Rick Green

This is the Intersection of Faith and the Culture. You found us here at WallBuilders and we're glad you're here with us today. I know you're going to enjoy today's program. It's going to be encouraging to you because it's Good News Friday. My name is Rick Green. I'm a former Texas legislator and America's Constitution coach and I have the honor of being here with David and Tim Barton.

You know these guys do an amazing job at bringing back the truth about our founding, the truth about even before the founding. If you haven't read their book, the American Story, you've got to get that book the lies today about the founding of our nation, about the 150 years before that and the things that happened here on this continent. There's so many lies out there and you need to know the truth so you can dispel the lies in your circle, so you can bring truth to people on your social media page, at your church, in your community, at your work. So get that book the American Story. It's available at wallbuilders.com. But I love serving with these guys. David and Tim Barton do an amazing job of educating the nation and what we try to do on Fridays is bring you some good news so that you realize, hey, the system does work if we work the system. God's given us an amazing system of government here in America and we encourage you to be a part of that.

A lot of ways you can be active. You can get on our website today at wallbuilderslive.com and you can share today's program with your friends and family. That helps. You can donate at that page, wallbuilderslive.com. Those donations help us to reach more people through adding more stations, through our legislator trainings, pastors training, youth training all the different things that we do. You can sign up as a Constitution coach and be part of hosting our classes in your home or at your church or wherever you prefer. But there's so many things you can actually do to be a part of the solution and then you be part of a Good News Friday program at some time in the future.

But I'm just thankful that you're with us. I hope you'll share the program with others and I hope that you will be encouraged by the good news that we're going to share today. And guys, I know we got a lot of good news to get to, looking forward to that on this Friday. Everybody listening out there. This can be a fast 30 minutes. So when we run out of time and David and Tim have not gotten even close to all of their good news. Make sure you go to wallbuilders.show and at least get some of the previous good news Fridays and then tune in next week. We'll have more for you, David . Get us started, man. What's our first piece of good news?

David Barton

Well, this goes back to something that I think three years ago nobody knew what this meant. But when you say Title IX today, a lot of people know what that means. This goes back to a provision of federal law that I think is back in the 60s said hey, let's set up women's sport and make sure that that survives as a separate sport, women's sports so Title IX. Nobody knew what that was until all the gender stuff came up, but it was what protected women's sports. So what's happened now is you have a lot of states that have passed laws saying, hey, we're going to protect women's sports as it was designed and we're not going to do gender orientation so that if you are born a biological male and you claim to be a female, you can compete in swimming or in boxing or in wrestling or in anything else. There are massive differences and we just saw this again. Tim, I sent you the article. You're into jujitsu, but you had a top guy wrestle a top lady,

Tim Barton

 Craig Jones, yes, who wrestled this, uh, massive brazilian lady and, uh, she has a hard time finding anyone who will compete with her because she is so much bigger than pretty much any of the women that do jujitsu and she is very talented. Uh, and Craig Jones did a match, uh, which was a Craig Jones invitational and for anybody that is a pace, do it all. I mean just some of the most incredible matches. It was so fun to watch. I definitely watched it, and he just it was so evident from the very beginning that he could have won at any moment he wanted. He was just kind of fooling around for a little bit and then, finally, when he decided it's like okay, we'll go ahead and end this now, and sure enough, he put her in this chokehold and submitted her. It was just so obvious that, even though she is a very large woman and I don't mean that in any kind of insulting way she is very tall, she's very strong, very muscular, but she was no match for a physical athletic trained guy. There was no competition at all.

David Barton

It's just another example of what everybody with common sense knows. If you got half a brain, or even maybe a third of a brain, you recognize there's a difference in genders, including a lot of areas, and strength is one of them. So that was one example. But you've had all this left progressive side saying no, you are whatever. You think you are, you can be anything. You think no, you can't be anything. You think you want to be. There's a lot of evidence of that. You cannot be a brain surgeon just because you want to be, maybe if you go through all the training. But simply because you say I'm a brain surgeon, I'm not going to let you operate on me Now wait a second.

Tim Barton

You could be a successful brain surgeon, but if you thought you were, you could try it. It just might not be successful.

Rick Green

I wouldn't want to be your brain surgeon client, let's just put it that way, when the doctor came out with the chainsaw, I would decide that that's not the doctor. I'm operating on me, you know. 

David Barton

So you know the irony of look, there is reality despite what you think in your mind. And so what has happened? The Biden administration has gone back to. No, it's what you think in your mind. And so with Title IX they came in and they put a lot of stipulations on it. What schools had to do.

What happened with the Biden administration and I'll just read what's in the article here says at the center of the legal disputes are three provisions, which include one declaring that the existing federal law against sex-based discrimination education settings also prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. So it's not just male and female distinctions, it's whatever you think you are, we'll protect that too. So whatever you think you are or want to be. And it continues. It says the rule also addresses gender pronouns and sex-separate spaces like bathrooms, locker rooms and shower areas. And grab this clarifying that schools and colleges could lose federal funding if they don't address students by their preferred pronouns or allow them to use facilities corresponding to their gender identity. So if I don't say whatever pronoun you claim to be, then I could lose federal funding. If I'm a college and if I don't make sure that you can go into any bathroom or locker room you want, then you could lose federal funding. So this goes to the Supreme Court.

It's already gone through several state courts. Several groups of courts of appeals for several states have said no, no, no, we're blocking this, we're not going to let this go into effect, we're going to have full trials on this. And they block something if they think it is not likely to prevail when it gets into the court and all the final stuff is going. So they blocked it. Well, it went all the way to the US Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, said, yeah, we're blocking it too, we're not going to let any of this stuff go into effect at all.

And the Biden administration says, well, let it go into effect until the ruling comes down. They said no, no, we're not letting any of this go into effect at all, which kind of tells you where the court may be leaning on this. So eventually the court's going to hear the full case and I think that's going to happen October of this year. So we'll know something then. But in the meantime, what we've got is the court has said no, we're not going to let this wokeness go any further, it's going to stop right here and that Biden policy is not going to be able to proceed until we have the full trial.

Tim Barton

Well, dad, one of the things that will be interesting and, guys, this could be a theoretical question.

There's also a possibility that, whatever the Supreme Court decides, if we have a different president and if President Trump says, you know, we really don't even need the Department of Education, some of this could change and then it could be really interesting what might happen.

And so we have seen at times, for example, when you go to the Navy SEALs, the vaccine mandate case and there were lower court judges saying, hey, this case, we're throwing it out because it's already been decided and therefore, or at this case, the military is only requiring that that's kind of already been resolved, so we don't need to go forward with this anymore. And the argument was we want to make sure this never happens again. So my wonderment is if you remove things like the Department of Education which is part of what would be impacted by some of this Title IX thought and process is, if there's no Department of Education goes back to the states, do you think this would still go through? Because then you would have people arguing well, we want to make sure in our state that we don't have departments in our state to get this wrong, or does some of this change going forward?

David Barton

Yeah, well, I think the answer to that is by the time this is heard in October, which is when it's going to be heard, we'll still have a Department of Education at that point in time To get rid of. Department of Education is going to be after the next election, so probably by the time of this ruling it'll be gone.

Tim Barton

Well, but my wonderment is will it, will it potentially impact, because they say we're going to do it a certain way right, let's say it goes the wrong way and then that's thrown out. I'm just wondering how, how that process might go forward if some of these bad decisions, those departments, are then done away with 

Rick Green

well, and it's such a good argument.

Right like this is the perfect argument to say there should be no department of education. It's like do you really want some bureaucrats, or even the president of the United States, telling your local school district you got to let boys go into the girls bathroom locker room, you got to let boys compete. I mean, this is one of those absurd absurdities that really helps to say, hey, states should be able to decide this stuff on their own and the feds should not be involved at all.

David Barton

Now here's one. I'll throw one out. That is not good news or bad news, it's just a reality is, if Trump gets elected and says no more Department of Education, that's got to be passed in federal law because federal law created it, they're going to have to repeal the federal law. You're not going to repeal any federal law unless you get 60 votes in the Senate and neither side Well, I was going to say neither side is going to get 60 votes. I've seen miracles happen Maybe one side gets 60 votes, maybe our side does.

Speaker 2: 9:50

So what Trump could do is he could say well, I just refuse to fund it, I'm not going to have a secretary of education, I'm not going to give any funding to it. And again, that would be tough because the funding is appropriated by Congress. So it would be really hard and it's a it's a great issue and I hope he wipes out the Federal Department of Education. But you've got to get that, that constitutional threshold there of the House and Senate to agree and you've got to get the money appropriation stop, and so that's going to be tough. So you know, but I think the, I think the fight is worth having, I think we move forward with this. I think people should rally around the fact that we've got somebody who wants to get the federal government out of indoctrination of all kids in the nation. It's really good stuff and hopefully that's going to move forward. And you know, regardless of what happens, if we get the right decision from the courts on this, we'll see. But I think it opens up a whole big debate over what you can and what you can't get done in the next administration to fix this Cause it's. It's going to be a tough one If the court says we're going to let it stay. It's going to be tough to get rid of it.

Rick Green

Yeah, and just to add a little bit on the on the good news side of this thing you know we had uh Tina Descovich on uh earlier this week talking about what Moms for Liberty did in this very space. So she was, you know, they were one of the plaintiffs that helped get this all the way through the court system. I thought it was really interesting how the court, initially at the district court level, if you were a member, if you had a kid in a school and you were a member of Moms for Liberty, you were protected by the injunction. So it was kind of like a you know it was a great way to say listen, the people that are making a difference and charging ahead on this. You know they were able to stop schools all over the country from implementing a lot of this nonsense while this injunction was moving forward.

So pretty interesting that we did that interview with her and then this decision from the Supreme Court. But, like you said, let's watch for October. Going to be really interesting. All right, tim, what's your first piece of good news today?

Tim Barton

Well, this one kind of follows a similar route.

This is from New Hampshire and it says New Hampshire bans transgender procedures for children, reserves girls sports for females and guys, sometimes we forget that up in the Northeast there is a relatively conservative kind of state that is up there. Certainly there are many great conservatives, some great Christian leaders up in the Northeast, but New Hampshire there is a Republican governor and Governor, Chris Sununu, this summer signed three bills, actually vetoed one that affects how schools, businesses and medical establishments consider transgender-related issues, and so the three bills. One of them dealt with school sports and it said that we're not going to let boys play in girls' sports. And there was one on gender surgeries and it bans any physician from performing any genital gender reassignment surgery on patients younger than 18, which is great news. And the last one was on classroom instruction and it requires school district staff to notify parents at least two weeks in advance of any material related to sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, and all those take effect in September. So a really great news, uh, that some of this stuff is happening.

And then, uh, 

Rick Green

could you just reread the headline again, Tim?

I just want to, because the Overton window keeps moving and we get desensitized the fact that you said something like um girl sports reserved to females, that we have to say that I just I still 

Tim Barton

New Hampshire bans transgender procedures for children, reserves girl sports for females, so that the the irony that we're having a good news Friday saying hey, girls gonna play girl sports, it's good news, uh, and yet that is. That is the 1984 animal farm world we are living in. But the good news is that there are some people paying attention, some people waking up. Things happening in the courts and, in this case, happening in state legislative chambers, signed into law by governors or, in some cases, vetoed when they weren't good laws. So, overall, good news. This has been coming from New Hampshire.

Rick Green

Can you guys imagine the congressman years ago that James Traffickin or something like that? He was actually a Democrat, but he would have had a heyday with this. Remember how he used to get up and rant about the craziness and then he'd say beam me up, Scotty. He would have said that a hundred times a day over the stuff that we're having to, just I don't even, I'm speechless. I'm speechless, it's just, the normalcy is gone. So anyway, all right. Well, on that note, let's, let's our great producer Justin beam us up, Justin, to a commercial, and we'll come back to sanity when we return. More good news for you on this Friday You're listening to the WallBuilder Show.

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Rick Green

We're back here on Wall Builders. Thanks for staying with us on this Good News Friday. David's up next. What's our next piece of good news, brother?

David Barton

This one is archaeology. It's going to Israel and it is a discovery that has recently been found archaeologically. That documents what the Bible says, and I love it when we keep finding evidence that the Bible is right, because all the critics say no, no, no, that's myth, it's fable, whatever. These are tales that have been around for thousands of years. Here's some archaeological evidence, and this goes back to what happened literally in 2 Kings 19. 2 Kings 19,. Judah's been going downhill for a while, but they get good kings like Hezekiah. God spares them, brings them back. And so what happened in Hezekiah's reign was the Assyrians came, king Sennacherib came and attacked them and they got into. They were completely surrounded in Jerusalem. They got into a starving time. Things were not going well at all. They prayed and God sent relief. He miraculously sent all sorts of opposition in the middle of the enemy's camp and drove them out, and without a battle, they returned to Assyria, having lost a lot of their army. So God did a real miracle in it. Well, that's a nice fable, is what is believed for a long time, because no army would really do that and God wouldn't do that, and we can't prove that. Well, now they've proven that that battle actually happened and it happened as it said and it goes back to in Assyria. They found in King Sennacherib's palace an engraving of when he was attacking in Israel and it shows his army, it shows how they're laid out, shows the battle plan. Now, it was not Jerusalem, which is where the account happens in 2 Kings 19, but it's a city about 42 miles south which is called Lachish, and so it shows all how that happened and so they've known the ruins were there at Achish and they've been able to identify. Yeah, the Assyrians came there, there was a big fight that happened down there, but they've never identified Jerusalem. Well, some archaeologists went and studied those battle plans as they were laid out on that scene. That's inscribed there in Shenekerib's palace, and they said, okay, based on that, let's see if we can find these same configurations of camps. And they got to Jerusalem and found outside of Jerusalem that these same configurations.

What makes it significant is when the Romans attacked, all their camps were built in squares and anybody that's ever been to Masad or Israel, you get on top of the mountain, you look down. Even now, 3,000, 4,000 years later, you can still see the Roman ruins. You can still see the ruins of the squares where they set up things, and sometimes they're a half-mile square. It's massive camps, but with the Assyrians, their camps were always built in ovals, not squares. And so people said, well, it was the Romans who attacked Jerusalem, and they did.

But what they found? The archaeologists looked and they found these circle camps, massive circle camps, and they found them around Jerusalem, right where the battle was supposed to have occurred. And then they dug into it and, based on that, they were able to go back and find two undiscovered cities they did not know existed or at least had not found. And those two cities are mentioned in the Bible and those two cities were the cities of Libna and Nop, and the Bible talks about them in 1 Samuel 22.

And once they found out where the Assyrians had attacked Jerusalem and confirmed that, then they were able to find those other two undiscovered cities and found out yeah, here they are, we found them, we know where they are and that's significant because 1 Samuel 22, the tabernacle was kept at the city of Nob and that's a big holy site because that's where the tabernacle was before they built the tabernacle in Jerusalem. So this bit of history says, you know what the Bible got it right again. The Bible was right and looking not at Bible but looking at history, they were able to document things that are accurately described in the Bible. So for your faith, it's just another good boost that this is not myths and fables. That what's in the Bible. There is lots of evidence documenting the historical accuracy of that, the scientific accuracy, the creation accuracy. I mean there's a lot of scientific evidence, evidence, and now here's some good archeological evidence as well.

Tim Barton

And this is something too, that just to remind people one day, if and when the craziness ceases, we actually used to take trips to Israel. We would take trips over to Asia Minor, slash, turkey and we would go see some of the foundations in Turkey of the early church, part of in Revelation, when there's letters to the seven churches, those seven churches, the archaeological kind of digs, those areas are still there and obviously in Israel. So much history and if God willing, there's peace over in the Middle East again, peace in Israel and some of the craziness that has been remnants of COVID. Once things settle down, the hope is that we will once again return and take some of the trips to Israel again, and this is something that we have encouraged for so long.

Every Christian, you need to go to Israel so that, as you're saying, some of these archaeological discoveries that are confirming what the Bible has said, saying some of these archaeological discoveries that are confirming what the Bible has said, in some cases for thousands of years, and now archaeological digs are confirming that same thing what Israel does is not only help bring the Bible to life, but it helps your faith become so much more grounded in so many ways, because you realize that there is a great foundation for this faith. It's not a blind, ignorant faith, but really that the history, the archaeological, the geological evidence is there to support what the Bible says. And so it's just one more plug, I will say, for why every Christian needs to plan to go to Israel at some point in their life.

Rick Green

Good stuff, and I just have to point out, David, as you described that piece of good news, you just rattled off that king's name as if that was easy to pronounce. I just want to know if you had to practice that, because I've never been able to pronounce that one.

David Barton

King Shennekarib. There you go, shennekarib.

Rick Green

All right.

David Barton

Record that and you could say it again, and again, and again.

Rick Green

All right King Shenecarib. All right Tim. Whatever your good news is, you got to have a hard name to pronounce in there.

Tim Barton

Well, I actually do here in a minute, ironically enough. But I would also point out that, whatever we say and how we pronounce the names whenever we get to Israel, our friends in Israel always say it differently, and half the time it's named Leo 

Rick Green

and they probably laugh at the Texas accent, right,

Tim Barton

 right, I mean they're talking about this guy named Eliha and I'm like who's Eliha? Oh, you mean Elijah, is that who you're referring to, alicia? No, that's Elisha, sir, excuse me.

David Baton

And then they start reading to us from the book of Habakkuk. You mean Habakkuk?

Tim Barton

Abukuk, abukuk.

David Barton

Abukuk. These guys speak Hebrew. They just don't understand how.

Rrick Green

.Hey guys, we're going to take a quick break. Stay with us folks. We've got more good news for you when we return. You're listening to WallBuilders

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Rick Green

We're back on WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us on Good News Friday. Always love these days at the end of the week to get some good news as we go into the weekend. If you'd like a little bit more of that good news, it's always at our website, wobblerslive.com. Hit the archive section and go back to some of those previous Friday programs. You can get all the good news that you'd like. Let's jump back into some good news. Tim Barton's got the next piece of good news.

Tim Barton

Okay, so my good news is coming from Tennessee. We'll try to get this in real quick. The headlines is Tennessee drag show ban upheld after appeals court reversed ruling. So there was a law that was passed Governor Bill Lee in Tennessee signs it and then a US District Judge, Thomas Parker, ruled in 2023 that the law was unconstitutional because it was too vague and overbroad is what he argued. Now, uh, there was a a majority of a panel of judges on the us court of appeals, the sixth circuit. Um, they actually ruled the opposite direction.

So one of the things it says it the article highlights, actually in the first paragraph a federal appeals court on July 18th reversed a lower court ruling as it upheld Tennessee law. And here's the law it bans performances featuring strippers or men dressed as women in locations where they could be viewed by children. So no strippers in front of kids and no men dressed as women in front of children. Seems pretty plain. Well, the US District Judge said you know that law is kind of vague and it's overbroad. Now, vague means we're not really sure, we're not clear. What does it mean? That you can't have men dressed as women in front of children? That law is too vague or it's overbroad, meaning that applies to too many people. Are you suggesting it applies to many Democrats? I'm not even sure what you're arguing right now. Fortunately many people. 

the name us circuit judge john nalbandian. Uh, I, I don't really know how that name is pronounced, uh, but he said the law in this area is clear. There is no constitutional interest in exhibiting indecent material to minors. And then he pointed out from previous appeals courts that while fully protected when directed to adults, it may be restricted when directed towards minors.

So when they're talking and this is actually pertaining to what they argued was the freedom of speech, which really is more about expression than speech, because it's behavior, it's activity, it's not words coming out of your mouth, but today they're calling it speech. And they said look, you're allowed to do stuff in front of adults for consenting adults, but not in front of minors. Well, the lower judge said yeah, that's vague, we don't even know how that applies. Fortunately, the Sixth Circuit said that's not vague and it's not weird to say that you can't do sexual acts in front of minors. So the good news is that law is going back into effect in Tennessee, so once again we see places like Tennessee conservative states working to protect kids, and that is always good news.

Rick Green

Very good news, guys. Thanks for all the good news today. We've got a lot more on our website. As we said earlier, go to wallbuilders.show, Look for those previous Friday programs and then we'll have a whole other stack to bring to you next Friday. Have a great weekend. Thanks so much for listening to the WallBuilder Show.