Are We In a Revival? – At the ProFamily Legislators Conference, part 3

Are We In a Revival? –  At the ProFamily Legislators Conference: Today, we hear David Barton’s presentation at the ProFamily Legislators Conference about revival. How do we recognize revival? What does it mean to be in a revival? Could we be in a revival already? You will hear the historical perspective as we discuss previous revivals and what they looked like, and what they meant for the direction of the country.

Rick Green:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders, where we’re talking about 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 here with David and Tim Barton. Tim Barton, National Speaker and pastor and President of Wallbuilders. David Barton is the founder of Wallbuilders and America’s premier historian. You can learn more about all three of us at our website, WallBuildersLive.com . That’s the radio site. And then over at WallBuilders.com you can get all kinds of tools for yourself and your family and your church. Pick up that Biblical Citizenship course. Go through America’s Godly Heritage. Go through the American Heritage series, I mean there’s so many available things with kids books, you name it, even the Catechism on the Constitution. Lots of great tools. get that for yourself and your family. You will enjoy it. Check that out at WallBuilders.com . Okay, let’s jump right back in. Monday and Tuesday, both we were listening to David Barton speak at the Pro Family Legislators Conference, and today we get the final part of that program. Here’s David at the Pro Family Legislators Conference:

David Barton:

Change occurs slowly. If you go and look specifically with the first Great Awakening. How long did the first Great Awakening last? forty years? It was a forty year revival. We often think if we have a revival it’s going to get fixed and it’s going to be quick. And it’s going to be really nice to have people different that I work with. Now it’s forty year process. Take the second Great Awakening. Second Great Awakening went from 1801 to 1878, seventy seven years. You could have been born in 1802 died 1877, been seventy five years old. Lived your whole life in a revival, and you had no clue that everything you experience was in revival. Revivals are slow. They take time because it takes a while for people to change their thinking and then takes a while to change their behavior. And then takes a while for them to make that a regular part of what they do. So revivals even the turn of the century revival. See the urban renewal revivals and eighteen eighties through the nineteen tens. D. L Moody, Ira Sankey these kind of folks, and that’s thirty years even though that point in time. So revivals don’t happen quickly. And so we keep looking for measurements that we can measure that we’re in revival. Now it’s just little bitty degrees at a time. But again, I think we are in a revival. And I think I can prove that. So, revivals generally, they spanned decades. Now here’s an interesting point about revivals- Most people didn’t know they were in revival.Asked Whitfield he thought he was in revival, no indication he thought he was in a revival. Most of the time, Revivals are identified as revivals by historians. Long after they’re over, they look back, say, hey, let’s call that the first Great Awakening. It’s not what they call it back then. It’s what we call it after it’s over. So historically people don’t know they are in a revival until after it’s over. And then a later generation looks back and said, Wow, look at all the change that happened. Then you askedWhitfield how much change he saw in his day. It wasn’t all that much change because it happens so slowly he wasn’t noticing it. Matter of fact. I’ll show you what happened a little later. So historically, revival as a process, not an event. We’re not looking for a spot in time where things change. It’s something that takes a period of time. It is a process. So the fourth thing about a revival is change occurs slowly. The fifth thing about a revival is you have to use strategic incrementalism. And that seems like a strange phrase. But I’m going to give you two scriptures on this. When the children of Israel were going into the Promised Land. This is what they’ve been waiting for four hundred years. We finally get our own land. We can have our own place. As they are going in, God told them somethingin Exodus 23. And then in Deuteronomy 7, Moses repeats later, now that the way this works is when the first generation’s getting ready to go into the Promised land. They weren’t thinking right yet. Let’s just stop here. Let’s go do this for another forty years. I’ll get the young guys in, and they’ll do it right. Because you old guys are thinking crazy. And so that’s where everybody over the age of twenty wipes out and Moses is now told he’s not allowed to go on the promised land, of the book of Deuteronomy as a six week sermon. Deuteronomy is… Moses stops him on the plane. Just said, Okay, all you young guys, we were here forty years ago and we didn’t get it done. You’re going to have to get it done. And so the book of Deuteronomy is, Moses giving them the history of what happened and what’s been going on for forty years. He said, Here’s where we really screwed up forty years ago. Here’s where you’ve got to get it right. And so the book of Deuteronomy is the old man telling the next generation what you need to know to go in and take the promised land. And so they do. And there’s some really interesting things in the way they end up taking the promised land, But nonetheless. Two passages… What God tells the older generation that they don’t do, and then what? What Moses tells the younger generation repeating what God said. Here’s the two passages in Deuteronomy 7:22, Moses said, Now here’s the deal. Here’s what God told us the first time, It says, The Lord your God will drive out the enemy from before you. Little by little, You will not be allowed to eliminate them all at once. Notice what God told his people about how you’re going to do this. He says, I will drive them out before you. But it’s only going to be little by little. You will not be allowed to do it all at once. Now that’s counter intuitive, for what we hope revival does. We hope we have an immediate change. That it all gets easier. Things start going through… People agree with us ain’t the way it happens. You will not be allowed to eliminate them all at once. It’s only going to be little by little. But I will drive them out. I will get it done. But this out is going to happen. The way he told it originally,in Exodus 23to the first generation that didn’t do it this way, he says, I will not draw them out in a single year. Little by little, I will draw them out from for you. I will not. This is not going to happen fast. If you’re looking for quick solutions, this is not the way it works, he says. I will draw them out little by little. And so that’s the mentality you have to get. Okay, It’s not going to be a fast process. If I want this measure passed, I’m going to figure on a twelve year plan here to get it passed. I may not be in here at the time it’s done and you’re going to see a lot to legislate. I’m going to show in a minute whether they pass it on to subsequent law, legislators that they trained and they mentored. They didn’t get to do what they wanted done, but they understood it’s a process. Getting people to change and getting the right thing done often takes a long time. But that’s part of what they did. Thus, A fifth thing, strategic incrementalism. The six thing is transgenerational Let me explain this way, You go back to the children of Israel, and if you look in Judges 13, it’s a bad time in their history. They are oppressed by the Philistines. And I mean, they are not just under the thumb of the Philistines, they’re under the heel of the Philistines. They’re being ravaged. The rampages through the country, really, really bad. And so the people that cry out to God. And in the midst of this really tough oppression as I cry out to God. It’s interesting with all the bad stuff going on. We’re told in Judges 13 that God heard their prayers and He sent an answer.

Rick Green:

Okay folks, Quick break. We’ll be right back on WallBuilders

Rick Green:

Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. Let’s jump right back in with David Barton.

David Barton:

He sent an angel and the angel came in. Judges 13:5. The angel comes to earth. He looks up a guy named Manoa. He says, Manoa God has heard the prayer of his people. He is going to send an answer. He’s going to answer the prayers, people. You’re going to be delivered. Thank God finally deliverance. And then Manoa tells him how to. And the angel to as me know how it’s going to be done. Is is what’s going to happen. It’s your Wife’s going to get pregnant. And when that kid grows up, he’s going to be the national deliver. Time out! Wait. twenty years for the answer to my prayer. I thought you said God’s going to deliver us. Yeah, your wife’s going to get pregnant. When that kid grows up, he’ll be at the national deliverer. What happens is God often uses a new generation to get something done. We pray our hearts out. Okay, I’m going to send you an answer. And here’s a new generation. They’ll get it done for you. Well, they don’t get it done for you if don’t mention them and disciple them and get them thinking right and there… A new generation. When God’s going to do something, new generation’s always the number one. Target of the enemy. He got to get them thinking as goofy as they can because they’re going to… They’re the ones who God intended to be the solution. But man, we keep putting them in schools that twist their minds and get them thinking wrongly. If you haven’t seen, a month ago the LGBTQIA+ doing corporate training for woke corporations. They now point out that they have identified one hundred and fifty different genders. You have lost your mind. You know I’ll take out the ranch. You look at my cattle. There’s only two genders. We all know that it’s real simple, but we’ve put the next generation, which is the answer to our prayers, that we’ve been praying, at real risk. And so what happens is we have to understand that we’ve got a really woke next generation… because that’s what God’s given us to get stuff done. So and looking at that when you look at the Great Awakening. Remember the guys I mentioned earlier, Samuel Davies. He’s the guy out at the western valleys of Virginia when Whitfield came through therein 1750 andgot the revival started. Samuel Davies kept going for the next nineteen years. And it’s interesting that there was a kid that went to church faithfully with Samuel Davies and just set at his feet and learned. Samuel Davies poured into this kid, his mother, as they would go home after the service would say, Now what’d you hear from Reverend Davies today, and then talk about it. And the kid was a kid named Patrick Henry. It was just a country kid out in the Sticks. Patrick Henry says, I became a great orator from Samuel Davies. Samuel Davies, considered the greatest pulpit orator in American history. Patrick Henry’s probably greatest political orator we’ve ever had. And Patrick says I got it from Sam Davies. And so so you find that Sam Davies raised a guy in the next generation out in the country. Who would have thought a country kid from out in the sticks of Virginia would have any impact? That’s not abig mega church. Now that’s a little bit. And it was Polegreen church. Have fun place to go to out in Virginia and still see Polegreen Church where it was where Samuel Davies did his ministry and he mentored one little kid there. And that kid turns out to be a huge national leader. Huge impact. And what happened in the American Revolution? Gilbert Tennent was the guy in Philadelphia and the reason I started there. His local pastors kept going and he mentors a kid and this kid turns out to be a guy named Benjamin Rush. John Adams said of all our two hundred and fifty founding father. Of those you have three most notable are George Washington, Ben Franklin, Benjamin Rush. Unbelievable, the impact he had in America. We don’t know him today as the greatest physician. American history still called the father of American medicine. To this day we still use medical discoveries he found two hundred years ago. He started five universities. He started academic education for women. He’s called the father of public schools under the Constitution. He started the first abolition society. He ran the National Abolition movement. He started the Sunday School movement in America. He started the first Bible Society in America. He served in three different presidential administrations, and he was a director to the US mint, the treasurer. Just the guy did everything is just phenomenal What he did, and he was mentored in a little backwoods area of Philadelphia. But he’s the guy. And the same thing happened up in Boston. Big city, Sam Cooper was, revival broke out there. He kept going for another ten years. And there was a kid that he spent a lot of time with. Even took this kid on vacations with him. When Cooper would go on a trip, this young kid… and the young kid’s a guy named John Quincy Adams. John Quincy Adams had a huge impact as well. So they mentored the next generation. They took these kids under arm and they just kept them with them and took them around and did everything they did and let them see what they did. This is where revival comes as through the next generation.So we bust our tails, but we’re not going to have successful revival. We don’t get it passed on the next generation. And if we don’t preserve them from the attacks the enemy will throw against them because the enemy knows, like we know as the next generation. And that’s what God has always done to revive. Also, Millennials Gen Zs they got to be a target for us. We’ve got to find some. Mentor them, one on one kind of stuff. Just just find one. Get one on your staff that you can try and do something to pour into these kids and help them. Thank right, humble, think biblically. Help them see the perspective. They’ll become the next leaders. John Quincy Adams mentioned what happened with Samuel Cooper. This guy. He got an early start when the American Revolution starts. At eight years old he’s got his musket out with the Massachusetts minutemen Training with the minute men at the age of eight he goes on and he becomes… at the age of ten he becomes the secretary to his father, who is the ambassador of the diplomat to France. At ten! But at 14 years old Congress appoints him to the court of Catherine the Great in Russia. They send him as a diplomatic assistant to Russia. He becomes the official translator because at the age of 14 he can speak seven different languages. So they sent him to Russia to be the official translator for the American diplomat there. Francis Dana. Then when he’s sixteen years old, they put him in charge of helping arrange the peace treaty to end the American Revolution and Paris. So you got a ten year old, a 14 year old, a sixteen year old doing this? Yeah, absolutely. We trained people back then. And then you’ll also find the condition that he became a diplomat under George Washington. George Washington said, He’s the best foreign diplomat we have under John Adams. He’s remained a diplomat under Thomas Jefferson. Became a us senator under James Madison. He goes back to being a foreign diplomat, is actually appointed and confirmed to the U. S. Supreme Court, but turns it down. He becomes a secretary of State under James Monroe. Then he becomes president of The United States, sixth President. After his presidency he goes into the house of Representatives where he spends the next seventeen years in the House of Representatives and in the House of Representatives, he’s the only president to go from presidency to the House. Seventeen years he spent fighting slavery. He is known as the hellhound of slavery. He hated slavery, maybe more than anybody else at all. And he’s an old crotchety man. And here he’s one of the very few. Is either the first or second president to have a picture made. Does he look like a guy you want to spend your afternoon with? He is not a people person. He’s all about policy, all about getting stuff done. He’s one of the most brilliant political strategist I’ve ever seen. He would just love to give the opposition a hard time and he would lead up into what they thought was a trap and he would just spring it on them and make them look really stupid. He just had a lot of fun playing political games and he did it really well. So this guy, interestingly, he is one of the most famous men in America. You’re in the House of Representatives and used to be the President. And you ended the War of 1812 and you were appointed the Supreme Court. And so all the freshmen that come in. They all want to get to know this guy because he’s really famous. And so everybody kind of fall over most to hang around him. And as you can tell, he’s not a people person. That’s not what he does. He’s just not people person. Interestingly, there was a freshman that came in one year that for whatever reason he seemed to take some kind of attention on. And this guy got in his shadow and started learning from him and John Quincy Adams as great as anti slavery leader. He starts doing all this stuff and it’s not successful. But this kid watches and learns and it’s interesting that this kid was with him only 14 months. And then John Quincy Adams died and in the house chamber and was buried in. This kid… Young kid, young freshman, ends up being put on the funeral arrangement committee to arrange all the statefuneral for John Quincy… Ends up being right there with John Quincy Adams. And it is significant when you see what happened with John Quincy Adams. The kid that he had 14 months to mentor was Abraham Lincoln. This was the only session he had in Congress was 14 months with the old man. John Quincy Adams. And it’s interesting if you look at what happen. John Quincy Adams put something into that next generation. He poured into this young guy and it’s significant that you know, of course, Lincoln become President of the United States. And as such he does the Emancipation Proclamation and slavery eventually ends. Historians say that the Emancipation Proclamation, he learned that from John Quincy Adams. John Quincy Adams showed him what that needed to be. And John Quincy Adams came up with a three step plan to end slavery.John Quincy Adamscould never get the house to agree with his plan. Abraham Lincoln did. And Abraham Lincoln just implements a three step plan. So here’s a kid that got mentored by the old man of the house. And this kid in the next generation ends the evil that people have wanted ended for generations. But it’s this young generation kind of stuff. And so this is the end of the second Great Awakening. John Quincy Adams never got to see what he was working for his whole life. But he got to train the guy who did it. And that ends up helping the nation. So this is the part of the long term thing where you got to become transgenerational. And the final seven thing is is revivals require a lot of hard work. I want to go back to Whitfield for bit. Whitfield without his preaching, there’s no United States. Founding fathers agree on that. People like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Ben Franklin talked about the impact of Whitfield’s preaching on them, what it did in the First Congress, without Whitfield what he did there, there’s just no United States, now.

Rick Green:

Alright folks, Final break of the day. Stay with us. We’ll be right back on WallBuilders.

Rick Green:

Welcome back to WallBuilders. We’re going to the conclusion of David Barton’s presentation at the Pro Family Legislators Conference. Let’s jump right back in.

David Barton:

Originally about Whitfield, He had a whole lot of opposition, and nearly all of his opposition came from… The church does not come from the secular folks. If you read the criticisms of Whitfield, it’s from preachers. It’s not from secular guys. And his opposition was from the people that should have been his allies. And he gets his brains beaten in. We have records of church pastors telling their congregations, telling their parishioners- When Whitfield comes, you guys will get up in a tree over him and pee on him and defecate on him. That’s what the preachers are saying to do. This other preacher and they told him to go get rocks and pelt him while he’s preaching. Get potatoes and throw at him. Throw cabbages at him, throw rotten… This is what the church is doing to a Christian guy. Expect opposition to come more from your own allies, people who should be your allies, than your opponents. That’s a revival. Oh boy, I can’t wait for revival. While I think we’re there in a… I think we’re shooting each other plenty enough now. So opposition comes from a religious community and the church is often the last to get on board. You know what happened was that revival lasted for those forty years? About three fourths of the way through as the church gets on board and says, Hey, this must be from God, and they end up taking credit for it. Look what we did. We had a great awakening. No, you didn’t. You fought it for thirty years. You finally got on board in the last ten years of… Whitfield Who did it? And church, generally in most revivals takes credit for the revival when it’s nearly over, and that’s how long it takes them get on board. So don’t expect great support when you’re doing something really good for the Lord and you’re doing all the spiritual stuff you expect. Pastors come have your back. Doesn’t usually happen in a revival. Usually pastors don’t have your back on revival. They should, but they don’t. So they’re the last to get on board. He did eighteen thousand sermons and thirty four years. We talked about that earlier. Even then on horseback now what he was. He was a chaplain in Georgia and been Chaplin in Georgia. He got on his horse in Georgia, and he rode up to Maine. Maine was the northern part of Massachusetts at the time, but was not as one state was part of Massachusetts. So he rides from Georgia to Maine and he stops, horseback, and he carried, by the way, a portable pulpit with him. He brought it on the back of his horse, and he would stop and town after town, set that pulpit up. He’d get up in it. He preached sermon, go to the next town. So he rode on horseback from Georgia to Maine, preaching along the way. They turned around at Maine, road back to Georgia. Preaching along the way. Take a different route. When he got to Georgia, he rode back to Maine. Different route, preached along the way. When he got to Maine, he rode back to Georgia different route, preaching. He did seven trips from Georgia to Maine on horseback. Can you imagine how fun that was? You’re out and all kinds of weather. You’re out with all the dangers that go with highway robberies, ect. And just riding on… Same with Francis Asbury. Francis Asbury, The Second Great Awakening. This dude rode Three hundred thousand miles on horseback in America. Just in America. Three hundred thousand miles. Do you know how many years in horseback that is? It was not fun stuff, as this is really really hard work. All that they went through to do that. So eighty percent of Americans heard him because he was in that many communities in America. His preaching is what killed him literally. He ends up dying as a result. He’s buried in 1770. Last two years of his life. After he would preach, he would go off to the side and cough up a bunch of blood and spit up his guts and just really retch and then get on his horse, go to the next place and preach. It literally killed him. Ask him how much fun he had, ask him how much fun it was to get defecated on but by church people and get pounded by rocks and… But that wasn’t the deal. This is what God had him doing, and he ends up saving the whole nation, literally. We don’t have theUnited States without him and it was not a lot of fun. But that’s part of revival too. And so our mentality is what really allows for a rival to come. We have to get the right thinking done and if we’re looking for an easy ride, it’s just not going to happen. And revival’s characterized much hard work. Benjamin Rush said it this way, Who was a guy who is in the policy side of what was happening as a result of the revivals. He said to do good as the business of life. He says to enjoy rest is the happiness of Heaven. He says we pluck premature for forbidden fruit when we grasp at rest on the side of the grave. If you expect this to be fun and easy on the side, that’s when we get there. Right here, what we have to do is work. That’s what we do here. To do good to work is the business of life. To enjoy rest is the business of Heaven. We ain’t in heaven yet. So while we’re here, we got a lot of work to do. So requiring hard work. Let me run back to this real quick. Revival- Do we really want one? That’s the question, because it’s it’s us. A lot of hard work. Number one takes individual action. Number two, A willingness to disciples, find somebody and mentor somebody, disciple somebody else. Practical applications. The Bible. Make the Bible relevant for every bit of policy that goes on. This is a process, not an event. It is going to take awhile. We do it incrementally, look for small gains. It’s nice if you can get a big win. But look, the little wins, but little ones together make a big one. Transgenerational Again, the mentoring aspect and lots of hard work. That’s what revivals look like. Now, I do believe we’re in one and I think I see lots of evidence that we’re there. I think there’s a lot of attacks on our young people because this is a revival and that’s why they’re targeted more than they would be. Young people weren’t targeted like that in the forties or the thirties of the twenties. They’re targeted like that now because they’re the solution God has sent. So we really have to do what we can to protect that group and try to get their heads straighten out, etc. And a lot of us can be one on one because our schools sure ain’t doing it. And a lot of parents are not doing it now because they went through a bad education system where they don’t even think right. That’s all right. We can do this. So don’t worry about results. John Quincy Adams. In all the years he was in Congress, his motto was duty is ours, results are God’s. He never got done. The antislavery stuff he wanted to get do doesn’t matter. He worked his tail off to make it happen, and a young guy he trained got it done. So duty’s ours, results are God’s. Make that your motto. Just hang in there, keep doing it. I think things will change and will turn, but it’s not going to be fun along the way. But that’s why God chose you guys for this point in time. You could have been born any time. He had you born right now. He puts you right here for this spot, because that’s what he needs to get this revival done in America.

Rick Green:

Okay folks, you’ve been listening to David Barton speak at the Pro Family Legislators Conference. Have you joined us today for the first time? You can get the first two parts of this series at our website WallbuildersLive.com right there in the archive section. So it’s a three part series. It was one presentation at the Legislators Conference, but it took us three programs to get it all in this week. And just encourage you to share with your friends and family as we kick off the new year this first week of January. So again, check all that out at WallbuildersLive.com That was David Barton speaking at the Pro Family Legislators conference. Also a great time, as these legislative sessions are going to start up in the next few weeks. So let your legislator know about the conference and encourage them to go later in 2023! Thanks so much for listening! You been listening to Wallbuilders.