God’s Way Works - On Good News Friday

Rick Green: 0:12
Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. This is WallBuilders. We're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. It's my favorite day of the week here on WallBuilders. Good news Friday is here and we got a lot of good news to share with you. Be sure to check out our website today WallBuilders.com and WallBuildersLive.com. Both of those sites have a wealth of information. They're at WallBuilders Live you can jump into some of the archives for the last few weeks if you missed any shows and they're at WallBuilders.com Great materials for you to get engaged and inspired and equipped to make a difference in your community. And it also has information about our various summer programs, pastors' briefings, all the different things going on as we rebuild the foundations, rebuild the walls, so that we can restore our constitutional republic. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach and a former Texas legislator, and I'm here with David and Tim Barton. David's, of course, America's premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders. Tim's a national speaker and pastor and president at WallBuilders, and let's get into that good news. David Barton is going to start us with the first piece of good news.

David Barton: 1:12
Okay, Rick, I want to hit something that deals kind of with apologetics and I know that sounds way out there, but it really is just understanding why you believe what you believe. And this is one of the things we do at WallBuilders a lot with young people, teachers, with anybody else is helping them understand the foundations for their belief, because there's so many people just believe what they've heard or what they've been told. They haven't checked it out, they don't have a basis for it, and so you really want to affirm foundation for the beliefs you hold, to be able to defend them, etc. So, even as a Christian, we believe the Bible, but how do we know the Bible's true? And this is where things like archaeology come in, and we've talked in previous editions of Good News Friday about new discoveries that have been made. And I go back to that thing they found with that tablet of part of the curses that were Mount Ebal and Mount Garosim, and there it was written and that didn't convince all these guys that, well, maybe all the slaves that came out of Egypt weren't illiterate, because here they are, having written stuff, and so it just changed the whole look of things and that was what two months ago.

Tim Barton: 2:10
Well, and specifically, it was the. There was. You mentioned two mounts and you mentioned curses, right, so it's part of, in the Old Testament, the Israelites as they're getting ready to go into Canaan. And you find us in Deuteronomy 28 where Moses tells them hey guys, if you do it God's way, you will enjoy blessings. And you'll be blessing all these things, these various areas of things you do, and blessing your coming, blessing your going, blessing the city and blessing the field, blessing your harvester, planting your crops and new harvester crops. But if you don't do it God's way, then you will live under a curse and everything you do and everywhere you go, it's going to be a curse because you're not doing it God's way. In fact, when you do it against God's way, that's what it produces. And so, as you're saying, they found that tablet, the tablet of curses. That was the literal confirmation of what you can see in Deuteronomy 28. And it's not only in Deuteronomy 28 that it lists the blessings and curses, but that's the one that's the most explicit, the most detailed, is Deuteronomy 28. And so, finding it that, as you mentioned, there were some people saying there wasn't even written language back then and so these guys couldn't have written all this down. So then, finding this tablet, finding this stone and actually having literal curses written on it, identifying these things, it verified not only was there written language, but actually this notion of God saying if you don't follow these commands, you will live under a curse. Literally, that is there, written in stone.

David Barton: 3:26
Yeah, and the key part was they had found this thing dated all the way back to the time of Joshua, because a lot of the professors said, well, it was written hundreds of years later and it wasn't at that time. It was actually done long after they got there. Well, no, this dates back to the time of Joshua, when they're going into the promised land, and so it really was significant. So things like that. They become real foundations. You can say, hey, what I'm believing is not fairy tales here, this is stuff that has actual evidence with it. And to that end, here's a new discovery they have in Israel, and it deals with a pool that actually was built by King Hezekiah back 700 years before Christ. And this pool, this water area, it's actually where Jesus performed a miracle, and so what you have is a discovery of the pool of Siloam, and if you read the New Testament, that's where Jesus healed a blind man. It was at the pool of Siloam, and they just found the original pool of Siloam.

Tim Barton: 4:18
Well, and maybe even to get a little more detail. So they knew where the pool was, but they hadn't done the full excavation of it, and so they found the steps going down to the pool of Siloam. Because we've been there, we've been going for years, in fact, next spring we're taking another trip, and I was so excited about this being able to go back to Israel, especially now that there's no of the COVID mandates and vaccines and all these silly requirements that were there for several years. Israel is now open up and it's safe. It's just so fun and exciting to go to the place where Jesus was, where he walked, where so much of the Bible happened. And so we've taken groups down to the steps. And they knew this was the pool of Siloam. They knew where it was, but they had not completed the excavation, and so I was actually there in May when they had actual like big rig equipment, bulldozer kind of stuff down, as they were loading those bulldozers up with dirt and they're taking the dirt out. They have finally finished the excavation because when I was there in May they were trying to figure out how far, how deep is this pool? How wide is it? Because it was in the rock. So they knew eventually they're going to find the edge of it, they're going to find the bottom of it, and so they've been working on this, this excavation, when they finally have now finished it. And so they actually at this point they can say not just Theoretically what we found, the steps leading down, like we were pretty sure it's pull of Psyloam. No, now, what that's excavated, it's there. They have now Unveiled, so to speak, for the public to be able to see, and you can find pictures online when you can see the pool of Psyloam, the whole pool of Psyloam, and it adds a little perspective. When Jesus was there in healing and people were going down and there was water there, what did it actually look like?

David Barton: 5:52
They've excavated it now, where you actually can see what it looked like from not just the time of Jesus, but that even, as you're mentioning, 700 years prior, with King Hezekiah being the one who did a lot of this Initial digging and the initial establishing of this pool, and so, as Tim mentioned, we've got a trip going to Israel next year and this kind of stuff you can actually see and when you do it will rock your Spiritual world is one thing to read, it's one thing to hear us talk about on a story, it's one thing for you to read a newspaper. When you go there and stand there, you stand on the steps of the pool of Psyloam, you stand at the place where these things happen. It just absolutely Does something. That it's just. I don't even know how to explain it. I didn't think it's going to be a big deal when I went the first time. It absolutely Changed my faith and took it much, much, much deeper, much stronger. So if you're interested, you can go to the website. But it's April 6th to the 14th of next year. Next April 6th to 14th Got a group going Israel. If you want to be part of that group, and where we go is it's not just doing the churra stuff. What we do is the Bible stuff. You actually go see the stuff. Just like we like American history, we like Bible history as well, and we'll go so many places, so many sites four or five, six, seven, a day that will stop there and we'll pull the Bible out and read what the Bible says about that while we're right there at that spot, like Read what the Bible says about the miracle to pull of slow, with Jesus healing a blind man right there at that spot. It just comes alive in a way. They'll change your faith. It is a really positive thing. So April 6th to the 14th of 2024, you can go to the website at WallBuilderscom. You sign up for the trip there. It's a trip of a lifetime.

Rick Green: 7:29
You'll love it our folks WallBuilderscom to find out more information About the trip next April. Tim, what's your first piece of good news today?

Tim Barton: 7:36
Well, guys, this one is pertaining to Disney, and the title says Disney sees massive falloff for Disney plus, who lose subscriptions after price hike and woke policies. In this article, there's some great little tidbits of information when they identified that last month and so this would have been in August. In August, the company's market cap had fallen from $350 billion of March 2022 to 154 billion in August, which is a decline of 196 billion dollars or a 56% drop in the overall stock in the company, so that's a major decline well, no wait, Tim, can you, can you, can you, can you clarify for me now, is that bad for business or good for business? if you, to lose a hundred ninety six million dollars value Probably not good for business.

Rick Green: 8:31
Yeah, I'm sorry, I just wanted to clarify that.

Tim Barton: 8:33
I mean, if it's a federal government, it's no big deal, right? But if you're a private company, it becomes more of a problem. To lose a hundred ninety six billion dollars, right? This isn't like losing an F-35 somewhere along the way. This is a hundred and ninety six billion dollars, right? That's a problem. Well, ceo Bob Chepic in August of last year August 2022. He set a target they wanted to get 215 to 245 million subscribers by the end of fiscal year 2024, so a year and a half to grow their subscription list. However, the end of Q3, quarter three this year, they were down to 146 million Disney plus subscribers. I don't think that's 215 million. No, they're. They're losing ground in this and the idea they're going to add 60 to 70 to 80 or 90 million subscribers by the end of next year not going to happen. But what's great about this is, without acknowledging the the reported shortfall, bob Iger, the current CEO, said in February that Disney would cease providing subscriber forecasts. So they're like we don't want to talk about it anymore. We're, we're going to pretend like that never happened. So instead they said we're just going to focus on how profitable the company is, which again losing 196 billion dollars that's. That's not really going to show a lot of profit there either, but his idea was to make them more profitable. They are going to start charging more for their subscription. Now it's only three dollars a month more, but when you have 146 million subscribers and that's three dollars a month, that's that's quite a few extra dollars coming in, but it has not helped them gain new subscribers. In fact, it's the. The Indications we have at this point is that more and more people are leaving Disney plus. Now also, disney is looking to sell off the ABC Television Network. So they are there in a little bit of crisis mode, a little bit like Budweiser, a little bit like target was for a while, and that's to me just really great to see, because Disney, when all these problems really started, was when they were in Florida and they began promoting some of these really woke policies For children and for those that might not remember, in Florida Disney began having political demands that children is young, and this is in the article children as young as third grade Be taught sexual matters, and it sparked a national fervor among conservatives. That was led to boycotts Against Disney plus and Hulu, which Hulu, disney plus owns the majority that stock. They control Hulu as well. So this is great news, not just that when you go woke, you go broke, but when you begin trying to sexualize kids, when you begin doing those kind of evil things, that the market in the population is not so woke that they won't say, hey, this is really bad and we want to stop it. And, by the way, even that thought of a hundred and forty six million subscribers that's around the world, so that's not just America. So this is great that that least in America and arguably even much of the rest of the world, they are not supportive of some of the Disney agenda. And also, for those that might remember, there were executives at Disney that said they wanted to have at least 50% of their stars and their movies Be focused on the LGBTQIA plus Agenda and on minorities, and so they wanted to get away, which is why the the movies a little mermaid that came out. They wanted to do a very different cast and right. I mean there's. This is not a Conversation about picking on somebody's race or color, ethnicity. That's not the point of this. It's more acknowledging that Disney was saying we don't like white people anymore. We want to go a different direction instead of just saying, hey, let's make the very best movie we can make and let's have the very best actors and actresses play these roles. That would be a much better case in situation. Then, like we've already seen, some of the release is coming out from Snow White in the seven dwarfs, where it's not seven dwarfs anymore, it's the seven displaced people and one of them happens to be a dwarf. So Disney is very going in a very woke direction and, to this point, the people are not supporting it, and that is great news.

David Barton: 12:40
Yeah, and to add to this, we've covered a steady decline of Disney over the last several months. We've had several good news Fridays talking about this and, to be real blunt on this, the Bible says you don't gloat when your enemy falls, and that's not what's happening here. This is a win, and that the reason Disney is falling is because there's a rising number of people who are supporting these traditional values, are supporting that, the values that we've held dear. So for a while, it looked like the Disney values, the wolf kind of values. Tim, you mentioned that that is what was growing and taking over. It appeared to be, because everything looked to be going that way, and Now we find no, that's not it. There really is a majority of people, a growing majority, and so we're not gloating over Disney's fall. We're rejoicing over the fact that there's so many people that don't want to be part of the direction.

Tim Barton: 13:26
They're going. Yeah, it's really about the people standing up to oppose, yeah, the evil. The wokeness is happening, and this is also right. This is not a slam on everything Disney's ever done, because I grew up with Davy Crockett.

David Barton: 13:36
Oh man, I'm still watching the old Disney classic right now with the Swiss family Robinson and Zorro. I'm sorry mine are in DVD, if you know what that is. I even have the VHS as I was watching on Disney.

Tim Barton: 13:47
So we actually had to preserve a VHS player just so that we could maintain those. And there's people out there going guys, you can digitize that now, we know, but it's more fun on VHS now. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait you guys got a.

Rick Green: 13:56
I got to give the Listeners a visual here, okay, you, when they say they have some V, some VHS, is listen. The first time I went to the Barton Ranch and opened the closet in the room I was staying in, it was no kidding floor to ceiling. Vhs is stacked like three deep. They have a few movies from Disney and Old Disney, John Wayne, you just a couple. Just a couple, not not many. So Digitizing the Barton library VHS's would require, I don't know, like the whole Pentagon, you would need a lot of people.

Tim Barton: 14:31
Well, we might have, you know, there might be closets with certain things in there and they could include some some movies along the way, right. But this is where, also, if Disney would get back to those kind of movies, we would absolutely wholeheartedly support because it was wholesome, good, valued entertainment, and that's what they've gotten away from. And so it's great that the market and the people are not following them on that journey of decadence, on that journey of Sexualizing kids and promoting evil things or promoting wokeness, as the case were. So that is great news that they are. They are suffering the negative Consequences from really bad choices and hopefully they will learn from this and they'll go back to just making wholesome movies without promoting these woke agendas.

Rick Green: 15:12
Alright. So this is always good news when Disney is not doing well because of going woke and, like you said, let the market you know, we send a loud, loud message and hopefully we can get them to reverse course, as well as no support companies that are doing the right stuff and and producing good content. So great news, folks, let's take a quick break. You're listening to WallBuilders and it's good news.

Tim Barton: 15:33
Friday you hey guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called the American Story. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that's just not known or not told today and, we would say, very providentially, in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not the statement Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we're against everything that America was built on and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There's so many things attacking America. Well, is America worth defending? What is the true story of America? We actually have written and told that story, Starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln. We tell the story of America not as a story of a perfect nation or a perfect people, but the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It's a story you want to check out. WallBuilderscom the American story.

Rick Green: 16:45
Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us on this Good News Friday. Diving right back into our Good News, David, what's the next piece of good news, man?

David Barton: 16:52
Well, Rick, one of the things that we have seen in recent years that has been concerning in addition to the decline of the culture as Disney's trying to take it down, it appears to be coming back is the fact that when you look at Christianity in America, it has been declining for a number of years. As a matter of fact, over the last 20 years, the percentage of Americans who are Christian has dropped by 20%. So literally we're losing in the nation about 1% a year of people being Christians, so more coming in as non-Christian and secularists and progressives and whatever they are. And so this America that's been founded on this religious and moral and biblical foundation, it's been changing a lot and we can certainly see that politically. But my concern has been man, where are the Christians? Because every one of us Jesus tells every one of us in the Great Commission to go and make disciples of other people. We should be winning people to this philosophy and sharing with them the Bible and sharing with them a relationship with Christ, and we just haven't seen that. And even in families we see that, for example, if you look at a family, there's two adults and the average family has 1.94 children, so two kids. So the average family is four and we're seeing that even parents are not able to keep their kids in the Christian faith their own kids and so there's a decline going over the last 20 years. But it looks like there are indications that things are starting to turn. I've pulled a couple articles so they're really cool. This one I had not expected to see anywhere. It says spiritual awakening breaks out at Texas A&M University, which is the Corpus Christi branch. They've had 21 small group gatherings going at Texas A&M Corpus Christi and the small group gatherings they end up just and they're led by the students and the students are sharing Christ with other students. And so they have gotten ahold of a local church and there's a pastor there who just goes over periodically and takes the key and opens the church up so they can go in and do baptisms of all these students at Corpus Christi that are becoming Christians Thank you Moving over to the Christian faith out of secularism or whatever they were. So it's really good to see students actually winning other students to Christ and the fact that there are baptisms going on. And then I came across this article as well, as a military chaplain in Missouri Recently shared that he baptized more than a hundred and fifty US soldiers during basic training this summer. So Fort Leonard Wood, this one chaplain just this summer, he's led a hundred and fifty people to Christ. So I'm just seeing more and more articles like this, with here a little, there a little, and it's all adding up and it's all Becoming part of movement. I think that's a really, really healthy trend and every one of us, we all, ought to make the commitment to go disciple someone. If you could just make a commitment to lead one person a year to Christ, that would grow the faith and that would turn the direction of the nation. We're just fighting a secular America right now and that needs to change.

Tim Barton: 19:42
Well, and Dad to your point. I mean something that just to add a little context what you're saying, if we would focus on reaching the loss well, not just reaching the loss, which, again, to clarify this, is what you talk about a lot it's disipeling those we reach, because part of the problem when you're saying that, even for so many parents and so many families and there's there's people listening right now that probably have gone through the heartbreak of seeing their kids Reject the faith, and God is a god of choice and free will and he allows people to choose and reject him. Right very beginning, garden of Eden, adam and Eve, he allowed people to choose and reject him. I did one of the very strong Accounts from the gospels, examples of this that the father of the prodigal son and then and he leaves but that's the reason we so believe in the power of prayer and write that praying mom, the praying grandmother, the praying Dad and grandpa, where this prodigal son goes out and it's hard times and then nobody bails him out. He comes to his senses, he comes back home. So there are people we know that are going through heartbreak, that have had to navigate that and Unfortunately we hear these stories a lot when parents have sent their kids off to university and they get to university and they reject their faith, which is one of the many reasons we don't encourage Sending kids to college at this point, unless your kids have prayed and thank God's calling them to be a doctor, to be a lawyer, to be an engineer and, to be clear, there are maybe a dozen colleges we would kind of say, hey, you probably won't lose your faith here. Oh, yeah, whether it's it's somewhere like an Arizona Christian there's. There's a few that we actually and I'm saying that because we were just with Lynn Munsell not long ago the president of Arizona Christian, George Barna, is on staff there, so that's some very, very solid Christians who are there. But, yeah, I think there's probably a dozen universities we recommend. If you're going to college, these are great ones to go through and they're actually will encourage your kids to grow in their faith, not to reject and walk away from faith. With that being said, as we're talking about, if we would just focus on reaching those around us it's not just reaching them as far as introducing them to Jesus and then let's go find somebody else, Jesus, they go make disciples and it's a process of discipleship and that's what has been so lost in culture and really kind of the modern Church era. The modern church movement is we want to reach the loss and just tell everybody about Jesus. At this point, we don't just need to tell them about Jesus, we need to help disciple them and learning how to live like Jesus. How do we follow Jesus? Jesus said if you love me, keep my commands. Well, so what are the commands of Jesus? We need to keep those, because what we can show, we love him and he said that all men would know that we were his disciples. And he told us to his disciples right, but he told them, all men would know you're my disciples, by the way. You love one another. The first Corinthians 13 walks us through. What does love look like its patient? It's kind, it doesn't envy, doesn't boast, isn't proud, isn't rude, isn't self-seeking. Right, read first Corinthians 13. It lays us out all that. Again, just reiterating, as you're challenging people, that we need to focus on reaching those around us. I just want to remind people it's not just introducing him to Jesus, it's helping them learn who Jesus is, who he was, how do we follow him? How do we become a disciple? And it's a discipleship process. If we would focus on the discipleship, then let's go find somebody else, let's interzine the Lord, let's disciple them in. Discipleship Can take a couple years. Jesus Discipled right, the 12, and it was two to three years for all of them that he poured into them. And Then he went on and right said okay, guys, now you're in charge, now you go do everything I showed you. You go do. And it's a discipleship model, and Dad actually had a my stack as well about the chaplain from Missouri, a Logan lair, and Just incredible what we are seeing how God is moving. You mentioned on college campuses, in the military, there is no doubt that God is still on the move. In the midst of craziness, in the midst of crisis, it's very clear that God is still doing something. Another great, fun example it of people of faith Sharing some of their faith, and sometimes in strategic ways. But this headline says Miss American winner says having seven children makes her feel the most empowered. And this was great. Hannah Nealman delighted people across the country and I'm reading part of the article with a viral response to her question. She was asked when have you felt the most empowered? And Patrick contestants went all different directions, but she is the one who gave an incredible answer. She said I have felt this feeling seven times now as I bring these sacred souls to the earth. After I hold that newborn baby in my arms, the feeling of motherhood and bringing them into the earth is the most empowering feeling I have ever felt. And guys, we've talked about it on and off the air A lot of conversations about how some of the modern feminist movement has just so degraded the reality of the value of motherhood and the greatness of motherhood and to have the Miss American winner say that where she feels the most empowered is right. It's not having a job title, it's not running a company, it's not this argument of making more money than all the men, this equal pay whatever. It is Not some of these feminist movement arguments. It was saying no, being a mother's one of the greatest things ever and it really is one of the greatest things ever. If you study scripture, it's one of the most important things ever and actually for all of us. We would talk about the value of even our own moms and how they poured into us and the value of a Christian mom and what they do in the home. It's the reason that we also very much support the homeschool movement, knowing that value of having parents, porn the kids and help raise kids. But just so cool that on such a big stage, the Miss American winner, hannah, when asked this female empowerment questions, had me and a mom is one of the greatest things ever and I think that is really encouraging. As we've seen Roe versus Wade being struck down by the Supreme Court with that Dove decision, I think we're seeing a growing movement of people again, maybe even in kind of a public level, where people are coming back and saying hey guys, the value of motherhood, the value of being a parent, the value of bringing children into life is something that is overlooked and shouldn't be understated, and I think we're seeing a little bit of a restoration of that, which to me is very encouraging.

Rick Green: 25:56
Alright, guys, we're out of time for today. That's a lot of good news. We'll have a lot more for you next week. Be sure and check out our website, WallBuildersLive.com. You can look in the archives and go back to some other good news programs. Appreciate David and Tim doing the research and finding all these good stories. We miss these in the major media, right? They don't give you the good news, they only give you the bad and the ugly, and we love reporting on the good news so that you know what you do in the culture can make a difference. Make sure that you're getting active out there. Get on WallBuilders.com today. Get some good materials, get educated, equipped and inspired to go out and be the catalyst for restoring those biblical values and constitutional principles in your community. Thanks so much for listening. Today You've been listening to WallBuilders.