Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. It's the WallBuilders Show on a Friday, which means it's good news Friday. We're going to bring as much good news to you in these next 30 minutes as we possibly can. I'm Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton. Check us out at wallbuilders.com and wallbuilder.show. If you've missed some radio programs, you can get that at WallBuilders.show And if you want some good materials. In fact, yesterday I mentioned the second amendment book. I want to mention that again.  David Barten has a great primer on the second amendment and you can, it's actually small enough. You can give it out to friends and family. It's only about seven bucks. a copy. So check that out at wallbuilders.com. And if you missed yesterday's program where we answer a lot of questions about the Second Amendment and the reciprocity bill going through Congress, check that at wallbuilders.show. And last reminder before we jump into the good news, the teachers conference is coming up this summer. We talked about it yesterday. You can listen to that on the radio program from yesterday, but go to wallbuilder.com click on the little hamburger up in the top right hand corner and learn more about the teachers conference happening twice. this summer on teachers that are listening, you don't want to miss that. And it's only like 99 bucks. So check out that teachers conference at wallbuilders.com and get signed up today. You don't wanna miss that? Okay. Uh, I think that's enough updates from yesterday. Let's jump into some good news. David's got the first piece of good news today. 

David Barton [00:01:22] Rick, this week, President Trump signed a presidential proclamation honoring the two of- Oh, no, wait. 

Rick Green [00:01:27] Oh, no, wait, we were doing good news without uttering the words president Trump. Oh no, no. That's impossible. Nevermind. Nevermind, go ahead. 

David Barton [00:01:35] It's a, it's a nice thought. So he signed a presidential proclamation honoring the 250th anniversary of Patrick Henry's legendary speech at St. John church in Richmond, where he said, give me liberty or give me death. It's a great speech. 

Rick Green [00:01:51] On my birthday, by the way, I just want to always have to remind everybody Patrick Henry knew that that would be my birthday 200 years later, I'm going to give this speech on Rick Green's birthday. 

David Barton [00:02:02] This is your 250th birthday as well? That's right, yes, yes. That's great! 

Tim Barton [00:02:09] Hey, you're eligible for social security now. 

Rick Green [00:02:11] That's great. Ah, that's good, Tim. Yes, yes, but,. 

David Barton [00:02:15] But that guy, that 369 is still receiving is ahead of you. You got a ways to go, Rick. You're not quite there yet, but the good news is that the founding fathers and American history are back. It's been a long time since we've heard a proclamation from a president about founding fathers or this kind of American history and that's good that America is remembering its roots and going back and remembering his founding fathers, going back in respecting first principles that that's really good news to me. 

Rick Green [00:02:46] I love it. And David, since you brought it up, because I just spoke at Hank Kuhneman's church night before last and Brenda had read something about March 23rd. And so I said, I got to share a couple of lines out of that speech. So since you've brought it up and I had no idea you were going to bring it up and you had no idea that I had talked about it at that speech, but I just, I love it just one line that most people are not used to hearing it about because he invokes God so many times. in this speech and he talks about the fact that God will raise up friends to fight our battles for us, that God presides over the destinies of nation. I just, he has so much in that speech. In fact, I would encourage people to start reading that on March 23rd every year. What a, what a, I think you're right though, cause I'm hearing more and more people hungry to learn about the founders and, and more and more recognition and what a great time to do it. Cause that's the 250th of his speech. I'm headed out to Boston in a couple of weeks. We're going to take a ton of people out there  for the Lexington Concorde 250th, there's more interest in this than I've ever seen. 

Rick Green [00:03:47] Well, I'm going to also encourage them to do something in the line of what you're talking about, Rick. And it's something that happens in the summer. Tim leads the summer institutes where we have young people in 18 to 25 years old for a week and go through so many grounding things that help them get their feet down and help with apologetics and what they're going to face in college, et cetera. And one of the things we do often is take that speech and have the students go through and find all the Bible verses that Patrick Henry is quoting without saying their address. He quotes verse after verse after verse. He doesn't need to tell them where the verse is found because everybody studied the Bible back then and knew it. But that's a great exercise as well is take their speech, go take a concordance, go find all the Bible verses. You'll be shocked at how many dozens of Bible verses are there. 

Tim Barton [00:04:31] One of the things that, just along those lines, that we really encourage students, and Dad, you mentioned these summer programs, this is where we often will spend time. In fact, it's one half of a day that, and maybe we don't always get that much time. Usually we're running behind because there's so many things we're trying to fit in. So sometimes it's only like an hour or two, but we just have a list of letters from Franklin or Washington or speeches, right? This is one from Patrick Henry, and we will start off asking some basic questions, I was like, okay. If you're writing this letter, right, you're probably sitting under your desk, you got your quill pen, you've got your paper out and you're ready to go. What resources do you have available? Cause there is no internet. Right. That there's, there's no search engine and you were like, Hey, grok, help me find what applicable things there are right now. Like those are not options. And so as we're going through this, I want you to... 

Rick Green [00:05:23] You mean, wait, Al Gore was not around, he didn't invent the internet about this time? 

Tim Barton [00:05:27] No, not yet. He was still concerned with the global flood that was coming at that point. Ah, okay. The ice caps were melting. There was a lot of issues going on. But when you read these, if you just ask the kind of very basic thought questions of where did they come up with these ideas? Because some of them are actual like literal Bible verses and some of the idea. So for example, in his speech, the last couple paragraphs are the ones where he does nothing but like, quote, verse after verse after first, but even one of the phrases he uses toward the end of his speech, he talks about the God of hosts and he's not quoting a specific verse when he talks the God have hosts, but clearly the idea, the God of host, it came from the Bible. And I want to say it's like over 250 times the phrase God of hosts appears in the Bible And so even exploring this idea, sometimes they're quoting verbatim scripture, sometimes it's just the ideas that they are saying are very clearly from scripture. 

Rick Green [00:06:34] I think you're cherry-picking man. I think your picking just like this one founding father because those guys like Ben Franklin I mean they would never Quote a Bible verse or refer to something out of the Bible in one of their speeches with them I mean I'm not not at the Constitutional Convention. I mean no way that what that would happen, right? 

Tim Barton [00:06:51] Oh yeah, I mean it wouldn't like Franklin was in the middle of a debate with other founding fathers and they and you know that they're not figuring out what they should do and it's not like he suggested they should take time and pray and probably not like in the speech he's giving suggesting they pray he probably doesn't quote lots of Bible verses. That probably didn't happen except for the fact that it did. Like even in James Madison's records of the debate he has this speech from Franklin and actually Franklin's one of my favorite people to use. Because when you talk to students, if they know anything about Franklin, it's often, and especially faith related, is often, well, he's one of the famous Deists Founding Fathers. And Deist is someone that believes that God doesn't get involved in the world. And so I'll take a couple of Franklin's letters. There's a really great one from 1753 that he wrote. If people want to look this up online, initially this was thought to have been one that he wrote to George Whitfield. Later it was found out that it probably wasn't George Whitfeld for lots of reasons, so probably it was a letter maybe to Joseph Huey. Nonetheless, it's in Franklin's writing, so it's an actual letter he wrote. The recipient, there's been some debate about who it is, but it's from 1653. And if you. 

David Barton [00:08:02] Whoa time out, not 1653, that that that's about yeah, yeah,. 

Rick Green [00:08:07] I thought I was the one that was 200 and something years old. 

Tim Barton [00:08:10] Well, you and Franklin, oh, yeah. It's no 1753. Yes, good, good catch. 1753, Benjamin Franklin letter to George Whitfield, and you will find this. And what's what's really remarkable about this is, Franklin, this is before he really, and maybe kind of early on that there's the first half of Franklin's life, he doesn't seem to have much use for, and use being relative in kind of a pragmatic sense for him, for faith, for religion, Christianity. He's grown up in a culture where it's all around him. He hasn't really embraced it, but then he does have a change in his life. Part of that is signified by him becoming very good friends with George Whitefield. There's a lot of things that change in Franklin's life and you even see it in his writings, in his letters. And so this one letter, he goes through... And he's talking kind of challenging. He had heard a pastor and the pastor was essentially saying, if you don't do it this way, then you're not really saved. And Franklin's like, well, I seem to remember, and this is from his letter. He says, he preferred the doer of the word to the mere hearers, which is from the Bible, the son that seemingly refused to obey his father and yet performed the commands to him that professed his readiness, but neglected the work. And for those that don't know, There was a parable of two sons and the father said, Hey, come work with me. And once I was like, Oh yeah, dad, I'm all about it and never showed up. One was like dad, don't have time. And he went out there. So he's referencing that the heretical, but charitable Samaritan to the uncharitable, the Orthodox priest, the sanctified Levite, those who gave food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, raiment to the naked, entertainment to the stranger and relief to the sick, though they never heard of his name, he declares shall in the last day be accepted. when those who cry, Lord, Lord who value themselves upon their faith, though great enough to perform miracles, but have neglected good works, shall be rejected. He professed that he came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." On he goes. And every single line is a new verse. And again, asking the question, where do they come up with these ideas? Because every one of them is a Bible verse. And if this is the guy that people are told is the least religious founding father, If the least religious founding father was that familiar with the Bible, was that influenced by the Bible? What does that mean for everybody else, right? If this is the least religious and not to digress because we've gone a long way from Patrick Henry to Franklin to Bible verses, but this is definitely part of what we cover and part of what we want to help the rising generation see. is the rich Christian heritage of our nation then it doesn't mean that everybody that was part of our nation was always Godly or did Godly things or righteous things. No, there's definitely been some dark sinful moments and we identify those too, but it's unquestionable that the most significant influence on the founding fathers and early America was the Bible and Christianity and certainly even if people want to review Patrick Henry's speech, those last two paragraphs of Patrick Henry speech He quotes an awful lot of Bible verses, and it would be great to go back and review that now that we've had a 250th anniversary of that speech. 

Rick Green [00:11:21] Okay. I got to tell the audience because they have, they, they're going to think that I set you up with that question. Like that you knew that, that I was going to mention Ben Franklin folks. Tim had no idea. I was gonna say that I just, I don't think people realize, you know, how important it is to know these things and how important it is to teach these things. And so sometimes if they're listening, they may think, oh, he must've told Tim he was going to ask him. No, Tim just did that off the cuff, off the top of his head. I love that. That's what I love about you guys. I remember sitting down with you, David, 20 years ago in, what was that restaurant we used to go to all the time when we'd do a capital tour and we'd walk over there and they had the good buffalo wings and. 

David Barton [00:11:56] Bull feathers, man,. 

[00:11:58] That's it. and by the way 

Rick Green [00:11:59] And by the way, Rick, history question, where did Turnbull Feathers come from? 

Tim Barton [00:12:04] Is something to do with Teddy Roosevelt, but that's all I remember. 

David Barton [00:12:08] Yep. It was Teddy Roosevelt. That was, that was his pejorative old bull feathers. You know, it was kind of a, that was his pajoritive that he would say when he thought something was nonsense. So bull feathers restaurant right there on Capitol Hill. Roosevelt. 

Rick Green [00:12:22] I remember sitting at dinner with you and I asked some random, I can't even remember what it was. It was about some random founding father that most people don't even know, and something about him. And you didn't have Grok, you didn' look up anything, you literally started rattling off all these dates and quotes and everything. And I realized, wow, these guys really are reading the founding, I mean that's when I realized how steeped into, you don't just have a museum, you just have a collection of books. you actually study these things. And that's why when people ask about original intent or somebody says, well, yeah, but I read some professor said something about what David Barton said. And I'm like, you guys have no idea what you're up against. He actually reads all this stuff and has it in his head. So anyway, I just like, I thought that was important to point out for the listeners that made me think, you know, that was a setup question. Nope, they had no idea I was gonna bring that up. All right, back to your good news, David. I do think it's important to compare that good news of this interest and love of the Founding Fathers coming back to how woke the left has been and how much they own the institutions. And so we have a battle ahead of us to save our national treasures and to save the stories of the Founding Fathers. And everybody needs to be aware of that. 

Tim Barton [00:13:34] Well, and guys- I know we're about to go to break, but this one just ties in so good. Let me, let me give this piece of good news real quick. Before we go to brake this one, the headline says CNN poll, democratic party favorability ratings falls to historic low. Right now, less than 30% of the nation have a favorable view of the democratic party. Now to go along with this part of why that matters, because the over the last several years have doubled down on wokeness. And the fact that the majority of Americans now are looking going, this is crazy. We don't support that. This to me is echoing that good news sentiment that there are people that are once again, caring more and more about the foundation, the tradition, wanting to restore some of those things that they, the things that we've been working on a wall, but there's now for decades. And, and I think we mentioned it, man, maybe even earlier this week where It's such a blessing that we now get to live in a place that we are seeing so much fruit coming from the effort that people have been laying down for decades. And this doesn't mean that at this point, we kind of rejoice and kick up our heels. No, there is far too much work to do. But the fact that we, God is blessing us to see a little bit of fruit coming in this harvest, that it's such an encouragement to wanna keep going. And again, it's. The good news for me is not just that people don't like the Democratic Party, but it's that they're rejecting what the Democratic party is promoting and what they're standing for right now. So this is not an anti-party good news. This is an anti wokeness, anti craziness thought that to me is very good news 

Rick Green [00:15:20] Alright guys, we got more good news coming at you, stay with us, you're listening to The WallBuilder Show. 

Rick Green [00:16:32] Welcome back to The WallBuilders Show. We have a Good News Friday today and David's got the next piece of good news. 

David Barton [00:16:38] And it deals with 10 commandments displays. Tim and I have been in a number of states this year testifying to state legislatures. I think there's 14 states attempting to place the 10 commandments back in their classrooms, et cetera. That's a dozen, whatever. It's a number states doing that. And what's been cool about all that is that in seeking to do this, so often the opposition goes back to Kentucky and they point to a 1980 case out of Kentucky where the Supreme Court told Kentucky they have to take their 10 commandments down. And that was in the classrooms in Kentucky. Now, the courts have ruled three times since then that undermined that they've had a different direction and said, hey, we're not using that standard anymore. We're using the traditional, the history and tradition standard. And so history and tradition, we can show the 10 commandments are there, but what we have is Kentucky has been the center of the opponents using that. And Kentucky didn't like that. They didn't want it all. They tried to keep the Ten Commandments up. And so we've seen Kentucky raised by the opponents. Well, one of the things we talk about in the hearings, as we look at history and tradition test is when the movie 10 Commandments came out in 1956, Cecil B. DeMille, big blockbuster, Academy Award winning movie. After that movie was over, they took and put 10 Commandment's up in 10,000 classrooms across America, no lawsuits. And they took 180 marble monuments and they put those marble monuments up. uh, like a state capitals and in Memphis and in Nashville and in big cities. And in the case of Texas, our 10 commandments monument was upheld by the Supreme court in 2005 and it was erected in 1961. Charlton Heston, the famous actor came to Texas to help dedicate that because he was out of the movie. And it was the guys in the movie and Cecil B. DeMille that were promoting that. Well, what's happening right now is guess what? Kentucky just pulled their monument out of mothballs. They had that monument up from the 10 commandments until 1971, and they got pulled down and they're putting it back up. And I think that is great stuff that with this current climate, we got the changes there and they did it through the house and Senate, both the house and Senate concurrent resolutions said, we want that monument back up so it looks like the 10th commandments monument that they had from back in the Cecil B. DeMille movie days is going back up in Kentucky, which is really fun news. They keep trying to point to Kentucky as the reason you can't put the Ten Commandments up. Guess what? Ten Commandment's going back up in Kentucky outside the legislature. 

David Barton [00:19:08] That's some poetic justice right there, man. That's fantastic. What a great story. All right, Tim, what's next, man? 

Tim Barton [00:19:15] Well, this one could go in line with what we talked about on foundations of freedom yesterday. The headline says Trump administration removes advisory from HHS website labeling gun violence, a health crisis. And yesterday when we got into the second amendment, self-preservation firearms, some details surrounding that, I had not seen these, this piece of good news yet, uh often throughout the week and really the last several weeks. My dad and I will just, kind of email in some of these and, they get added to the stack and I had not even seen this one until today going through the stack, but on, in June, 2024 advisory by former surgeon general Vivek Murthy declared violent crime involving guns, a public health crisis has been removed from the department of health and human services website. A little background. A lot of anti-guns rights advocates have been advocating to try to really gun control advocates what we're talking about, but to try and advise the American people how dangerous firearms are and how deadly they are. And the reality is firearms can be deadly, but if you look at the people that with firearms every year that the top of the list is suicide. And then if you take out gang violence, or take out these major Democrat cities where they've passed all of these gun control laws and measures that have not worked, all you've done is largely disarm the law-abiding citizens, if you remove some of these major Democrats cities, or again, if you removed gang violence. If you remove suicide, then the quote-unquote health crisis from gun violence? It is so far down the list. It's not even worth mentioning, even the FBI's own statistics identified. Things like that when people talk about assault rifles and how dangerous assault rifles are, there's more people that die every year from baseball bats and hammers than die from assault, quote unquote, assault rifles, AR-15 style rifles, and so the data has been so misrepresented of what the truth actually is, and, so seeing President Trump do an executive order protecting Second Amendment right... And then the HHS removing it from their website is super encouraging. And again, it's not that there's not danger in firearms, but there's danger in automobiles there, there's right. There's danger in chainsaws. Just cause something is dangerous. Doesn't mean it's a health crisis and certainly the larger health crisis. In fact, I don't want to get on a tangent on this, but I've heard it recorded. And it certainly makes a lot of sense. I've heard people talk about it. I'm saying I've had people talk about because again, I'm trying to be careful how I say this, but that if you look at all of these school shooters. And guys, I don't have all the facts and the details, I'm gonna be clear on this, but I've heard a lot of people talk about, and I've seen things online, and I know you can't trust everything you see online, again, I get it, but I heard a lotta people talk about the fact that virtually every single one of these school shooters was on some kind of pharmaceutical, some kind of prescribed medication, some kind prescribed drug, whether it was an antidepressant, whether it a Ritalin, I mean, we can go down the list. It's just very interesting that a lot of what we have been presented has been from a certain perspective and we haven't always been told the whole story in some of this, there's just so much more to the story that oftentimes the media tells us and when you find out more of the details, you realize that a lot of, what we've been given has been misrepresented or they've been intentionally trying to deceive for a political gain and a political agenda. And so the fact that President Trump has worked to defend and protect the second amendment and bring some clarity to this conversation is very encouraging. 

David Barton [00:23:14] And by the way, I'm going to add to this a little bit and point out that one of the actions we use for a long time is you don't have to worry about what's in your hand. You have to worried about what in your heart and what you need is not gun control with the hand. You need heart control. If you can control your heart, what's your hand is not the issue. And if you go back to Cain and Abel, the first murder in the Bible, it was not with the gun. It was that he assaulted with the club and clubbed his brother. So if we'd passed a club control law back there, would that have prevented the murder? Absolutely not. It's what's in the heart, not what's in the hand. And so hopefully some of that's changing. And that leads to my story. The title here is Bible Sells Sore in the UK and the US Signaling a Global Spiritual Awakening. And so what we have, and I'm really intrigued with this for United Kingdom, Great Britain, because they have been going secular so fast. If you haven't seen it in Great Britain they're actually arresting people for praying silently. They go to them say were you just praying silently yes I was and they get arrested so it's unbelievable the level of persecution that's going on in Great Britain what had been you know a Christian bastion. 

Rick Green [00:24:24] How do they even know you're praying silently like what's the clue. 

David Barton [00:24:27]  Well they're they're standing in one place outside an abortion clinic for too long They're not doing anything outside the abortion clinic because they're upstanding there. And they'll go ask them, are you praying? Yes, I'm praying. That's illegal. And so they're getting arrested for standing outside an abortion clinic, making no noise at all, simply standing there. And they're not going to lie. You know, Christian good for them. They don't lie or a lot of them do, but a lot don't. These guys have the courage to say yes, I was praying and they get arrested. And so it's just, it's amazing to see, but in the United Kingdom in the last four years, Bible sales have increased 87%. That's almost doubled the amount of Bible sales. So something's going on in the UK and hopefully it's, I mean, their leaders are so woke and so crazy and they're doing so many silly things there. So that has really changed here in the U S it's about a 30% increase, which is really, really good. Southern Baptist Convention reports sales of Bibles through their bookstores up 30 percent. Wall Street Journal shows 22 percent. So we're seeing this turn in America and in Great Britain. And by the way, the British Bible Society, I didn't realize, was co-founded by William Wilberforce. So the British Bibles Society is still giving out Bibles in Great Britain. It goes all the way back to Wilberforce. But the other thing that's interesting as in Great Britain, atheism. and young people is going out the door. Here's one of the recent survey, British survey found that individuals in their teens and twenties are less likely than any other age group to identify as atheist. And atheism, once considered by modern society to be the view of more rational adults, no longer seems to carry the same weight or appeal with the children of those adults. So that generation seems to be turning around in Great Britain and America. That's really Good news. 

David Barton [00:26:20] lots of good news y'all thank you for sharing so many stories we'll have more next week and there are some at our website wallbuilders.show if you missed any of the last few Fridays you can check out out there and then don't forget the items that we mentioned you can get at wallbuilder.com also learning about the teachers conferences the pastors conferences all the different things coming up this year that you need to get plugged into check it out at wall builders.com thanks so much for listening to The WallBuilders Show.