Rick Green [00:00:07] Thanks for joining us today on The WallBuilders Show, the intersection of faith and culture. It's Good News Friday. We're going to jump into a lot of good news today, but I obviously want to tell you about the websites. If you haven't been there lately, go there. WallBuilders.show is a great, easy website to use. You can scroll back to programs you might have missed, download them, share them with your friends and family, get more people to learn these things. Plus, it's going to help get them energized for these last couple of weeks til the election, whether it's a Good News Friday where they see some of the victories or it's some of the stories about just how bad the leftist Democrats are at this point and why it's so important to show up. There's some great content in that programming. And this week, if you didn't hear it, Tim had a fantastic interview and time with Rob McCoy. You can get that over the last three days that's available right now at WallBuilders.show. And of course, our main website, Wallbuilders.com. That's the place to get all of those materials that will help educate, equip, and inspire you and your friends and family. And then of course you can make your one-tim or monthly donation there as well at WallBuilders.com. Alright guys, I'm itching for some good news. Let's jump in to get as much good news as we can going into the weekend and into the final few weeks of the election 

David Barton [00:01:11] Well, a few days back we were talking about all the elections coming up and especially all the ballot initiatives and propositions that are out there. We're talking about how we got to get out and vote, but then I went through a lot of those ballot propositions and went down on them. We talked about the ones in Virginia and we talked about ones in Colorado. I went to a bunch of the states, and I got to Idaho and was talking about Prop 1 in Idaho, which deals with abortion, and Teresa Rennery, and thank you for contacting me, Teresa, she pointed out that I stated that one backwards there. So Prop 1, Idaho is a strong pro-life state, which we talked about, but Prop 1 would make it a pro-abortion state. It would allow abortion all the way up through viability, which, you know, time a child is born outside the mother's womb, it would be okay up to that point. Also it would take away all the parental rights, the parental notification for minors, abortion of minors. So Idaho has this really radical abortion initiative on the ballot Prop 1. And I think as I blew through that, I said Prop 1 was just the opposite. So thank you Teresa for making that clear. But if you're in Idaho, make sure you get out and vote. I think if you read that prop, you're gonna see exactly what it says. So ignore what I said on that previously, but that's one that needs to be defeated. Idaho needs to stay at pro-life state. And so that's to start with. The good news I wanna start with is also kind of related to that. It's election related. And it's a headline that really shocked me when I saw it. And it says Christine Drazen leads radical Oregon governor, Tina Kotec. Now, Oregon is one of those states that is so stinking blue in so many ways that I didn't even think there was a possibility of a Republican candidate being even within hardly double digits, down to single digits. But as the polling right now shows, she's up by either one or two points. Now, that's within the error margin, so it's kind of a tie. But nonetheless, the fact that in Oregon, you have a Republican competitor, she's a state senator, but the fact that she's actually above in polling right now, the incumbent Democrat governor in the state of Oregon, oh my goodness, that could be a real sweeping upset. And again, it's within the margin of error there. But nonetheless, that is a huge indication that a lot of what we're hearing on the media, and we talked before that we think a lot the stuff about, well, you know, it's going to be a blue wave kind of stuff is designed to keep red people from turning out. Well, if it's gonna be a blue wave, why would I go vote? Because I can't make a difference. But seeing a headline where you have a Republican candidate leading the Democrat incumbent in Oregon is just pretty shocking. And I think that may be an indication of what we all thought could happen. And we won't know until after we see the election results. But that could be really good. The other thing I'd point to is that Obama this week has come out of retirement and as Obama has announced that he's going on the road to campaign for candidates, and he's agreed to do it in two states. And one of them is the state of Michigan with Al Said. Now, again, Michigan should be a safe state, a blue state. And here you've got maybe the top name in the Democrat party, the most popular Democrat. Going on the road in a state that should be a very safe, blue state. And that's another indicator that, hey, it may not be the blue wave they keep talking about. And the other place that Obama is going is down into the U.S. Senate race in Georgia. And that is a race that people have thrown off for the last several weeks saying, no, the Democrats have got that in Georgia, Ossoff is going to keep his seat, there's no way that Collins wins. And yet here's Obama and that's one of the two states he's going into to help raise Democrat support. So the fact that you've got Democrats that appear to be in trouble in Michigan and in Oregon and in Georgia may indicate something kind of that we thought could happen, which could be not the blue wave, but a real pickup. But that only happens if people get out and vote. So the that these are headlines means absolutely nothing except there may be a possibility. And it would suggest that Democrats are seeing more tight races than what they're saying they're seeing. I mean, the fact that they're having to go into these places and kind of pull out the Democrat candidates there could indicate something good. But again, this means absolutely nothing unless our people get out and vote, then they go out and voted, even if they think it's gonna be a landslide against them, you go out a vote. But those are great headlines showing the possibilities of what could happen if our folks go out an vote. 

Rick Green [00:05:52] Yeah, I wouldn't have even expected a possibility out of Oregon. That, that's really surprising. Michigan, just because Syed's so far out there and there's still so many good people in Michigan, I could, I can definitely see the possibility there and definitely praying for that and hearing good things. You know, Tim, before you go to your piece of good news, you know, you're on the road like crazy right now as well. I'm feeling a little bit of a shift in terms of at least interest and energy, even, even just, you know, in this last week, let alone. Uh, you know, as we go into the last three weeks, what about you? I mean, what, you know, I know there's a lot of, a lot of negative out there. There's no way to know for sure. But I just think maybe some of the, you know, blue wave talk is, is trying to keep our people from showing up or to give up or whatever. What are you, what are you kind of feeling on the ground out there? 

Tim Barton [00:06:38] I completely agree with you. It's what I'm seeing a lot. Now, granted, where we go, we're not always around the people that would be considered the blue wave. We're on the other side, but the last couple weeks, I've been in a lot of different pastor events and some of them in some very liberal states, but I am seeing pastors that are waking up, that are engaged, that are going, hey, I wanna do something. What do I do? How do I it? And so I am, I am very encouraged. I actually think we're going to see an increase in voter turnout and this midterm election, and it could be significant. And I don't mean like the increase of, you know, the, the Biden presidency with the mail in ballots, where he's the most popular president that's ever been and he didn't campaign and stayed in his basement. I don't mean that kind of voter turnout. I think there are a lot of people who are going to show up. Now how they vote is still undetermined to this point, but I do see a reason for optimism. And so at least what I'm seeing on the road, I'm seeing a lot of Christians that are are recognizing they can't sit on the sideline anymore. They have to get involved and make a difference. 

David Barton [00:07:46] You know, I would add to that, that this week I've been on the road, different state every day essentially. And we just, the most recent stop we had was in Colorado. And particularly it was in congressional district number eight, which is the one that Republicans think they can get in Colorado, and Colorado has become so stinking blue with blue on the side that it's just pretty amazing how far they used to be a reliable red state and now they're definitely a blue state. And it was interesting because we were talking to the folks that were there at the rally and it significantly, there's 760,000 people in a congressional district right now. That's how much a congressman represents. You're gonna see about 170 to 200,000 votes usually in that. And in these key districts where we're going into like Colorado District 8, that race is going to be cited by a few hundred votes. Even though there may be 170,200, typically in that race, it ends up being just a few 100 votes. It's really close, they go late in the night, it's hard to call. And what was so phenomenal was that there were 11 congregations that came together for that rally. 11 churches, 11 pastors, that's not just hundreds of votes, that could be a few thousand votes. And that kind of capacity, even though there's probably 5,000 churches in that district, the fact that you had 11 come together, that doesn't seem like much, but they represent enough to be able to actually make the deciding difference in that congressional district. That's why it's important that everybody show up. You know, you may be one of 760,000 in that district, but that doesn't mean that you're just one of seven 760,000. You may be part of the deciding factor, which could be really slim. So what we're seeing this week is a high energy. We've been in every place we're going is something that's a really neck and neck, tight race. And we're seeing the kind of energy that can make a difference in those races. And I hope that carries over into what we see on election night. 

Rick Green [00:09:41] Well, of course, the reason elections are so important, we only get the good news whenever you get good people in office and meaning good news on policy or winning the direction of the country, that sort of thing. So that comes downstream from us showing up and doing the work during the election. That's how you get all the good stories, man. I mean, we've had so much good news over the last two years as a result of people actually showing up in 2024. So Tim, first thing up on your list of good news. 

Tim Barton [00:10:08] Well, guys, this one is something that's an organization that I know and love. I'm fairly well connected to called WallBuilders. We sent out an email, I think it was yesterday. 

Rick Green [00:10:18] I've heard of those guys. It sounds familiar anyway. 

Tim Barton [00:10:21] Well, we sent an email yesterday. I had the opportunity to be part of a conference this summer with some incredible men and leaders. And our buddy Josh McPherson is a pastor in Washington State at Grace City Church. He's the one that had assembled a lot of these guys that came together. So Eric Metaxas, Josh Howerton, Frank Turek, Nick Freitas, Tim Barton, Adam James, John Lovell, Nate Schatzlein, Russell Johnson, and Josh McPherson. All of us had given talks up there and Josh McPherson got inspired and said, man, we ought to, we had to take this and the talks that were given take the highlights of it, kind of boil it down. And use it as as an outline. Because part of what the conference was was challenging Christians to get involved, challenging men to get off the sidelines, challenging churches to engage and activate in the culture etc. And the idea was what if we took these talks and we used them as a encouragement and then a prayer journal. So give a talk but then let's have some really specific prayer points from it and and what ended up happening was a 21-day prayer guide leading up to election. Now, I mentioned at WallBuilders, we, we sent an email out with a link to this. We're actually going to be putting it on our website today. So you can go to wallbuilders.com and you can see this 21-day prayer guide. And what it is all the men that I just mentioned, there's going to be one or two or three, little short devo's and by short, this is like one of the, you know, Max Lucado Grace for the Moment. It's a short little devo, but then it's two, they're all two pages. The second page is going to some, some prayer, some action steps. Things that you can do to engage. And one of the things is we're talking about what's happening in the nation and with elections and, and people being stirred up and what's going to happen. The Bible tells us that the horse is prepared for battle, but victory comes from the Lord. We should work as hard as we can, busting our tails. And maybe the adage of the farmer, right? That you go out and you till the land as best you can, but ultimately God sends the rain. And we say this because in the midst of an election coming up, we know we have a part to play and we need to help encourage our friends. We need to be involved. We need help disciple people to not be deceived. Maybe by some of these commercials or social media posts and videos of certain candidates that are not promoting good policies that are going to benefit the nation or they're maybe promoting ungodly policies that could bring judgment on the nation. We want to help our friends know what's going on. But in the midst of all of the work that we should be doing and we will be doing, the responsibility the stewardship that we will exhibit, we also need to make sure we are praying in the midst of this. So for everybody as we are gearing up toward an election day, there's a 21-day prayer guide. You can go to wallbuilders.com, you can click on that link is going to be right there on the the front page of the home page and it will take you to this 21-day prayer guide. And it's just really cool that you see some of these incredible men coming together. That we all got to play a part and, and some of our talk goes into this. But then we all got to look over and review and edit and add and change things to our specific devo  and there's specific prayer emphasis at the end. And we know in the midst of all this going on, Christians, we have got to be not just activated in action of the culture and voting and encouraging. We also need to be active in prayer. And this is a really great reminder, encouragement to go to this prayer guide. So this is something that I think is very good news because I am excited that we get to play a part in helping encourage and challenge people to be active in prayer, as well as being really good stewards in other areas. So wallbuilders.com look for the 21 day prayer guide, and then we'd encourage you share with your friends, get people to follow along. And as I mentioned, there's in a lot of these, there are really great little devotional things and some of the devotional things will have some moments from American history, some cultural application things. It's really good, encouraging, informative stuff, and then some great prayer points at the end. Go to wallbuilders.com and click on that 21-day prayer guide and join us praying those 21 days leading up to the election. 

Rick Green [00:14:38] WallBuilders.com we're gonna take a quick break and by the way, I bet there's a ton of you out there that have said, you know I wish somebody would do this. I know my wife said exactly that, almost described exactly what you did here Tim. And so I know there's lot of our listeners probably in the same boat. So hey now it's done! Now you just go to WallBuilders.com and get it. So WallBuilders,com. Check it out. We're gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back. You're listening to the WallBuilders show. 

Rick Green [00:16:05] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. It's Good News Friday, second half of our program. Back over to David, your second piece of good news. I can't believe we only got two pieces in the whole first half of the program. Here we go. 

David Barton [00:16:14] But they were really important pieces. 

Rick Green [00:16:16] They were, that's right. 

David Barton [00:16:16] To determine the direction of the nation. So they're good. And this one also relates to that. It can help kind of determine the direction the nation is gonna take for the next few years. And it goes to a lot of, well, let me back up. This comes from nature.com. Now nature.com and science.com are two, I'm gonna say really highfalutin academic groups that do lots of studies. They do lots and investigation, do lots or research. And they tend to be not left or not right necessarily. They just tend to go where the science is and that's what they try to follow in Science.com and Nature.com. And so what happens is at Nature.com they just released a study and it relates to social media trends and they look at social media. And so they looked at all these different social media feeds, whether it's TikTok or Instagram Reels or whether it YouTube Shorts. And they also looked at longer feeds where you get like YouTube and you get X and and you know longer view YouTube then they compared it all and they found out that if you spend up to 10 minutes a day on the short feed like the Instagram reels and TikTok that you actually become dumber over time. But if you spend time on the longer feeds the long blog type programs, it actually helps you. And so I've been, you know, I mentioned we've been traveling all these last few days and wherever I show up, my phone knows who I am. And so, I get all these short ads from all the candidates running in that area. And I mean, it is so ridiculous because I know a lot of the candidates, I know how bad they are. And it's kind of like taking Mao Tse Tung and in 10 seconds you make him look like he's the savior of the world, pretty much. And you can do that with short stuff. And I find it interesting that they went through academically and did studies to show the spending time on short feed stuff. And they said up to 10 minutes a day on TikTok will make you dumber, literally, will make your dumber than you are. And you know what the average person spends on TikTok is 58 minutes. And so that's just a warning for everybody to stay away from that, stay away form the short form stuff. Stay away from short form ads, which we're all inundated right now on election stuff. They can make anybody look great. Go and do a little bit of research and that's why voter's guides are so important because they do have the documented research of what these guys actually did, not the sound bites that have been shaved down to 10 seconds to make them sound good. So I thought that was a really good study coming out from these guys. They weren't directly relating it to elections, but I'm relating it elections just on the fact that you need to get more than 10 second feeds on any candidate out there, good, bad, or ugly. 

Tim Barton [00:18:50] Well, Dad, I would say the good news for all of us is, we don't watch Tik-Tok, so if we're getting dumber, it's not because of Tik-Tok. That's that at least is good takeaway from that. 

Rick Green [00:19:03] Alright Tim, how about you man, what's next? 

Tim Barton [00:19:06] Well, I am going to do something a little unprecedented, because this is something that I feel like my dad traditionally, this is his lane, where he says,. 

David Barton [00:19:16] Wait a minute, should I take this over? 

Tim Barton [00:19:18] I have one piece of good news, but it's really a couple pieces, but I'm going to pretend like it's one piece. No, so really, I think that's funny. 

Rick Green [00:19:28] Good News Friday, to be continued until Monday. 

Tim Barton [00:19:31] So I do have one piece of good news, but... I have an alternate that I'm going to pitch to somebody else, because I am a subscriber at Patriot Academy. I got the Constitution Chronicle, which is the email that goes out, and I just noticed that starting on Monday, there is an eight-week course, live course on Biblical Citizenship in Modern America. And I just thought, you know, maybe the founder of Patriot Academy might want to us and the listeners about what it is and the opportunity they can join and be part of this 

Rick Green [00:20:08] So you know what's really funny Tim is I have a draft email sitting in my outbox right now. Hey, David and Tim could you guys set aside a couple of weeks in the next eight weeks to join us on Monday nights and come on? So we're just gonna do this live on the air here. Hey David, Tim could you guys, maybe come on let's see I think we got Gene Bailey on the 12th and Kelly Shackelford some other people. But I'd really love to have the Bartons So, you know, could I could I rope y'all in on live radio? Or y'all probably wouldn't mind saying no, if you had to say no on live radio. But no seriously we are we're gonna do eight weeks and have a lot of our different partners on. I actually have let's see, where do I have this? It's week number five, November 9th the week after the election in order to break it down and give us hope no matter what the outcome is. Hopefully David and Tim Barton from WallBuilders, but they don't even know yet because I haven't sent the email. This is great. What do you think guys? Do you think it? I know you don't have your calendars open. 

Tim Barton [00:21:08] If you would send that to our secretary, we will try to review that. We'll try to review that.  

Rick Green [00:21:11] You got it! My people will be talking to your people. 

Tim Barton [00:21:13] You know, yeah. We'll see if we can. We'll just see what we can do. 

Rick Green [00:21:16] Yeah. So I will say though, bro, this is like four weeks leading up to the election, right, the last four weeks of the election to keep everybody motivated and out there involved. But then the last 4 weeks of class are gonna be after the election to go, okay, what now? Whatever the outcome, each Monday night will be strategizing, you know. But they'll also get to go through the videos and of course, you now, that's David and Tim and Charlie Kirk and Bob McEwen and Jeremy Boreing and all these other people teaching, Rabbi Lapin, you name it. So yeah, it's gonna be fun, man. Thanks for mentioning that and reminding me that I need to nail you guys down on a couple of dates there. 

Rick Green [00:21:48] But for people that want to sign up, that want to be part of this... 

Rick Green [00:21:51] Oh, yes, thank you. Yes, PatriotAcademy.com. Big box right there on the home page to get signed up to be a part of the Biblical Citizenship class for eight weeks in a row. Monday nights, 8 p.m. Central. That's 6 p.m. on the west coast. Yes it's going to be late night for you east coasters. But we're doing it so we can follow Flashpoint and all the Flashpoint Army folks file right in with us right after Flashpoint. So yeah, it's gonna be fun, man. We're gonna have a lot of people from a lot different organizations joining and like I said, just really hoping to create some energy going into the election and then of course, you know, dealing with victory or defeat in individual states and you know David, you taught me a long time ago, man, you win, you lose, whatever. You just keep doing your duty. You just keep doing your duty and you keep having a good attitude about it no matter what. And I'm actually, like we said at the beginning of the program today, more optimistic than most people about the election, but did think it was important for us to have a class going for people to learn about some of the things they can do post-election going into 2027. So thank you, bro, man. I appreciate you mentioning that. Again, patriotacademy.com to sign up and it's free, and it's easy, and you get to ask questions in the chat, and it'll be, we'll have a good time. So yeah, that's a good piece of good news. Oh, wait, you said it was a multi-part piece of good news, though. So that was just one part. 

Tim Barton [00:23:02] Yeah, so, I mean, really, that was good news, but I wanted you to share because you don't usually get to share your good news. You're usually tossing to us, but that was the good news! Yes, and I know we are almost out of time for the program, but... I feel like one of the funnest pieces of good news happened this last week, when... When we look at all of the different AI platforms, at WallBuilders we use Grok probably the most for research purposes. We talk about the fact it is a tool. It is a helpful tool, it's not infallible. There's times that we really have to like teach it and coach it like, hey, here's what we want, here's the way you're supposed to do research, here are the sources you look for, and there are still times it will come back and say that doesn't exist and I'm like yes that letter does exist, look in this source. And it goes oh I found it! And I'm like, why didn't you, why did you tell me it didn't exist? And it says oh I apologize I was incorrect. And like yes Grok what are you doing? So it is, Grok I think is the least woke, the most helpful AI tool out there for our purposes for research right now. But the part that was so fun is somebody posted in GROK an image that has Jesus at the center but then all kinds of other religious deities that are in the image and the person said hey Grok remove the fake gods from this picture. And I know you guys heard this hopefully Most people listening have heard about this. If not, you need to look this up. It's so fun. You can go to Not the Bee. There's a lot of articles about it. But this image was on Grok of all these different deities, Jesus in the middle. It said, hey Grok, remove all of the false gods. And it removed every single one of the faces and images in this overall conglomerate except Jesus. And it just has a picture of Jesus and it says, Done. So removing all the false god's acknowledging there's only one God, a real God, and it's Jesus. Guys, Grok got it right! This is amazing! 

Rick Green [00:25:02] That's great. 

David Barton [00:25:04] And Tim, I saw that earlier and I was really captivated in the way it was laid out because there was like 30, 40, 50 different deities from all these religions across the world, global religions, big religions, small religions, some I've never even heard of, and they were all in there together. And so it's like you got this big puzzle in front of and you ask it to pick out one piece. And man, it picked out Jesus with all these others, and some of them are really famous deities, and you're right, I was just absolutely floored that Grok said, yep, this is the real God right here, is Jesus, that's a great story. 

Tim Barton [00:25:38] Well, what's great too is then Grok gave explanation when people are like, wait a second Grok, why are you doing this and it asked Grok to explain it? And so Grok literally walks through the explanation that Jesus was a real person, the evidence for Him is real and so it like it basically gives an apologetic for Jesus. Guys, not that Grok is a perfect tool, but I've never been more pleased that Grok is my primary AI assistant when it comes to research, then when Grok was able to identify that Jesus is real. And actually, it's really fun because one of the final images somebody posted of this, it was, and this is from Grok, yep, we've known Christ is king. So that, like, that's the conclusion, guys. This is good news when even the AI, the Bible tells us that if we're silent, the rocks will cry out. Well, in this case, when people were silent, the Groks cried out. And Grok identified that Christ is King. 

Rick Green [00:26:34] Haha, love it. Great way to take us into the weekend, even the Groks cry out. Alright everybody, have a great weekend, we look forward to being with you next week. You've been listening to the WallBuilders Show.