Biblical Citizenship In Modern America Course – Part 2 Of Week 1: Do you want to know how to resist tyranny and be a restorative force in our nation? If our country is headed in the wrong direction, who can best point us to the right direction? What are the principles that made America great? Does the Bible contain God’s Ways of nation-building? Did the Pilgrims leave us their blueprint from the Bible? Tune in to hear this timely message of Biblical Citizenship in Modern America!

Air Date: 06/07/2022

Guest: Kirk Cameron

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

Listen:

Download: Click Here

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.

Faith and the Culture

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live, where we’re talking about the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. If you were listening yesterday, then you know that all throughout this week we are doing Biblical Citizenship in Modern America.

That’s our new Constitution course, citizenship course. It’s a biblical worldview course that is being taught in living rooms and churches all over the nation. It has David Barton, Tim Barton, Kirk Cameron, Mat Staver, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Congressman Barry Loudermilk, David Harris, Jr., Carol Swain, Michelle Bachman, all these folks commenting on what it looks like to make sure that your society and your nation follows the biblical commands on how we should form a society and nation. So let’s jump right back in where we left off yesterday. This is Biblical Citizenship in Modern America.

Biblical Citizenship in Modern America

Kirk:

It counts right now. I mean, don’t you agree? I’m understanding now more than ever that the things our Founders told us, the things George Washington said all those inspiring words that it is up to a moral and faithful people to keep the republic and if the church doesn’t have the courage and the backbone required will lose it. And it kind of sounds like great words in a bit of a vacuum when we’ve always had such an abundance of liberty. But now in our country, we’re seeing the winds change.

And we’re realizing that our churches are shut down. And we’re in rebellion against the government for us to meet and sing to our God. These are different days. And now is the time I personally want to learn how to become a biblical citizen in modern America, because I’m on the team and I’m ready to fight to win for the sake of our kids, our grandkids and the Lord Jesus Christ. And I know you are too.

Rick:

Amen. Well, and even the way you said that, it’s like David Barton and I will say, hey, you know, we’re just fellow citizens, we’re sojourners learning together. That’s what I love about doing things like this. We get to sharpen each other’s counters, constantly learning from each other, and then taking it out there and sharing it with your friends and family.

You’re going to have so many aha moments as we go through this. In fact, in a lot of the videos, I’m sitting there with David Barton, and he goes off on something I’ve never heard of before and I’m the one sitting there in shock, or worse yet, he gives me some tests from third graders and I can’t even spell the words, let alone answer and he’s going. That’s how far we’ve gone down in our education.

This is NOT a Boring Class

So I’m usually the guinea pig with Barton, but we have a great time. It is fun to learn. This is not like, I don’t know about your high school government class. But my optimum learning position in high school when I was in government, our history was this. I mean, I slept, I drilled on the desk, it was boring, I didn’t learn anything.

This course is not going to be like that. We are going to have fun, it’s going to be educated, it’s going to be inspiring. And probably most important, at the end, we’re going to have action steps, things you can actually do…

Kirk:

See, that’s what I’m looking for. I’m looking for action steps. Because I think a lot of people just by virtue of the fact that people are here, people are watching taking this class, and myself included, we’re in, we’re already on board with the idea that we need to be the force, the resistance against tyranny. What we want to know is, what do I do? What do I do?

Guest:

You know, it’s funny, because within the human nature is the desire to do. But if you don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing, then you’re not going to get the fulfillment out of it. But we have a great, great privilege in this nation where we know what biblical citizenship is, we know what we’ve been given.

Because look, we are living in the greatest experiment the world has ever known. But we have to protect that and to protect it would be to share it with others, get others on board, if you would.

Why Every Citizen Should Pay Attention

Rick:

Let’s start with why every citizen should pay attention. You know, you’re an actor, okay, what made you think I want to pay more attention to history and government and being a citizen, what caught what was the big shift for you there?

Kirk:

You want me to be honest? It was my kids. I wasn’t interested prior to having children. Life is great, things are cruising along, I live here in sunny California. We got the beach. We’ve got the mountains. You know, I wasn’t in between jobs for a good chunk of time, and then you have kids and you start to realize that they’re going to grow up in a world that is looking like it’s heading in the wrong direction.

And when economists and pastors and politicians are telling you that it’s only a matter of time before it gets worse and worse, and there’s nothing ultimately that we can do to change it, and there’s those who have that fatalistic view even of the Scriptures that the whole thing is going down the drain, there’s nothing we can do, I’m like, really, I’m going to tell my kids that kids, the best days are behind us and you guys have really got a bad deal coming, but I’m going to be raptured out of here and I hope you guys…

Rick:

The four-year-old is bawling at the dining room table.

Kirk:

I’m like really, is that really the message that Christians have told their children for thousands of years? And then I went back, and I began learning from my friend, Dr. Marshall Foster, and David Barton, and Rick Green that hundreds of years ago, thousands of years ago, Christians had a very different perspective on the future. I mean, think about it, 1,000 years ago, 1,500 years ago, things were much, much worse for you as a Christian.

Based on Principles

I mean, you’ve got kings ruling your kingdom that declare themselves to be God on earth. They have complete tyrannical control over the people. The economy’s broke. There’s nothing like what we have today.

If ever, there was a time that they thought the world was over, it would have been 1,000 years ago. Yet, we have pilgrims who said, wait a minute, we’ve got a Bible. And my Bible says that all authority was given to Jesus Christ, both in heaven and on earth.

They said, let’s take these principles, he promises to be with us and let’s go build a new world. We think the gospel is going to overtake sin, and we’re going to find that blessing is going to come as far as the curse has affected the world. And, I’m thinking yeah, that’s the kind of Christian I want to be.

Rick:

Alright, friends, got to interrupt here, we’re going to take a quick break. What you’re listening to is Biblical Citizenship in Modern America. It is a free course. It’s an eight week course. You can get it at biblicalcitizens.com today and become a coach. Host it at your church, in your living room.

We’re bringing it to you all throughout this week, actually, so five separate programs this week on WallBuilders Live, and we’ll be able to squeeze in week one and week two. There are eight weeks total, but you’re going to hear some fantastic presentations, even just during these first two weeks. So let’s take a quick break, we’ll be right back on WallBuilders Live.

The American Story

Hey, guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called The American Story. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that’s just not known or not told today. And we would say very providentially, in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil and everything in America was built off slavery.

Which is certainly not true or things like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not the statement, Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we’re against everything that America was built on and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There’s so many things attacking America.

Well, is America worth defending? What is the true story of America? We actually have written and told that story, starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln, we tell the story of America not as a story of a perfect nation or a perfect people, but the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It’s a story you want to check out wallbuilders.com The American Story.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us today. We are listening to Biblical Citizenship in Modern America. We’re going to dive right back in where we left off before the break.

Launching Freedom

Kirk:

I want to be the optimistic, positive Christian that believes that greater is He who’s in me and you and my kids, then he who is in the world, and of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end.

Rick:

Amen. That is a viewpoint that is so needed right now. Because even now when people look around and they get depressed about what’s happening, you’re going wait a minute, if we were in 1863, it would be a whole lot worse than what we’re dealing with right now. Right? If we were in their situation, far worse, but we were…

I mean, is it fair to say we’re spoiled? I mean, really we’ve enjoyed freedom so much for so long and we haven’t had to pay the price for it.

But now all of a sudden, when we start to experience some little bit of tyranny, we almost become like snowflakes and want to run to our safe spaces. Instead of saying, hey, let’s learn, how can we win, how can we be like those pilgrims that came over and went through so much to try to launch freedom?

Kirk:

That’s right. One of the things that you and other historians have taught me is that the pilgrims came over and they landed in a wilderness with nothing but some Bibles and some chickens. And they built the template for the greatest country in the history of the earth. We are here in a virtual paradise in California, United States, the greatest country in the world.

Precious Liberty

We were born into this, many of us, with churches on every corner and everything else, and we’re letting it all fall through our fingers. So we have a different mindset than they had. I mean, they fought for liberty, we’re fighting from liberty, and we’re just watching it go afraid of those who are just writing the narrative before us.

But we’ve got a book that already wrote the story long before they showed up. And it says that Jesus wins.

Rick:

That’s right. Amen. Amen.

Kirk:

Now , I sound like I’m on board with the whole, like I got it all understood, but I’ll tell you what, I don’t. I don’t understand the steps and the strategy for the how-to for everyday citizens like you and me. I get voting, and we need to continue to do a better job at that. But I also understand that we got to get more involved in the things that those quotes told us, education and law and government and arts and entertainment and medicine and military and everything.

Rick:

Well, before we get to the action steps, let’s lay a good foundation of what the principles are that will produce that and then we’ll talk about how to do those action steps. And that was you went on a journey, really, with your movie, Monumental, and you rediscover the secret sauce. I mean, you went back and found the formula that was not in 1776, 150 years before that.

Whose Fault Is It?

Kirk:

That’s right.

Rick:

Before you go to the Monumental itself, tell us what surprised you most and then we’re going to take a quick break, we’re going to come back and get the whole story. But I’m wondering if there was one thing out of all, because you discovered a lot, and the movie is fantastic. We want to recommend it. But what was your number one shock?

Kirk:

I think my number one shock as I went to retrace the escape route of the pilgrims, because my idea was, if our country is headed in the wrong direction, who can best point us in the right direction? Well, the right blames the left, the left blames the right; the rich blame the poor, the poor point to the rich as the ones causing the problems.

The church points to Hollywood for corrupting the world and the media points to the church as the cause of all the problems and wars in the world. And I think with everybody playing the blame game, who can give us the right answer?

Rick:

That was almost a Johnny Cash song, the one on the right blames the one in the middle… Anyway, I’m sorry, go ahead. It goes like where did that from?

The Recipe

Kirk:

Now I’m thinking of all my favorite Johnny Cash song, sorry. So, I thought, well, maybe it’s as simple as we just forgot what made us such a great nation in the first place. They were people who basically had a recipe for liberty and justice for all. And, they didn’t have cell phones or the internet.

The Pilgrims didn’t have all these things. If only I could talk to them. Well, you know, I didn’t have a DeLorean and couldn’t go back like Marty McFly and visit them. So, I did the next best thing.

And, I went to England and began retracing the escape route of the separatists, the pilgrims, as they call themselves.
They escaped to Holland, where they spent 12 years with their pastor John Robinson, who taught them these biblical nation building techniques found in the scriptures. Those are the things that they tucked away in their hearts and in their mind and brought over on the Mayflower to the New World, and they began living them out.

And, what surprised me the most was that the pilgrims were not just these, oh, I don’t know, in fifth grade I have this picture that I can just see even right now in my mind of these people and grab clothes with belt buckles on their shoes, holding turkey guns and these funny hats, and they were people who were just running from a king because they wanted religious liberty.

I learned that these were the radical free thinking “biblicysts”, who had a biblical worldview and understood that even the government was under the authority of God, and if he was abusing his power, that they needed to do something about that, because Jesus came to set captives free, and came to give liberty, both internally from sin and externally from tyrants.

Twelve Years

And so they risked everything to come across an ocean and land in a wilderness in the winter so that they could in essence, lay their faces down in the snow, and die so that their children could use their backs as stepping stones to get to a land of promise and liberty. And that’s the kind of Christian I want to be a man.

Rick:

Amen. So what you’re saying is they didn’t just sit around and complain about whatever was happening with the government, they actually took action? And I always missed that very important point, 12 years of study basically, 12 years of getting ready. We always want the solution next month, you know, right now, immediate gratification, 12 years of preparing themselves before they even came.

Kirk:

That’s right, and they were learning the principles from their pastor, okay. So these are nation building, government principles, political principles, if you will, from their pastor. And that told me that wow, pastors have sure come a long way. Most pastors won’t touch politics with a 10 foot pole. But these are the things I have to discuss with my children.

These are the things on social media and in the news that really get us riled up. And if there’s anyone I want to hear about this stuff from, it’s from the man of God who has been given wisdom in the pulpit to educate us about how to see them through the lens of the Scriptures. And that’s what I love about the pilgrims.

A Deep Dive

Rick:

I love it. Let’s take a deep dive, let’s go into those principles and what they actually laid as our foundation. We’re going to take a quick break, when we come back, Kirk Cameron’s going to explain what he learned from Monumental and what the pilgrims did to launch this freedom on this content. We’ll be back on Biblical Citizenship.

Rick:

Got to take a quick break, folks, stay with us. We’re going to take a quick break and we’ll be right back and we’ll jump right back into Biblical Citizenship in Modern America.

Patriot Academy

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 and 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 Patriot academy.com 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 adult, 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 Patriotacademy.com

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us today. We have been sharing Biblical Citizenship in Modern America, our new constitution citizenship, biblical citizenship course that you can get right now at biblicalcitizens.com. It’s entirely free. You can sign up for free. You can host it for free, and invite your friends and family to join you. Let’s jump right back in, this is Biblical Citizenship in Modern America.

The Pilgrims Must’ve Known

Kirk:

Welcome back to Biblical Citizenship in Modern America. My name is Kirk Cameron. We were just talking about the journey that I took, retracing the escape route of the pilgrims from England to Holland, where they spent 12 years with their pastor John Robinson. He taught them the nation building techniques in the Bible, so that they could go and establish a new colony, a new society that would bring heavens principles to earth.

And, these principles, interestingly, were the same principles that were used in the ancient Hebrew republic under the leadership of Moses. They apply to us today, and they bring blessing to us today.

So continuing this journey, I followed them to Massachusetts, that’s ultimately where they come to Plymouth and that’s where we know of Plymouth Rock. But I discovered that there was something else that they left for us and it was a marker. They left for us an instruction manual for how to create liberty and preserve liberty.

It was almost as though the pilgrims knew that man’s heart was selfish enough and prideful enough to eventually drift from the essential principles, and that we would need someone to pull us back, almost as though we would throw the instruction manual out the window, like Rick said, and we would need someone to give us another one.

I discovered that they left for us a giant granite monument in the middle of a forest hidden in a place where most people don’t even know it’s there. It’s called the National Monument to the Forefathers. It is the largest granite monument in America and it spells out the pilgrims’ secret sauce recipe for how to build and sustain a free and just society under the Word of God. And most people have never even heard of it.

The National Monument to Our Forefathers

I’ve actually created a replica of this monument. It’s the only one in the world that I know of that is detailed like this. In fact, I hired the best sculptors in the world. This is the Wetter Workshop, the ones who did all the sculpting for the sculptures and Lord of the Rings and Avatar and King Kong. And they’ve replicated this in great detail and I want to show you this incredibly important and hidden monument that is sitting on a hill right now, tucked behind a forest of trees in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

This monument spells out the recipe for liberty. This is the instructions on how to build a free and just and prosperous nation like ours. Now, just to give you some perspective, if you were to stand next to the real monument, you would at six feet tall, come up to right here. So you would come up to this line right here if you were standing there. And by the way, I encourage everyone to make a pilgrimage to Plymouth, Massachusetts, and go to the real National Monument of the Forefathers.

So here it is, the largest granite monument in America, our pilgrim forefathers and foremothers felt that this monument was so important that they inscribe these principles, they carved it into granite so that we would never forget, and never lose our way. How many of you think that we are forgetting our essential principles and our first love for this country and its principles, and we are losing our way? That’s right. We definitely are, this is our way back home. And I want to decode and decipher this for you.

Now notice, there’s a lot of detail here. But the most obvious features are the five human figures around this monument. Now, the largest one is also the one at the top. It’s also at the very center, the very spine, the very backbone and core of this monument. Now, I’m going to read for you at the very front, this is the National Monument to the Forefathers. This is erected by a grateful people in remembrance of their labors, sacrifice, and sufferings for the cause of civil and religious liberty.

So they made this for the purpose of liberty. What does liberty mean? Freedom. Freedom. That’s what Jesus came to bring us freedom, and eternal life. And it’s two kinds of freedom that they were all about. It was both internal freedom, that’s religious freedom, the freedom from sin, the freedom to worship God; and external freedom, civil freedom, the freedom from governments…

Not Just Any Faith

…that tell you that you can’t have your friends come over to your house at Christmas time and sing Christmas carols, freedom from a government that tells you how to live, how to die, where you’ll work, what you eat, what you wear, what kind of music you can and can’t listen to. This is the kind of tyranny that they wanted to be set free from. And this gives you the instructions on how to obtain that. So back to the top of the monument.

This largest figure is what they believed was primary, most important. Her name is written right here, and it says, Faith. Faith. We know that George Washington told us that. 150 years later, we find that faith is at the very heart and soul of this American Republic. And our forefathers and foremothers knew this.

And it’s not just any faith, notice the details. Faith is pointing to the one true God of heaven. She also has a star on her forehead, representing wisdom. This woman “Faith” is also holding a book. And it’s not just any book, it’s the Bible. Its pages are being blown open as though by the wind, the wind of the Spirit of God.

Notice that this isn’t just faith in any random deity. This is faith in the one true God of heaven, and faith in that God’s Word, the Bible. And that Bible is also very historic in that it is the Geneva Bible. The pilgrims brought over with them the first English translated Bible that contained the chapter and verse numbers in the text. So literally, the first time that John 3:16 could be found by going to chapter 3:16, was in that Bible carried over by the pilgrims on the Mayflower, and they believe that this faith in God in His Word must be reasoned toward every aspect of life.

We’re going to reason about how to be a family through the Word of God … reason about how to have government through the Word of God. We are all going to think about how to educate our children through the Word of God. Her feet are firmly planted on a rock, and that rock is Plymouth Rock.

A Biblical Worldview is Essential

Faith is primary. Faith would then be manifest in several key ways to have a healthy culture. And the first way it was manifested you can see right down here at her feet, it says morality. And morality is a woman seated in a chair, her eyes happened to be closed. Some of the other figures have their eyes open, they’re looking out, but morality is looking inward, because morality is an internal quality. She’s holding the Ten Commandments in her left hand.

She’s holding the scroll of Revelation in her right hand. They didn’t believe that morality was a moral standard imposed by a king through external rules. They believe that morality was an internal quality that began with a transformation of your heart. How do I know that? Look to her left, under her chair, it says evangelist. Why would it say evangelist in this statue that is on a hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts all about civil liberty?

Biblical Citizenship In Modern America Course – Part 2 Of Week 1

Rick:

Alright, friends, we’re out of time for today, we will pick up where we left off. We’ll jump right back in tomorrow. So it’s all throughout this week, all five days this week, we are bringing you Biblical Citizenship in Modern America the first two weeks. We’re cramming into this week on WallBuilders Live so that you can get a really good taste of this and then go to Biblicalcitizens.com and sign up so that you can host this in your home or your church. It’s entirely free. Check it out today at Biblicalcitizens.com. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.