Rick Green [00:00:07] This is the intersection of faith and culture is the Wall Motor show. And we are going to jump right in to David Barton speaking just a few days ago at the Pro-family Legislators conference. You're going to love this. It's a great update on what happened after the election and what we do now. It's so important for us to take action now. This is no time to rest. Let's jump right in. Here's David Barton speaking at the Pro-family Legislators conference. 

David Barton [00:00:29] I want to start tonight and want to can maybe set the tone where we had and I'm going to look at answered prayer. And when you look at answered prayer, I want to take you to three historical prayers have answered. Now there are thousands, hundreds of thousands of prayers answered, but three historical prayers, one from the 1700s, one from the 1800s, one from the 1900s. Once about George Washington, once about Abraham Lincoln, and one is about George Patton, World War Two. And by the way, you heard about the artifacts and said, I'm going to walk down here for just a minute. All sorts of stuff. This is all original Lincoln stuff right here. This is George Washington's eyeglasses. So if you remember the story of he pulled us out at the end of the revolution and actually campus guys from having a revolution because he nobody knew who wore glasses. These came from Alexander Hamilton. But that's George Washington's eyeglasses. We have a lot of George Washington stuff down here, a compass. We have the compass from George Washington when he was young. Boy is a surveyor that he kept with him throughout Washington's first Thanksgiving proclamation, first time in the history of the nation that we had a national call to prayer and was George Washington. So all that stuff, Lincoln stuff here, literally, this is the bloody cuff of the shirt when he was shot. That's blood off the cuff that we have Porter's collar there. We have the sister gun to the gun that shot him. Family Bible. This is the only known picture of Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth in the same picture. The assassin and the assassinated. This is the first time John Wilkes Booth tried to kill him. Was not successful. But the second time was this is all related to the patent stuff down here. That's a four star flag. This is actually called patent Sword. If you didn't know George Patton was in the Olympics in 1912, competed in five five athletic events, he was the best swordsman in the Army. And this is a special sword that he designed for the army called the Patent Sword, because at that point in time we didn't have mechanized vehicles yet, so patent was still horseback and Calvary. So lots of patent stuff down here. So let me go to the stories. I want to start back in the 1800s with they are the 17th and 18th century with the first Continental Congress. First time our founding fathers got together, they did not know each other. By and large, they were 13 separate nations. The guys from Massachusetts never met the guys from Georgia. Guys from New York didn't know the guys from South Carolina. And it's interesting that they opened that session with a prayer session and it wasn't a typical prayer session that we would have today. According to John Adams, it ran about two hours. So the first time they get together, they have a two hour prayer session. And according to John Adams and this is John Adams is above George Washington there, but you see George Washington kneeling in prayer. And this is very common for him. He was known as a man of prayer. His officers throughout the revolution talked about looking for him and times of war, not finding him. And they would go out and look and he would be praying somewhere. So he was known as a man of prayer. He always had one hour a day. He set aside that he prayed and read the Bible. And his family said, you don't you don't mess with them that time. Nobody interrupts them. Nobody talks to them. That's one hour. So this is Washington's practice. He is then made our commander in chief because he is a military veteran from the French and Indian War. And the first major battle he fought was only about five weeks after we had signed the Declaration of Independence at the Battle of Long Island. Battle of Long Island was very one sided battle. And the sense that we just we didn't do well at all. And we were on the verge of being eliminated Only six weeks, say, after we had signed the Declaration of Independence, Washington was about to be repeated and captured. And there was a military historian on the British side that drew the plan of battle. And it very simply our problem was that there were some 30,000 British troops and only 9000 American troops. And back then, that is everything, because every gun you have is a single shotgun. So if you've got 30,000 guns pointed at 9000 guns, it's real easy to know who's going to win. And that is not like having Seal Team six on your side. Would that make a difference with that? With their techniques and with their knowledge? This is simple, simple numbers. And so Washington gets completely surrounded. They push him back that against what's called the East River. And for whatever reason, General Howe, for some strange reason, decided not to wipe Washington out. At that point. He had him his back against the river. He's outnumbered him 3 to 1. He cannot wipe them out when he wants to. And he just for three days did nothing. And in that period of time and three days, Washington said, you know, this is a real problem because if we stay here, we will die. We've got to get off of here. And so he sent us guys to find anything that would flow, find anything. The people back then didn't swim much. That was not something that you were trying to do. And so finding anything that float, we got to get across the river. That's our only hope of escape is across the river. And so in that period of time, Washington has this guys out collecting, forging for anything that will float and how is still doing nothing. And finally he said, you know what, just bring the the British Navy up behind them, bring it up East River from the harbor, and that way we'll just demoralize them. And then when they give up the war, the war's over. Because we've got surrounded on all sides. We've shown our military might, our naval force, our prowess in the army. And so as they start to move. As they start to move the Navy up. History reports that the strangest storm ever set up on top of the river. And that storm on top of the river started blowing the British ships back down the river. And the harder they tried to go up the river, the more they could not go up the river. And it went all day long. And finally night comes and they can't sell the ships on the river at night because they can't see. It's not like being in the ocean. They've got to know where they're going. And so the ships don't come forward. Well, that is the night that Washington had enough boats collected to see arson in his guys across the river. And so he starts them out across the river. He's got 9000 guys to go and he sends them across the river all night long. And as the morning breaks the next day, he's still got a thousand guys that have not left. And those thousand guys are about to be captured by the British because as soon as daylight comes and they see what's happening, they will rush the troops and Washington's going to be captured because he made the commitment. I'm the last guy off the island. No, I'm not leaving before anyone else. I'm the last one in the last boat. And so he is he's there. He's part of that last 1000. And at that point, when the sun started rise for some strange reason, just an incredible fog sat up over the top of the British camp and the fog rolled in and it was so strong that they couldn't even see their own comrades. Major Talmage, who who is Benjamin Talmage, is a Washington is chief of spies. He's the guy who ran the Culper spy ring in New York. Major Benjamin Talmage recorded what happened this what he said. He said a very dense fog began to rise and it seemed to settle in a very peculiar manner over both encampments. I recollect that peculiar providential occurrence perfectly well. And so very dense was the atmosphere that I could scarcely discern. A man a six yards distance that's from here to the back of the room. I couldn't even see a person 18ft away. And so at that point in time, the fog rolls in. And so they continued the evacuation as the fog continues to roll in. But that wasn't the only thing that it happened. It turned out that the night before, there was a loyalist family, and that means they were pro-British. They were anti Americans, even though they were Americans. It's a New York loyalist family. And they saw what Washington was doing and they said, we've got to let the British know. We got to let the officers know. So their family, they sent one of their servants out and they said, go, go tell the British commander this is what Washington's doing. He's got to come now. He's got to stop this because they're evacuated across the river. And so that particular individual was able to elude the Americans, got past their outpost and made it all the way to the British camp. And it's now it's now into the evening. And so he's at the British camp. And so he is stopped at the camp by the guards. But the guards who happened to stop him were both Hessians, which means they're German speaking. They don't speak any English at all in this case. And so their German speaking guards, they stop him. He's trying to come into the camp. They recognize he's not one of the soldiers. So they take him and they they put him in jail and he keeps in. I got to talk to somebody who and they don't understand the thing he's saying and he doesn't understand German. And so this goes on all night. I got to talk to somebody. And finally the next morning, the English officer comes in, in charge and says, Who's this? What did you got here? And is the German guy so he can speak German? English? We don't know. We just caught the guy who's coming in to camp. We've held him here all night for you. And the guy's really frustrated. I've been trying to tell these guys all night. Washington is escaping his going across the river. If you guys don't get down there now, you won't be able to stop him. And so that the officer recognizes how sure it is he runs, he gets the other officers and they rush. And all night long, Washington's been going across the river getting these guys off his net. So got a thousand and he needs to get off. But the fog is rolled out. And so he keeps us going. And so when the British finally get the word, they finally understand what's happening. They rush down and the last thing they see is the last boat going across the river on the other side. There's not a single American left. They did not capture a single American in the entire battle. And so when it's all over, as you can imagine, George Washington was very thankful to God for what happened. They had and Congress had been praying at that point. They issued a national day of fasting and prayer for what was coming on in that battle. And so it's a very clearly answered prayer. And Washington itself, so many of those. That's interesting. He later told one of his fellow generals, Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson's a son of the declaration who's a general in the military. He said, Thomas, you and I have been through so many battles. We've seen this happen so many times. And this is what he told Thomas. He said, the hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this that he must be worse than the infidel that lacks faith and more than wicked that hath not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations. If you've been through what we've been through and you've seen God intervene as many times as we have, and you don't feel like hitting your knees and thinking, God, you're just pagan, you're just you're part, you're reprobate. And that's Washington says, you know, over 250 times, Washington stopped to acknowledge God's hand and winning victories and winning battles and and curses. They happen. So he was very God conscious. He saw God answer prayer time after time after time. That's why it was the revolution. Now, that was a very early battle in the revolution that we just looked at. Now, if I go past Washington and get out of the 1700s and the 18th century and go into the 19th century, into the 1800s, I want to pick Abraham Lincoln for just a moment. Abraham Lincoln. He was raised as a young man in a log cabin. And in that situation, he's part of the family. But the family wasn't a real strong, functional family. They were all members of a Baptist church, attended Baptist church regularly, which was kind of unusual in that part of the country where he. He grew up, but there were members of Baptist Church, but his father was very abusive to the family. His father drank and was abusive. So they would go to church and they would come home and get beat up. And he was very stern and very harsh. And it would just was not a good family situation. But Lincoln Associates, he's a Christian. He's going to church and this is how I treat us. And so as a result, Lincoln really kind of turns against faith. And when he gets leads home, when he's when he's 22 years old and he moves on to two other steps in life, he becomes an attorney. And after he becomes an attorney as a young man, he becomes a legislator at the age of 25. So he's now an attorney in the legislature, but he's also what's called an infidel. That would be what we call atheist. He's an infidel. He just doesn't believe in this religion stuff. He just doesn't think it makes sense. And it just I don't like the way it's turned out that hadn't produced grapefruits. And so he ends up getting into a law business. He's a law partner with a guy named William Herndon, who's another famous infidel of the day. So you have these two atheist guys that have started a law firm. And so that's this is where Lincoln's belief and philosophy is. He is not a believer. He is a skeptic. He is an infidel. He will argue people about Christianity and he laughs at it. He would make it make fun of it because it's such an inconsistent belief. And in 1841, he came across a guy named James Smith. Reverend James Smith was a Presbyterian pastor. And in that particular year, he had a debate with a guy named C.G. Olmstead. Now, C.G. Olmstead was a famous atheist of the day. And so these two had a debate. And typically the Christian loses a debate. They're not as good arguing and they don't have as much experience, as much knowledge and background as a lot of the the infidels do. And so they didn't win debates. And that's what Lincoln saw. These guys are not very smart. They don't win the base. But in this case, Smith had a really good job and he actually came out two years later in 1843 with a book. And you see the title of the book. It talks about leading all this object, handling all these objections to infidels. And so Lincoln apparently goes through this book and goes through it, says this is really pretty strong stuff. This is some of the best answers I've heard. There's some of the best defense I've heard of Christianity now. And in the middle of rethinking his infidel position and the fact that maybe there is something real to religion, it's in that period of time that he marries his wife, Mary, Talk. And so they're married. They start a family. And in 1850, their second son, Eddie Eddie, actually died in 1850, which was a devastating tragedy. Mary Todd And that seemed to fill her life. She had four kids and three of the four died while they were young. And then she loses her husband as well. So five guys in her life and four of them die when one, you know, with her, which is why she seemed to have emotional problems, which you can kind of understand at the time. So at this point in time, when they lose the second son, Eddie Lincoln, actually reaches out to Smith and said, would you be willing to do the funeral? Which is a big step for him to go to a preacher and bring a preacher into his life to kind of deal with this this big family tragedy they had. And so Smith agrees to do that. 

Rick Green [00:13:00] All right. Quick break. Everybody. Got to interrupt for just a second. We'll be right back with David Barton, speaking of the Pro-family legislators conference. 

Rick Green [00:14:13] We're back here on the wall to show. Thanks for staying with us. Jumping right back in with David Barton. 

David Barton [00:14:18] It's an 1853. Smith wrote a letter about Lincoln. This is the letter right here from from Pastor Smith. This letter right here from Pastor Smith. He said that Lincoln basically kind of showed up at his door and said, look, he said, I'm an attorney. I'm a judge. I understand. You look at all the evidence and I've been on the infidel side, the atheist side. But evidence is there. There is a god. There's no question that there's a God. I need help coming back to that belief. And so he really asked Smith what kind of mentorship helping get back to faith. And so Smith started doing that, and Smith talked about it in the letter. And so as he goes through in the letter, he explains, he said that finally came a point where that that Lincoln was getting grounded enough, it said. And I really felt that it was important for him to start sharing what he's learned. And so I told Abe, you need to preach assignment. And Abe just panicked, says, no way, I'm going to preach. I can't reach a sermon. And he just goes through all the insecurity. And that was part of who he was, a fairly insecure individual. He was confident his place, but he was not confident in himself necessarily. And so but Smith keeps present. You got to do it. You need to. And so Smith finally said, look, the county Bible Society meets at my church every month, and there's only about 5 or 6 people in the Bible Society. They meet here just just preach to that little group. And so he said he finally got Lincoln to agree to do that. And Lincoln said he would. And Smith said that Lincoln preached a sermon on the Ten Commandments and how the Ten Commandments apply to every aspect of life on a daily basis. And Smith said that was the best sermon I've ever heard on the Ten Commandments. It was it was really good. And so from that point, what happens is they develop a good relationship. And after that sermon with the Ten Commandments, Lincoln continues to get more confidence and he grows. He's continuing to move forward politically as well. After that, he enters the race for U.S. Senate against Stephen Douglas, doesn't win that race. He then enters the race for president. In that race for president, he does win that, but that's not a necessarily good deal. And back then, we fix this with the constitutional amendment. But the election would happen in November and the inauguration happened in March. So you have about four months period of time. And that was a lot of time for a lame duck Congress to do a whole lot of stuff in the middle. And that's why we backed it up to January the 1st week of January. And so Congress goes in the first week of January, the new Congress, we knock two and a half months off that. So you wouldn't have that lame duck kind of stuff retaliating against the other group for having won. And so but this is one is still four month. And so what happens in that period of time is South Carolina says, well, if he's president, we're out of here. Mississippi says, we're going with you. And finally, 11 states say that. And so the union dissolves. Lincoln is then sworn in as inaugurated, that all these states of 11 states are left. But now he's looking at only a nation of 25 states. It was 36 when he was elected and goes down to 25 states. And then the South declares war at that point in time. And so now he's in a situation and this is not a situation he wanted, not one he wanted to inherit. He had tried to reconcile in many ways. He did not take a hard anti-slavery position on the trail because the Constitution is not hard anti-slavery. Although he was individually, he actually was very strong anti-slavery. But as the upholder of the Constitution, President Constitution doesn't say that yet. Not all we get the 13th, 14th Amendment. So he tried to mediate the ground there and it just wasn't working at all. And so with the Civil War breaking out, it's a difficult situation because he's got all these states that, you know, just a few months ago were part of the United States and they've been part of the United States since back in the American Revolution. And now they're gone. We've lost some of the original 13 as part of those are separated. And so he talked about how difficult it was and how do you put a nation together like that? And this is what he said. He said both both sides. They both read the same Bible. They both pray to the same God and each is invoking his head against the other. The North is praying that God will give victory North. The South is praying that God will get victories South, North this pray and help us defeat the South South, support and help us. And both sides are praying against the others. Actually, it's interesting. We have we have prayer and fasting proclamations from both sides where the Confederates are praying and fasting that God will defeat the union. You're praying and fasting. God will feed the Confederates. And Lincoln's watching this going back and forth. And he said, look, he said, the prayers of both cannot be answered and that of neither will be fully answered. I mean, this is this is an impossible situation. We're so polarized. We're so broken. And so Lincoln talked about the result. He says, I've been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction. I had nowhere else to go. So he's a very lonely president. He is a very he's always been isolated kind of guy. Wasn't a great social guy. And so Lincoln, throughout this time, his faith is still still developing. And actually, he told an Illinois clergyman where it was finally a break over point for him where he moved past just learning. He told this Illinois clergyman, he said, When I left Springfield, I said, I ask the people to pray for me in Springfield. That's his home in Illinois. When he got on the back of the train after he's been elected on his way to Washington, DC, which they tried to assassinate him, was the way to Washington, D.C.. So when he got on the train. He said. I asked the people to pray for me, he said, But I wasn't a Christian at that point in time. But I asked the people to pray for me, he said. And then when I buried my son, the severest trial of my life and this was an eddy, this was the third son. This was Willie who died while he was in the White House in 1862. And he said, When I buried my son, the severest trial of my life and I still wasn't a Christian, he said. But when I went to Gettysburg and when I got to Gettysburg and I look there at the graves of thousands of our soldiers and there were some 51,000 casualties at Gettysburg, he said, When I saw all the death and destruction, he says, When I saw that, he says, I then in there, consecrated myself to Christ. Yes, I do love Jesus. So by the testimony he gave to that Illinois clergyman, this is the turning point for him seeing so much devastation in one battle, so much death, so much destruction. And so when you look at Lincoln at that point, we think historically that that's probably an accurate account because he seemed to change in his rhetoric and tone up to that point. For example, if you look at the second inaugural and this is this is the picture I pointed out earlier where John Wilkes Booth makes the first attempt to try to kill Lincoln here. But Lincoln in his second inaugural, the second inaugural is one of the shortest inaugural speeches ever given in the history of the United States. No president has had them as short as what Lincoln was doing then. So very short inaugural is so short that it's engraved in stone inside the Lincoln Memorial. And if you read it, it's one of the most spiritually profound speeches ever given by any president. It is very deep. He's in the middle of a war. And again, God's not going to answer the prayers of both sides. So how's God going to work this out? As a very, very profound speech that he gave. And so at that point in time, what Lincoln does, when you look back at Lincoln's got all this going and you've got a divided nation, and Lincoln calls for a national day of humiliation, fasting, prayer. You can see there, the original proclamation is right down there on the table that he issued for this day of humiliation, fasting and prayer. And as you read the content interested, if you didn't know the Civil War was going on, you wouldn't get it from reading that because this is not about help us win. This is all about help us be more like God. Help us all. Repent. Help us, repent of our sins. Help us get back to doing what's right here in God. It's just a very God centered thing about every one of us needs to get right in here from God. And so it's a really profound thing for someone to do in that situation, not to ask God to take sides or bless one side or the other. Help us to get on God's side. And so I want to show you what happened as a result of this time of prayer, because we're talking about answered prayers. Glenn Beck's a good friend of mine. We've done a lot of stuff together. I want to show you a two minute clip that Glenn and I did on TV over this stuff with Abraham Lincoln. 

Rick Green [00:21:46] Abraham Lincoln, the change in him, Gettysburg. He he really he says now, now I am a Christian. Now I get it. And I don't know how many of us can really say that. I mean, we don't say we're a Christian or we all say, Well, I believe in God, but how many of us can say, no, no, no. After all these tragedies, I still didn't get it. Now I get it. And he calls people to fast and pray and says, This is it, right? What happens? 

David Barton [00:22:13] Show you. This is a timeline of the major battles of the Civil War. Now, there's a lot of other minor battles. You got Pea Ridge, you get stoned, river, you got all these other battles. But let me show you, as the Civil War progresses, how the union was doing. The union won, fought Henry and fought Donelson. They won Shiloh. And that's it. Everything else belongs to Confederacy. Then they get over here. They win Gettysburg. They win. Where? 

Rick Green [00:22:43] Where does the thing have Where does the. 

David Barton [00:22:45] Come back to that? Okay, Vicksburg. They win Chattanooga. They lose Spotsylvania. Cold Harbor. They win. Petersburg. Richmond. They win on Sherman's March. They win Atlanta. They win Mobile Bay. They win Nashville. They win Appomattox. And that's the end of the Civil war. Now. Pretty clear difference. That's where he had the National Day of Fasting and Prayer right there. That's before. That's. So that would be an answer. Prayer. He wasn't praying for an end to the war he was praying for. Let's get a hold of God and do what God wants. And so that's that's profound. Answered prayer. Now, significantly, one of the books we have down here is a Bible. And you see on the inscription here, it's from Mary Todd Lincoln to Pastor Smith. And so she's giving this as a token of their appreciation for what he's done to help the family move back in a good direction. Help them find God again. And it's significantly with that relationship with Smith, Lincoln actually made him the ambassador to Scotland. He was a Scottish descent, and so he became an ambassador of Scotland. Abraham Lincoln's appointment. And on Lincoln, now that the war is over, when the war's finally over. He's relaxing. He is trying to figure out what to do because before he got in, until that point in the second term, it's been nothing but fighting, absolute fighting. And so he turns to Mary Todd and said, What do we do now? I mean, what do we want to do? And they were out in a carriage ride, and this is the day before he went to Ford's Theater that night. They're out in a carriage ride. And as they were riding, talking, they were talking about what do we do now? And he said, you know, we need to get away from D.C. for bit. Let us go somewhere and let's kind of clear our head. And this is what he told Mary Todd. He told her, we will visit the Holy Land and see those places hallowed by the footsteps of the savior. There's no city on earth I so much desire to see is Jerusalem. So his thing was, I want to go see where Jesus was. And then that night he dies or is shot. He's assassinated. Now, this is what Israel looked like at that point in 1865. And I will tell you, if you've never been to Israel, you need to do that. That ought to be a bucket list. Even if you don't know it on your bucket list. It ought to be. I was a guy. I love America, like doing stuff for America. I had no interest in other foreign nations. I'll go there if I need to. If I do something for America, that's when I usually go to foreign nations. But I'm not looking to go until I got to Israel. And it was revolutionary for me. I found out that all the Bible study I've been doing, it was like watching a black and white TV. And when I got to Israel was suddenly full color TV. Everything changed. It was all the stuff I thought I knew about the Bible. I didn't know as well as when I got there. So there's more about that. Tim, I'll talk to you more about this later. But it's just an awesome trip. If you've never been able to take it, you are put on your bucket list. So that's the 1800s. One more example is out of the 20th century, and I want to start with the attack on Pearl Harbor, December the 7th of 1941. That's what brought us into the war. And that attack at that point in time after the Japanese attacked us, the next day, they announced they declared war. So the next day they announced that on the eighth. And so Japan opens war with us. And so also on the eighth, we declared war on them. 

Rick Green [00:25:58] Alright folks. That's David Barton speaking to the Pro-family Legislators conference. We're going to get the conclusion tomorrow on WallBuilders. And by the way, I do want to encourage you, if you want to take some action, you want to press the gas, you want to not slow down. You need to come join me at the Patriot Academy campus December 10th, 11th and 12th for the Patriot Experience. Check it out today a Patriot academy.com. It's your chance any age 11 and up. It's going to be mostly college students parents people of all ages. Honestly it's going to be really cool in the legislative chamber that we built at the Patriot Academy campus. Getting to be a legislator, you're going to get speaking, training, all these cool things. Check it out today at Patriot academy.com. And be sure and tune in tomorrow for the conclusion of David Barton's presentation at the Pro-family Legislators Conference. You've been listening to The WallBuilders Show.