Biblical Citizenship In Modern America, Week 3-Part 1 – Truth And Liberty: This week David Barton shares on the important principles of truth and liberty. Polling shows that truth is on life support in America. Does objective truth matter to the stability of a society? Do Americans understand what communism really is? Is there any nation in the history of the world that has switched from the free market to socialism while maintaining liberty and prosperity? Tune in to hear why you must have truth to experience liberty!

Air Date: 06/01/2021

Guest: David Barton

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.

Faith and the Culture

Rick:

This is the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live. Thanks for joining us today, where we’re taking on the hot topics of the day, everything that affects us in the culture; we’re looking at it from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. You can learn more about us at wallbuilderslive.com. 

That’s our website where you can get a list of our stations across the country as well as archives. So if you’ve missed some programs over the last few weeks, and in fact, we’re going to be doing a series over the next four days, if you miss one of those days, you can always come back to wallbuilderslive.com and find that program in the archives.

We encourage you to share those programs with your friends and family, get more people educated, equipped, and inspired, so that they know they can be a part of preserving America’s Constitution, really restoring it, not just preserving it, but restoring America’s constitutional republic: all of that available at wallbuilderslive.com.

My name is Rick Green. I’m America’s Constitution coach and a former legislator in Texas. I’m also normally here with David Barton. He’s America’s premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders and Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. But the rest of this week, we’re going to be doing a special program for you. We’re bringing you Biblical Citizenship in Modern America. It’s the third week of the class.

So in previous months, if you go back in the archives, you can listen to Week One and Week Two of Biblical Citizenship. This week, we want to bring you Week Three and give you a chance to learn more about the foundations of America and the importance of us as Christians that we would step up and be salt and light in the community. 

Quotes from Influential Leaders

So Week Three of Biblical Citizenship, we’re going to dive right into it. It’s going to take us four days to share this entire series with us. So be sure and listen throughout the week. It’s great information. You’re going to be equipped and inspired. And we hope you’ll share it with your friends and family.

Here we go, Week Three of Biblical Citizenship in Modern America.

Biblical Citizenship:

I think Biblical Citizenship as a Christian would be stewardship, that God has given us this republic to be stewards over, and you begin to love what God loves and hate what he hates in the scriptures because your heart is lining up with the heart of God because of the gospel.

If you’re a Christian, a person of faith, you must care about what’s happening in our culture, you must get involved in voting. If you love this country, then what small thing can you do to help save this country?

Remember, in Old Testament after the scripture been hidden for so long, and it was brought out and it was read before the people, the people wept with joy because there’s freedom in law. When you know, we have love of country, love of God, all of this is important. And it’s part of love of family, because if you don’t stand up for the Constitution, if you don’t know your faith principles, then you’re not going to be able to protect your family.

Biblical principles are what produce freedom in society. But you won’t have biblical principles in society in which you don’t have citizens with a biblical worldview. The further we move away from biblical principles, the further we move away from liberty and freedom.

As people are experiencing tyranny, they’re asking why, what has happened? And there’s just this feeling of being lost right now and not knowing where to turn, and you just gave us the foundation. This is truth.

BIBLICAL CITIZENSHIP IN MODERN AMERICA

Rick:

Welcome to Week Three of Biblical Citizenship, we are having a great time learning the truth of what the Bible says about how we should act as citizens. And last week, wow, we went into that amazing WallBuilders Museum and Library. And David took us through the biblical view of the different spheres of government, and then taught us how to tend the garden, so important. 

And then Tim Barton gave us that response to the 1619 project. And he gave us the truth about American history. He answered that question. Is America worth saving?

And I don’t know about you guys. But I was blown away by the human interest stories, the facts, the data, all the things I didn’t even know about America ending slavery. How many of us knew that we were the first ones to end the slave trade, that we were fourth in the world to end slavery completely? You know, we’ve been taught for so long that we had to be dragged, kicking and screaming as the last ones, to end it.

So, all of those truth bombs from last week in the library were just amazing. And we’re going to try to top it this week. We’re going to try to do even more. We’re going to take it to a whole another level. 

We’re actually going to go to the room, Independence Hall, where the Constitution and the Declaration were both created, that very room where the founding fathers hammered out the philosophy of America in the Declaration of Independence, and then they hammered out that rulebook 11 years later, our Constitution. So we’re going to actually get to go into that room and begin to study those things.

And I really wanted to take you all to the library. I mean, we’re going to have David again talking this week about truth and courage. And I wanted you all to be able to see him in person. So I had a jumbo jet lined up. 

I was going to take all of us. We were going to get on that jumbo jet, we were going to fly to Texas, we were going to cram into the WallBuilders Museum and Library so that you could see David live, but there is no way I can afford a jumbo jet. So it didn’t happen. I didn’t really get one.

Sobering Polling

But I did even better. We decided to bring the man himself all the way to California, America’s premier historian teaching tonight right here in our biblical citizenship class on the subject of truth, and courage. Would you please welcome America’s premier historian David Barton.

David:

Thanks, guys. Thank you guys, appreciate it. Let me take you into what we’re going to cover tonight. And you can tell from the title of the course, it is Biblical Citizenship. So we try to cover things from a biblical perspective. I’m a Christian, professing Christian. And I hope we can take those Christian principles, apply them with biblical principles and come up with good solutions.

Now, knowing where the country is today and one of the things we do a lot of work in is polling. We do a lot of national polling. And polling is a good way to kind of have snapshots of where the nation is. 

And because we’ve been doing polling in America for nearly 100 years, we can kind of look back and say, hey, here’s what we look like when we’re a lot younger and here’s when we’re a little older, and so we can make comparisons.

Doing that, I would say that one of the biggest issues facing America today is the issue of truth. Quite frankly, truth is under fire in a way that we have never seen it in American history. When you look at what we have gone with truth, I would say without using any kind of melodramatic hyperbolic, because I’m not given that, truth is on life support. And again, that is because of statistical information. Let me show you some of the polling that’s out there.

Right now, we know that in America, three out of five Americans believe that there is no absolute moral truth. Now, here’s a problem. No nation has ever survived if they can’t get at least half of the nation to agree that certain things are right and wrong. 

If you have more than half the nation says no, there’s no right or wrong, then no law means anything. There’s not a reason to enforce any law, because more than half the people are opposed to it. You have to have a moral basis for what’s right and wrong.

So here we are with three out of five Americans thinking that they can make up their own moral truth, they can decide what’s right and wrong for them, may not be right and wrong for anybody else. But it’s okay for me. You cannot govern nation that way. It gets even worse when you look at the rising generation. Among millennials, it is four and five millennials believe there’s no absolute moral truth.

The Rising Generation

Now this is the next generation of everything. This is the next generation of theologians, next generation of pastors, next generation of media, next generation of political guys, next generation of scientists and teachers, you name it. And four out of five think that there’s no absolute moral truth, that again, that is individually self-determined.

And even among Christians, it’s shocking to see that it’s one out of two Christians who believe there’s no absolute moral truth. Now, for me, I think, wait a minute, surely you’ve heard of the Ten Commandments. And apparently, for half Christians, they think the Ten Commandments are the 10 suggestions because there’s no absolute moral truth. 

So we’re at a point in time where that objective truth really doesn’t matter much anymore. It doesn’t matter much with what we see in media, what we see in universities, academia, doesn’t matter much in politics, it should, but it doesn’t.

And so when you look at where we are with really the lack of objective truth, there’s so many examples you can turn to. For example, a decade ago, everybody in America knew that there were two genders. Well, just a matter of a few years ago, we stopped counting how many genders there were because there were over 90 different self-identified genders that point time being legally recognized. I think even on Facebook, they has 74 different genders you can choose from in your individual profile. So we don’t know how many there are, today is hundreds, is whatever you determine.

So the new really acronym for the movement is not LGBTQ. It’s LGBTQIA+ and IA+ adds the other hundreds of genders that are out there. So we don’t even know how many genders there are anymore. 

And the same way, when we look at things like religion, so many people in America believe no religion’s any better than the rest, they’re all the same, they’re all religions, they’re all good, they’re all bad, whatever, but there’s no distinction among them. And as Christians, we should know better than that. But even with Christians, we find that that’s not the case.

What Do “Christians” Belief

Now 80% of Christians say that they believe that religions other than Christianity will get you to heaven. Now the reason Christianity is unique is because Christianity believes that it’s the way you’re able to go to heaven. But we’re saying no, no, we don’t believe that anymore. IT’s what we believe for 2000 years. That’s what Jesus taught. That’s what the apostles taught. That’s what the church taught. 

But we don’t believe that anymore. And so what we see is even 42% of Christians believe that atheists will get into heaven. Now, this is an oxymoron kind of thing because atheists don’t believe in God, and yet, somehow they’re going to spend eternity with God? You know, how does that work out?

And the 56% of Christians belief in no religion at all is going to get you to heaven. So it doesn’t really matter what you believe, we’re apparently all going to help. And this is why you see in America, there’s been such a decline and drop in Christian profession. 20 years ago, 85% of all Americans profess Christianity. 

Today is down to 65%. And why would it not keep going down, because if anything you believe is going to get you to heaven, I don’t need to be a Christian to get there, I can just believe what I want to believe. I can make up my own truth. And so what we’re seeing is this decline of religion in America because it no longer means anything for many people, because again, they’re self-defined.

When you look past religion and go into something like even forms of government, it is amazing to me how many people today are having tattoos put on them of the hammer and sickle, communist tattoos. Do we have no knowledge at all of what communism is or that in the last century and a half, it has killed hundreds of millions of people across the world? And we think that’s going to be a good form of government for America? Look at the protests and look what’s going on statues, look what’s painted on so many of the statue has been taken down, communism assembles, and we say, oh, it’s just protesters? No, that’s a philosophy that they apparently don’t understand, because if they think that’s a good replacement for what America has been, man, they have no clue of what’s going on.

No National Standards

But apparently, all forms of government are the same. The same when you get to education. We used to have six standardized tests in America, the Ohio tested base achievement, the California achievement test, Stanford achievement tests, etc. and therefore we can compare state to state because we all use the same ruler, the same measurement. 

We can say, oh, Texas is 23rd and whatever, and California is 47th, or 18th. Not anymore, every state has gone to their own individual state measurement for academics. We can’t compare states and states anymore.

So we all want to feel good about what we have in schools. So we’re not looking and saying, well, we’re not as good as Alabama, or we’re better than Oklahoma, all that’s gone. We don’t have the comparison by which to use because in education, we’ve changed all the standards, all the tests, completely different way of looking things. We don’t use truth as a base anymore.

And the same way when you look at morality, I already mentioned that most people don’t think there are moral rights and wrongs. When you go to history, we simply cancel what we disagree with. So many that the statues that were torn down, apparently were racist. And you asked the people torn down who’s that guy and what’s he do? 

So many civil rights statues were torn down, but they just made the assumption, if it’s a statue, it’s racist. So we’re canceling stuff we don’t even know we’re canceling.

I mean, they throw down the statute of David Farragut in Washington, D.C. because he was racist. No. No. He was not part of the Confederacy. He was actually union naval commander that led the entire union forces defeating the Confederacy. 

You say you want Confederate statues down, you just tore down statute of the leading naval guy in the union. And you tore down the statue of Ulysses S. Grant. I mean, he’s the union commander who defeated the Confederacy. You’ll say all the racism, they don’t have a clue.

They’ve been tore down the statue of Frederick Douglass who’s a civil rights leader. You can tell me he’s a racist? See, we just cancel stuff because it’s there, we don’t even know what it is anymore. In the same way, you look at science, we can look at the identical studies in science and come up with very opposite conclusions. We’ve seen that with everything, from masking to climate change to whatever else, you can have this study and come out with two opposite sides on it, because this is what I want to believe.

Socialism

The same thing with economics. There’s three primary economic systems in the world. And what happens today in America is we think that any economic system is going to work. Well, we have been the most prosperous nation in the world over the last several decades, apparently, it’s time for a change, because right now, we know that 75% of college students want to change the socialism. 69% of millennials want to change to socialism. And 41% of all Americans want to change the socialism.

Now, the problem with that is, in the 5,800 years of recorded history, and the history of the world with thousands of nations, you cannot find a single nation that went from free market to socialism that preserved liberty and maintain prosperity. It’s never happened in the history of the world. That’s right, we’ll get it right. 

No, we won’t. It’s going to be the same outcome every time. It’s never worked right and yet, we have this thing of we need a massive change. See, we don’t even have a perspective for what’s right and wrong, and what works and what doesn’t. Same with ethics.

So all these errors we can point to, we see a lot of a shift in change there. There’s really no absolute truth in any of them anymore. And that’s why truth, in fact, has now given a way to personal opinion. Now, from a biblical perspective, Bible has a lot to say about truth. 

And I want to take you specifically to a passage it’s in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 verses 1-12. And in the first 10 or so verses, first 9 or 10 verses, this is a discussion about the man of lawlessness versus the man of truth.

And as conflict is going on between lawlessness and truth, and then after it goes for a while, we get to verse 10 and we find a progression that happens. Because truth has been presented for several verses and the other side said no, I don’t believed that’s truth and they’ve rejected truth. And so it’s interesting to see what happens in verse 10. It says they did not receive the love of the truth.

Becoming Delusional

So what happens, if you get to the point where I don’t care if that truth or not, I disagree with it. If you get to the point where you do not love the truth, you love your opinion, or you love something else more than you love truth, and that’s the next step that happens. It says for this reason, God will send them strong delusion. If you get to the point where you no longer love truth, then delusion comes. Notice the next step. 

It says that they should believe the lie. A delusion comes, believe the lie, and then in verse 12, says that all might be damned to believe not the truth. Now damned is the King James word for condemned or judge. So notice the sequence that happens here.

If you don’t love or if you reject the truth, what happens is a delusion enters, you will believe the lie, you will then act on the lie, and there will be high costs and consequences. Doesn’t matter how nice a person you are, how sincere you are, this is just a sequence, this is going to happen. Let me take you into the science for a bit.

I was in science all the way through high school and college, that was my gig, went to college on a science scholarship, taught science when I got out, school principal, science teacher, basketball coach. In science, we have what are called laws of science. Now, there’s not many laws in science, but a lot of science such as the law of gravity, Newton’s laws of gravity, it’s called a law because it’s never in the history of the world been violated not even once. 

If a law of science is violated even once, it’s no longer a law. It can be in theory, an axiom or principle. But a law is something that is never in the history of the world been violated. 

Not even once. If it ever is, is no longer a law of science. So a lot of science, it’s not an opinion, it is a law. This doesn’t really matter what you think about it. It is a law because it is always universally true at all times, all demographics, all situations, it’ll always be true.

CONSTITUTION ALIVE!

Rick:

Alright, guys, got to interrupt the program just for a moment to take our one break of the day. We’re only going to take one break today. Stay with us, we’ll be right back on WallBuilders Live.

Have you ever wanted to learn more about the United States Constitution, but just felt like man, the classes are boring, or it’s just that old language from 200 years ago, or I don’t know where to start? People want to know, but it gets frustrating because you don’t know where to look for truth about the constitution either.

Well, we’ve got a special program for you available now called Constitution Alive! With David Barton and Rick Green. And it’s actually a teaching done on the Constitution at Independence Hall in the very room where the constitution was framed. We take you both to Philadelphia, the cradle of liberty and Independence Hall and to the WallBuilders’ library, where David Barton brings the history to life to teach the original intent of our Founding Fathers.

We call it the Quickstart Guide to the Constitution, because in just a few hours through these videos, you will learn the citizen’s guide to America’s constitution, you’ll learn what you need to do to help save our constitutional republic. It’s fun, it’s entertaining, and it’s going to inspire you to do your part to preserve freedom for future generations. 

It’s called Constitution Alive! With David Barton and Rick Green. You can find out more information on our website now at wallbuilders.com.

Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us today. We’re in Biblical Citizenship in Modern America. And we’re going to dive right back into week three where we left off before the break.

Technology 

David:

I must say that our technology we have today is so far ahead of where we’ve been in previous generations. One of our friends is Charlie Duke. Charlie Duke went to the moon on Apollo 16. He was one of the 12 guys that walked on the surface of the moon. He was the youngest moon walker. And I was talking to Charlie about what’s happening with space stuff today, the space force, etc. 

And it is amazing what we’ve done. He just pulled out his phone, says see that, the phone right there, he says this little smart device that every one of us have sometimes have more than one. He says there is more technology in this smart device than we had in several rooms of computers at NASA when we went to the moon. What we have right there is more than we had to send guys to the moon and bring them back.

So our technology has certainly changed and we’ve advanced in ways that we heard, for example, we heard President say, well, it’s time to put a woman on the moon, it’s time to put an American on Mars. You start thinking about all the things we’re doing space and the space force. And again, talking to Charlie Duke, he was explaining to me what we can do in space and what’s out there in space force and is just unbelievable stuff; it is science fiction kind of stuff that’s coming real.

So as I look at Newton’s laws of gravity, I’m not sure that they have the same impact they did in previous generations, because our technology is so much better. Matter of fact, I reject the law of gravity. I don’t think that it holds any kind of impact on us anymore, because we can get past it with technology. Now, here’s the deal. Here’s what happens.

If I say there’s no law of gravity, the next logical step is they’ll say, well, the law of gravity doesn’t affect me, because there is no law of gravity. And if I say the law of gravity doesn’t affect me, then I’ll say I can do what I want. 

Believing a Lie

And quite frankly, I’ve always wanted to be able to jump off a building and soar. I’ve wanted to do that since I saw Superman as a kid. So I’m going to jump off a building and I am going to soar all the way until I splat on the sidewalk at the bottom. See, as a result of believing that, I’ll act on it and as a result, I will die.

And it really doesn’t matter how sincere I am in my beliefs, it doesn’t matter that I have a good heart. It doesn’t matter. The sequence is there. If I reject the truth, then a delusion will enter. 

If I believe the lie, I’ll act on the lie, it will be a high cost and consequence. So there are universal truths. There are moral truths that are out there. 

I may disagree with them, may not like them. But you have to find truth and love truth more than you love anything else, more than you’d love your own political opinion, more than you love your opinion of science. You have to find what truth is and go in that direction.

And again, it does not matter how sincere you are. And it doesn’t matter how much your personal truth is there. Objective truth will win every time. Now, what it may do is destroy the culture in the meantime. If you get away from objective truth and start believing in personal truth, you may lose the culture, you may lose everything the nation has been, you have to have a stable foundation. You can’t change foundations on [inaudible 20:23]

What happens is, no matter the size of the lie that you believe, it will always cost some degree of harm, even if it a little white lie. Yeah, little white lie will grow into bigger stuff and bigger stuff. So you always have to have an absolute love for the truth. That’s something we have to really learn to identify as citizens, we’ll talk about later about how you find the truth because that’s a difficult thing now.

But when you look at truth for Christians, there are sources of truth that we know about. When we talk about truth, we have passages in the Bible like John 17:17, where the Bible says, since Jesus talking, he says sanctify them by the truth, thy Word is truth. So Jesus says God’s Word is true. One of the things we talked about in previous sessions is how the Bible does apply to everything.

The Bible is the Basis

Some of the greatest philosophers in American history use the Bible for economic basis. The pilgrims use it to create the free market system 1627. The Pilgrims use it to be able to have equality. While Jamestown brought slavery in 1619 as Tim talked about last week, the Plymouth model is exactly the opposite. 

They said all men are created equal. And that’s lines we hear from the Declaration, because of what we see in Acts 17:26 and what the Bible says in Revelation 7:9 about equality of mankind. So many ideas came out of the Bible, including forms of government. In the Bible, you’ll see seven different forms of government illustrated.

The some forms of government are shown to be much superior than others. And our Founding Fathers chose what they believe to be the best form, which is a constitutional republic. They pointed to Exodus 18:21 is the reason for choosing that form. You’ll also find in Deuteronomy 1:15 & 16, Deuteronomy 16:80. 

So the Bible applies to all aspects of life. So truth, we believe comes out of the Bible for everything we need, not just theological truth, all sorts of truth, science, everything else.

In the same way, we’re told in John 14:6, Jesus says, I’m the way, the truth, and the life, nobody comes to the Father, but by me. And by the way, this is a claim of exclusivity. Jesus is saying nobody gets to heaven except by me. And so Christians will say, well, I don’t believe that, I believe anything you believe will get you that which is what 80% of Christians, they’re contradicting the truth. 

And Jesus is the truth personified. So if you’re interested in truth, alright, you go to God’s Word, you go to the person of Jesus Christ. This is where you find truth. And as you find truth there, for Christians, this is the difficulty we have today.

As you look at the Bible, today, only 9% of Christians read the Bible on a daily basis. So with only 9% of Christians reading the Bible on a daily basis, most have no idea what objective truth is. They don’t know, for example, what the Bible says about issues like immigration. They have no clue of the fact that in the Bible there were three different types of immigrant levels, what we call the native born citizen, what was a naturalized citizen and what was a green card. The kind of policy we have today came from the Bible long time ago.

Where Did Our Rights Come From?

There’s so much in the Bible, it deals with criminal justice, even what we do with the due process rights and Bill of Rights, the Fourth and Eighth Amendment, even the US code annotated federal practice and procedure points back to verses in the Bible is why we have due process rights. But see, we don’t know the Bible today so we don’t even know how practical it is in every area of life.

So not knowing the Bible, it’s not surprising that only 6% of Americans have a biblical worldview. That is, even with 65% of Americans professing Christianity, only one out of 16 Americans actually sees things from the same perspective God sees when he gives it to us in His Word. So we’re not even thinking like the way he wants us to think because we’re not in His Word.

So having said that, His Word is a good place for truth, and this is where when you have his word, it trumps my opinions. It’s like the laws of science, when I was in science, doesn’t matter what my opinion is about gravity, it’s a law, it’s going to be there. And I can say all day long, I want to fly from building, but I will hit the ground every time I jump off, unless I have some kind of technology to get me temporarily past that, it doesn’t change the law of science though.

So supremacy of personal opinion has to go away. So this is why what I want to hit tonight is we have to develop a love for the truth. We have to be able to conform and change our own thinking, our own action, our own behavior, even our own political affiliation if we need to, to conform to what truth is. 

It doesn’t matter what any party says. And right now we know that there’s 17 different types of political parties in America. Doesn’t matter what they say. What is truth, align yourself with truth wherever that may be.

Now, having said that, finding the truth is the biggest problem we have today. Because if I tell you, you need to believe the truth, the question should be well, how do I know it’s true? Good question. How do you know it’s true? 

Finding John Clum

I can look it up on the web and instantly I can come to four or five or six or eight means that will say whatever my viewpoint is, that mean is truth because I can find it out on the web. No, not at all. Not by a longshot.

As a matter of fact, as we have seen big tech start to deplatform more than 70,000 individuals and groups off the platform because of what they believe, as we see they’re going on, there’s also a definite bias that goes and even your searches. So if you’re looking for truth, for example, in writing a book, we do a lot of writing. 

And I was recently working on a guy named John Clum, right, John Clum was an Indian agent back at the time of Geronimo. He’s the only guy ever to capture Geronimo. And he was a strong Christian guy.

He was actually chosen by the government to go in and handle the reservation. Because unlike the other Indian agents, he wasn’t going to be bribed or bought off. He was going to do the right thing. He had integrity. This is a great story.

Biblical Citizenship In Modern America, Week 3-Part 1 – Truth And Liberty

Rick:

Alright, friends, we are out of time for today, you’ve been listening to Biblical Citizenship in Modern America. Is the third week of that class that we’re sharing with you this week. It’s going to take four days to do it. And I want to encourage you not only to listen to Week Three of Biblical Citizenship here this week, but also to sign up as a coach and host Biblical Citizenship in your home, at your church, wherever you might be. Get your friends and family together, we give the course away for free. 

So if you go today to patriotacademy.com, click on the biblical citizenship link and you can sign up as a coach and host that class entirely for free. That means you get access to all eight weeks, you get the digital workbooks for free, you get the coach dashboard where you can create your own web page for people to register for your particular class, all of it for free. Go to patriotacademy.com today to learn more.

Thanks so much for listening to WallBuilders Live.