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Building on the American Heritage Series - Revival and Reformation
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Revival is one of those words that can feel inspiring and vague at the same time, so we decided to get concrete. We talk about what revival actually looks like when you compare Scripture with American history and we challenge the popular idea that renewal is a quick spiritual adrenaline rush that fixes everything overnight. The Great Awakenings didn’t last a weekend. They lasted decades, and they changed the way everyday people thought, lived, and participated in public life.
We dig into the First Great Awakening and why many historians argue it helped lay the groundwork for the United States itself. Then we zoom in on George Whitefield, whose relentless missionary travels and staggering preaching schedule show the real cost behind spiritual movements. We also look at a surprising pattern: opposition to revival often comes from “spiritual” circles that feel threatened by new methods, new unity, or new priorities. If you’ve ever wondered why good change can create conflict, history has receipts.
From there we get practical. Prayer matters, but prayer that never turns into action stalls out. We discuss why Scripture puts special emphasis on praying for leaders, how praying for officials can reshape our own hearts, and how to think about advisors and staff who influence policy. Finally, we tackle the big question: how do you measure revival? The strongest markers aren’t just church metrics, but cultural fruit like integrity, accountability, and a refusal to tolerate what once felt “normal.”
Subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of faith and politics, share this with a friend, and leave a review if it sharpened the way you think about revival. What’s one cultural change you’d expect to see if renewal were real?
Welcome And Where To Listen
SPEAKER_03You found your way to the intersection of faith and politics, Wall Builders Live, also found online at wallbuilderslive.com and wallbuilders.com and also on Facebook. You can follow us there as well. And we also encourage you to let your local station know if you'd like to hear us locally and we're not on a station there close to you. If you're not familiar with which station we're on close to you, then go check it out at wallbuilderslive.com. Here we go to Building on the American Heritage Series with David Barton. David,
What Revival Is And Is Not
SPEAKER_03revival is something that pastors talk about. We as Christians all say we want it. What exactly is it? How do you know when you're in one? And what should we be praying for?
SPEAKER_02Well, I'll tell you that that is a big focus in America right now is revival. I've never seen the type of prayer I'm seeing now. We have the National Day of Prayer. We've had that for decades. Our days of prayer go back hundreds of years. But in the past several national days of prayer, there have been over 50,000 prayer groups on each National Day of Prayer. Not 50,000 people. You're talking about 50,000 groups. In civic arenas. I mean, they're they're meeting at courthouses, they're meeting at police stations, at fire stations, uh, they're meeting at school, 50,000 groups praying, and that big emphasis has been praying for revival. Yeah. We're praying for revival. What's it look like? Yeah. And the best answer to that is, well, let's go back and look at some previous ones and see what's common to them. The first thing that's common to all revivals, and you have several biblical revivals, you have several American historical revivals. Uh you have the first Great Awakening, the second and third great awakening kind of run into each other. You have the turn of the century revivals, you have all these revivals in American history. What's characteristic is they always last for decades.
SPEAKER_03That's right. People think if God answers our prayers revival, he's gonna swoop in and fix every problem in the nation.
SPEAKER_02Well, I grew up into weekend revivals. Is this not what you're talking about? No such thing. Yeah, yeah, not a historical sense. That's not a revival. The first Great Awakening went from 1730 to 1770, that's 40 years. The second Great Awakening and pops up against the third Great Awakening, but that goes from 1801 to 1878. That's 77 years. Wow. You could have been born in 1802, you could have lived a full 75-year happy life, died in 1877, and never knew you were in a revival because your whole life was. Yes, your whole life was part of that revival. Yes, let's go back to the first Great Awakening, because historians agree without that there was no United States of America. It took that revival to lay the political landscape, to lay the spiritual landscape that allowed America to become an independent nation, create a form of government, create a bill of rights, et cetera. So help me get this in the timeline then. So the first Great Awakening is before the revolution.
SPEAKER_03This revival you're talking about. This is where all the seeds were planted.
SPEAKER_02This is where all for 40 years, all this thinking was changed, and then it manifested itself politically in the next several years after that. Because all this stuff that's been talked about over here, it's like, wow, now we've got a chance to do this in policy. We we've never been able to do this before. We've always been under the British monarch. We we can do it ourselves. Whole different approach.
SPEAKER_03So if there was such a good result, meaning our nation being born and all the great things that happened with our document, how did we get the revival itself then? That's
George Whitefield And The Cost
SPEAKER_03what people want now. We want to have a revival like that.
SPEAKER_02Well you go back to someone like George Whitfield. Uh and there's a lot of preachers in the in the first Great Awakening. Uh Gilbert Tennant, Gilbert and Willem Tennant were big preachers, uh, Jonathan Edwards, that famous sermon on sinners in the hand of angry God. You got Samuel Davies, you got Samuel Cooper, you got Jonathan Mayhew, you got all these famous preachers, but probably the best known as George Whitfield.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And by the way, here's some of Whitfield's original writings from the First Great Awakening. And here's some sermons from Matthew, who was also part of the First Great Awakening, and here's Wesley's sermons and all these different series. Here's Davies, bunch of sermons by Samuel Davies, all these guys in the Great Awakening. What's significant is George Whitfield was 34 years of the 40 in the Great Awakening. He made seven missionary journeys to America. He traveled from Maine to Georgia and back preaching as he went. Now, in that 34-year period, he preached 18,000 sermons. Wait, wait, wait. That's a thousand almost thousand a year.
SPEAKER_03Quick math, that's three a day. That's not an easy thing to do. No, well, I get I get worn out if I speak a couple of times a day. He does that every day. He does that every day.
SPEAKER_02He averages three sermons a day for 34 years. And I'm guessing he's not doing this uh flying American Airlines. Oh no. No, he's on horseback. As a matter of fact, one of the neat things is he had a portable pulpit he carried with him. They still have that pulpit, but he would stick that pulpit on the back of his carriage and he would go to the next place, unfold that pulpit, crawl up in it, preach a sermon, fold it up, head to the next place. Man, Georgia. What do you do when he weather's tough? What do you do when you come to a tornado or a hell storm? This is not inspirational work he's doing here. This is hard, hard, hard work. What level of commitment does that take on his part for him to be? I'll tell you, revival killed him. He didn't think revival was all that fun. The last two years of his preaching, he would get up in that pulpit and preach. He'd get out of that pulpit, go over, spit up his guts, and cough up a bunch of blood, get on his horse, ride in the next place, sit up that pulpit and go preach, get out of the pulpit, go over, cough up a bunch of blood. It was not easy work. But if he hadn't done that, we don't have a revival, we don't have a country.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So It was his sacrifice, his investment. That was an investment of his life. You best his time.
SPEAKER_02And do you know how effective he was in that revival? Eighty percent of everyone that lived in America heard him physically preach a sermon. Wow. No broadcast back then, that means you've got to be on the spot. You know how many communities he had to go into for 80% of Americans to get anybody that thinks it's this great spiritual inspiration, God's gonna sweep in and fix all this stuff, look at Woodfield. This is the other
Why Revival Sparks Religious Opposition
SPEAKER_02fun thing about revivals, fun thing. Um, revivals are always characterized by lots of opposition, but not from the secular folks, from the spiritual folks. And so shouldn't we be you'd think it'd be the spiritual folks saying, hey, you had this guy great, we're so glad he's gonna be able to do it. It was the preachers that attacked him, said It was the opposite. And see, revivals nearly always involve old wineskins, new wineskins. Jesus told that story, you don't pour new wine, old wineskin, you'll it'll bust and you'll lose all of it. But they said, Whitfield, we've never done it this way before. No, we're used to doing it this way over here. And so Whitfield comes in with a whole new way, open air meetings, uh, not just in one denomination. He was messing with all denominations. He had what was called his Father Abraham sermon, which brought people together rather than divided them. And they said, Whitfield is wicked. He's evil. What do you think? Because he's messing with their tradition. And that's always the characteristic of revival. It's Charles Finney comes along in the second great awakening. Now, what do you mean an altar call? We don't do altar calls, we don't have open air brush arbor meetings, we do it inside of churches. Well, he's out in the middle of the community doing stuff. And they said, Well, Finney is wicked. Look at him. He's changing, and it's always a transition of doing something new. God works in a different way, and a lot of people can't get on board with that. Now, what happens today is we remember Whitfield. We don't remember his critics. Back then they were alive and they ate his lunch. They chewed him up. The other thing about a revival is it's not just a spiritual thing. But
When Revival Shapes Nation And Policy
SPEAKER_02you know, Whitfield is really the father of the American military. He's the guy who designed the first American military flag, came up with a military motto, military banner. Now, Whitfield died in 1770 up in Newberry Port, Massachusetts. They buried him below the church there, down in the basement sarcophagus. The first Massachusetts regiment that went out to fight in the American Revolution all stopped by that church, had a sermon about what was happening as soldiers going out into war. They all went downstairs, opened the sarcophagus, cut off a little piece of his robe to take with them because he was the inspirational father of the military. So you know we didn't think of the preacher, a great awakened preacher being the one that did it. Oh, it's not just that. 1765, when we had the Stamp Act in America, now that's an economic thing. Yeah. America sent two people to Great Britain to argue against the Stamp Act. One is Ben Franklin, one is George Woodfield. No kidding. What's he doing in Parliament? What's he doing in politics? What's he doing with taxation issues? Because revival covers all aspects of life. It's not just spiritual stuff, it affects the way you live, the way you think, the way you act. That's characteristic. So everybody's praying for revival. Yeah. Now you're talking hard work. Hard work. You're talking it's going to take a long time. A lot of opposition. A lot of opposition. It'll last decades. It's not fast. And the other
Revival And The Next Generation
SPEAKER_02thing that's really significant is it's always transgenerational. There's a revival recorded back in Judges 13 where God's people were under the oppression of the Philistines, and then they prayed and prayed, God deliver us from the Philistines. We need a revival. God answered the revival. Verse 5 of chapter 13, God so answered the revival, he sent an angel to Earth to tell people, I've heard your prayers, I've answered, you're going to have a revival. The way he did it was the angel went to Manoah and said, Manoah, God's heard the prayers of this people. He's going to deliver you. You're going to be free people, you're going to have a revival. Here's how it works: your wife's going to get pregnant. And when that kid grows up, he's going to be the national deliverer. Time out. It's going to take 20 years for that kid to grow up. I thought you said you answered our prayers. God often answers the prayers of revival by sending a new generation that does it differently. Great example. Back here. Samuel Davies, he's considered the greatest pulpit preacher in the Great Awakening. He had a little kid running around with him when he was doing all this preaching. And as a matter of fact, Samuel Cooper, another great preacher in the Great Awakening, had a kid running around with him all the time. And Gilbert Tennant, another preacher in the Great, had a kid running around with him. And it's interesting. You know how the kid was running around with Samuel Davies? Little guy named Patrick Henry.
SPEAKER_03No kid.
SPEAKER_02I wonder where he learned to be such a good speaker. He heard the greatest pulpit orator in American history preach and preach and preach. And then he became the kid. And then he became the greatest orator. And you have a little kid running around with Samuel. Who's oh, it's John Quincy Adams. That's who it is. And this guy named Elias Boudnum, the president of Congress who signed the peace treaty in the revolution. Oh, you mean he was baptized by George Whitfield in the Great Awakening?
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_02And Benjamin Russ, considered one of the three most notable founding fathers, he ran around with this preacher named Gilbert Tennant and William Tennant. See, what happens is you have a new generation. I think we're there now. And for example, in America, America's finally become 51% pro-life. It's taken his decades, we're now majority pro-life nation. Isn't that really cool? When you look at the stats for our teenagers, teenagers are 72% pro-life. 20 points more. Only 19% of teenagers believe that abortion on demand should remain. Now, how did our teenagers get 20 points more pro-life than anybody that teaches them? Has to be revival. How'd they get more pro-life than the culture? How'd they get more pro-life than the teachers, their parents? Because God says, I've been hearing your prayers, let me send you a new generation that that'll do some things differently.
SPEAKER_03You know, in the examples you use, I mean in Bible days or even the founding era, they they seem to be a little more patient than we are. We're a real immediate graduate. We're a microwave generation.
SPEAKER_02I mean, we watch the news all the time. We've got a crisis going in some nation, and in 30 minutes they'll get the expert soon tell us how to fix the problem. Right, right, right. You know, we've had these two nations fighting for 400 years, but we got a 30-minute program that told us how to fix the problem. Yeah, so how much harder is it for us to say it's generational? It's generational. And see, this is the question as we pray for revival. How serious are we about revival? Are we willing to expend the work and the time and the effort and the discipleship and the mentorship of the next generation that it's gonna take to do this? Because that's what a real revival looks like.
SPEAKER_03Okay, David,
Prayer That Turns Into Action
SPEAKER_03how about some questions from the audience about revival? Sounds good.
SPEAKER_00What is it gonna take to get revival in America?
SPEAKER_03Well, we're praying for it, we're asking for it.
SPEAKER_02How do you get there? Well, that's that's the starting place. You have to ask for it. You have not because you ask not, and you have to start by asking, which means prayer. I love what founding Father John Hancock said about this. He said, I urge you, by all that's honorable, by all that's dear, by all that's holy, not only that you pray, but also that you act. So it takes both. Faith without works is dead. Uh, it's an interesting thing that if we start praying, and the Lord tells us a number of prayers to pray in the scripture. You pray for laborers to go out in the harvest. If you get really dead serious about praying for God to send out workers in the harvest, your heart gets turned that direction. All of a sudden, I'll go do it. Uh and so what happens is the more you pray for something, the more your heart gets into it, the more you're likely to start taking action on it. That's why I think it's significant that we're told in 1 Timothy to pray first of all. And by the way, there's nothing else in the Bible where we're told to pray first of all. But we are told to pray first of all leaders, those in authority.
SPEAKER_03That's regardless of which leaders and who it is that's elected. You pray for the ones you agree with, the ones you don't.
SPEAKER_02But if you pray for those authority, if you pray for leaders and those in authority, pray before you pray for yourself or your church or your job or your kids or anything. That's the only first of all in the Bible related to prayer. Pray for leaders and those in authority. If you start praying diligently for leaders and those authority, you're gonna start saying, Man, I look what's happening in the country. We we've got to change this. We gotta your heart will start taking you in that direction. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03How do you pray for your leaders if you don't even know who they are? I mean, I guess you can pray in general at the leaders of the country, but you almost have to do it, start doing some homework and finding it.
SPEAKER_02Well, if you start praying for your leaders, you'll have a desire to know who are my leaders. I don't know who my leaders are. And there are a number of prayer networks out there that now provide um guides on uh there's a great prayer calendar, for example, with Heritage Alliance. Yeah, but in Texas, daily uh you know they'll give you a couple of things. Well they have a national calendar too. You get to pray on this day for your senator, on this day for your state rep, on this day for your for your U.S. Congressman, on this day for your governor, on this day for the Secretary of the State, on this day for the uh the It gives you a little summary so you know something about them, pray for their family.
SPEAKER_03That's right, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And every day it gives you a leader and someone in authority to pray for. So Heritage Alliance is a good place, but there's a lot of prayer groups that do that.
SPEAKER_03Is it okay for me to pray, you know, not only pray for that person, but pray that that God send advisors to them if they're non speeding from a biblical point of view, that he'll send advisors that'll influence them, that he'll change their heart. I mean to actually pray for that leader and the policy they're implementing.
SPEAKER_02And you pray for the staff as well. Because even if you have a rotten scoundrel like Ahab, Ahab had a righteous guy named Obadiah working for him. And Obadiah, despite Ahab and Jezebel trying to kill all of God's prophets, Obadiah over here is able to get a hundred prophets of God and save them, put them in a cave and take care of them. So you you can even have really good people and a really wicked administration, and you want to pray not only for their counselors, because they need counselors, they need people giving righteous input.
SPEAKER_03That sounds like too, though, that that when you're praying for that kind of uh those kind of things with your leaders, you recognize that revival does come through the hands and the feet of the people. I mean, God does do it through these people in these positions. You can pray for revival all you want, but if you're not willing to do something with your prayers, it's not gonna happen. Staying with this subject of revival, let's get another question from the audience.
Measuring Revival By Cultural Change
SPEAKER_03How do we measure revival? Well, I have to admit I have no idea. How do you measure? I mean, we're praying for it, we want it to happen, but how do you know if if you're in it or if it's happened and and whether it's a good one? Well, revival is a little different when you pray.
SPEAKER_02I mean, if we pray for rain, we know when that prayer is answered. You know, if somebody's sick and you pray, God heal them, you know when that prayer is answered. It's a little different with revival, but the Bible does give us a lot of indicators and so does history. And one of the things that you'll find that happens with revivals is you have changes in individuals, you have changes in culture as well. You look in the Second Great Awakening, part of the reason we knew it was a revival was because all of a sudden you could get hundreds, thousands to show up to pray. Ten years before, who wants to pray? It's a waste of time, or I'm too busy, or but suddenly there's an interest in spiritual activities. There's an interest in doing something spiritual. Now, it doesn't stop there. I mean, you can't say we have a revival because we got so many baptized or so many joined the church, and that that's not it. Because it's not just what you say spiritually, it's how that works out through your life. Uh, if if you have a real conversion experience with the Lord, your lifestyle is gonna change. And if your lifestyle changes, what you will tolerate around you and what you demand to be around you will also change.
SPEAKER_03So it's not just your spirits, it's not just your heart, not just your heart. That's how you act after that and what you're willing to put up with around you in the culture.
SPEAKER_02It's is and that's a great way of saying what you're willing to put up with. Because if if God's really hit you, man, you you you think lying is an abomination. And you're not gonna let all these people that used to be your employees that are liars say you say, guys, you gotta cut that out. Or you're gonna say, no, wait a minute. I I can't have liars in office either. These guys made all these promises. We've got to get these guys out. We've got to have somebody with character and integrity. You start wanting and demanding different things around you. You'll demand more from the places where you go and what you patronize in the way of dining establishments. You know, there's certain things you want tolerate. Um and you start working that up to the culture, and you can always measure revival by what it does to change the culture.
Bring A WallBuilders Speaker To You
SPEAKER_01Hey, this is Tim Barton with Wall Builders. And as you've had the opportunity to listen to Wall Builders Live, you've probably heard the wealth of information about our nation, about our spiritual heritage, about the religious liberties, about all the things that makes America exceptional. And you might be thinking, as incredible as this information is, I wish there was a way that I could get one of the wall builders' guys to come to my area and share with my group, whether it be a church, whether it be a Christian school or public school or some political event or activity. If you're interested in having a wall builder speaker come to your area, you can get on our website at www.wallbuilders.com and there's a tab for scheduling. And if you'll click on that tab, you'll notice there's a list of information from speakers' bios to events that are already going on, and there's a section where you can request an event to bring this information about who we are, where we came from our religious liberties and freedoms. Go to the wall builders website and bring a speaker to your area.
Second Amendment History Moment
SPEAKER_01This is Tim Barton from Wall Builders with another moment from American history. The Second Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees to every individual the right to keep and bear arms, has been targeted for years now by those who are determined to dismantle the individual right to self-protection. Opponents argue that only the militia, the military, and law enforcement are to have and use firearms. But those who wrote the Second Amendment strenuously disagreed, including founding father Richard Henry Lee, a signer of the Declaration, a president of the Continental Congress, and one of those who actually framed the Second Amendment. He declared, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them. For more information about Richard Henry Lee and the history of the Second Amendment, go to wallbuilders.com.
Proof Revival Leaves A Public Mark
SPEAKER_02They'd rather go to church than go to bars. Or they'd rather be with their family than go to bars. I I love what happened in New York in the Second Great Awakening. Uh one of the founding fathers, James Kent, talks about it, and they were appalled that in the entire state of New York, over a 16-year period, they had eight murders in New York. Sixteen years? That's a murderer. In New York, Chicago's got a murder every eight hours. See, you can measure statistical results. They act. They act different. So anytime you have a revival, it's not just spiritual measurements. It will affect the culture. If it doesn't affect the culture, it's not a revival. There have been revivals gone on all over America. People say, oh, come see this great revival at this church. It's not a revival unless it gets outside the church and affects the culture. How about another question from the audience?
SPEAKER_03Would
Biblical Revivals And Political Outcomes
SPEAKER_03a national revival really make a difference in our government? Well, we're back to this question. I mean, if it's a revival, spiritually there's a change, but then how does it work its way up to where we see that reflection in government?
SPEAKER_02Let's take this issue policy for a minute because as you look in the Bible, there are several revivals that occur in the Bible. You have a revival of the nation under Jehoshaphat, you have a revival of the nation under Josiah, you have a revival under the name of the nation under Asa. Now, those that's just three revivals, but let's take those. They've been away from God, they came back to God. You take those three revivals, they are recorded in two parallel books. They're recorded in the Kings, and they're recorded in the Chronicles. Now, there's a difference in these two books. The Kings, that's compiled by Jeremiah. The Chronicles are compiled by Ezra. Now, Jeremiah is a prophet, and in Bible times, a prophet was part of the king's staff. You remember, even Ahab said, Hey, we can't go out to war unless we get a prophet in here. Let's get a prophet, and they bring a prophet and say, I hate this prophet. He always tells me bad things. But he's still got a prophet in it. The prophet spoke directly into policy, directly into the king. So you got Jeremiah, he's got a very political view. And if you read the book of Jeremiah, you see that he's interfacing with the kings all the time. They throw him down in that Mori pit. He sends word to the king, and he the king says, I want to meet with you in private. Don't let anybody know we met. There's always this stuff where the prophets are working with the civil leaders. They had no hesitation in speaking out, which and the civil leaders were wrong. He spoke very clearly. He's the guy who was back at the temple doing all those hours of prayer and fasting. And it's interesting that when you read the same incident in the kings that you have in the Chronicles, in the kings you get a political viewpoint of it. In the chronicles, you get a spiritual viewpoint. Here's an example. In the kings, it'll say that the king so-and-so died and was buried with his fathers. In Chronicles, it'll say King so-and-so sinned against God, and God struck him down and he died and was buried with his fathers. Well, you got a spiritual perspective over here, and you didn't get in the political. So when you look at a revival, you can read the Chronicles and get the spiritual perspective. What's really cool is read the Kings and get the political perspective. Every time there was a revival, this is the striking stuff. Every time there was a revival in the Bible, you know what changed with every revival? Their attitude toward homosexuality. Really? In the Old Testament. They they'd been tolerating that, they allowed it. And it said that when the revival came, that they chased the sodomites out of the temple. So revival brought moral clarity and they acted upon it. And it brought policy. Suddenly the church is not tolerating homosexuals homosexuals in the temple. And with a revival, it's they chase that's a political position. Wow. But it's a result of a spiritual change. So as you go through and read revivals in in the Bible, yes, there is a spiritual component to them. There's always a political component that goes with it as well.
SPEAKER_03So if we have a revival in America, then we should see changes not only in our attitudes, but in the policy. You bet issues like abortion and marriage.
SPEAKER_02And that's why historically these are what were called common law offenses. Because this was common to nations, this was common throughout history, that this behavior is not acceptable. And that's why in common law offenses, it listed everything from burglary, from arson, from murder to kidnapping, to theft, to rape, to homosexuality, to prostitution, and that's why it was always in the common law offenses. And that was incorporated in the Constitution through our through Amendment seven of the Constitution. So but I say that because common law goes back hundreds of years before the Constitution. They just took that body and put it into the Constitution. And that's why it was part of the statutory laws. For all the states. Alright, time for one more question on revival.
Occupy Till He Comes
SPEAKER_03Sounds good.
SPEAKER_00America is so far gone, it seems we have only a few years left. How can we get revival in such a short time?
SPEAKER_03Well, you do hear this quite a bit. I mean, some people are out there saying it's all over, grab your guns, canned food, go hide out at the ranch. I mean, they want to give up on America and they don't believe a revival would work.
SPEAKER_02Well, what happens is those people are not very familiar with history because there is nothing new under the sun, but this also gets somewhat into eschatology. And as we get into eschatology, we see the end times. And I believe the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible word of God. I also believe because I believe that, Peter said he was living in the last days. Timothy said, Paul told Timothy, we're this is the last days. John said twice, I'm in the last days. What does that mean? That means the last days must last at least 2,000 years because we're still there. See, every single generation since Christ was here thought that Christ would return in their generation. Now, eschatology is divided in a lot of ways in the church. You have the pre-trib, the post-trib, the mid-trib, the a-trib, the pan-trib, the pre-millennial, post-millennial. You got all these positions. The simple way to look at this is exactly what Jesus told his disciples when they were thinking about this when's the master coming back kind of stuff. Luke 19, 13, he said, occupy till I come. But if we think it's time to pick up and get out of here because it's just too hard, just too rough, we don't have Christian character yet. Yeah. That's when you dig in your heels and say, I'm going to be the last one standing. I I love in the Old Testament as it talked about the three chief warriors for David. And you look at what those chief warriors did. You crawl down in the snowy pit with a lion now on a snowy day. But the guy I really enjoy is the guy who went out there and defended a bean patch. And he stayed there and kept the enemy out of the bean patch so long they had to pry his fingers off. Who cares about a bean patch? Give it up. No, no. I was told to stay here and defend this bean patch. This is my place on the wall. And I'm not moving. My commander put me here to do this bean patch, and you ain't getting me out of here. And so he stayed defended that silly bean patch or lentelfield. He defended that bean patch until they had to pry his fingers up. He was one of David's mighty men. See, and that's the kind of people God wants. And I will tell you historically, as you look back into the diary of Christopher Columbus, Christopher Columbus says, I've talked to every major theologian across Europe. They all agree every prophecy necessary for Christ to return has been fulfilled. They all think Christ will be here in the next 70 years. And that's in the 1400s. That's in the 1400s. And that's why he wrote in his diary, he says, that's why I'm compelled. God has shown me out of Isaiah that there are isles of the sea that haven't heard the gospel. I've got to get the gospel there because there's only 70 years left. Um, 500 years later. A little bit 500 years off there. Yeah, as you move into the founding era, founding fathers like Sam Adams. Sam Adams said, uh, we've talked to all the theologians, they all agree there's not a prophecy left to be fulfilled before Christ returns. They think he'll be here by 1800. And Sam Adams said, Maybe, but I've still got stuff to do, even but they were believing by 1800. We've we've had across every single generation, every prophecy has been fulfilled since a long time ago. Every single one. There's nothing left in return except the Father to say, okay, return. That's all we're waiting on. Who knows how long that's gonna be? That's not our business. It doesn't matter when he returns. We've got to be occupied until he comes.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, because it isn't it much easier to give up on the culture if you are saying, look, God's gonna be back in two weeks or two years or whatever. Why should I worry about that trying to turn the culture around?
SPEAKER_02And the other thing is it creates a pessimism. You know, it's all this is the last day, so there's nothing we can do to turn it around. Yeah. What makes you think so? I I love Isaiah 59 where God says, You think my arm's too short to save? And even with Moses, he told Moses, get out of the way, Moses, I'm gonna destroy this people. Now, when God says he can destroy the people, he's gonna do it. And Moses went and prayed, and God said, Okay, I won't destroy them. How do you know what can be changed through prayer? You think this is the last time, you think it's all written? God responds to prayer. He's changed so many times what he intended to do because somebody got involved in prayer. And we can't check out on this. We absolutely cannot check out on this. And you look in the Bible, how many times did Israel sink to the bottom of the barrel and God still brought them back? You know, still I I've got great hope for the country. Well, I was gonna ask you about America.
SPEAKER_03I mean, we've had our downtime. We've had our downtimes. We've had revivals and big touches and come back and come back.
SPEAKER_02So why why couldn't it happen again? And this is why believers need to know something about history, both the Bible and both American history. Yeah. Because this is not brand new water we're treading in. We've been here before. God's quite capable of handling this. He just needs some people willing to do some stuff. And that's what the key to revival is is we've got to be willing to get involved.
SPEAKER_03Thanks for
Closing And Resources
SPEAKER_03listening today, folks. Many of you have the DVD set of the American Heritage Series. You could get the sequel, which is Building on the American Heritage Series, a lot of new material, some fantastic programs you want to you want to have in your library. You can get it at our website today at wallbuilders.com.