Rick Green

Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. This is the WallBuilders show, where we're taking on hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. I don't know if today's a hot topic of the day. It's a continued conversation we've been having around here at Wall Builders in our celebration of independence. That is now going to be year-round, not just a day, not just a month. Be year-round, not just a day, not just a month, but year-round. We're restoring patriotism uninformed patriotism, as Ronald Reagan described it which means we've got to know where we came from, what we've been about, what our foundations are, as Ronald Reagan also said. You know, he said if we forget what we did, we won't know who we are. So, knowing these stories, knowing the foundation absolutely critical.

I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach and a former Texas legislator, here with David and Tim Barton. Tim's a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. David's, of course, America's premier historian, and we are so thankful for you, the listener, joining us today and taking action. So, as we talk about all these things and we learn this history, you need to help people learn this history as well. So, whether you're hosting a constitution class in your home, or biblical citizenship, or just sharing the program. That's super easy. Just take the link today and share it with your friends and family and guys in this continued conversation about who we are as Americans. Bill Federer joining us once again here in a little while, but this is, I think we're just going to do it. Man, patriotism year round, guys, it's going to be. No day is off limits going to do it, man.

Tim Barton

Well, there definitely is enough history to learn that we could dedicate every show to going through and telling the story and it would take us a lot of years to get close to even one segment or section. Dad, as we were working on the second American story book, Building the Republic, and you were going through and doing so much research and finding things, and we were talking through it and I kept telling you we can't include that, we can't include that, and you're like, but how can we not tell this part of the story? And I was like, because the book can't be that big, right, we are going to have to reduce so to that point. There is enough of the story back there that we really could spend so much time learning the details and still maybe not even have a complete understanding of everything. But at least in our book, the American Story, we just tried to reduce it to give some of the big picture concepts.

And, as we are having this conversation, the reason like guys like Bill Federer are so great His American Minute website, where he will almost on a daily basis send out an American Minute email and just give kind of history side notes from that day would highly encourage people. If you're not already subscribed, subscribe to American Minute. Get his nearly daily email blast and it's just a moment from American history where it's a little bit like a Paul Harvey moment. If you grew up listening to Paul Harvey where he would tell stories on the radio and you just had that fun story moment. Bill Federer is doing something like that Now.

His are a little more academic, not as much of a fun narrative driven as it is a history driven, but such great content. And so, yeah, we need to have more conversations with guys like Bill Federer, or even us having that conversation for American history, because learning from history helps us to replicate the things that work and helps us to avoid the things that don't work. When you actually know history, know the story, we know who the heroes are, we know who the villains are and unfortunately today most Americans don't know what we should be replicating, what we should be avoiding. We don't know who we should be celebrating as the heroes and maybe even who some of the villains were that are now being celebrated and they shouldn't be. So relearning this story really is important.

David Barton

You know Bill being a good historian, he's also very good in the Bible as well, as you would be if you studied history. And one of the things that he's got this book out now and it's a really important book. But it's Silence Equals Consent, and that is a biblical and historical principle and it's something that we've really got to get over. We've talked about in previous programs how the current polling shows that 77% of traditional values Americans remain silent on those issues because they don't want to start a controversy, they don't want someone objecting to them, they don't want to be rejected by people, and we got to get past that. And so both the biblical and historical teaching of silence is consent. I mean, the Bible is really clear on that.

God's made us watchmen on the walls, and if we see the enemy coming and don't say anything and the enemy comes into the camp and ravages the camp, it's the watchman on the wall that's going to be in trouble.

The enemy is going to do what the enemy is going to do. But if we had a chance to stop that or save lives or keep people out of lifestyles or whatever, and we didn't say anything, we're the ones in trouble, and so that's a principle. It's really got to be driven home. This is where we find the founding fathers very outspoken against the evil in their day, very outspoken against the tyranny in their day, calling names, calling out policies, calling out groups. We've got to get back to that, because what we're doing now by being silent is we're avoiding controversy, but we're giving the enemy free reign for our families and our children and our churches and our nation and everything that's going on, and so this is a lesson we've got to be reacquainted with, and Bill Federer is a great one to reintroduce us to that lesson 

Rick Green

We've got to have courage, it's got to be infused into the culture.

It's one of those things that's been lacking and gotten us in the mess that we're in. Bill Federer, our special guest when we return. You're listening to the WallBuilder Show.

Break

Tim Barton

Welcome back to the WallBuilder Show. This is Tim Barton, and we are joined by one of my favorite historians, Bill Federer. Bill, thank you for being with us today.

Bill Federer

 Hey, Tim. Well, you and your dad are my favorite historians, Bill Federer. Bill, thank you for being with us today.

Tim Barton

Well, for anybody that doesn't know, we've already mentioned American Minute, but if anybody doesn't know, I would highly recommend that they sign up for American Minute. My dad and I often will reference American Minute and things that you highlight moments from American history, days in American history, significant things that happened. You connect and tie dots together and it is very common that we learn something new from there, and so, as we even get started, what is the best way for people to sign up to get your nearly daily email to learn more about American history.?

Bill Federer 

Oh, you're so kind, it's AmericanMinute.com.

Tim Barton

And everybody listening. I'm again telling you you need to sign up for this. My dad and I we love getting the American Minute email. I save all of them. I have thousands of them saved in my email account because it's just such valuable stuff. And, Bill, you've been studying American history for years. You and my dad there's only a couple of you that I know that have been doing this for literally decades, trying to help tell the truth of America. But you now have a new book out. Silence Equals Consent the Sin of Omission. Speak Now or Forever Lose your freedom. And we want to talk to you about this book, as you're diving into very modern cultural things, but obviously looking at America in general. And so let me ask the first kind of maybe the obvious question is can America be saved, and what do we need to do?

Bill Federer 

Well, I did a special with George Barna and of course you and your dad know him well and one of the things that stuck out was, he said, the areas that have the highest percentage of Christians have the lowest voter turnout. It's like what? Why is that? And so in the beginning of my book I jump right in and I hit Christian nationalism and point out three things.

Number one nationalism is the opposite of globalism. There are globalists who want to win world government. One of them was the first director of the World Health Organization, brock Chisholm, and he said to achieve world government it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their national patriotism. And so globalists hate people that are patriots to their nation. Number two nationalism depends on the nation. In socialist nations like the USSR or Nazi, which stands for National Socialist Workers Party, there's no individual rights. Ask the Jews, right. But in America we are a country, a nation that believes rights from a creator and, to top it off, it's government from the consent of the governed. So we get to be in charge of ourselves, right. So nationalism in other countries is bad. Preserving our nation where we're in charge is sort of a good thing.

Thirdly, Christian nationalism used to be called Christian patriotism, and every president was in favor of it. Lincoln's inaugural address he said intelligence, patriotism, Christianity are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty. He mentions patriotism and Christianity right next to each other in his inaugural. And even as late as 1965, 93% of Americans identified themselves as Christian. So we were always a majority Christian country and patriotic.

But the other side is doing what's called projection, where they're wanting to set up a woke nationalism. Right, they're pushing transgender nationalism, they're pushing this dominionism of the wokeness, and so they're blaming us for what they're doing, and so we need to call them out on it. We don't want dominionism, we want freedomism. How can you force freedom on people? Watch out for those Christians. They want to force you to have a choice. They want to force you to have freedom of conscience and freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and freedom of right to trial by your peers and freedom to defend yourself. It's like they're playing games and we need to call them out on it. But then the meat of the book is. I go through where this idea of not getting involved came from and, if you want, I could jump into it.

Tim Barton

Yeah, I mean, ultimately, we would love to get into this. I do want to address real quick, as you're talking about, even this notion of Christian nationalism and as you're identifying, this used to be something that wasn't controversial. To say I'm a Christian and I love America, but that's what nearly everybody thought, and we've seen people go so far as when there was that segment on MSNBC, I believe, is where it was, where they I don't know if it's a panelist journalist, I don't remember who it was at this point but the person that said if you believe in God-given rights and you're a Christian nationalist, right, and at that point you're like man, every single founding father, according to your definition as a Christian nationalist. And I really think you're right that they're using this as a club to try to beat down Christians from being involved. And, as you just pointed out from your work with George Barta, if the places where there's the majority of people that identify as Christian as a lowest voter turnout, it certainly seems like that this has been a tactic that has worked over time this notion that Christians, we don't have a dual responsibility to God and country, that we say no, no, no, no it's.

You can't have two masters Either you serve America or you serve God. You don't do both and that's really confusing. The idea of what God has called us to do as Christians, to engage in culture, to be stewards of what God has entrusted to us, to really the parable from even Luke 19, that we occupy until the master returns. It's disconnecting a lot of basic things. But yeah, let's jump into Bill. Why did you think now was the appropriate time? And I'm asking this only for the sake of conversation, because even hearing this, I'm like I know exactly why now is the appropriate time but, yes, why did you think that this was the appropriate time to dive into this topic?

Bill Federer 

Yeah, well, here they are selling children for sex. I was watching the news where Shannon Groves, a Democrat state senator in California, wanted to make the buying of a child for sex a felony and the Democrats wanted to make it a misdemeanor where you could get as little as two days in jail. And the Democrat state senator Susan Eggman gets on the floor and rebukes her days in jail. And the Democrat state senator Susan Eggman gets on the floor and rebukes her own Democrat colleagues and she says I was a social worker and I worked with these women who were scarred from sexual abuse as children. You're more interested in this guy that's going to go out do it again in two days. And where's the church? The churches that say, oh, we're so spiritual, we don't want to get involved. They're selling children. And you don't want to get involved? Oh, no, no, we're so spiritual, we just. And so so I traced in the book two waves of pastors and churches that influenced the founding of America. The first is the Calvinist Puritans, and they came up with a way to have a government without a King it's called the covenant form of government and they got their idea from the Bible. But what part of the Bible that first, 400 years out of Egypt before King Saul, it's called the Hebrew Republic and it's a unique period in history where you have basically 6,000 years of kings and pharaohs and Caesars and Kaisers. It's all top down. And then there's the anomaly where, around 1400 BC, you have millions of Israelites come out of Egypt and there's no king for 400 years. It works because everybody's taught the law and personally accountable to God to follow it, and so this inspired these Calvinist Puritans that founded America, that set up our form of government. But the kings of England looked to the Bible, but they looked to the post-King Saul period of the Bible. The divine right of kings, God chose me. So King Saul is the divider between America and England. Both are looking to the Bible for their authority, but the kings look to the King Saul and on oh, divine right of kings, I've been chosen. And the founders of America look to the pre-King Saul. Why is this important?

Romans 13, which says everyone must be subject to the governing authorities. Romans 13 is understood differently in a republic versus a monarchy. In a monarchy, subjects submit to the king. In a republic, the citizens are the king, the politicians are your servants. You hire them, you fire them right. And so all those pastors that say, well, you got to submit to the government, they need to pick up and move to China and submit to Xi Jinping. And when the trumpets are blown, you got to submit to the government, they need to pick up and move to China and submit to Xi Jinping. And when the trumpets are blown, they bow to the statue. But in America the people are the king and we are accountable to God for what happens.

Tim Barton

Well, and, Bill, I would add to that, as Christians, we are looking to examples from the Bible. In Hebrews 11, we're told that without faith it's impossible to please God. We're told what faith is, what it looks like. But then we're told to look to the heroes of the faith who have gone before us as examples to us of maybe how we should live our life. And it's so interesting, if you go through the heroes of the faith, how nearly every single hero of the faith at some point practiced civil disobedience, and that was their act of faith, was rejecting tyranny, that was calling them to do something that was ungodly. And this is where I think to your point, a lot of modern Christians have misunderstood some of these notions, that we haven't looked to see that some of this ungodliness is happening. We as individuals, at some point you have to be the Daniel. You have to be the Shadrach, the Meshach Abednego, you have to be the Moses, the Joshua, the Caleb. You have to be someone that stands up and says this isn't right, we shouldn't be doing this. We're doing what God says, we're following where God leads.

And it's really interesting, as you point out, even from the early kind of pilgrim era thought right in my mind, those early, more Calvinist, the Hebrew Republic modeled Christians.

It's such an interesting thought that you really can. If you only take a portion of the Bible, you can seemingly justify a lot of bad things, as the kings were doing. Because it reminded me of even in the South, in the time of slavery, where you had a lot of pastors in the Southern states who were defending slavery, saying hey, slavery is in the Bible, but they weren't taking the whole of scripture, the whole counsel of God, to get their guidance from. And it certainly seems today that there's a lot of pastors that maybe, to quote the old adage, maybe they're so heavenly minded, they're no earthly good right that they're not thinking about how should we be engaging around us with the word of God. And so I know in your book, as you go through some of the thoughts of some of the issues, you will present some of the solutions. What should we be doing now, in our modern era? How should Christians in the church engage? What advice would you give us?

Bill Federer 

Right. So the first thing I go through in the book is, after a century of the Puritan teaching that God has a plan, some took it the next step and said God in his infinite wisdom already knows who's going to be in heaven, so don't even bother preaching the gospel. And it got spiritually dry. And David Brainerd was expelled from Yale because he said his professor was as spiritual as a chair. And so in the 1700s you have the New Lights, and these are revivalists, they're pietists that originally come from Germany, where Martin Luther starts the Reformation. But he was a personal experience.

But some princes want to break from Rome and they said this is my chance, kingdom of mine. I just decided you are all now Lutherans. And the people say, okay, great, we're Lutheran. What do we believe? So for the people in the kingdom it's not necessarily the same personal experience.

Bill Federer 

So a revival movement starts, called pietism. They said being a Christian is more than a doctrine, even if it's good doctrine. You have to have an experience with Jesus and when you do, your life will change and you won't do worldly things anymore like bars and brothels and government. It's like wait, what was that last thing? Yeah, government, it's really worldly. If you're really a Christian, you're not going to be involved. Turned into the German concept of the two kingdoms kingdom of the government, kingdom of the church the two don't touch. There were even German princes that donated money to the pietists so they would teach their people not to get involved in the prince's business. That's like George Soros and Rockefeller's giving money to woke universities to come up with curriculums to teach Christians not to get involved, yet at the same time they're giving money to LGBTQ activists to get them involved, right. And so this idea of not being involved, that's where you have. Four centuries of teaching of that. In Germany allowed Hitler to put Jews on train cars and they're going right past the church crying for help, and the church's response was well, that's the government that's doing that to the Jews, and we're the church and we can't get involved in government stuff because we're too holy. So let's just sing praise songs to Jesus louder. It's like can anybody see there's something wrong? And so I end the book by bringing up a question To those that think they're holy by not being involved. What do you do at Numbers, chapter 30. It's the silence equals consent. Chapter of the Bible.

Half a dozen scenarios, one if a daughter is still living in her father's house in her youth, binds herself with a vow the day the father hears it. If he's silent, he's giving his consent. That's come down to us as vows. In a wedding ceremony the pastor tells the church members if you're silent when you hear these vows, you're giving your consent. It's called the rule of tacit admission T-A-C-I-T.

It's in real estate law. You have a piece of property, somebody's squatting on it and you're not trying to evict them or charge them rent. They can gain title to your property through adverse possession just by you being silent. It's in debt collection law. Somebody owes you money. You wait 10 years to try to start collecting. The judge will say you're past the statute of limitations. If you really thought they owed you money you would not have been silent. It's in our Constitution, article 1, section 7,. Congress puts a bill on the president's desk. If any bill shall not be returned by the president within 10 days, the same shall be a law in like manner as if he had signed it. His silence equals a signature.

So all those church members that think they're being spiritual by being silent, they're giving consent..If they're killing babies in the community, those church members are giving consent to killing babies. They're mutilating children. The church members are silent. They're giving consent to mutilating.

Their tactic is to guilt, trip Christians into being more Christian than Christ. They say what you say. Yeah, if you're really Christian, you'll be silent and give your tacit approval to us teaching the trans agenda. I mean, would Jesus teach the trans agenda? And approval to us teaching the trans agenda? I mean, would Jesus teach the trans agenda? We know what Jesus taught Matthew 19,.

In the beginning God made a male and female. And so think of it here, a school counselor who cannot even define woman. Yet they think they can tell that a little boy is supposed to be a little girl. And Jesus said if you allow one of these little ones who believes in me to stumble better than a millstone, we around your neck and you'd be thrown to the depths of the sea. So I think it's going to be a rude awakening for all these churches to think, oh, we're spiritual, we're not going to get involved when they're mutilating children and selling children for sex. I think it's going to be a rude awakening when they wake up, when they realize that by their silence they are giving consent to all that evil.

They're inviting the judgment of God on their heads.

Tim Barton

 Yeah, that is something that is man, Bill. That is so powerful, the reality that, as Christians, we are called to speak up. It reminds me also of like the watchman on the wall If they don't sound the trumpet and the bad people come in and do evil, then you're guilty for not doing what you should have done. Okay, I am so excited about this. We need to get this book and I want to encourage everybody listening right now the book Silence Equals Consent the Sin of Omission. Speak Now or Forever. Lose your Freedom, by Bill Federer, and, as always, go to AmericanMinute.com to find out more. Bill, thank you for coming on today.

Bill Federer 

Hey, great to be with you, Tim, and blessings to you and Gabby and your whole family.

Tim Barton

Thanks so much. We'll be right back in a moment with David Barton and Rick Green. 

Rick Green

Welcome back to the Wall Builder Show. Thanks for staying with us. Thanks to Bill Federer for joining us Always good to have him on. And David and Tim, of course you know silence in the face of evil. I mean that's pastors that have just been unwilling to speak him on. And David and Tim, of course you know silence in the face of evil. I mean that's pastors that have just been unwilling to speak to things.

Christians that have, as you say, in biblical citizenship, David, what is it? 70-something percent that self-censor and aren't even willing to give an opinion or talk about Scripture or a strong position if it's counterculture. Some of us just kind of have a rebellious spirit about us, so we kind of like rebelling against the culture. So timing's just good for us to be able to be our true self in this moment. I tell the kids at Patriot Academy that all the time, hey, you get to be rebels with a cause, so you're not like James Dean. Anyway, great time to be courageous guys, great time to stand up against what's going on in the culture, and Bill has some great stories for us to teach that lesson.

David Barton

Yeah, but it's a biblical thing too, because you look at America now, I think Christians in America now have the least influence they've had in the entire history of America. Christians before were always the ones that would be out front leading in all the major efforts, and that's not as visible today. And that's not surprising because we talk about being a revival and if you go back to the previous revivals of American history, pastors were not the ones out front. Pastors finally got on board with it, but they were not the ones that led this thing. It was individual Christians who did it, whether it was like Elijah and Owen Lovejoy back in the anti-slavery stuff. Pastors eventually got on board, but there were activists who were doing it.

And this is one of the things I think every one of us needs to recognize. Twice in the book of Ezekiel, God says look, if you see someone being led to the slaughter and you don't say anything, I'm going to put on you the judgment that came on them as a result of whatever happened to them. I'm going to put that on you. Man, God keeps his word. And just the fear of God, which the Bible teaches we should have, the fear of God is a fountain of life. The Scripture says All these verses on the fear of God. We need to fear God enough to say you know what he told me. I'm going to receive the judgment that came on them if I remain silent and God keeps His word. I better open my mouth and speak up. I better start warning people against lifestyles. I better start saying things about what's going on with certain leaders and certain efforts and certain agendas.

We have got to get back to the place where we find our voice. The church has had laryngitis for way too long. Individual Christians have had laryngitis and it's not self-inflicted, it's self-chosen. We have chosen to be silent in the face of evil because we don't want to have to confront evil, and God promises that on us will come the judgment that comes on everybody else because we remain silent. So he's made us watchmen on the wall.

If we cannot fulfill that simple responsibility of speaking out and having backbone and having courage, we go back to Revelation 21, 8, where God says hey, the cowardly are the first ones I'm throwing in the lake of fire. And if we don't get past that cowardly business and stop being the cowardly line like out of the Wizards of Oz and get some courage and stand up. We're in trouble as a church and as a nation, so I'm really glad that Bill's covering this. He's covering it very bluntly and he needs to, but the teachings of history and the Bible are clear and this is something that Christians really need to take heart to. It's a tough teaching, but you've got to readjust your life to conform to what the Bible says we need to be doing.

Rick Green

And, of course, guys, we know there's a lot of people out there waiting for somebody to stand up. So if you're courageous and if you do stand up and you do speak, what we have seen is that there are people waiting in the wings to rally around you . There are people waiting in the wings to rally around you. You raise the banner, there are people that are going to rally and we've seen that over and over and over again across the nation. We've had thousands and thousands of biblical citizenship classes where we've seen it happen. We've seen people stand up and run for an office or maybe just speak out at a school board and people rally with them. So very, very good chance. You are not alone in your community or in your church, and so if you'll speak, you'll find you're not alone. There's other people that will join you and we can turn this thing around. Thanks so much, Bill Federer, for joining us today. Thanks for listening to the WallBuilder Show.