I worry about trying to turn the culture?

David Barton: 25:21
around and the other thing is it creates a pessimism. You know it's all. This is the last days. There's nothing we can do to turn it around. What makes you think so? I love Isaiah 59, where God says you think my arm's too short to say and even with Moses, he told Moses get out of the way, moses, I'm going to destroy this people. Now, when God says he can destroy people, he can do it. And Moses wouldn't pray it. And God said okay, I want to destroy them. How do you know what can be changed through prayer? You think this is the last time. You think it's all written. God responds to prayer. He's changed so many times what he intended to do because somebody got involved in prayer and we can't check out on this. I mean, we absolutely cannot check out on this. And you look in the Bible. How many times did Israel sink to the bottom of the barrel and God still brought them back? You know, still, I've got great hope for the country.

Rick Green: 26:06
Well, I was going to ask you about America. I mean, we've had our downtime. We've had our down times We've had revivals and we've got just come back, so why couldn't it happen again?

David Barton: 26:12
And this is why believers need to know something about history, both the Bible and both American history, because this is not brand new water we're treading in. We've been here before. God's quite capable of handling this. He just needs some people willing to do some stuff. And that's what the key to revival is, is we've got to be willing to get involved.

Rick Green: 26:30
Thanks for listening today, folks. Many of you have the DVD set of the American Heritage Series. You can get the sequel which is Building on the American Heritage Series. A lot of new materials, some fantastic programs you want to have in your library. You can get it at our website today at WallBuilders.com.