Rick Green

It's the intersection of faith and culture. It's WallBuilders and we're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. Thank you for joining us today. Hope you're sharing the program with your friends and family, being a force multiplier out there and maybe even coaching one of our Constitution classes. If you haven't done that yet, it is fun. Yes, I know that's weird when I say history, constitution and fun all in the same breath, but it actually is. David is an amazing teacher, Tim as well, and then, of course, we get Kirk Cameron in there and all kinds of fun folks like Congressman Barry Loudermilk, Rabbi Daniel Lapp and Jeremy Boring man. It's just good stuff, and so I encourage you to check that out today, wallbuilders.com.Go get your biblical citizenship course and then share it with your friends and family and invite them over to your house, and that makes you a Constitution coach right there. You just have them in the living room and you do the power play. All you got to do is turn on the power hit play. You don't have to know anything about the law or history. You don't have to sweat that perfection Everybody's like. Oh what if they ask me something? I don't know the end. Don't worry about that. You don't have to know the answer to anything.

Let the videos do the teaching and then just let the group talk and I can promise you 7,000 classes later, a million people going through them. I can promise you that you will create hope. People will watch those videos, they'll be given hope, they'll learn things they never knew about American history, and then they'll get action steps. So it's not just this kind of shallow hope, it's a hope built in the foundation of biblical truth, and then it's an empowerment that comes from knowing you can do something about it, that there's actually a difference that you can make in your community. So please consider doing that. Check it out today at Wallbuilders.com and just search for biblical citizenship and get started today. Alright, David and Tim, let's jump into the good news Now. Yesterday on Foundations of Freedom Thursday, we got one question and it dominated the whole show. So, Tim, I'm a little nervous about tossing to your dad first. What if he gives us a good news story that takes the whole show and then you don't get to any of your stack? Should we just kind of skip him?

Tim Barton

Well, usually we give him one story and he's like but I've got four things that apply. They all connect, all four stories in this one 24 minute segment. And then, Tim, it's your turn. So you know, yeah, he used to be really good at math and I feel like on good news Friday he just struggles with his math a little bit more. And I say that you know, this is not a dishonoring to my father. He is a brilliant historian. His math has just struggled in recent years.

Rick Green

It might be my math, Tim I'm supposed to be the kind of the goalie here, you know. I'm supposed to, like you know, kick you guys back out to the field and take turns and go back and forth and all that kind of stuff. Maybe I need to, maybe I need to just, you know, tackle him like they do in hockey or something, and make sure you get your fair square of time.

Tim Barton

I like that you use hockey as your example for tackling someone, instead of like football. You know where there's like tackling.

Rick Green

I just saw fights the other day on social media in hockey, where these guys did the old fashioned, you know throw the gloves down and they just went at it and the refs all stood around almost like cheering them. Yes, wow, that's hockey. Okay, not that I'm encouraging you guys to go at it here on the radio show. So, David, save me, man, give us a piece of good news here.

David Barton

Wait a minute. Now you're in a theology. I can't save you. That's what Jesus does. Are you wanting to have a theological discussion here, bro?

Rick Green

No, no, no. Take the program from me. That's what I mean.

David Barton

Okay, I'm going to start with good news coming out of Oregon, and it starts back in 2020. Oregon 2020 ballot initiative they passed ballot measure 110, which decriminalized hard drugs. And so what happened at that point in time? If you were a personal user of heroin or methamphetamines or LSD or oxycodone or other illegal drugs, if you were not a distributor of them, but just a user of them, then no longer are we going to punish you. No longer is that a crime If you use hard drugs. We've had a ballot initiative and we're just not going to do that anymore. And so that passed in Oregon by nearly a 17 point margin, and it was the first state in the country where they said we're not going to arrest people for hard drug use. So what happens as a result of that is, they said this is going to be a revolutionary time in America. This is going to change the way we deal with drugs by legalizing it. We're not going to have the same problems we've had, and this will be a way of treating drugs. This is the problem when liberals think what they think is a good idea often does not work and it always sounds good on paper, and that's what they said here, but what they found as a result was they're experiencing one of the nation's largest spikes in deaths as a result of illegal drugs. So since they passed that measure, illegal drug deaths, deaths from illegal drugs, has just gone through the roof. They're like top in the nation, one of the biggest spikes out there.

So what happens is and and credit to them they allowed common sense to return and said, hey, this, this really wasn't a good deal. And so what? What happened was they just repealed that measure, and it wasn't even close, and we're talking in a really blue state. They repealed this measure. In the Senate it was a 21 to 8 vote to repeal this measure and in the house it was a 51 to 7 vote. So it's not even close. That means you got all the Republicans and probably 80% of the Democrats agree that hard drug use is actually not a good deal for a Country, and we've seen a lot of other states try to go that progressive thing of all. If you don't criminalize it, it'll go away. If you, if you don't fight it, if you don't prosecute it, it won't be a problem anymore. No, that's not the way it works. So good news is that common sense has, has won out in Oregon at least in this area of illegal drug or hard drug use that now is back on being illegal again. So good news from Oregon.

Rick Green

Yeah, we don't always get good news from Oregon I was. I was talking to some legislators the other day that said they were paying to take, they weren't from Oregon, they were from a different state, but that other states were watching this and going. You know, maybe this will, maybe this will put to bed this idea of just you know, anything goes, everything is okay and we're gonna let all drugs be legal. I mean, this is the pain, is what causes people to finally wake up, and the pain's been pretty horrific on this one. They're not only in Oregon, but you know Seattle and there's other places where they just gone totally lacks on it. So, yeah, I would love to see more victories on this in other states as well, Tim well, and guys.

Tim Barton

This reminds me too of the parable of the prodigal son. One of the things that is often left out in that narrative is when the father and if those don't remember the parable of prodigal son there's a father. He had a couple sons. One son comes to him and says I want my inheritance. And the father says, okay, you can have it. Here it is.

And the son goes off and wasted all on this extravagant living and really a lot of immoral activity. He loses all the money. He comes back, really he realizes that even my father's servants are living off better than I am. I should go back and just be a servant for my father. At least I would get food, at least I'd be taken care of. He was at the place where he was willing to eat that, the food that was being thrown like in the trough for the pigs. He said, man, I would even even that I have nothing. I'm gonna go back and be with my father and most people that they know the story and when the son returns that the father kills the fatted calf and there's rejoicing and the older brother comes and he's kind of bitter and angry and people kind of remember and walk through that portion of the parable.

What I would point out is go back to the place where the Bible actually says that the prodigal son came to his senses. And if you find that verse and I'm saying I'll stop my head because I don't know my Bible in front of me, I haven't looked at some of my phone, I'm just thinking about it, so I'm talking about it. I think it's like verse 16 or 17 in Luke, when it goes through this parable and If you look right before it says he came to his senses, go to the verse before it, because the verse before it finishes the verse and it says and no one gave him anything. Period. Next verse starts and when he came to his senses. What's so significant about this? And, Rick, to your point, a lot of times people don't come to their senses until they have to face the consequences of their actions, until they face the reality of what they've dealt with.

Right, but in modern culture, so often we have people trying to prevent individuals from having to face the reality of the consequences of their actions. And we wouldn't prevent that because, oh you know, I don't want someone to have to deal with hard things in their life because that would be hard for them, right. But when did the prodigal son come to his senses? When no one gave him anything. And I'm not saying this as a calling challenge that right as Christians, we should stop helping people in need. Of course that's not what we're saying. Jesus is very clear in Matthew 25 that those, when he divides everybody in the last days and he separates them as a shepherd, would separate the sheep and the goats, and the dominant thing he divides them is based on how they treated people. What you did at least these are my brothers you did it to me. If someone was hungry, you gave them food. If they're thirsty, you gave them drink, right? I mean, he goes through this, the parable of the sheep and the goats. So I'm not suggesting we don't give people something, but I am pointing out that the prodigal son did not come to his senses because people were enabling him to continue on in his prodigal living. He came to his senses when people were not rewarding his bad behavior and he had to deal with the consequences of his negative actions. And then, when he dealt with those consequences, he lost all his money. Why? Because he'd spent it all on immoral things, on this right kind of robust living and he had nothing left and people were like, yeah, bro, you shouldn't have spent all your money, that's just things for you. He came to his senses when no one gave him anything. And, Rick, back to your point, that I think one of the positive things we are seeing in some of the very challenging times in America. People are coming to their senses because they're dealing with the very hard reality of some of these policies, of some bad decisions, and is making people be awakened to the reality that some of these policies aren't very good, some of these decisions are not good decisions. And because they're dealing with that hard reality, it's leading them to make better decisions, Like the prodigal son saying let me at least go back and get a job. Let me go back and work for my dad. Well, that's a good decision, right? Go get a job. Go get the earning of food instead of looking for the handout of food. That's a good decision.

And I definitely think that even as we hear some of these good new stories, sometimes we don't realize how much of this good news oftentimes lines up with biblical teachings, and we try to highlight and point that out as we go. But definitely there's so many aspects of these good news that the reason good things are happening is often because the application of biblical principles, whether the people doing them or not even know they're doing what the Bible says. God's ways work and God created the world to work in a certain way. And these principles work when they're applied, when they are tried, and that's certainly what I see so often as we go through good news. And so, as you guys were talking about that, it just reminded me of the story, the parable of the prodigal son, and no one gave him anything and he came to his senses when he dealt with the reality, the consequences of his behavior, and nobody saved him from those consequences.

He had to deal with it. That's what brought him to his senses. And I think that sometimes what we are seeing from some of these policies being reversed or decisions being changed is because people see the reality of their decisions and know we shouldn't do that anymore, and that's good news.

Rick Green

Yeah, and it's unfortunate that our human nature sometimes we have to have so much quail, we're sick of it, and that's often what's happening in our culture today.

David Barton

All right, rick, rick, rick. You used the Bible allusion. You didn't explain it. You're gonna have to tell what that is. All right, explain.

Rick Green

 We’ve complained about our manna here in the US for too long and God said, all right, fine, I'll give you quail to us coming out your nostrils. And it did, and we're watching it come out the nostrils right now in the culture. And for the children of Israel, man, they had it so difficult, guys, they had to walk out of their tents and actually pick up the manna off the ground and eat it. What a rough, rough, rough road they had. But they were complaining, complaining, complaining. And God finally said okay, okay, I'll give you what you think you want, so much so that you'll be sick of it.

And I think in our culture we wanted what we thought was freedom, what we thought was oh, I wanna do what feels good, I wanna do what I desire to do, what I'm inclined to do, and then you do so much of it that you just come to the end of yourself and you have enough pain from that, whatever it is sin in our lives, that you finally go. Okay, I should have been doing it God's way and to your point, Tim. His way works every single time. It's not just right, it works best, it produces a better result, it's actual freedom instead of being in bondage to those things. So I think we're seeing that. I think we're seeing people wake up. Did you guys see by the way, I don't know if this is on your Good News List or not did you see Joe Rogan say everybody needs Jesus, his point being we need religion, we need right and wrong, we need? This idea of just letting everybody do whatever feels good is leading us into chaos.

Tim Barton

It was really neat to see and probably for those listening or, like I, wanna hear Joe Rogan talk about Jesus.It was a very short clip and there was profanities surrounding it, right?

So just, viewer, discretion is advised. But he was making the point that we have been living so freely for so long that people don't even know how to make good decisions anymore and we don't even know right and wrong anymore. He was like we just need some Jesus. And then they kind of joke about the fact like look Jesus, if you're listening, if you wanna come back, now's a good time, just come back now. People don't know this is really bad, they're not figuring it out. We need you to come back right now.

Well, that's a really big deal for Joe Rogan, because he's been very much in the libertarian camp. But in the leftist libertarian camp like believes in a level of socialism. The government should do a lot of things is what he thinks, but I should be free to do what I want, and so like, really those ideas are not consistent and I don't think he recognizes the inconsistency, the intellectual dishonesty of those ideas. But the fact that we now have people like a Joe Rogan who really, since COVID, has Joe's awakened to a lot more conservative ideas than he used to really embrace, but the fact now that he's even mentioning Jesus as an option on his show, it really does say something about the shift happening in the culture and even going back to points we periodically make on this program, we think that there is an awakening happening in America, based on historical precedent, historic examples, that we can go back to and say this is what happened in the first grade awakening, what happened in the second grade awakening, this is the examples we see of what happened in America when God was moving in those awakenings and there's so much similarity to what we're seeing in culture and not saying.

Joe Rogan now is a born-again professing Christian. No, that's not even what he was doing, but the fact that he was acknowledging that we need a code and a system of morals and that Jesus is someone that gave a system of morals, that they gave an example that we should look to, and even he references that he would, right, we need to be safe from this mess. And how do we get safe from this mess? We need Jesus to come back. That's pretty profound coming from secular libertarian Joe Rogan.

Rick Green

Yeah, and I guess it kind of and I know we need to go to break guys, but it sort of reminds me of some of the you know that those few founding fathers that were not professing Christians, that still recognized that Jesus' teachings produced good citizens, and then, when people did follow the Bible and do what the Bible said, the whole culture benefited from that. And I'm hearing a lot of libertarian-leaning folks express that same kind of thing, which is really really good. All right, quick break, We'll be right back. Next piece of good news, I think, is going to David. Did we ever get to you, Tim, or was that, or were you just commenting on David? See, it happened. We're still on David's first good news topic. Stay with us, folks, We'll be right back. You're listening to WallBuilders

Tim Barton

It's Tim Barton and I want to tell you about our new book, the American Story Building the Republic. We start with George Washington as president and we've already become a nation. So really now it's how do we function as a nation? If we look back in American history, the stability, the prosperity, success we enjoyed as Americans is because of the foundation that our early presidents laid, because of the examples they set. How do we live in America under the Constitution? What is the role of federal government? And really, what part did each one of these early presidents play? We go to the first seven presidents and a lot of people probably know the names Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison. Very few people know about Monroe or John Quincy Adams or Andrew Jackson. Now, we might know some of their names, we really don't know their stories. We want you to relearn, rediscover American history and see how it applies to today. Go to wallbuilders.com and get your copy of the American Story Building the Republic.

Rick Green

Welcome back to Wall Builders. We're trying to get past one question or one good news in one show this week. So, Tim, we turned off David's mic and we're turning off my mic, and now you have to give a new. You can't talk about whatever we were just talking about. It's got to be a new good news story.

Tim Barton

No, and in fairness I did kind of derail us with the prodigal son and then we got into Joe Rogan, right, but but kind of continuing along, but we're still going to blame your dad, right?

Rick Green

I mean, that's just the yeah, the pattern.

Tim Barton

Okay, so continuing along this idea we mentioned before the break about Joe Rogan talking about we just need Jesus. Jesus needs to come back. Well, interesting, Joe Rogan, secular libertarian, saying we need Jesus. There's an article from an Orthodox Jew saying the solution is Jesus. Well, the title of the article is the solution for peace in Gaza is Jesus. Wow, One of our friends, Jonathan Feldstein, wrote an incredible article. In fact, we need to reach out to him. Let's get him on the show.

We got to talk to him about this, one of the things that we have many Jewish friends who are pretty open in this perspective, and especially the ones that are intellectually honest. They recognize, right, that the best friends for Israel, the best friends for the Jews are, by and large, Christians, and especially Biblically based Christians. And I'm saying that because there's a lot of people now embracing the title Christian that do not believe and read and study and follow the Bible. Right, that's a very different thought and idea. But Christians absolutely are the ones that recognize the foundation of the Christian faith. It's Judaism, right, that the, the very beginning and the first large portion of our Bible is Judaism. It's the history of God from the very beginning of creation. What we believe is Christians, and, and there's God and there's Adam and Eve, right, you go through and there's Noah, and then you keep going, and then there's Abraham and you keep going, and there's Moses and you keep going, right, you come all the way up until Jesus finally arrives. And this is where there's a different differentiation between the Christian faith and the Jewish perspective that, for, for many Jews, they'll acknowledge Jesus exists, but he's really like he's not the Son of God, right that's, they don't hold that perspective. As Christians we go. And I wait a second. Let's let's look at all these prophecies from Isaiah, right, let's let's go through all these prophets who, hundreds of years, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, before they were saying things about a coming Messiah and Jesus, fulfilled all these prophecies and there's some incredible, incredible studies done where people talk about what are the odds that one individual fulfills three of these prophecies, four, seven, eight, ten, twelve, twenty of these prophecies, and the math just gets so far beyond the level of normal understanding and comprehension. But with that being said, right, there's such a similar foundation between Christians and Jews the Apostle Paul talked about that in Romans that the Jewish people were the tree that was planted and Christians are grafted into that tree, and so Christians recognize that there is still a special connection between Christians and Jews. Now, all that to say, building the connection and the understanding.

Jonathan Felstein wrote an article about what happened in Gaza, the terrible, evil attack from Hamas against the Israeli people and what is ensued because of that, and he addresses some of what's happening in the culture, where people are suggesting that one of the ways we need to cease fire, and then we need a two-state solution. So one of the things we need to do is we need to get Israel to the table to figure out how can we give this Hamas organization, or whatever, the Palestinians, the Muslims that are there, whoever's there. We need to give them their own land, because then these terrorist activities would never happen. So Jonathan takes this head on in this article. The article is phenomenal. It's several pages long. I don't have time to get into it, but I would highly, to the extent that I would like to, in the couple minutes we have left. But I would highly recommend anybody listening go look up the article.

The Solution for Peace in Gaza is Jesus. What he ultimately gets to is people that suggest there should be a two-state solution are not being intellectually honest. They're not being serious. If you're looking at Hamas and the terrorist activity they did coming in and butchering people, the grotesque levels of what they did to human beings, it's pure evil. And so then for people to say, well, what should we do? We should reward those terrorists by giving them a new section of land. We're going to take it away from Israel. We're going to give them their own land. That's how we're going to reward them for murdering, raping, butchering people. You can't be a serious person to think that is the point he makes.

Well, as he goes further, he acknowledges that most people are not going to look and say well, Israel, they should take over Gaza, they should resettle and do all these things. They're not going to accept that. But ultimately, the Muslims probably are not going to be as influenced by the Jews anyway. Very clash of cultures, of ideologies, of theology. He says what really needs to happen is at least 100,000 Christians that move into Gaza and they bring their faith with them. And the people of Gaza there's so many that are hurt, that are broken, that need help and Christians can come and they can show the love of Jesus, because what's going to help them the most, these Palestinians, is the love of Jesus. And then when they learn to love God, they learn to love Jesus, they learn to love each other. They will also learn to love more of the people of God who are the Jews.

And he goes through. I mean just brilliantly laying this out. And it's interesting when we think about all of the options and solutions we've heard for what should be done. Almost nobody, except for Jonathan has suggested that the solution for peace in Israel is we need more Christians, and this is an Orthodox Jew. So this is this is not what you generally would expect from an Orthodox Jewish person who's not a believer in Jesus, but he recognizes the value and the contributions of Christianity and that, ultimately, the Solution for peace in Israel is the influence of Christianity, as Christians coming and helping make a difference. Guys, again, just a remarkable article. We need to get him on to talk about this, but this is a really cool piece of good news that when you have Jewish, orthodox Jewish people Saying what we need more of an Israel is Jesus, that's a really cool piece of good news.

Rick Green

And it really fits with our earlier story and what we were talking about, because you're essentially saying look, if we put biblical Principles into Gaza, good stuff's gonna come out. If we put the good stuff in, we'll get good stuff out and you'll have people that can live in in Freedom there. A David, we got time for one more man. What's your? What's your final piece of good news today?

David Barton

I'm gonna tag on to what Tim had, because I had a.

I had another Orthodox rabbi tell me. He said look guys, he said Christians will be the ones that really saved the world, in the sense that he said we Jews? He said we don't, we don't believe in evangelizing people. We don't do that, you guys do. He said you guys are trying to bring people to God. You're trying to bring Muslims to God. He, he said the best thing for Jews is Christians, because you, you go out and you, you touch people and you change people, you change their hearts and God changes their hearts and you believe in reaching out to others and we, as Jews, just believe in practicing our own faith in a private kind of way. And so they're there again and, by the way, I wish that that, that the way these guys see it, were actually right.

There's a lot of Christians that are not living biblically and doing what they should, but they understand that if you get a Christian that lives by the Bible and lives according to the Bible, it will elevate a culture, it will elevate a nation, it will elevate a people, and so you know this is multiple Jewish, orthodox Jewish rabbis that have endorsed the fact that Christianity does bring good, positive benefits, and that's that in itself is good news.

It's kind of like what we began at the beginning with. You know, Oregon is learning from the bad side and we're seeing other people learn from the good side, but you can always judge a tree by its fruits, and that's what we're seeing here bad fruits or good fruits or whatever and so the fact that Orthodox Jewish rabbis are saying this is really, really good. We need more of this than culture. Or we can look and, as Tim said, the prodigal son, you can give them no help, or find out that helps not coming, and then you change the result. Either way, experience is one of the best teachers out there for the good, the bad and the ugly.

Rick Green

All right, folks. Well, that's all the good news for today. We didn't get through that many stories, but we'll have more for you next week, we promise. And you can also find some of the other good news Stories and programs in the archives at our website. So check all that out. You can go to wallbuilders.com. You can still go to wall builders live calm, and that link will have some of the archives there as well, but a lot of great information there for you to use and to enjoy. And don't forget what I said at the top of the program Look for ways to make a difference and be engaged, be thinking about it over the weekend and go ahead and make that trip over to wallbuilders.com and get your constitution classes there and start hosting those classes and your living room or at your church. Let's get this thing turned around. Folks, have a great weekend. Thanks so much for listening. You've been listening to WallBuilders.