An American Revival Could Be On The Horizon And More Good News – Could there be an American revival on the horizon? Two students sue their schools after being punished for religious expression, survey shows there are over five million first time firearm purchases last year and more!

Air Date: 02/18/2022

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

 

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. Thanks for joining us today on WallBuilders Live. I’m Rick Green, America’s Constitution coach and a former Texas legislator. I’m here with David Barton. He’s America’s premier historian and our founder here at WallBuilders. Tim Barton is a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. And all three of us are looking forward to sharing with you a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective of all the hot topics of the day.

You can learn more at our website, wallbuilderslive.com. Wallbuilderslive.com, that’s the place where you can get archives the program, if you want to go back and pick up some of the shows you missed over the last few weeks or months, it’s all available there. And we encourage you to grab some of those links, share them with your friends and family. That’s how the program grows, when you recommend it, and you share it with folks, we greatly appreciate it. That makes you a force multiplier.

So not only are you learning these things, not only are you getting educated and inspired and making a difference in your community, but then you’re encouraging others to do the same. That’s the kind of multiplication that we need in order for this nation to be saved. We got to get more people involved, folks. I mean, I love the fact that everybody’s waking up over the last couple years and finally saying, whoa, whoa, can government actually run my life? Can it tell me when I can leave my house, when I can go to work or not? Can it inhibit my breathing and violate my bodily integrity with all these masks and healthcare decisions and all these things? Can government really do that?

So people are asking these questions because their rights have been violated, and they’re finally saying what is the proper role of government? Well, that’s what we talked about here on WallBuilders Live quite often, the proper role of government what it should be doing, what it shouldn’t be doing. In fact, we encourage you to take one of our Constitution classes. Go to biblicalcitizens.com today, and you can become one of our biblical citizenship coaches, hosting that class in your home or at your church. It’s free. Go there and get that and get started. You can be the catalyst for a restoration of biblical values and constitutional principles.

But we’re going to always bring you truth on this program. We just want to challenge you to help expand that truth. That also means making a donation, wallbuilderslive.com, your donation will help us reach more people, allow us to do more trainings for pastors and students and all these different things. Thanks for being a part of the solution.

And today, we’re in fact going to give you that perspective with a lot of good news. So it’s Good News Friday around here at WallBuilders. We love Fridays, getting a lot of good news for you. David and Tim have been compiling some of these stories of the major media doesn’t cover and then we want to share with you today to give you some encouragement, to show you that the system works when we work it. These principles of liberty are not dead. Alright, guys, let’s jump into some of that good news. David’s got the first piece of good news.

David:

You know, I want to back up to a program we did not long ago, we were talking about a spiritual renewal that happened in America back in the 70s. It was called the Jesus Movement, and it birth so many things, and it was just a big spiritual movement. And there’s evidence today that there’s another spiritual movement developing. We’ve seen this now for a few years. There’re stats starting to show that something has changed in the last two to three years. We’re seeing, for example, young people and the Gen Z or they’re starting to profess Christianity. There’s a growth there. We’ve seen in the last few years the percentage of Americans who read the Bible is on the increase.

So there’s some indications that maybe there’s some stuff coming. And I was talking to a friend I said, you know, when you look back at the 70s, and the movement back there, the Jesus Movement, it was really kind of like the lamb because Jesus is scribes Lion and a Lamb. And that was the Lamb thing. Everybody got around an acoustic guitar, we all held hands together, roasted marshmallows, oh, the fire and sang worship songs. And that was the Jesus Movement of the 70s.

But this Jesus Movement now is a little different. It’s more like the Lion, Jesus is the Lion rather than the Lamb. There’s a little more push here. There’s a lot more backbone here. There’s a lot more courage involved. There’s a lot more standing at a cost that’s involved. And I’ve got two stories here right off the bat that indicate this. And these are younger students, and both of them are high school students. And they both filed suit against their high schools for the high schools attacking or limiting their religious expression.

So these are young people who have such conviction about what they believe and such a belief in the constitutional system that we have that they’re actually taking on the entire school. And it’s just interesting. So, the first one is the young girl who wanted to start a prolife club, Students for Life Christine Hawkins. She wanted to start a chapter on her local high school campus. And so as she did that, the teachers attacked her for being a bigot. And they called her all sorts of names. And they first said yes, you can have the club and then they took the club away. Now it’s interesting. Here’s the other clubs that are approved on the campus.

So, the thanks that you have on the campus, you have the Young Democrats Club, that’s okay. The Conservation Club and Environmental Club, that’s okay. Black Student Union is okay. And the Gender and Sexual Alliance is okay. But a prolife club is not okay. And so the teachers went after her, and they call her misogynist and called her bigot. And so she just sued the school and good for her. I mean, she’s got beliefs and values that represent what most Americans believe. The numbers that are prolife in America are very much more than the pro-abortion side. And yet here is this position of schools that we’re trying to indoctrinate with a ‘wokeism’, and it doesn’t involve that this kind of life.

Tim:

And did you say she was a freshman in high school? Because my recollection from that story because I think I saw that story too when it came out, I think she was a freshman in high school. What’s remarkable about this is you’re talking about somebody who’s 14 or 15 years old if this is the freshman that I remember reading about…

David:

I believing it is.

Tim:

So you’re talking with someone who’s probably 14, 15, it’s possible she’s 16, but probably 14 or 15 years old. And not only is she courageous enough to stand up against this, but also, you have to know that her parents were largely going to be behind this and say, you know what, you need to stand up for what’s right. And this is one of the things that, guys, we have talked over and over and over about in the midst of this terrible COVID coronavirus were literal, right. It’s real virus, people died. There were some really negative things that happened. We actually know some people who passed away from this, some extended family. This was a real thing.

And yet, in the midst of a real tragedy in many situations, we have seen how God has worked to do so many good things from some of that, some of it exposing the educational system. But one of the things in the midst of the educational system, it’s also helped parents and students to become more courageous and stand up in the midst of the nonsense going on. Now, whether it be regarding mandates, but maybe in some of these cases, even just now because they are getting the idea that standing up for righteousness is a good thing, then when they see some of these nonsensical things coming down, they recognize you know what, somebody needs to stand up for this.

And so you have arguably a 14, 15 year old girl, parents, presumably behind her supporting this, people coming alongside as she is standing up. Guys, when you have 14 and 15 year olds doing this, it reminds me of Scripture where it tells us, right, a child shall lead them. There are some moments that we are seeing some really courageous kids standing up and saying things that arguably a lot of parents should have been saying, a lot of teachers and leaders should have been saying. When you have a teacher calling this girl a bigot, other teachers should have been standing up going, wait a second, no, that teacher needs to shut up, that teacher is wrong. And there should have been adults to be leaders in this situation.

But it’s really impressive to me, as we’re seeing some young people get the courage, the backbone, have the understanding, and then even get support around them as they’re courageously standing up. These are going to be people who are going to be major leaders in the future.

David:

And by the way, that was out of Indiana. That was out of a red state and what you would consider to be a largely rural kind of estate. And so here you have teachers that took the position. Exactly as you pointed, Tim, we said other teachers standing up and saying you guys are crazy. But the school did not allow her to have the club. So she’s in court now.

This one comes out of Michigan, and this one in Michigan, it’s a student there who had a private conversation with another student who had his beliefs, two Christians talking together. And as they’re talking together, then after they left school, they texted back and forth and others got involved in the conversation, other Christians as well. And they were talking about how that Jesus is the answer for sin. You have a relationship with God through Jesus, so a typical evangelical kind of position. And then they also shared look, our belief is their moral rights and wrongs. And homosexuality is a moral conduct that God does not approve in the Bible. And by the way, there’s only two genders, he made them male and females.

So they shared these biblical beliefs with each other in text messages off campus, and in private conversations on campus. And the school found out about these messages, and the school confronted them and went to the student. And the student is David Stanton said, why didn’t you self-report yourself for having these conversations? These are hurtful conversations. These are conversations that can damage anybody else who hears them. You should have self-reported. And so they suspended him for three days. And good for him, he’s taken the high school to federal court. So he’s got them in federal court.

This is typical free speech, not to mention the free exercise of religion. I mean, he really has two constitutional clauses here to stand on: one is his right to free speech, and the second is his right to express his religious beliefs. And so, good for him. Another young person in high school who’s willing to take on the entire system and clearly take on the administration, and by the way, if you think the schools are not indoctrination stations right now, you’re not reading the news. Maybe your school is not. But both of these examples come from rural parts of the country. These are not urban schools. These are not big inner city schools. These are country kind of schools. And this is what’s there in those schools. So good for these students for standing up, maybe the lion part of Christianity is starting to show back up now, it’s really good.

Rick:

Yeah, such good news, guys. And, of course, we all work with a lot of youth around the country, whether it’s Patriot academy or Leaders Academy or High Point or any of these different programs out there, and so we love getting to see literally biblical type characters, the JLs and the and the King David’s and the Shadrachs, and the ones that are willing to stand up against this nonsense that’s out there and the attack on our faith and the tyranny, frankly. So it’s really good to see that in the youth. Alright, let’s jump over to Tim to see what our next piece of good news is.

Tim:

Well, guys, this is a survey that was done by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the NSSF. And what they identified was that in 2021, there were at least 5.4 million new individuals who purchase a firearm for the first time. So, 5.4 million people who legally purchase a firearm, was their first time to purchase a firearm. And they go through some of this data, where the number is actually down from 2020. When in 2020, there was roughly 8.4 million first time gun owners going out legally purchasing these guns.

And you know, guys, we’ve talked for a long time about the Second Amendment. Of course, we encourage for anybody who has a gun, anybody who wants to get a firearm, you need to get firearm training. You need to make sure that you are adequately prepared, you know how to use it. And there are a lot of good training facilities out there. In fact, for most people, there will be a gun range where you live. Oftentimes, they have private training, they’ll do these gun ranges. Many times you have former military guys, veterans, this is one of the jobs now, they go and they do training. And so they do have oftentimes some high level training, some very good foundation, or where you can just get the basics of firearm operation, basic gun safety, how to use a holster, how to conceal, whatever the case might be. There’s all kinds of levels of training.

There’s some great individuals out there that do this. Tim Kennedy has Sheepdog Response, John Lovell with the Warrior Poet Society. There’s a lot of really good individuals who have really good training out there. But in the midst of this, guys, is just interesting that in this survey, they talk about how that for new gun owners, the number is actually a decrease from 2020. And it almost seems like kind of a negative, apologetic. But I’m just reading this going, wait a second, if you had 8.4 million new gun owners in 2020 and now you have 5.4 million new gun owners in 2021, at some point, you’re going to max out of how many new gun owners you can have of people who are interested in this.

And I think one of the things, again, going back to sometimes the positive things that we’ve seen come out of COVID is one of the tragedies of COVID was and actually even before COVID, but sometimes exasperated, in the midst of COVID, as you go back to some of these BLM riots, stuff that was going on where literally, people were going through cities unchecked destroying buildings, burning stuff down, where there was people being murdered in some of these what the media like to mostly reference as, “these peaceful protests”, this kind of nonsense was happening.

And for so many Americans, they realize, wow, this is crazy, maybe I should consider getting a firearm, a handgun, something of such a level so that we are prepared to defend ourselves. I think at some level, some of these riots help people recognize the biblical reality known as the depravity of man, the sinful human nature of man, that people are not basically good. And if you do not have a basic governing morality largely based on the Bible, or maybe entirely based on the Bible, if you don’t have a regenerated heart through the work of Jesus, right, if he’s not your Savior, and you haven’t become a new creation in Christ Jesus, and yeah, you’re going to have a lot of these issues, or you’re going to see a lot of these issues and culture.

And so, it just interesting seeing the survey of how many people are now recognizing the importance and necessity of firearms, which also largely means that these are people if they recognize the necessity of firearms, I would argue probably many of these people are going to become Second Amendment defenders or promoters on some level. They go through and identify that in 2020, 40% of first time firearm purchases were from women, in 2021, 33 of the first time firearm purchases were from women.

So, considering what we generally think of firearms, and who generally would carry a firearm, when you’re talking about 1/3 to, I mean, 40%, right, so two-fifths when you’re talking about that level of percentage of women who are going out and legally purchasing, because also keep in mind, right, this isn’t a scenario where a husband is going in buying a gun for his wife, because that would not be included in the women who are first time gun owners. These are actually women themselves showing up to legally purchase a firearm. They’ve never purchased a firearm or a gun before.

There are a lot of people in the nation who are now becoming awakened and aware of the reality of the Second Amendment. Something else, dad, is as we are seeing so many people now beginning to care more about some basic constitutional provisions, values, principles, and recognizing they need to be offended. There’s a growing number of people who recognize the necessity and importance of the Second Amendment and many who are now joining on the side of a firearm owner.

And so again, we would encourage everybody if you got a firearm, you need to find a place to go train to make sure you are adequately prepared to you know basic gun safety. We don’t need gun accidents, right, whether it be trigger discipline or understanding how to properly maintain a firearm or malfunction clearance. There’s a lot of basic things that individuals need to learn when it comes to firearms. There’s a lot of training facilities you can go to. But guys, to me, it’s very good news how many people are becoming first time gun owners and supporters of the Second Amendment.

Rick:

Very good news, and you mentioned all the ladies, I mean, that’s what we have found with our constitutional defense course that more women come out to train than men. I did not expect that at all. And a lot of times it’s the women dragging their husbands to train as well. Too often the guys think they don’t need it when we all actually do need it. So yeah, I absolutely encourage people, especially if you’re going to go buy the gun, get the training, whether you go somewhere local, whether you come to one of our constitutional defense courses that combines constitution and handgun defense, we’re looking at doing that around the country. We’ve only done it in one part of the country for the last four years, but we’re looking at doing that at different places around the country.

So, there’s a lot of opportunities for that and even just starting to watch videos online and starting to learn and get comfortable with those concepts, really, really important. And we call it having a combat mindset. It’s not being paranoid. It’s just being aware. It’s just being basically being that guy in Proverbs, that’s the wise person that perceives danger, and takes precautions, instead of being the fool that walked blindly on and suffers the consequences. And there’s a lot that every single one of us can do. So, really good news on the gun ownership.

Alright guys, we’re going to take a quick break. When we come back, we’ll dive into more good news when we return on WallBuilders Live.

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Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us on this Good News Friday. Next piece of good news is coming from David.

David:

Well, we’ve talked about the United Nations and how hostile they are to Israel. Israel has been there since 1948. And there are a number of resolutions a year that condemn Israel for whatever, and I mean the Arab nations, was it, 26, 27 Arab nations, and they will introduce all these resolutions against Israel and they get passed. And so, Israel just gets the dickens beat out of it every year at the UN.

And they finally got a resolution passed. And this is only the second time that Israel has ever had a resolution passed at the UN. So go back to 1948, so, we’re looking 73 years here, and this is the second time the UN has agreed with Israel on anything, which kind of tells you how twisted the UN is. And the resolution that Israel got pass was a resolution to combat Holocaust denial. Yeah, like, that’s a duh. But it’s amazing that it took something like that before the UN would agree with Israel on anything.

Now, we’ve seen Holocaust denial going in several ways. We’ve even seen people like Whoopi Goldberg that seems to be jumping into this thing that it’s Holocaust denial to some degree. So this is something that we’ve seen missing in colleges. We’ve talked in previous programs, how that even in Minnesota, they decided to take out any acknowledgement, the Holocaust from their history text. Several states have done that it’s going at a high rate now.

And so in the woke academic world, they don’t want to talk about the Holocaust, or they want to denied, or they want to say it wasn’t racial, it wasn’t about Jews, whatever. This is a big thing that it’s going across the world right now and America is really kind of the point of the spear in many ways. We’re joining into what other nations have been saying for decades. But now America is part of this. So the fact that Israel got its second resolution ever pass at the UN and the fact that it was the UN saying, hey, it is wrong to have Holocaust denial, that’s a piece of good news. And it’s fun to see Israel finally get another victory at the UN.

Rick:

Yeah, good news on the Israeli front. And Tim, where are you taking us for the next piece of good news?

Tim:

Well, guys, something that hopefully many people have heard about by this point was the analysis that came out from John Hopkins talking about the lockdown policies. There was a group of professors who got together and again, this is the analysis…

David:

Is John Hopkins, I mean, why does that matter? They’re very reputable. They’re not reputable, are they?

Tim:

It seems like in the medical field, they’re kind of a noted institution. It seems like. I’m no doctor. I have stated many holiday and expresses but anyway, John Hopkins…

David:

And by the way, I say this because John Hopkins really is the gold standard among research institutions. This is like the epitome of research. And when John Hopkins comes out with something, this is where everybody pays attention, because this is the premier research institution.

Tim:

Well, at least everybody should pay attention. I don’t know if they will. But this one, generally speaking, when it wasn’t something that most maybe as politically polarizing as COVID, they would have paid more attention. Nonetheless, dad, to your point, they do an excellent job. They’re noted very credible in what they do. And so there was a group of professors who got together, they did an analysis of studies. So this is scientifically backed on some level studies that have been done, and these studies were from Europe and the United States.

David:

And by the way, I think it was 146 study. So it’s not like taking two or three. I saw another article said 146 studies.

Tim:

It is a very large amount, right, whatever that specific number was. It’s a very large amount. So, it does increase the reliability of the conclusion based on the studies that they were able to look at. But it’s an analysis of the studies. And what their ultimate conclusion was that when you look at the lock downs of 2020, and 2020 is when so many lock downs were going into place really all over the world. And they said, if you look at the spring of 2020, when these lock downs started going into effect, and you analyze what consequence it had when it comes to number one, COVID, number two, they looked at other as social or economic issues along the way. But when it came to COVID, they identified that it only reduced COVID mortality by 0.2%, that we’re talking two tenths of 1% at this point.

Rick:

So that’s 0.2%, right, to see that number correctly?

Tim:

Yeah, this is 0.2, which is two-tenths of 1%. And we’re talking about COVID mortality. So not just even the people who got COVID or survived or people who were asymptomatic. We don’t even know who all said COVID. We’re talking about mortality. When you look at the death rates from people that had lockdowns, from nations that had lockdowns or states that had lockdowns or cities that had lockdowns, compared to the nation states or cities who did not have lockdowns, the difference was two-tenths of 1%, which they concluded was really negligible, that the lockdowns did not make any difference when it came to mortality. With that being said, they acknowledged it did make a very big difference in other areas.

David:

Yeah, and by the way, if this was polling, normally, in a poll is 3-5% margin of error. So you’re talking two-tenths of 1%, which I mean, that’s why they would say it’s negligible. Because anything else, you have a 3-5% sway that’s within the margin. And this is almost not even there at all.

Tim:

And what they concluded was that when these lockdowns went into effect, it imposed enormous economic and social costs where they could have been adopted, meaning different policies could have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.

So you have these professors from John Hopkins who analyze all the data that’s out there, arguably speaking, and from all the data they conclude, yeah, these lockdown policies aren’t any good, they really didn’t work. Because one of the things they concluded was there was so much of an emotional, physical and economic toll that was taken on the places that had locked down policies. We know that drug overdoses have gone through the roof.

Now part of that we also get talked about the fact that when you have in America, at least the US, when you have a southern border open and Fentanyl is coming across the southern border, and there’s so many overdoses for young adults, there’s major problems with that. But they go to the unemployment rate from these lockdown policies, that they go through a lot of things going on, the oppression rates.

So many of these, again, social economic issues, and they say 4.2%, is right 0.2% or two-tenths of 1%, that’s basically not any different from a lockdown to an open except the lockdown policies had such a negative consequence in other areas. They said this should be discarded. Nobody should ever do lockdown policies when a pandemic comes again because it did not have the desired effect. In fact, it had many negative consequences.

Guys, this is really good news because there are still places that are promoting this lockdown policies. And there’s now a really credible source with really good data that we can point to and say, right, the difference you might argue, well, we need more lockdowns, we need more mask mandates, we need more this and that and you’re like, wait a second, guys, let me point you this John Hopkins study and their analysis of all the studies that have been done and recognize these lockdown policies are not healthy and really not beneficial.

Rick:

And it really confirms what most people knew from a common sense perspective, right? There’s a reason we’ve never done this in history, literally, stopped earth so that we could slow the spread of a virus, especially one that had such a low mortality rate even in the first place. And so, definitely, I mean, people need to hold leaders accountable that made these horrible decisions. And we said from the beginning, this will be judged as the worst public peacetime public policy decisions in the history, certainly, of our nation and maybe of mankind because of everything you just said, Tim. I mean, the immeasurable cost the suicides, the addiction, the domestic abuse, the child psychological issues over the mask, and everything else, the paranoia that people feel.

I mean, I’m reading the stories where from teachers say the kids are not okay. They are literally afraid of killing other people just by living their life. It is a really, really bad thing what we’ve done. Even liberals like Barry Weiss said, this will be viewed by the next generation as a moral crime against the younger generation. So, really bad stuff that came out of the lockdowns. And what this study says is virtually no good. I mean, less than 1/5 of 1% is what we’re talking about here.

So man, I think it’s vital that people hear about what you just said, Tim, and that they hold the leaders accountable that made these decisions: the governors, the mayors, the president, everybody, the people behind the scenes. If you read Scott Atlas’s book, and what happened behind the scenes with Fauci and Burks just literally running roughshod over everybody and not allowing for dissent, I mean, there’s so many people to hold accountable for this. But this study is where it starts, because you got to first show people hey, this was not worth it, this was not a good decision to make and it was very, very, very costly.

So the good news is because of this study, people can wake up and there are other obviously tons of studies that they were looking at as well. So I’m seeing people that I didn’t think would ever waking up now and finally saying, oh, yeah, I think we got this one wrong, time to reverse course, and move back to sanity. I think I’ve posted that about 20 times in the last two weeks. Sanity is returning. It seems like sanity is returning. So, thanks for the good news today, guys. Lots of good stuff out there, and we’ll have more at our website wallbuilderslive.com. So go to the archives and check out some of those other Friday programs. Thanks for listening to WallBuilders Live.