Going Back to the Foundation – with Jerry Newcombe: Today we have Jerry Newcombe on to discuss his new film series, Foundation of American Liberty. We need to combat civic and biblical ignorance. If we don’t know the truth about our history, we will fall for the lies. The Left inundates us with false, re-written history. We need more truth to be known, and Jerry Newcombe is fighting that battle. Tune in today to find out more, and to learn how you can get this solid biblical truth for yourself and in your community.

Air Date: 08/14/2023

Guest: Jerry Newcombe

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

Providence Forum

Transcription:

Rick Green
Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture, it’s WallBuilders. We are taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. And we’re glad you’re here with us. My name is Rick Green. I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s constitution coach. Honored to be here with David and Tim Barton. Of course, David is America’s premier historian, I hope you have read some of his books, or seen some of his videos, if not check those out at WallBuilders.com today, wealth of information there. And then, of course, Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. And also a ton of great programs available there on the website. In fact, if you haven’t watched One Room Schoolhouse, you got to check that out there. There’s so many things that you can do. So if you want to just start you know, chipping away at it, then visit the website today, read a couple of articles, watch a couple of the videos, just start to get that education, I realized sometimes when you… if you’re new to this, if you’re kind of just discovering a love of history and a love of the Constitution and kind of trying to figure out what makes a society work well, what do I need to do as a citizen to do a better job of influencing my family and my neighbors and the folks in my church? If you’re just starting to do that, it can be overwhelming, and you’re going wow, you know, there’s a lot of stuff here, where do I start? Well, I highly recommend starting to listen, obviously to this radio program on a daily basis, we just give you 25-30 minute chunks every day for five days a week. That’s a fantastic place to start. But then also visit the website and just start perusing and then look for a topic that really captures your attention and seems like it would be interesting, check that out today. Go to WallBuildersLive.com for the radio site and WallBuilders.com for our regular site. Alright, David and Tim, we got Jerry Newcombe with us a little later, we’re going to be talking about some new video series that they’ve got coming out on education about the founding fathers and about our founding documents. And of course, we love that topic here and WallBuilders, it’s essential for a nation to get the good outputs, they got to get the good inputs, and we have to know what those good inputs are. We don’t even know how America became great in the first place, because we don’t teach civics anymore. And if we don’t know the formula, we can’t reproduce the formula, which means we can’t reproduce the good results of prosperity and liberty and all the things that we say that we want. So we love getting back to that founding formula.

David Barton
You know, it’s interesting that so many Americans today have built a lot of their view of America and of American history on sound bites that they’ve heard. And a good example that is literally just WallBuilders I mean, who we are as a group we, working with groups like American Journey experience, and Mercury One and Glenn Beck and others, we own 160,000 items from American history, actual items, things from Columbus all the way through the Bible that landed on the moon with Apollo 14 and everything in between you can think of. And it’s interesting that we’re characterized by groups on the left by Wikipedia, others as having a fake view of history that we make this stuff up. You know, I don’t know how you make it up when you own the actual stuff. And so that’s why in our books, we do so much footnoting. But a lot of people simply don’t even listen to what we have to say, because they’ve read this soundbite that says, oh, these guys have a wrong view of history. Well, it’s significant that when you go back and actually look at history and see what it says, it turns out that you know, what we’re putting out there is actually what happened. And the guys who reject that are the ones who have a wrong view. And I think we’ve shared this maybe once or twice before, but it’s been a while. But go back to there was a guy who challenged us. He was the state leader of the ACLU in that particular state. He was an attorney. And he read some of the religious stuff we had on the foundations of America. And it just so contradicted everything he had taught that he sent us this letter, and he made it really clear that he was going to expose us, he was going to embarrass us, he was going to show how wrong we were. And so he took the book original intent, which I don’t know, it’s got probably 1,500 footnotes in it. And we date them back to original documents. He went through that book looking to find stuff wrong. And we go through dozens of old court cases and what the Supreme Court said and the state court said and what the legislature said a state and federal level about faith and Christianity and religion in schools and public etc.. And at the end of it he actually wrote back and he was humble enough and honest enough to say, you know, he said, what you’ve got there, I’ve never heard and it’s irrefutable. It ended up that he became a Christian as a result of seeing all that history he had never seen before. And he ends up becoming a circuit judge. And so here’s this guy who was on the wrong side fighting religion publicly every chance he got because he is absolutely convinced our founding fathers were secular. What they did was found a secular nation and of course we have actual documents. We got the Founding Fathers own writings and so many of their publications and so many things from the Continental Congress and from the US Congress that say just the opposite. And when people don’t know that it’s easy to get led astray. And that’s where a whole lot of people are today, even people who believed that America has a religious heritage, they’re not really grounded in it the way they need to be. They can’t really defend it. If someone comes up to them and says, no, you don’t know what you’re talking about. America was founded as a secular nation. It’s hard for them to pull three or four tidbits out of history to prove otherwise. And so this is where knowing who we are as a people is so important. Mike Huckabee told me one time he said, you know, he said, If you don’t know your history is like having amnesia. You just kind of wander around, you don’t know who you are, you don’t know where you are. People kind of lead you around where they want you to go, and you’re not sure what you’re supposed to be doing. And America really does have amnesia in a lot of ways. And so that’s why Jerry Newcomb, who’s a good friend, he was working with D. James Kennedy, back in the day when D. James Kennedy was one of the pioneer voices, calling Americans back to a knowledge of their Christian heritage in history. He still is doing that. And so they’ve taken so much of that historical information they produced over the years, really great high quality stuff. They’re on national networks and do really good work. But they’ve come out with really kind of the foundations of freedom, kind of things, helping people understand who we are as a people, what we need to know about ourselves, helping us not have amnesia, helping us to have confidence, to be able to contend with those who want to rewrite history, and actually go back and show what history actually happen. It’s kind of like that ACLU attorney, once you find out who we are, it’ll turn you around and give you confidence and boldness and help you preserve what has made America great. So Jerry Newcombe. They’re doing great work. And now the new foundations of freedom series they have out, this is a really timely edition. Because of what’s going on in the culture and the open attacks that are happening against our history and heritage. It’s good for people to know who we are and who we’ve been, so that we can defend that with confidence.

Rick Green
Jerry Newcombe, our special guest, stay with us, folks, we’ll be right back on WallBuilders.

Tim Barton
This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. Many today wrongly claimed our founding fathers were largely atheists, agnostics and deist; certainly, some founders were less religious than others but even they were not irreligious. Consider Benjamin Franklin, definitely one of the least religious among them. Yet, when the delegates at the Constitutional Convention hit an impasse in their deliberations, it was Franklin who called them to prayer, invoking numerous scriptures to make his point. As he reminded them, “God governs in the affairs of men, and if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured in the sacred writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it, I firmly believe this.” So even the least religious of America’s founders urge public prayer and dependence on God. For more information about the faith and the founding fathers, go to WallBuilders.com .

Rick Green
Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. Our good friend Jerry Newcombe, back with us. Jerry excited about the foundation of American Liberty film series you guys were doing. Thanks for some time to chat about it today.

Jerry Newcombe
Sure, thank you for the opportunity.

Rick Green
Hay man, we say this often around here that the petri dish where bad government grows is civic and biblical ignorance. If we don’t know truth, if we don’t know our history, we fall for the lies. You guys are continuing the mission of D. James Kennedy to inform and get the truth out there in this new series that you’re doing. You’re doing it in parts and over Independence Day and July 4, you guys released some pieces of it. Catch us up on where you are, and what this seven part series is all about.

Jerry Newcombe
Sure, well, it’s called the foundation of American liberty. And it is a seven part series, one hour each of documentaries. And then there’s also additional commentary, bonus footage, at least, you know, in the DVDs of these programs. But basically the goal was to show how Christianity played a very pivotal role in the settling and then the founding of America. So the very first one is on the pilgrims. And the second one is called a city on a hill. And that gives an overview on the several different settlements after the pilgrims, notably the Puritans, and then after that we deal with the Beginning of Wisdom, showing how the Bible was pivotal in American education. It was, in order for children to be able to read the Bible for themselves, that public education or at least education for the masses, let’s put it that way, was implemented. That eventually led to public education and now today, unfortunately, children aren’t even allowed to, you know, learn about the Bible in the schools, which is totally out of step with our history. And by the way, education at the higher level, of course, was greatly influenced by Christianity. As you will know, all the great schools were started, the the colleges and universities for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith, to borrow a phrase from the Pilgrims in the Mayflower Compact. I mean, Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Princeton, in fact, the first and the only Ivy League school that was not explicitly founded for Christian purposes, was Cornell. And that’s, you know, in the 1840s. So, then another episode deals with the Road to Independence and shows the unknown connection between Christianity including the ministers, and the birth of America, for example, dealing with the Great Awakening, and also dealing with the ministers, the role of ministers played in the, you know, during the American war for independence, and we also have a whole episode on George Washington, and an episode on the declaration and another one on the Constitution,

Rick Green
Man, you guys, are basically giving people what they didn’t get in public school for sure. And maybe even most private schools today, but you’re basically giving them, you know, the history lessons that they need to educate themselves and their family. And if you know these stories, you influence the inputs better and get the good inputs instead of just putting the garbage in. And so this is vital for people to know and we’re always wanting people to grab more information, learn more information. So is it… so far, you’ve got four of the seven done?

Jerry Newcombe
No, actually, we have all seven of them done, but six of the seven exists on DVD format.

Rick Green
Oh, actually already released. Okay, gotcha.

Jerry Newcombe
Right. Right. Exactly. And ProvidenceForum.org that, I have the privilege to be the executive director of that, that was founded by Dr. Peter Lillback and he generously gave it to Coral Ridge ministries, D. James Kennedy ministry. So it’s actually a division of the ministry where I’ve been working by God’s grace for 38 years. But it’s very exciting to me. And by the way, Peter Lillback and I wrote a book about 15 years ago, on the fate of George Washington. It’s a real thick book, but it shows and documents beyond a reasonable doubt that George Washington was a devout 18th century Anglican, and all that that entails. He read the Bible regularly and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer in the Anglican tradition, which is a very godly book. In fact, if I remember one of the lines we put in that book, George Washington’s Sacred Fire, is that if you were to go into the average Christian bookstore today and look at the average Christian book, and this shows you this was written 15 years ago, because you don’t find these bookstores anymore, unfortunately, maybe online. And anyway, the 1662 book of common prayer… orthodox, small “o” than 95% of what you often find in these Christian bookstores today, where there’s so much pop psychology, unfortunately, you know, and that kind of thing…

Rick Green
Yeah, very little depth, and by the way, you’re right, Sacred Fire is big. I have a bookshelf where it balances out, it’s on one side of the bookshelf, and I have 42 other books on the other side of that, no I’m kidding but no you guys have done incredible work over the years. And actually I mean, that even, what you just touched on is important, we don’t have the depth to defend the faith or defend our faith’s influence on the country and why it does produce a better society for everybody, Christian or not, it produces a better culture. And that’s essentially the goal here is to get that, you know, that information and that depth, and that truth. And I would just say to the audience out there, and to anyone listening, I mean, this is… everyone has a responsibility to do this. And so here you have, I guess, you said it’s a total of seven hours, you got seven different videos an hour each, man just take, you know, do one night a week with the family. And over the course of seven weeks, you’re going to get a wealth of information.

Jerry Newcombe
Exactly. And at ProvidenceForum.org you know, we explain how you can find these, you know, DVDs or resources. And major portions of these programs are already online, which is really a great way to do it, for example, as we’ve been unrolling these or rolling them out. major portions have been showing on Truths That Transform, which is the… that’s the flagship television program of D. James Kennedy Ministries. And Dr. Robert J. Pacienza, who is now the senior pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. He’s the spokesman on the Coral Ridge program. And so I’m very excited about the whole series because I feel like a kid in a candy shop, you know, going out there and just talking with all these different leaders and so forth and so we’re just grateful for how it all worked out. But you know, at the end of the day, Rick, I think American can be summed up in two phrases. And this is what’s so neat, to simple phrases, self rule, under God. That’s what the founders gave us. That’s what the settlers of America, you know, ultimately sacrificed for. And this is a great legacy. And unfortunately, those on the left, don’t like either of those phrases. They want to take it away from us, take away self rule, and take away the under God part. And if you take away God, then you really take away the source of our rights. And in fact, in the special that we just released, you know, at July 4th time, was Endowed by Their Creator. We actually close with a little snippet from John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, where in his you know, his inaugural address, he says, that we need to stand for what our forebears stood for the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God. My good friend, Bill Federer, who’s one of the guests in these specials, he likes to say, hey, what the state giveth, the state can taketh away. And I think that’s absolutely true.

Rick Green
It’s so true. And I just think it’s interesting, you know, for you to end with JFK like that. I mean, I remember the first time I went to Arlington Cemetery, and over to the eternal flame, and you got all these quotes from him, and speeches and whatnot, chiseled in stone, and I’m sitting there reading all of it going, wow, I mean, he got it, he understood the importance of these things, and faith in our, in our foundation and in our country. And it just it man, I mean, just getting back to that, because you nailed it. I mean, it’s so you said, you know, self rule under God, if you take the under God part out the self rule thing turns into chaos. That’s essentially what Washington warned us about. And so even those that have kind of been in the middle, or even maybe, you know, pure libertarian, they want the self rule part, but they don’t want the under God part. I think the chaos in the culture right now is waking them up. And they’re going, okay, we missed something in the formula, and they’re hungry. So here in this series, they can figure out okay, what is the formula? What’s the secret sauce that made America work so well? And get back to those those foundational beliefs that are… I think that’s what you’re providing people.

Jerry Newcombe
Yeah. And in the episode A City On a Hill… it really starts with, actually with Ronald Reagan, where he’s talking about, you know, the that famous phrase until… but it begins really in Boston. And then it closes with William Penn and his experiment, William Penn, I think, is a very important man, when it comes to American freedom, because he basically set aside, you know, when he was given the opportunity to have all this land, he set aside this huge colony and what he called the Holy Experiment. And the idea was to build a colony, based on Christ’s golden rule, you know, Matthew 7:12, whatever you would want others to do to you, you do unto them. And in this holy experiment, people could be free to worship God in whatever particular denomination they chose. And, you know, they could worship Jesus this way, or worship him that way. And so what… and people wouldn’t be, you know, persecuted for their religious difference, which they then eventually extended to people of faith of different denominations… then of other religions, and then people have no faith. And as Bill Federer likes to say, well, the last ones in the boat are saying, hey, it’s too crowded in here, and they’re trying to throw off overboard. The first ones who started the whole thing, the Christians that started religious freedom. So it’s interesting how, when you look at the way the left responded and reacted to these recent Supreme Court decisions, which were wonderful decisions, many of these, you know, like, the religious liberty decisions and so forth. And the left was having such a cow they were even thinking in terms of, but we’ve got to somehow thwart this illegitimate court, supposedly, you know, they don’t like the ruling, so they call it an illegitimate court and so forth. And, you know, bottom line is these, you know, the justices were essentially going back to the Constitution, going back to as David Barton calls it Original Intent, you know his classic book is called that. And so, bottom line is, you know, the Founders intended that we would have this, you know, religious freedom, they did not intend America to be a second wasteland. They certainly did not want any one denomination to lord it over all the others, and nor do we want that. But we certainly need to realize that without God, we are, you know, we lose our liberties. As Patrick Henry put it, it is when a the people forget God, that tyrants forge there change.

Rick Green
Oh, that’s it. Ah, that’s a great summary, man. That’s a great way to end it. I mean, that’s so good. So good. Folks, you got to learn, you got to study, you got to be students of freedom. If we’re going to pass this thing on. ProvidenceForum.org ProvidenceForum.org is the website. Jerry Newcomb, God bless you, brother. Thanks for giving us some time today, man.

Jerry Newcombe
Thank you, Rick.

Rick Green
Stay with us, folks. We’ll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

Tim Barton
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 out 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 the story of a perfect nation of 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, WallBuilders.com, The American Story.

Rick Green
We’re back here on WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. Thanks to Jerry Newcombe. And this new project, we’ll have links at our website today so that you can go get access to these videos. Tim, of course we, you know, we do a lot of this stuff ourself as well. But I love having other people out there producing great content. Lord knows the left inundates people with the wrong history, right? And rewriting history. We need more and more of this in the hands of believers across America so that they can get those foundational beliefs David was talking about earlier.

Tim Barton
Yeah, there’s no doubt about it. And one of the things that most parents have discovered as their kids get older, there are times, whether it is in sports, whether it’s in church, and there is a Sunday school teacher or a youth pastor or somebody along the lines. But there’s usually those moments when… I was youth pastor for nine and a half years, I was a coach, a varsity coach of several different teams over the years for a lot of years. And there’s those moments when a parent will come to you. And they’ll say, you know, my child came home, my son or daughter came home. And they said, You told him this brand new thing. I’ve been telling them that for seven years, and they’re pretending like they heard it for the first time from you. The reality is that one of the reasons it’s so good to have friends and allies, as we are fighting to preserve truth, to teach truth, to preserve the Constitution is because at times, there’s just, there’s certain people that will help you understand it in a way that maybe you haven’t understood it before. And so this is certainly something that we are not at all insecure about people that want to do some of the things that we know God’s called us to do. Because we also know God hasn’t called us to run this race alone, we’ve just been called to run this race with perseverance, as we fight to do this. So I’m super encouraged that they are taking a step to try to make some of this available to people that are in their sphere of influence, people that certainly, many of the people they’ll reach are people that we wouldn’t reach. And this is where we would encourage all of our listeners, all the people out there right now, to find ways that you can grow in some of this area, find teachers and coaches that can help you in some of these areas. And certainly, we have things like Biblical Citizenship and Constitution Alive and the WallBuilders website. And there’s so many things that we have, that we would encourage people to learn from and go through. Dad, you mentioned Original Intent early on in this program, as kind of a foundational text. Yes, it is, it’s actually a pretty meaty text. There’s a lot of content in there, it’s not an easy read, if you have an easier read, go to the American Story. Nonetheless, there is so much content there. And it might be that somebody else’s voice helps more in this scenario. So we are definitely willing and happy to encourage people along these lines. And, you know, Dad, we were talking about it during the interview, some of the things he was pointing out that the Foundation of America, those two things that kind of set America apart. These are things that certainly are unique in America to a lot of extent, and things that should be remembered going forward.

David Barton
You know, those two landmarks, Tim, you mentioned, that of self rule and that of under God. The reason… I was just thinking just sitting there listening to you that I recall back when I rode horses a lot, and we would ride through the mountains and we would go into really rough and rugged areas. And we tried to go in where people hadn’t been essentially or we couldn’t tell they’d been there. And what you always had to do is you had to get a landmark on the horizon somewhere and ride toward that landmark, because as you’re weaving around trees and crossing creeks, and as you’re going around boulders, you kind of lose your direction at some point. And if you can’t look up and find the far distant peak and mountain, you kind of get off course, you can have a compass, but we generally went without compasses and just used land navigation. And those two distant peaks would be to look up and remember that everything is built around under God, and self rule. And so when you think even something like COVID, we should have gone under God and self rule, oh COVID, this is not self rule. The same thing, when we get the secular stuff, we say, wait a minute, under God, those are two landmarks to go back to time after time after time again, and if we do that, that’ll help us keep on track with what we need to do politically and educationally, philosophically, religiously, everything. Those are two good landmarks to keep in mind.

Rick Green
Alright folks, thanks for joining us today on the WallBuilders show, you can get more of our programming at our website, WallBuildersLive.com. There’s an archive section there if you enjoyed today, and you want to just go grab some of the previous programs from a few months back, you can listen to some good news Friday programs, foundations of freedom Thursdays, and then Monday through Wednesday we have great interviews just like we did today. And then also consider signing up as a Constitution Coach and hosting some of our classes in your home or in your living… you know, right there in your houses, I think is the best place to do it. But you can also do it at your church fellowship hall or local library or wherever you like. Just get people educated folks, we’ve all got a role to play in this. And if you want to be a Constitution Coach, we give that away to you for free. You can do that today at ConstitutionCoach.com . Thanks so much for listening. You’ve been listening to the WallBuilders show.