Standing Up in Your Circles For Christ - on Good News Friday

Rick Green: 0:12
Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. Glad to have you with us here on WallBuilders. We're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach and a former Texas legislator. Appreciate you. Joining us Also here with David and Tim Barton, as everybody knows, is America's premier historian. Tim Barton is a national speaker and pastor and president of Wallbuilders, and all three of us. You can find out more about us at our website, WallBuilders.com and WallBuildersLive.com Either of those sites. You can make that one-time or monthly contribution. Thanks for coming alongside us in that way. And lastly, be sure and join us on April 22nd Big groundbreaking for Patriot Academy. Going to be incredible. Lauren Boebert with us, John Rich, Tim Barton we've got Mark Meckler, just Lara Logan. There's going to be a ton of people there and we would love for you to be there. In fact, we want you to come to the groundbreaking, but also stay over and do your Constitutional Defense course. If you haven't done that with us yet, you need to. It's a great opportunity for you to learn handgun defense and constitutional knowledge at the same time and you get to be part of that first class on the Patriot Academy campus. We'll be doing them almost every week after that, but something about being in the inaugural class We'd love to have you with us. It's going to have a great time. Anyway, WallBuilders is an opportunity to help rebuild the walls. We're literally working to rebuild the foundations of America, to get the good stuff in, to solve the civic and biblical ignorance that got us in this mess by teaching civic and biblical literacy. We're glad that you're part of it. Hope that you will do that in your community as well. Become a Constitution coach, start teaching people these principles. Get your church to host a Biblical Citizenship class. So many different things that you can do, and it's always good to be a part of the solution and not just sit around and complain about the problems. Alright, David and Tim, time to dive into some good news. I know our listeners. If they're new and they haven't been with us for a whole week yet, they may be thinking we're calling this Good News Friday because it's well, you know, good Friday. But we do Good News Friday every Friday, and especially on Good Friday, and the whole idea is to bring good news from across the country, all kinds of stories out there that we can share where we are restoring biblical values in the culture. So what do you all want to start with on Good Friday for Good News Friday?

David Barton: 2:22
Well, there's so many good stories out there and I'm going to take one that we really hit a couple of times in the last few months and it's going back to New York City and Mayor Eric Adams and I mean this is I just keep getting more and more impressed with what he's doing. Certainly I don't agree with everything he's doing, because I tend to be conservative. He doesn't tend to be but my goodness, he is so open about putting God and Christ at the center of his life. He gives us testimony. He grew up in what is known as the Kojic Church, church of God and Christ. He's now in a non-denominational church, but he's assembled all these faith-based summits in New York City saying if we're going to solve our problems, we've got to get faith back in it. And he's even criticized in the schools. He says you know, we want our kids being strong and we've got this mental health problem going with their kids and if we can get faith back in, that's going to make a difference. He says we've got to introduce faith and wellness back into our families. He says I'm baffled that you talk about cannabis in schools but you can't talk about faith. I'm baffled. I'm baffled that we don't understand the importance of faith. I mean, this is the mayor of New York City and he sounded like a lot of, you know, red state mayors or red city mayors. And granted, I mean in New York City, you know, from a Texas standpoint, there's so many places where they're crazy. But when you start out with an acknowledgement of God and he gives his testimony on how God shifted his life and changed him and has dramatic he's had a dramatic conversion and he's talking about how we got to have prayer back in the public schools in New York City and he's talking about you got to identify as a Christian, I just think it is super, super good that you have a mayor in New York City that is going back and saying God's the solution, here's where you get your problems fixed. Go back to God. Man, if we can agree on starting point with God, we can talk about all sorts of other stuff and solve that later. But I'm so thrilled that he keeps doing this and he's getting beat up for it. You know, I think this is maybe the third time in two months. We talked about it and he gets beat up every time an arco comes out and he doubles down, and so I think that's really cool too, that that Mayor Adams is really doubling down and getting stronger the more they criticize and the more open he becomes about his faith. And hopefully we can all learn to do the same thing Get open about our faith and if we take criticism, double down and just keep doing it. But this is a great story out in New York City.

Rick Green: 4:48
Yeah, David, when I first saw that story I thought a lot about how many times over the years you've said and Tim you as well hey, it'd be great if we had faith people in both parties. You know we'd love to see Christians influential in both parties or have leaders of both parties get back to how it used to be, where I mean how many quotes of presidents that are Democrats, like Truman and FDR and others, where they talked about the importance of the Bible, they talked about faith. Wouldn't it be nice if we had that coming out of both parties again? You know, one of the largest, you know, Democrat officials in the country, largest city of a Democrat mayor and, like I said, David, definitely you know he's way liberal on a lot of stuff, but this is good for the country, wouldn't it be nice? Guys, we keep saying revival in the country. How about revival in the Democrat party? How would that be? Oh man.

Tim Barton: 5:34
Well, in a fairness, we probably could use revival in both parties.

David Barton: 5:37
Yes, yes you're right.

Tim Barton: 5:38
You're right, you know a lot of churches need some revivals inside their church. But, guys, one of the things I mean, Rick, you pointed out, we've talked for a long time about, wouldn't it be great if you have both political parties arguing for which one is more biblical or more godly, and recognizing, arguing their positions based on biblical truth? And what's great about having an individual like this and Dad you mentioned, I mean we certainly disagree with a vast majority of his political policy decisions, but the reality he's acknowledging faith is important because if we can't acknowledge there's a God, then you lose the fundamental basis of the even idea or possibility of morality. Where the founding fathers acknowledged that we, all these truths be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by their creator. If there is no God, he didn't create us, we don't have God-given rights that were given to us by our creator. There's a fundamental basis that starts with acknowledging God and just earlier this week, Dad, you and I had the opportunity to be down in Austin identifying with one of our good friends. We've actually had him on the program several times before. He's a Texas State Senator, phil King. He introduced a piece of legislation that was to put the 10 Commandments back up in public schools in Texas and this is something that largely because of Supreme Court decision last year with the Coach Kennedy decision. Who? Coach Kennedy was the football coach from Bermerton Washington who at the end of a football game he would go take a knee on the football field and he would just pray and thank God for opportunities, for freedom, for football, for his players, whatever came to mind, and the school told him no, he ends up getting fired because he wouldn't stop praying. And the Supreme Court, when they determined the school was wrong for firing him and he had to be reinstituted, had to get his job back. The Supreme Court acknowledged that the reason the school had taken that wrong position is because it was bad precedent from earlier courts. There was a case back in 1971, lemon v Kurtzman, where the Supreme Court said that if there's anything outwardly religious, basically it's not tolerated. What they said is you can only have a religious expression if it's not intended to be religious. If there's no religious component, then you're allowed to do that. Well, that's just. That is dumb. You don't do religious things to be anti-religious, right. That's really silly. But this was kind of their standard. That was overturned this last summer in the Coach Kennedy decision the US Supreme Court said that unequivocally they are removing Lemon. That was bad precedent. It's not going to be the way going forward. Because of that, since 1971, more than 7,300 cases and I think we've covered this on air before, but more than 7300 cases have been lost in this lemon decision where under a lemon, they said hey, you can't have nativity scenes up in public, you can't have prayer in school, you can't have prayer at graduations, you can't have prayer in city council meetings or school boards, you can't have 10 commandments displayed, et cetera. On they go, anything that would have a religious expression or religious display. They said you couldn't do and one of those things was displaying the 10 commandments. In 1980, there was a Supreme Court decision Stone v Graham where the Supreme Court said that you can't display a copy of the 10 commandments and they cited the lemon decision as the foundation, the precedent that was set to give them this position. Well, now that limit has been overturned, you actually arguably, legally, constitutionally, under modern interpretation because arguably constitutionally you always should have been able to display the 10 commandments. But under modern interpretation by our modern Supreme Court, they're back to acknowledging yeah, the 10 commandments fundamentally don't violate any constitutional principle for them to be displayed in public school. And so Senator Phil King from Texas Bride this legislation forward, saying we should actually have the 10 commandments back in school. We were able to go down there one of our good friends, matt Krause, who is now an attorney with First Liberty, that's Kelly Shackleford organization he was there. And so, Dad, you, me and Matt were all down there. Matt gave legal perspective, you gave a historic perspective, and I was able to give a lot of the what I thought was the basic common sense, moral perspective, the moral argument for the 10 commandments. And so, Dad, I feel like it's even worth acknowledging now, as we're talking about a Democrat mayor acknowledging God. Why this is great is because it helps us have a foundation. If we can get back to acknowledging there is a God and there is truth, there are morals, then there is hope for restoring some of these values in society. But let's go back. So, Dad, you were able to talk about some of the historic reasons for the 10 commandments. What was part of the argument you laid out, just so all the listeners will know cause? This is something, by the way, that we hope and pray this kind of legislation will be introduced in all 50 states, but let's back up. So, Dad, what is part of the historic precedent for this?

David Barton: 10:24
Well, I was able to show and it was really cool because we've talked before. We have so many original documents and we took a bunch of those down to Austin to show the legislators. This is not just our opinion, this is what happens, and one of the things is we took some of the very earliest educational books and leaders in the United States and show that they taught the 10 commandments as a foundational piece. The first textbook published in America in 1690, that first grade textbook had 43 questions on the 10 commandments. It's like what's the fifth commandment? What's the reason? Annex to the fifth commandment. What's forbidden in the fifth commandment? What's permitted in the fifth commandment? 43 questions for first graders. And then the famous McGuffey readers that sold hundreds of millions. They had the 10 commandments. And Noah Webster, all the books he did. His history of the United States has a section on the 10 commandments. So we went through all these textbooks. Then we showed how that the 10 commandments had been placed in schools. Back in the 1940s, the fraternal order of eagles not a religious group at all they put up 10,000 copies of the 10 commandments in school classrooms as a secular group, realizing, Tim, as you said though, the moral benefits of this thing. And then we talked about how the 10 commandments movie came out with Cecil B DeMille, and as people went to watch the movie in the theaters they got a brochure. When they walked in and said, hey, here's all the actors Charlton Heston and Yule Brenner, et cetera. But you need to know America's got 32 million laws, and that was back in 1956. And said, if we'd lived by the 10 commandments we wouldn't need 32 million laws. So that was the moral message being given to the public. And then we looked at when it was taken out of schools. And when it was taken out, Tim, you mentioned Stone v Graham. At that point we had had the 10 commandments constitutionally legal and permissible in schools for 191 consecutive years and suddenly the Supreme Court gets this brainy idea that we don't need them anymore 190,. You can't tell me they were unconstitutional, because usually in 191 years we just got a bunch of activists on the court who didn't want them. And, Tim, as you pointed out, it's now turning back the other way. And so, looking at Texas, we really think that's a good possibility. We may see that bell go forward.

Tim Barton: 12:36
Well, and also I want to follow up because after you were able to give some historic context, we started, matt, giving the legal perspective first, because if this is not legal, then it would be a uphill battle for them anyway. So we wanted them to know guys, this is totally legal for you to do now. You gave the historic precedent because part of overcoming some of the legal hurdles is if there's a historic precedent for it, well now, that's basically the only legal hurdle that arguably could come against it is if this is something that's never been done before and it's a brand new thing. No, this is something that's been around Posted Coffee to the Tinker Mammoth has been around, as you mentioned, for nearly 200 years in schools up until that Stoneveigh Graham case. But then I was able to present some of the moral component because we are seeing a rising generation that no longer knows what right and wrong is and really even how to determine what right and wrong is is evidence. We've seen so many shootings recently in the last couple of years and obviously the one in Nashville just recently where you had someone go in who obviously was confused on what was moral and right and wrong and obviously lots of issues. But the reason there's a level of irony in this is killing someone, murdering someone is a crime and actually, like what happened in Nashville, when you go in and you murdered all these children, that would be the death penalty in any state that has a death penalty right. That's the consequence. And here's the level of irony is you would criminalize somebody, you would arrest somebody, you'd put somebody in jail and maybe even you would give the death penalty to someone that was not allowed to see that killing someone was right, immoral. When they were a child they couldn't see a posted sign that said thou shalt not kill, even though they can go to jail for this and even be put to death for this. There's a level of irony in that. And the Tinker Mammoths were always the basis of morals in the civilized world, obviously in the western world. And John Adams pointed out that our constitution was only made for immoral and religious people. It was wholly inadequate to the government of any other. So if you don't have morals, our constitution won't work. Why? Because in America the idea, the whole experiment, was built on giving freedom to people. But if you have immoral people, then freedom doesn't work because all they do is immoral things and then you have all kinds of issues. Freedom only works with morality and the basis of morality is found in things like the Ten Commandments, the foundation of all law in the western hemisphere, the foundation of morals. So we were able to present this argument and this is something. Texas is the very first state to have this legislation brought before them again by our good friend Senator Phil King. Probably we'll have to get him on the program. Hopefully this is able to make it out of committee, make it to the floor and hopefully become law and Governor Abbott can sign it into law. We hope that is what happens and this is something that we want to see this trend happen all across the nation. But as we're even going back, I'm going to reconnect again as we go back to even Mayor Adams up in New York City. Part of the reason we're able to do some of this is when you have people that are acknowledging there is a God and acknowledge that faith is important and it's real. Well, then you can get to what is truth, where the rights and wrongs come from, because that is a foundation of faith and that's really why we need both sides of the aisle right, whether it's Democrats, republicans if we don't acknowledge God, if we don't acknowledge a basic set of moral values, our nation won't work. And that's why this really is exciting and encouraging on a Good News Friday that you have a Democrat mayor doubling down on faith as there's so much pressure against him saying, hey, don't be religious, separation, church date, whatever, and he says I'm not backing down. That is really encouraging Alright.

Rick Green: 16:14
Guys, we're going to take a quick break. We've got more good news coming at you. Stay with us folks. You're listening to WallBuilders. Have you noticed the vacuum of leadership in America? We're looking around for leaders of principle to step up, and too often no one is there. God is raising up a generation of young leaders with a passion for impacting the world around them. They're crying out for the mentorship and leadership training they need. Patriot Academy was created to meet that need. Patriot Academy graduates now serve in state capitals around America, in the halls of Congress and business, in the film industry, in the pulpit, in every area of the culture. They're leading effectively and impacting the world around them. Patriot Academy is now expanding across the nation, and now's your chance to experience this life-changing week that trains champions to change the world. Visit wwwpatriotacademycom for dates and locations. Our core program is still for young leaders 16 to 25 years old, but we also now have a citizen track for adults. So visit the website today to learn more. Help us fill the void of leadership in America. Join us in training champions to change the world at wwwpatriotacademycom. Welcome back to Walpenter's. Thanks for staying with us. It's Good News. Friday and Tim Barton's got our next piece of good news, tim.

Tim Barton: 17:36
Alright, guys, this one, as we've talked about already, it being Good Friday, there's several faith stories that we want to highlight. The one I picked is from Aaron. We're related to a gentleman named Aaron Brooks. Aaron Brooks is a national champion and wrestler. He was from Penn State. Earlier this year I guess this was really just a couple weeks ago he won the NCAA Championship title and it was for the 184 pound finals on Saturday, and afterwards he was interviewed and his interview was posted, and then it was pulled down because of all the backlash. Well, what happened is he's very outspoken as a Christian and on social media he posts Bible verses quite often, and so the person interviewing him was also a person of faith. And so here's part of the interview, part of what got him in trouble, but also is great that he had the courage and boldness to say this. So the interviewer says I know we share a strong faith. How does that help you on a night like tonight? Brooks, who often shares Bible verses on social media, then responds and says well, it's everything. Christ's resurrection is everything, not just his life, but his death and resurrection. You can only get that through him, the Holy Spirit, only through him. There's no false prophets. No Muhammad, no anyone else, only Jesus Christ himself. Now that's his opening line. He's being asked about the championship and how did you do this? And the faith play a part. And so he says look, only Jesus. That's all there is. It's his life, his death, the burial, the resurrection. It's only Jesus. And so then they continue the conversation. He says I'm blessed. God used me, he gives me this platform for this right here to exalt him. That's all it's for when I'm suffering, cutting weight away from family. It's all for him, it's all for his glory. Now, as you can imagine, there was a lot of backlash, there was a lot of pushback from this was Aaron ESPN? Espn covered this, or at least this interview initially, as it was posted, and so of course it gets pulled. And then you have all these different ESPN analysts and different athletes that begin commenting back about how ignorant this was and how dumb it was and how bigoted this was. That you would say Jesus is the only way which, just to clarify, aaron didn't come up with that notion. Jesus himself said that he was the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through him. So Jesus is the one that made the claim of exclusivity. Aaron's just repeating what Jesus said about himself. Nonetheless, he really no pun intended was getting crucified for this statement and he has been staying strong in the midst of this. And so you know, guys, maybe appropriate as we're looking at at Good Friday and recognizing what Jesus did on the cross. This is something that just a couple weeks ago, you had an NCAA champion, a wrestling champion, and openly acknowledged, not just that he was a Christian and not just that faith was important, but actually laid out some of the foundation of faith that it was. It's Christ, he's everything. His life is death, the barrel, the resurrection. There's no false prophets, right that. Whatever else, it's only Jesus, it's all through him. It's really encouraging to see an athlete when he has that kind of platform. He had right, this interview is going on ESPN and he is open about his faith, and not just again, not just about being a Christian, but even about what Jesus did, who he was, who he is, the only way to the Father. Exclusivity, guys. It was really encouraging to see that and now we can pray that God encourages him and blesses him and gives him strength and a lot of persecution because of this, but really great to see him standing strong in his faith.

Rick Green: 21:17
Alright, David, we've got time, for actually we might have time for two more Good News Friday stories. Let's say, Tim, you want to place a bet on how long David's Good News will be. Will you have time to do one? We're going to find out, David, what's your next piece of Good News?

David Barton: 21:29
Well, it's kind of on the same theme we've had all day. And as people stand as strong with their faith and you know, Tim, just what you're talking about the guy takes a beating. The stronger he is, the more he takes a beating. But let me go back to what Jesus said in Matthew 10. He said if you confess me before men, I'll confess you before the Father. It's really clear If you're silent about me, I'm going to be silent about you. So it's really in our this is a Christian duty to be firm in our faith and to share our faith. And Jesus said look, you're going to get persecution. If you're following me, it's going to happen. So if we're trying to avoid getting yelled at or getting slammed or whatever, that's not the way to go. You want more courage and more boldness. And this next story I've got deals with that. This actually came out of Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville and there is a student there, Maggie De Jong, and she's part of the art therapy program. Now, when you start getting into fine arts and art kind of stuff at most state universities, you're moving over on the fairly liberal side of the world Not that any area of a state university is very conservative, but when you get into sociology, psychology, art, those kinds of areas, they tend to be more liberal. And so she's part of all these art therapy classes and as part of the classes, the students are on all these discussion boards and they have all of these different discussions and whatnot. Well, she happens to be a conservative Christian and she shares her views, as everybody has shared their views, and so they talked about everything under the sun going on. They talked about religion and politics and critical race theory and COVID-19 regulations and censorship, and on and on and on it goes. And so they're all having these discussions on this board, back and forth on all these social media platforms going back and forth. And it's interesting that three of the students in the class with her got offended at the fact that she was sharing faith positions. She was talking about God, talking about religious positions, so she was just sharing her faith and they got offended at that. They went to the university and the university issued an order that said she cannot have any communication with those students at all. It's a total shutdown of her speech and she can't. It was called a no contact order. She can't have any contact, even indirect communications, with the other graduate students because they said her political viewpoints. When she expresses them, they consider that to be harassment and discrimination. So here you are at university level and you can't even share your view without getting the university to shut you down. Well, she didn't shut it down. She went and got help from the last defending freedom and last defending freedom went to the university and said no, no, no, you can't do this. The university said oh, you're right, we can't do that. And the university backed down, but a last defending freedom did to stop there. They said this is really egregious. You stepped into private communications and what she can and can't see under private communications. And so they went to court and the good news is the court said this is so egregious we're going to let her proceed with a lawsuit against the university because this is so out of bounds. And she stood for her faith and she was willing to fight for it. She's in court now and the court has said she can go forward with that lawsuit, suing the university for trying to limit her abilities to express her faith, even in social media posts. So great news is, again, courage. And with this comes all the problems. I mean, she had the lawsuit and she had the university after her. But you got to keep standing for what's right, and that's the good news. Friday for Good Friday is Jesus Christ wins, and if we'll just take the right side, this is going to turn out really good.

Rick Green: 25:13
Well, Tim, if you had placed a bet on whether or not there would be enough time left for you to do another good news, I don't know. Can you do one in 10 seconds, Are you?

Tim Barton: 25:21
that fast, I think. How do we cast lots? I'm not sure what I've gotten is robe, but yes, one thing I do want to say. So there are some great things the Founding Father said related to Christ's death, burial and resurrection. We did a social media video earlier this week on the Walbeth or their social media site, so it encouraged people to check that out to see some of the really cool faith connection. There is Obviously American history, but even the Founding Father is talking about the death, burial, resurrection of Christ. As we're getting into Easter weekend and really remembering and celebrating the victory we have through Christ and the incredible price he paid for us to love, that God showed for us All the things that we can celebrate, enjoy the emotions we can experience this weekend. But there is a great social media video out there giving some context for this. If people want to find that on the WallBuilders platforms.

Rick Green: 26:11
Well, as the Mercy Me song says, that's the best news ever. Right there, folks, that's the best good news we could share. What Tim just shared with you Hope you'll share it with your friends and family. Be sure and take a link to this show from today and email it out. Share it on your social media and we'll have links for that story that Tim has on our social media site as well today at our website. Thanks so much for listening. You've been listening to WallBuilders on Good News Friday.