Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's the WallBuilders Show, taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. It's Friday. Love Fridays, man. We get all the good news we can handle for about 30 minutes. And then, you know, we got to wait till next Friday. No, actually, most of our programs have some good news in them, but Friday is devoted entirely to good news, catching up on a lot of the stories the major media does not cover or that we just may have missed. And so I appreciate David and Tim working so hard to make these Fridays uplifting and and a good kind of monitoring of what's going on in the country and around the world. By the way, I'm Rick Green here with David and Tim Barton. And you can learn more about us at WallBuilders.com. That's our main website, of course. If you haven't visited that site, it's got a wealth of information you don't want to miss out there. Go to WallBuilders.com and considering it's about that time to be buying all those Christmas presents. It is a great resource for unique Christmas presents and Christmas presents that actually pay off for years and years to come because people are learning from these Christmas presents. And so you're investing in freedom while blessing your friends and family as well. So check that out at WallBuilders.com today. A lot of great stuff to look at there. And then of course our radio site is WallBuilders.show. WallBuilders.show if you need to catch up on the radio programs the last few weeks and months, or maybe you just want to share this program with what do I mean, maybe? Of course you want to share this program with your friends and family. So be sure and go to WallBuilders.show and each of these programs throughout the week. Great opportunity to be a force multiplier. Get this truth in the hands of as many people as you possibly can. It's it's good for the country. Absolutely. So let's jump into the good news. David, what is our first piece of good news today? 

David Barton [00:01:47] So this goes back to something we were talking about yesterday. One of the questions we had, the latter part of Foundation Freedom Thursday dealt with Nigeria and whether Trump could send in troops to Nigeria, what like he threatened to do. He said, if you don't stop killing Christians over there, I'm I'm going to take military action. And so this today is a good news story that kind of follows up with yesterday, or at least it's connected to yesterday. And so it goes back to all right, what can the United States do? Well, as it turns out, the United States, there there is something called the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. Currently that's headed by one of our friends, Congresswoman Vicki Hartler. She's now retired. She was in Congress a number of years. She was from Missouri. Just a really terrific lady, a class act, came from off the farm. She has agricultural background and just really, just real likable, real common sense, was a terrific Congresswoman from Missouri. She was for a long time was head of the values action team in in Congress. And what that means is in Congress, when you introduce between ten and thirteen thousand bills every year, somebody's gotta kind of watch over what might be hidden away in those bills. And so that's where you have caucuses like the Pro-Life Caucus will read every one of those bills to make sure that somebody didn't stick some pro-abortion sentence in there that might become law that would just completely turn things in a in a bad direction. So Vicky was over the values action team, and so her team would go through every piece of legislation looking for things that might undermine what George Washington called religion and morality, those things that would weaken the family, those things that would weaken public morality and et cetera. And so she she had that position for a number of years as a great leader in in the House on that. And now she she is over that that commission, that the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. And as it turns out, Congress had given that commission the ability to designate certain nations as problematic. And there there's kind of levels of designation. And and one of those levels is to call a country It just literally you would call them a "Country of Particular Concern". And if the Religious Freedom Commission looks at a country and says, hey, this is becoming really dangerous for religious liberty in that nation, you can designate that country as "A Country of Particular Concern". That is a notice to that country that if you guys don't change the way you're acting, you might have some negative consequences you don't want and don't like, including loss of foreign aid, loss of economic help, maybe even military action. As it turns out, the the law actually authorizes some degree of military action in order to go in for a humanitarian purpose and be able to stop genocides and other things from happening. Called Nigeria. He designated them "A Country of Particular Concern". So that now puts them on the watch list and that now elevates them to a point that if you guys don't get yourself under control, further actions could come. The loss of economic aid, which we talked about yesterday is a big stick, but it does also allow for some military intervention to be able to stop a genocide. So when you look at Nigeria, we talked yesterday that out of the 192 countries that are persecuting Christians right now, 192 out of 198 are persecuting Christians, you you have literally Nigeria's number seven on the list. And just in one year alone, in in the year 2021, according to the report from the Religious Freedom Commission, Nigeria accounted for nearly 80% of all Christian deaths worldwide. Nearly eighty percent, that is a massive number. What happens is literally since 2009, so we're talking sixteen years, there have been more than fifty thousand Christians killed in Nigeria. So this is a really deadly spot for Christians, but it's also turned on others. Boko Haram went in and attacked a mosque recently and killed twenty-seven people in that mosque. Boko Haram is a terrorist group and if if you're from the wrong brand of Islam, they'll kill you. If you're a Christian, they'll kill you. It's just a lot of stuff going on. And currently all the nations that are on this country of particular concern include China and Cuba and North Korea and Eritrea and Burma, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. So there's roughly a dozen nations that are out there that are actively killing people, persecuting people for that have a religion different than what the government wants or or tells them to have. What what happens is Trump has now put this country on notice that actions might be taken against it. And it's just it really is good to see that there is a U.S. Commission focused on protecting religious liberty across the world. Again, we talked yesterday how much how much authority they have to use any military stuff, but certainly they can cut off economic stuff. And in a country like Nigeria, kind of a third world country where they need all the money they can get, it it's going to be bad news for them if that happens, much less military stuff. And I thought it was interesting after Trump designated Nigeria as  "A Country of Particular Concern", the president of Nigeria went on to to " X" and said, Hey, this is really crazy. We are really safe over here in Nigeria. We protect the freedom of religion for all beliefs of Nigerians. And yeah, what about those 50,000 Christians that got killed? So it's interesting the president is trying to talk about how safe they are, or their president trying to talk about how safe they are. But good news that the United States is paying attention to countries that are aggressively going after and violating basic, and right now religious freedom is considered a basic human right even by the United Nations. So the fact that we're trying to protect some of that, that is good news. 

Rick Green [00:07:50] All right, great piece of good news there, David. Tim what What's your first piece of good news today? 

Tim Barton [00:07:54] Well, guys, mine is in Texas, and the headline reads, Patrick pledges one million to put Turning Point USA chapters in every Texas school. This is referring to Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. He announced that he's committing one million dollars from his campaign funds to launch an effort to try to put a Turning Point USA chapter on every college and every high school campus in Texas. The article goes on to talk about several things he said in regards to this. A couple things to note. He said I had not planned on making a donation before the call. He was on a call. It was a Texas project, Turning Point USA executives were on what they're trying to do in some of the states, including Texas. He said I hadn't planned to make a donation before the call, but the Lord put it on my heart to make a meaningful contribution to kickstart the Texas project. Now, guys, already beyond the fact that our lieutenant governor is donating a million dollars from his campaign funds. Get a Turning Point chapter on every high school and every college campus in the state. It's incredible. But I love the fact he said that I wasn't going to do this, but I just I felt the Lord put it on my heart. When you have a lieutenant governor who is trying to be sensitive to the leading of the Lord, that is also super encouraging. Dan Patrick went on in this interview to say that he was always inspired by the mission of Charlie to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government. He gave his life for his mission. He gave his life for Christ, referring to Charlie Kirk. And then, according to Dan Patrick, there's been more than 135,000 requests that have been submitted to start new chapters at Turning Point USA since Charlie Kirk's assassination. And he said he wants Texas to lead the nation in that effort. And this is his quote. He says Texas has a size and the heart to open more chapters than any other state and more than most countries, let's get it done for Charlie and for Texas. So, guys, as as we have seen the really explosion of interest and requests around the nation for Turning Point chapters, the fact that we have a lieutenant governor who wants to hear from the Lord, be led by the Lord, and wants to help start this initiative, which certainly when you look at Charlie, which at this point that the the we know of a guy who's doing an AI program that's asked Charlie, like Charlie Kirk, and it's just gonna have answers from, all of the videos, all the college campuses. It really an an incredible AI program he's putting together. But there's a lot of people looking to Charlie in the last couple of years of Charlie's life, he recognized there was almost like a switch that flipped in him that he wasn't just trying to encourage economic limited government kind of things, freedom-oriented things. He really was pointing people to Jesus more than anything else because he knew that that was the most important thing. That all of it matters, but you gotta know Jesus. And so the fact that now, with the the clarity of the gospel message coming from Charlie, especially the end of his life, and more interest than ever, and now again, Texas, Dan Patrick saying we want Texas to lead this effort, that is just incredible good news. And I'm also glad that I get to report it from the state of Texas. So a really good piece of news. 

David Barton [00:11:12] You know, that kind of goes along with what happened in Oklahoma, where that former education commissioner Ryan Walters said, Hey, we're establishing a Turning Point chapter in every school in Oklahoma. And so that's nice to see. So I both parts of Texas, both North Texas and real Texas, or Oklahoma and Baja Oklahoma, however we call it, anyway, both of those states are on board now. And that's what do we got, Tim? Is it 16,000 school districts in Texas? I I think it's something like that, which is a massive amount. And so, boy, that's great to to have a chapter like that with those principles out there that can inculcate in those kids in both blue and and red areas of the state, get those common core principles back to them. That's really good. 

Rick Green [00:11:55] All right, David, back to you, brother. What's the next piece of good news? 

David Barton [00:11:59] The next one I've got comes from, and this one for me, it becomes kind of personal in some ways. It goes back to even about 20 years ago. 20 years ago, one of the biggest debates going on in Congress is over climate change and global warming and how the the polar ice caps were melting and how we were all going to drown. Jim Enhoff, a senator from Oklahoma at that time, was was over the committee that had that he was just of the opposite persuasion that this is not what people say it is. And so as part of that, I was on a panel that testified on one of his hearings in the U.S. Senate. And I was on the side that look, guys, there have always been temperature fluctuations. There are always cycles. Things always go in cycles. There's there's no indication that man can destroy the entire globe. You know, that's just arrogance on our part to think we can. And so this went back and forth. The the California Senator Barbara Boxer was was kind of leading the other side at the time. And so all this debate was going back and forth. And now, just in the last couple weeks, some of the loudest voices in the last 20 years on the global warming debate have acknowledged that they were wrong, that the climate is not facing imminent destruction, and that the earth is not going to be destroyed as a result of what humans are doing. And so, kind of to set the stage for this, the UN Climate Change Conference was held this year in Brazil. So it it was it was just going on this past week. Lo and behold, there is a letter sent to the conference. And these are all the climate change activists from across the world. They've been working at the UN for now two or three decades on this climate change stuff. And they got a letter from Bill Gates. And Bill Gates, I can't tell you how many tens of hundreds of millions he has put into climate change and and and trying to stop the human activities, et cetera. And so Bill Gates wrote them a letter. The letter is significant because it's exactly opposite to what's in his twenty twenty-one book. So in twenty twenty one, Bill Gates, who's funding all this anti-climate stuff, he wrote a book called How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. And he states there that climate change is one of humanity's greatest challenges and it's going to cause more deaths than the COVID-19 pandemic did globally when millions were killed. Climate change is going to cause more than that. And so following that, the UN Secretary General said that in twenty twenty two, all nations must end their reliance on fossil fuels. And that's where we've seen Europe and other places getting completely away from fossil fuels and going to electric cars and et cetera. That's 2021, 2022. For this conference is happening in Brazil. Bill Gates just put up a blog saying that his doomsday view of environmental and social catastrophe is wrong. And it's marking a significant shift in the debate over climate change. He says that climate change may have serious consequences. It's not going to lead to humanity's demise. He says people will be able to live and thrive in most places on earth for the foreseeable future. In other words, climate change is not going to affect the way anybody lives their life or affect them. It's not going to lead to destruction. So there's Bill Gates, who's been the the guy putting most money into this of anybody we know of. And he's saying I was wrong. This this climate change stuff is not accurate. And then you take Ted Norhouse, and he has what's called the Breakthrough Institute. And back in 2007, as they were talking about this climate change, which is back in the time when we were testifying on this and Jim and Hoff had the stuff going in the Senate to fight this. He said, if we continue to burn as much coal and oil as we've been burning, the heating of the earth will cause the sea levels to rise, the Amazon will collapse, and according to scenarios commissioned by the Pentagon, it will trigger a series of wars over basic resources like food and water. Weeks ago he came out and said, I no longer believe this. Yes, the world will continue to warm as long as we keep burning fossil fuels and sea levels rise, but it's not going to change much. It's not going to have much effect. In other words, it's just a cycle again. So these are the guys that have been driving so much of what's happening with fossil fuels and the price of gas going up because we're going to stop drilling and Biden, all he was doing that to represent that side. And now these guys are saying it definitely is not the way we said it was. All of this stuff about, and by the way, this is something from 20 years ago with Jim Enhoff. They said that when the polar ice caps melt, the the sea is going to rise 40 feet. And so Washington, DC will be underwater. And so they predicted that anything that was 40 feet and below, which means all the Texas coast, all the East and West Coast, all those cities there will be completely underwater, will kill tens of millions of people. And now they're saying now actually we're having growth of ice in the polar ice caps. It's not melting, it's actually increasing. And and so this this goes back to pseudoscience. This is all the fear stuff. And when people try to use science to create fear and to basic to put humans as the cause of everything evil on the earth, they've missed the biblical worldview. So this is great news. I didn't know that I would ever see this in my lifetime, that liberals have backed up and said we were wrong, we got this wrong, we made a mistake, we now they spent billions since then and they've changed so many lifestyles and changed a lot of nations. But the news is they were wrong. And that's really good news to even have them admit that they were wrong. 

Rick Green [00:17:42] Guys, we've got to take a quick break. We'll be right back, folks. We've got more good news for you when we return. You're listening to the WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:18:56] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us. We've got some more good news for you. Tim, what's our next piece of good news? 

Tim Barton [00:19:01] Well, guys, this one is on college campuses, and we have talked a lot over the last several weeks, months, maybe all year, maybe even last year about things happening on college campuses. The headline says radically transformed hundreds of fraternities, sorority members trade party life for eternal life. There's a Christian organization called Greek Intervarsity. It's a ministry for Greek fraternities and sororities on college campuses. Their vision is every Greek is one friend away from Jesus. The ministry is essentially teaching students how to lead Bible studies in their fraternities and sorority chapters on many, and I'm I'm reading from this article on many campuses, Greek Intervarsity offers a weekly gathering for students from all Greek chapters and councils to come together for worship and fellowship. So it's it's a Bible study for everybody in the fraternity sorority, and also they do mentorship showing these students how to lead Bible studies in their fraternity sorority. Brian Mann is a national director of Greek Intervarsity, and the article highlights several things. I'll just read a couple of sections from it. One of the things he identified in the interview, he said when one student living with their friends decides they're going to partner actively with what God is doing in word and deed, it means that the 100, 200 friends they're living in proximity to are really now just one friend away from knowing Jesus. Kind of what their vision and mission says. He said many of the students are doing life together as a result. When one student lives boldly for Jesus, all the others are seeing with God's eyes what he might be up to and their friends. He identified for this Greek intervarsity they've had a 43% increase in participation in the 2024, 2025 school year. Now, that that would be last school year. So we are now in the 25-26 school year. We're in the fall, right, of 25. And not to pretend like we don't know how to do the math and how school works, but he's looking at last year, and they had a 43% increase last year. Well, since the Charlie Kirk murder, we know that there's been a massive swell of spiritual life on college campuses. So if they increased 43% last year, I can only imagine what it is right now. They've identified on their website  they think they've reached about 70,000 students so far this year, meaning ,right, this fall 2025, according to their latest report. The the concluding thought he gave in this interview, he said it's gotten to the point that they can no longer meet in fraternities or sororities for Greek intervarsity. So he's talking about when they have Bible studies. They have these meetings come together. He says they're they're all campus gatherings and they're starting to break fire codes because they've become the largest student group on the campus. So this is what's happening right now on college campuses and these fraternities and sororities, that these Bible studies, these movements, these worship services have grown so large that they can't fit in any of the rooms they've been meeting in. Just guys, we we've talked a lot about what's been happening on college campuses. This is just one more example. This is just one ministry. There are many ministries out there doing this. This is the Greek Intervarsity, but kudos to them for the work they're doing and just an incredible report of the growth from last school year and already what's happening this school year. The fact that these clubs are big enough that they're violating fire codes and have to find somewhere else to meet. That is really encouraging and really good news. 

Rick Green [00:22:33] David, I think we got time for one more piece of good news. What you got? 

David Barton [00:22:37] Okay, guys, this one deals with some immigration issues, but from a different perspective. Tim, our our state senator is Phil King, and as he was doing the last census, we were talking to him, and they were having to go through the census, and he was telling us how they have to count not only the the citizens in Texas, but every person who's here, everyone who's here illegally. And we said, yeah, but you know, they're not citizens. He says, Yeah, but by federal law, they're required to provide everyone here, health care if they need it, food if they need it, education if they need it, college, whatever. And so all that comes at somebody's expense, which is those who live here and pay taxes, as opposed to those who come here illegally and don't. And so with that kind of impact, and by the way, that also affects the way the congressional districts are drawn, because you're drawing them not only for the citizens who live there and vote, but even for those who move into the district. So it shifts the realignment of congressional districts, which you really don't get a a straight representation anymore of who the citizens are represented in Congress. And as we know, Trump is really focused on on trying to change this. So the the news, here's the current update I've got is that the border is now closed. They have the fewest crossings of the border in over 30 years. It is down, it's just completely closed, coming up from coming those immigrants, they're migrants moving through Central America and through Mexico, trying to get in the United States. And in Panama, they've got a gap called Darien Gap, which is a narrow place where these these migrants from South America work. Those crossing through that gap now is down 99.99%. In other words, it is essentially stopped. Those that were in the migrant trail turned back because they now know the border is closed. And what Trump has done, he's been targeting those that here's the list, it includes rapists, murders, drug dealers, pedophiles, and those that are committing crimes, some type of police infraction. And yeah, there have been some others deported as well that maybe didn't commit crimes, but they've been trying to focus on these. And if they focus on these and find others at the same time, then they'll send them back because they're here illegally. But focusing on those has sent a message to everybody else that we're enforcing the law. And so what they have now is there have been 527,000 deportations of immigrants where they focus on them for criminal violations, criminal behavior. Not just violations of the immigration law, but violations of civil laws in the United States. So that's a lot of people here who are no longer committing crimes. And then on top of that, 1.6 million have self-deported. And the reason that's important is Trump is saying, we'll give you a thousand dollars and we'll give you a plane ticket back to your home if you will voluntarily leave. Because if you voluntarily leave, then you can apply for immigration the legal way and you can be accepted if you meet all the requirements. But if we deport you, you're never able legally to come back to the United States. You cannot be a legal citizen here. So if you ever have hopes of being a legal citizen, you need to self-deport now and turn around and come back through the legal process. And there's been 1.6 million that way. So essentially we're down about two million illegal immigrants. And the the economic impact that will have on the expense side of dropping the expenses for for health care in counties, county health care and schools and school districts and classrooms, et cetera, that's substantial. And it's just from enforcing the law. And it's a nice thing to say that we're finally enforcing some of the laws that should have been enforced for a long time. 

Rick Green [00:26:01] All right, folks, out of time for today. That was a lot of great good news for us. And and and there's more, of course, at the website. I mentioned it at the beginning of the program, WallBuilders.show for previous programs. And you can just go right there at WallBuilders.show, scroll through those programs, and each of the Friday programs get even more of the good news that you may have missed over the last few weeks and months. So check that out today at WallBuilders.show. Then of course we'll have more good news for you next Friday. And normally our schedule is Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday we have interviews with people out there on the front lines engaging in the culture with that biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. Then Thursdays, that's our Foundations of Freedom Thursday program. And then of course Friday's Good News Friday. Have a great weekend. Thank you so much for listening. You've been listening to the WallBuilders Show.