Biblical Citizenship In Modern America: Week 4, Part 2 – Principles of Liberty

Biblical Citizenship In Modern America: Week 4, Part 2 – Principles of Liberty: Today we continue with the overview of America’s birth certificate: the Declaration of Independence. What are the principles of liberty? How many Bible versers do you think deal with government? Do they even impact our daily lives? Is there any authority higher than the government? What is the true purpose of government? Is there a fixed moral law? Should the President or the Court be able to change laws? Tune in to hear Part 2 of Week 4, of Biblical Citizenship in Modern America!

Air Date: 08/16/2022

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

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Transcription note: Â 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 taking on 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. Normally here with David and Tim Barton; David Barton is America’s premier historian, Tim Barton is a national speaker and pastor.

And we typically have guests during the middle of the week, and then later in the week, we have our Foundations of Freedom Thursday program and our Good News Friday program. But sometimes we like to bring you special programming. Sometimes it might be a presentation from our Legislators’ conference. We have a lot of great speakers that come to that Legislators’ conference.

And then other times, we want to share with you some of the courses, some of the programs that we have at WallBuilders to give you a taste of the information that’s out there for you that you can share with friends and family. What I mean by that is some of these courses are designed specifically for you to invite friends and family over to your house, pop in the DVD or go on to the streaming site and watch it together and then have discussion.

I’m telling you, there’s something special that happens when you do that. It gives you a chance to have fellowship. It gives you a chance to get together with people that are also concerned about the direction of the country that want to restore biblical values. There’s so much that you can do locally. You can be the catalyst for a restoration of biblical values and constitutional principles.

And this week, that’s what we’re doing. We’re giving you a little taste of our new program this year that we created called Biblical Citizenship in Modern America, literally applying the Bible to what it means to be a citizen in this system here in America.

Get Everyone Together

It’s actually an eight-week course that you typically would do, you know, pick like a Monday night and do that with your friends and family or Sunday afternoon at your church, everybody get lunch and come back over to the church, and do the course. But it’s normally eight weeks, and you’re going to spend about two hours each week together.

You’ll watch about an hour’s worth of video, and then have great discussion together. So, it’s a great way for you to get involved. That’s all available right now at wallbuilders.com, you can get the Biblical Citizenship in Modern America, DVDs, workbooks, all of those things.

You can also join us on Monday nights with a national class we’re doing right now where everybody’s invited to come together on Monday evenings. And we actually have a live class going. SoM we watch the videos together. And then we take your questions and we’re there to answer them. And we have special guests on, Kirk Cameron was with us a week or so ago, Pete Hegseth from Fox and Friends, David and Tim Barton.

You just never know who’s going to show up on one of those evenings. But that Monday night class is free. And you can go to Biblicalcitizens.com right now and sign up, biblical citizens.com.

Today, we are bringing you a taste of that. And it’s actually all this week we’re doing what is normally week four in the Biblical Citizenship eight-week class. So today is part two of that week four program. I know that sounds confusing, but it’s going to take three WallBuilders Live programs to share with you all of the Week Four video content from Biblical Citizenship. And we started yesterday, we’re going to pick up right where we left off yesterday, and then we’ll get the conclusion tomorrow. Let’s dive in where we left off yesterday with Biblical Citizenship in modern America.

Program Begins

Rhett:

Establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare.

Rick:

Well, I guess you could tell Rhett was having as much fun as you and I have when we get to see them…

David:

Well, so were you at the background watching, so you had a lot of fun too.

Teach the Rising Generation

Rick:

We love teaching those principles from that very room. Now before we get to the 30,000 feet view…

David:

And by the way, I think that was the third thing was to teach the rising generation, I think that’s the third objective…

Rick:

There you go, getting those little guys, and that is the rising generation. So, in our next chapter, we’ll get the 30,000 feet view on the Constitution itself. But before we do that, some more on the seeds of liberty, Rhett was doing a little bit. He did four principles out of the Declaration. You go further and in a couple of other paragraphs there and broaden it out to six principles…

David:

Yeah, Rhett got some really good application like the free market systems he showed there, there’s so many good things there. Let’s go back and back up just the overview of the Declaration because it’s national birth certificate, but with a 255-words up top to support the six immutable principles. Those six principles are followed by 27 grievances, and then Declaration because of these principles, the violation of 27 different categories, we’re not going to become a separate nation.

So when you look at those principles, let’s just take clauses out of those 155 words, because this is the essence, this is a key. By the way, this is what you’re working on with other states with the Celebrate Freedom Week is to get them to learn these kinds of principles. So what you’ve got…

Rick:

No, just get into the founding document…

The First Principle

David:

You get into the founding document, real simple stuff. So you have the clause in the Declaration says all men are created equal, they’re endowed by their Creator. Now, what does that tell us is our first principle that there is a divine creator.

Now today, we’re told well, you can believe that, but not everybody believes the Creator. So that’s why government can’t take a position favoring religion over non-religion. That’s what the courts have told us for these 40 years of judicial activism.

Wait a minute. That document it says that it’s the unanimous declaration of 13 States of America. That doesn’t sound like private individuals talking. This is the unanimous declaration of all the elected officials from those 13 states sent to the Continental Congress. And later on…

Rick:

This is what we agreed on, right? I mean, this is what brought us together. This is basically…

David:

This is our public declaration to the world of why we’re doing what we’re doing. Why we’re doing why is, because we in America believe there is a divine Creator. And that becomes the first step in a limited government. You cannot have a limited government if you think government’s at the top of the pecking order.

If government’s at the top, then what limits it? There’s got to be something higher than government. If there’s nothing higher than, so we said, hey, there’s a creator that’s higher than everything. And that’s why government’s limited. It doesn’t institute. It’s not the Creator. It doesn’t get to do everything the Creator does. It’s below the Creator.

So, our thing is, alright, we believe there’s a creator, we’ve been created and the Creator gets the right to tell his creation what to do, so government listen up.

Rick:

And that one principle has a huge impact on what kind of nation are we going to be.

Limited Government is Not the Norm

David:

It’s a huge impact. You find me any secular government in the world that’s limited government, can’t do it. It’s an oxymoron. You cannot find it. France, Greece, maybe China. No, I can’t go to Cuba. Can’t do, Sweden. Can’t do, Norway. Can’t do, Chile. You can’t find a secular government…

Rick:

If God’s not in the equation, government has to be even bigger, even though…

David:

Government is God. That’s it. There will be a supreme authority, and if it’s not God, it will be government. So, if you don’t get the declaration concept right that God’s at the top, then government thinks it’s at the top and therefore when it gives you a right, it can regulate that, right, it can repeal that right, it can take away.

If God’s at the top, if God gives you right, government, you keep your stinking hands off that because it doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to God, so jurisdictional issue. So that’s the first point.

The second point is based on that, it says they’re endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. So, number one, not only is there a Creator, he gives us a certain set of rights. These aren’t given by government. They come from the Creator.

Therefore, government don’t belong to us. You know, you and I both live in Texas. I’m a cowboy, got the ranch, got all the stuff and I got to pick up that goes with it. And I got it…

Rick:

No cowboy hat worn here today…

David:

Not on this…

Rick:

Not here. But I’ve seen you plenty of time. Yeah.

Our Rights Come from God

David:

I like my pickup. I got a red Ford pickup and I’ve looked over yours and you get a gray dot, I don’t like gray. I’m going to go over and paint your pick up red because I like red pickup. I can’t do that. I don’t have the jurisdictional authority to go over into something that doesn’t belong to me and change it. And that’s what we do with government. We say hey, government these rights over here, they come from God.

They don’t belong to you, you didn’t give them, they come from God. Therefore, you cannot go over there and mess with them. Same way I can’t go mess with your pickup, I may not like a dot, I may not like gray, doesn’t matter. I don’t have the authority to do anything to your pickup.

Rick:

That changes everything when you really think about the authority, because a nation without God, that government has the authority to do anything they want because like you said they’re God.

David:

You choose any other nation in the world that is secular, and you know in Germany right now, they literally, it’s a crime to homeschool your kids because you’re not the one over… In America, we’ve held for generations of positions Supreme Court articulated in the case called [inaudible 07:34], that it’s the fundamental right of parents direct to education upbringing and care of…

Rick:

Not the state, it’s the parent?

David:

Not the state. But over there, no, no, parents, you belong to the state, the kids. In Scotland, we were talking to the guy recently who said in Scotland from the time you’re born, every kid is assigned a government official liaison with the state.

Rick:

Oh, I remember that on a radio show. Yeah, I started thinking about it. Imagine that if every kid’s assigned somebody from the state to monitor.

Do Your Children Belong to the State?

David:

That’s right. Every kid belongs to a state, therefore we have to assign you a government official the time you come to the earth, you don’t belong your parents. Wait a minute. We believe you do. We believe that the parents are there because God made the parents…

Rick:

So, these initial principles really mattering in your day to day life, it is not just books and old documents. This impacts our lives today.

David:

And it’s not just well, if you believe in God, that’s fine. That’s your private belief, but don’t bring it in public with you. If I don’t bring it to public with me, you don’t have a limited government.

Rick:

You’re going to lose all those…

David:

You’re going to lose all the inalienable right. So that’s the second point. The third point is very simple. It says that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men. Now we have the purpose of government. Purpose of government is to protect inalienable rights.

Those God given rights, government exists to protect those God given rights. Now, significantly, government does not exist to make sure we all have a job or that we’ve got a great economy. Government exists to make sure that we have a certain set of rights that nobody can violate, nobody can take with.

The Fruits of Freedom

Now, once we’ve done that, and if you do that, then you will have a prosperous government, you will have a limited government, you will have freedom. And with freedom, I mean, we’re gangbusters with freedom: inventing, discovering, finding, creating. This 4% of the world population in America versus more than the 96% of the world every year with inventions and patents and everything else. Americans are more creative because we have more freedom, because that formula out there.

Rick:

So you’re saying so government is there to protect, not provide? It’s there to protect you and then you go out and earn and produce?

David:

If they will keep thieves off my back, I will go and take my ideas, if they’ll keep somebody from stealing my ideas, I’ll go and I’ll create a McDonald’s on every corner. I’ll create a Walmart’s in every city. If you just keep people from stealing my ideas.

Rick:

And just that principle was taught today, we wouldn’t have government growing so much because we’ve shifted that, now we think government’s job is to provide us with every little need that we have.

David:

And the more provides, the less prosperous you become because less initiative you have and less creative you are. Government’s not creative, it is never creative. Government doesn’t discover things. They don’t file patents and curious and whatever. You know, they have monopolies if they keep private citizens of doing it, but they’re not the creative source. So that’s the third principle.

The Laws of Nature and Nature’s God

Rick:

Okay.

David:

Fourth principle says and to assume among the powers, they ought to separate and equal station which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitles them. We’ll talk about this more later. But that told every person in that generation that there is a fixed moral law. There are certain laws you cannot cross, and they are called the laws of nature, and nature’s God.

Now, we don’t know what that means today, but we’ll show you literally the books where the Founding Fathers took that phrase, what it meant, how they understood it. But there are certain absolute rights and wrongs.

We live in a culture daze as well, what’s right for you is right for you, but I don’t think. No. You can’t have a culture that says, oh, a rape is okay, sometimes not okay; and you know, theft is okay if it’s for the right reason. You can’t be Machiavellian, the end justifies the means.

You know, rapes okay sometimes, theft is okay sometimes, and you know, a white lie doesn’t hurt anything. No, you got to have fixed rights and wrongs. Perjury is not okay if it’s for a good reason. You can’t purge yourself under oath if it’s a little lie. Now you have to have fixed absolutes and that’s what tells…

Rick:

But if there is not moral law, then anything…

Anarchy

David:

Then you are. If there’s no more law, it becomes anarchy. Because I will decide what is right and wrong…

Rick:

And then I get to decide what’s right for me…

David:

And if my AR-15 has 30 shots in the mag rather than yours, it has 20, I’m more right than you are.

Rick:

Depends on how good of a shot you are…

David:

Now that’s true…

Rick:

But I get your point. No, that’s exactly right. I mean, now there’s no fixed like you said those…

David:

John Quincy Adams said at that point, you have to love the tiger and the shark. That’s where gangs rule. That’s where guys with the biggest fish rule.

That’s not what… You have to have fixed moral laws that nobody can transgress, you don’t cross these laws. The fifth thing you have from the Declaration, it says government is instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Now, what you get with this is what we call the consent of the governed or the will of the majority. There’s nothing in the constitution that ever allows anything smaller than a majority to win a vote, unless you’re in the US Senate today, and because the filibuster, 40 beats 60 every time. Founding Fathers oppose that, that’s why they did not allow filibusters, was the rule of the majority.

Only AFTER Our Fixed Moral Rights

Now, this is point number five, and it comes only after you’ve said there are inalienable rights and only after you’ve said there is a fixed moral law. We don’t get to vote on whether rape will or won’t be a crime, because that’s part of the fix, that’s part of the laws of nature, and nature’s God.

We don’t get to vote on whether you’re going to lose your right to keep and bear arms because that’s an inalienable right. The right to defend yourself is a God given right; God gave it to you, not the government. We can’t vote that we’re going to take that away from you.

So the consent of the government is good when you talk about do we want the sidewalk to be four feet wide or five feet wide or six feet wide? Do we want the speed limits be 45 or 55, or if you’re in Texas 85? That’s what we can do on the consent of the governed. But we cannot vote on inalienable rights or fixed moral laws. That’s the principles in Declaration. And the sixth principle is…

Rick:

Consent of the governed doesn’t overrule those basic truths, and those laws of nature and nature’s God?

David:

Government exists to protect those truths. And with those truths, we can have a civilized culture and move forward…

Rick:

So, it doesn’t mean we just put our finger to the wind and whatever’s popular at the time changes those fixed points?

David:

Now we can put our finger to the wind on sidewalk size, is speed limits, but we can’t put our finger to the wind on moral laws and on inalienable rights.

Rick:

Yeah, that’s a great point.

When Government Becomes Destructive to….

David:

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends is the right of the people to alter or to abolish and institute new government. Destructive of what ends? If you get a government does not do the first five things, if you get a government that says there is no creator, the creator does not give you certain guaranteed rights, government does, we don’t exist to protect those rights.

And by the way, there is no moral law, there’s no right or wrong to set what we tell you to do. And there’s no consent of the government, we will decide what you…

If you get a government that wonderful the first five things that says this is the right of the people to alter or abolish or institute new government. That is the sixth principle of government.

We have a lot of changes have gone in our constitutional government today and they didn’t happen by the people. The President by fiat one pen decides he’s going to change the government. The Supreme Court decides we need to make policy. We don’t like that legislative body cross it. You cannot have the branches going in and redefining their…

Rick:

So, is violating the first five principles?

David:

Is violating the first five principles. The only way that we get the success, prosperity, freedom, liberty, everything we enjoy is those first five principles. And because government comes from the people, if those first five principles which are our needs are not met, then we can start this thing over or we can pass constitutional amendments, 27 of them, we can change our government, how, but it always comes back to us. You can’t have any brands change itself.

No Revolution Necessary

Rick:

And the great thing for us we can actually do that in a peaceable means, you know, actually. We’ve been given the tools to alter or abolish…

David:

We don’t have to have revolutions to do this.

Rick:

Yeah, or revolution with ballots instead of with bullets.

David:

See, that’s the revolution we need. Because at this point in American history, based on national statistics, only one out of three Americans voted in presidential elections, only one out of four voted in nonpresidential elections. Which means since it takes majority with only one out of three voting in presidential elections.

That means that half of that one out of three chooses the president, which is about 18% or something; which means five out of six Americans are not choosing the president right now, and seven out of eight Americans are not choosing their governor.

Rick:

But they’re living with the consequences. Yeah, it’s impacting…

David:

You want to have a revolution, show up at the ballot box and say, I’ve had it. I’m not going to be part of that five out of six that don’t vote for my president anymore. I’m going to love my president, here’s [inaudible 14:45]. And when we decide to do that, we can have an easy revolution.

Rick:

Quick break, folks, we’ll be right back and you’ll get more of Biblical Citizenship in Modern America.

The AMERICAN STORY

Hey, guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have here at WallBuilders called The American Story. For years, people have been asking us to do a history book, and we finally done it. We start with Christopher Columbus and go roughly through Abraham Lincoln.

And one of the things that that so often we hear today are about the imperfections of America, or how so many people in America that used to be celebrated or honored really aren’t good or honorable people.

One of the things we acknowledge quickly in the book is that the entire world is full of people who are sinful and need a savior, because the Bible even tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And yet what we see through history, and certainly is evident in America is how a perfect God uses imperfect people and does great things through them. The story of America is not the story of perfect people.

But you see time and time again how God got involved in the process and use these imperfect people to do great things that impacted the entire world from America. To find out more, go to wallbuilders.com and check out The American Story.

Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us today. Let’s jump right back in where we left off. Here’s Biblical Citizenship in Modern America.

The Six Principles

David:

The six principles that are very simple here is one, there’s divine Creator; two, inalienable rights come from God; three, government exists to protect those rights; four, there’s a fixed moral law; five, you have the consent of the governed below the moral law and inalienable rights; and six, is if we don’t get these five things, we can change it till we do. So that’s…

Rick:

Now we mentioned where some of this comes from. But in Philadelphia, we talked about that Richard Henry Lee mentioned that John Locke’s two treatises of government had a huge impact on Jefferson. Okay, this is the coolest thing you’ve ever given me. Actually, I have to admit you loaned it to me, but possession is nine-tenth, so long, I had it for about 10 years now. So I’m claiming it, but someday it’ll be go back…

David:

Let’s see how you go argue that in court, come on.

Rick:

Alright, this is John Locke’s two treatises of government. This is, I believe, is 1784 version or 74 version, if I remember right. So this is Locke’s…

David:

That’s in 1774…

Rick:

Oh, you got me beat there, the dually Locke… So tell us more about Locke, though, because I hear a lot of people say a lot of negative things about him. And if he was such an influence on the Founders, and that means they weren’t religious guys, they didn’t believe in God. What can we learn about Locke?

David:

One of the things you know for sure about Locke and political scientist have documented that he was one of the three most frequently cited individuals in the founding era. Founding era goes from 1760 to 1805. In that era, we’re establishing operating our first constitutional government. He’s one of the top three guys. Now…

The Men Who Wrote The Documents

Rick:

So if we want to really understand the document itself, we need to know a lot about the guys that gave it?

David:

He is the guy in the 1760s and 1770s. He is the guy quoted most often because that’s the age where we did the Declaration. Richard Henry Lee you mentioned, he said that they quote, copied the Declaration from those two treatises of government. Now, that’s why in American public schools, prior to 50 years ago in government class, you would have read those two treatises, because that’s where…

Rick:

Really?

David:

How can you study government not know where it came from, where you read it? You will not read this today. And as you know, your version, there’s an inch thick, mine’s three quarters in this thick, the book less than 400 pages long. This book cites the Bible over 1500 times to show the proper operation of civil government. Now…

Rick:

No, let me do the math here. That’s got to be what, three, four times a page?

David:

Three, four times a page.

Rick:

Because you can’t go a page without reading the Bible, and yet we’re told these guys didn’t respect the Bible?

John Locke

David:

And we’re told John Locke is a great deist, that he was one of the leading deist. You know, weird thing about Locke as a deist, I wonder why he did this little book right here. This is called the A Commonplace-book to the Holy Bible. You open this up, and it’s “The scriptures sufficiency practically demonstrated.” Now wait a minute. What’s a deist doing, showing us that the Bible applies to every aspect of life?

Rick:

Yeah, let me think, practically demonstrated, so he’s saying, this is how you use Bible in your life…

David:

This is how you use the Bible and everything in your life… No way. And so he talks to the reader on how applicable this is, and he goes into here. And what he has done is he’s taken all these verses of the Bible and put them in categories.

So, the duty of a believer with respect to humility; the duties arising from religion, husband and wife; religious duties toward God and affliction and persecution, I mean, he’s taking in categories, and he’s put the Bible verses together. Why would a deist do that?

Rick:

Yeah. If you thought it was some watchmaker God that steps back and has nothing to do with us, you wouldn’t be applying God’s Word to your marriage…

David:

To your marriage and everything. And see, that’s the thing, is because he is the guy who had such a great impact, because he had such a big impact and because he is so religious. Oh, no, he’s a deist, you don’t need to read his works in government class anymore.

So they show you how far we’ve come in our thinking even as people faith. I was recently with a group of about 500 pastors, and I said, how many Bible verses can you guys think of the deal with government? Less than 10 in the room.

The Sufficiency of Scripture

I said, here’s a little book right here with more than 1500. And he does say it is the scriptures practically demonstrate the sufficiency of the Scriptures Bible applies to, and the founders knew that.

As a matter of fact, that’s why if you look at the Declaration of Independence, those rights that fourth in Declaration, historians have documented that every single right set forth in the Declaration of Independence had been preached from the American pulpit prior to 1763. The Declaration of Independence is nothing more than listening to sermons we’ve been hearing in church.

Rick:

So the church was not applying government principles to our life, the church was applying the Bible and that got reflected in our government principles. So if it was getting taught from the pulpit, it showed up in our government documents?

David:

This guy right here guy named John Wise. John Wise, historians like Clinton Rossiter, actually, Cornell University, he was such a great historian, award-winning historian, that they have an endowed chair history, the Clinton Rossiter Chair of History, a great historian. And he went back and said, you know, the American thinking was so different. No other nation did what we did.

France didn’t do it. Spain didn’t do it. Portugal, Italy, no other nations…

The Pastors Made the Difference

Rick:

So he would be wondering why, why would we do something different?

David:

And his question, what were the six greatest intellectual forces in shaping the thinking of the founders. He went through and identified six greats and four of the six preachers, and he was one of them. This guy right here, now this are his sermons from 1710 and 1717.

And you’ll find that by 1680, now he’s a preacher at Massachusetts, you’ll find by 1680, he had looked through the Bible and he preaches a sermon, well, looking at government in the Bible is very clear that God preferred form of government is the consent of the governed. I think I’ve heard that phrase before. He looks through here, and he says…

Rick:

And this when?

David:

This is 1680s.

Rick:

So this is 100 years before?

David:

1680s.

Rick:

And he’s already talking about the consent of the governed. Okay.

The Seeds of Liberty

David:

And 100 years before he says, you know, there is a Creator, and he’s created all men equal, and he’s given them all the same set of rights. 1680s. And he goes and he said, when you look at what the Bible says about taxation, it is very clear the taxation without representation is tyranny.

Rick:

No kidding. So when we say seeds of liberty, he was literally planting 100 years before what would bear fruit in our family document?

David:

Let me show you how significant this was, because he did this in 1680s. Tell me what the date of publication of that is right down there?

Rick:

Oh, I have to read Roman numerals. This is going to be difficult. Okay. So, this is 1772. I was going to say 52. So that’s 72. Okay, so 1772. The Founders then in their era…

David:

You know who the Sons of Liberty are?

Rick:

Yeah.

David:

Alright, how are great Sons of Liberty?

Rick:

So that was Sam Adam started it.

We Have Hope

David:

Sam Adams and John Hancock and James Otis and all those guys, they’re the ones who reprinted this and distributed across America so Americans will know how to think going into this conference.

Rick:

Okay, so wait. So these are sermons preached 100 years before the Declaration, the founders themselves reprinted his sermons to help educate their generation…

David:

To get them thinking on right principle.

Rick:

Okay, this gives me great hope. Because that means if they did it, if they could do this 200, whatever years ago, reprint, reeducate, bring these things back to life, then we can do the same thing today. We bring these documents out, we educate a generation, they come back to these principles, we bring them…

David:

And remember the principle number one, and it’s demonstrated through here, but principle number one of the Declaration, there is a Creator. And if you don’t recognize the Creator, then you got trouble. Now, this is the other thing we get today. Founder Fathers are atheist, agnostic, deist… Really? You know, let me take something right here. This is, you tell me what’s the name at the bottom of this thing?

Rick:

George Washington.

David:

George Washington. This is his first ever called a prayer in America as the federal government. That is Washington’s…

Rick:

1789.

Wise Words from Washington

David:

This is going to be October the 17th 1789 he calls the entire nation to honor God. Now, why would Washington do that? He gives the answer right here in this first paragraph. Let me just put it up. I’ll show you what’s in this first paragraph.

Washington is now calling the nation to honor God. Why would he do it? He says it’s the duty and notice the word duty, that’s a word that is a big important word we don’t talk about it much today. Military still gets it. A lot of the rural people know what duty means.

I’ve built houses for a long time. I had hundreds of thousands of dollars change hands, I never signed a contract in my life. I’d walk into the bank, we would talk about the terms, we would shake hands on it, neither one of us would break that contract, that you have a duty to keep your word. I don’t need it on paper. I’ve got to do your duty. And so…

Rick:

Today, you hear duty and people think oh, responsibility, I don’t want that. Yeah.

David:

See, duty in his day is a legally binding contractual obligation. In 1913, the definition of duty was reduced to a responsibility. And today’s dictionary says is that which one ought to do. Well, that’s not the same…

Rick:

It’s a choice, sounds like a choice instead of this is what you do.

David:

So what he’s saying it’s a legally binding contractual obligation of whom? Of nations. Legally binding contractual obligations, nations will do four things concerning God.

Acknowledge Providence

Number one, to acknowledge the Providence all by God; number two, to obey as well; number three, to be grateful for his benefits; number four, humbly to implore us protection and favor. And, that’s what nations are supposed to do, not individuals. So, they believe this philosophy that you have to honor and recognize God as a…

Rick:

But this is just the father of the country, I mean…

David:

I mean, he’s one of the great Deist Founding Fathers which is what we’re told in school today…

Rick:

But he’s obligating the nation? He’s saying the nation has a duty to do.

David:

The nation, the nation, not individuals, the nations has duty to do…

Rick:

So all this stuff about official acts, you know, you can keep your religion at home and you can have my god but don’t even have a public they have prayer, remember when our Governor Rick Perry couldn’t even pray with people in Houston, because he’s governor he’s not allowed to pray with people because it’s official. Exactly what we want is official prayer.

Official Calls to Prayer

David:

See that? What’s that?

Rick:

Proclamation for Thanksgiving.

David:

It’s handwritten. It’s done by a guy named John Langdon. Oh, he’s a governor. Oh, wait a minute. He’s a signer of the Constitution.

Rick:

Yeah.

David:

Yeah. So what do you mean a governor can’t have prayer? Here’s the governor who’s a signer of the Constitution. So the signer of the Constitution thought it was the right thing.

You’ve also got Samuel Huntington. There’s a signer of the Declaration. He’s a call to prayer. He’s now governor of his state, he calls the people to prayer.

Rick:

So this is unofficial act from a governor?

David:

Here’s one from Oliver Wolcott, another signer of the Declaration, another governor of his state calling people to prayer. Here’s one from John Langdon governor of state, you know, that was handwritten, this is called broadside because they would nail these up to trees or they nail this up bars, evidently somebody nailed it up, and you see the part…

Rick:

And tore down.

David:

And here you got John Hancock, I mean, he is his, I mean, even behind us, we got all these things behind us. You know, if I go to this one right here, pull this one out, you’ll recognize the guy there. Who’s at the bottom?

The Sons of Liberty

Rick:

So we’re back to the Sons of Liberty. So, here’s Sam Adams when he’s governor.

David:

When he’s governor.

Rick:

Okay, now so this kind of ties together for me. So, Adams reprints, he and others reprint John Wise, so there’s the principles from a pastor 100 years earlier. Now he’s in an official capacity, and he’s basically reiterating those exact same principle for John Wise?