Biblical Citizenship in Modern America, Week 8 – Classes And Candidates: What does it take to really influence society? What’s it like to be a Constitution Coach? Who can be part of God’s solution to the problems we face? What does it take to win a local race? Tune in to hear inspiring stories of how ordinary people are making a big difference, as we continue bringing you week 8 of Biblical Citizenship in Modern America!

Air Date: 03/24/2022

Guest: Various Guests: Scarlett Lani, Joe Messina, Ken Davis

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:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. This is WallBuilders Live. Thanks for joining us today. We’re diving right back in today to Biblical Citizenship in Modern America. As you know, if you’re listening to WallBuilders Live, we’re always looking at the hot topics of the day, from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective.

This week, we’re really combining all three as we bring you this biblical citizenship course. The course, by the way, has exploded across the country. If you want to know more, go to biblicalcitizens.com, you can sign up as a coach for free, you can host classes for free, you can pick up the DVDs and the workbooks at wallbuilders.com. 

There’s so many great things in this course. I really encourage you to take it. You know, if you have to take it by yourself, that’s fine. 

But it’s much more fun to bring people over into your living room or get people together at the church. The interaction that takes place after you play the videos, that’s the most powerful part. So check it out at biblicalcitizens.com. But for now, let’s just pick up right where we left off yesterday with Biblical Citizenship in modern America.

BIBLICAL CITIZENSHIP IN MODERN AMERICA

David:

By the time you have a House and Senate debate, and by the time you see if you can get 38 states to come together on this, this is going to be thoroughly vetted through the people, we will have had discussions extensively on this. And by the way, the notion of being able to wipe out the Constitution at such a convention, and it doesn’t exist.

Rick:

Yeah, that’s a totally false premise.

David:

I mean, remember the current polling is right now, nearly three-quarters of the nation respects the Constitution. They don’t think that mean is right. But they respect it. So they’re not going to be willing to wipe this thing out.

Rick:

Well, and specifically to that I’ve heard people say, well, what if you had a Convention of States and they do the same thing that they did in the first, that’s not possible because again, it’s still whatever they do has to come back to the states. It’s got to come back to us and you got to have 38 approved.

David:

That’s right. And it’s interesting Article V actually limit set by saying amendments to this Constitution. It doesn’t say you come out with a new Constitution. You know, the original Constitution of convention, they just met there to revise the Articles of Confederation. 

Delegates

They came up with a whole new document. No. Because had that violated what the States sent them, therefore the states would not have ratified it. The States knew that they probably could not revise the Articles of Confederation, you go to try. But you know what? Get us a document that gets us into a nation. And that’s what they did.

And it’s interesting that you have examples through that process, even back in the Continental Congress, that the states were explicit with their delegates. For example, when we signed the Declaration, originally, when we were writing the Declaration, Pennsylvania told these delegates you do not sign the separation from Great Britain. As the day went on, they changed position. 

So they sent word to their delegates, sign, separate from Great Britain. Well, half the delegates refused to sign individually. So the state legislature popped them all out of there, new one is back. That’s how Benjamin Rush became a signer of the Declaration. He replaced one of the guys who refused to separate like the state legislature and told him to do.

So the question of well, what kind of delegates might Congress appoint? The Congress didn’t appoint the delegates. But the states appoint the delegates. And the states control the delegates.

And if the delegates start doing something that state didn’t send them to do, the state was calling back home really. So the history is there. And the history answers all this.

And so again, I mean, we need to have open debates on this because it is a big issue. But this is, I’m not scared of using the Constitution.

Rick:

Yeah, use the constitution to save the Constitution. And it’s going to destroy it by any stretch of the imagination.

Article V

Mark:

So, one of the major powers that states have is Article V. It’s right there in the Constitution. It is fully 1/7 of the articles of the Constitution. So to forget about Article V, you’re saying I got six-seventh of a Constitution, which means I’ve got basically no Constitution at all because I have no way for it to balance and reflect the conditions of the nation.

Article V is a power specifically to the states where they have complete control. Two-thirds of the states can call a convention on a specific subject. The states meet, they meet in a convention for proposing amendments. And that’s all a convention does. If a convention meets and it proposes amendments, then it goes back to the states for three-fourths of them to consider whether or not to ratify it.

So you’ve got two methods: Congress can propose amendments, the states can propose amendments. Whatever is proposed, it requires three-fourths of the states to ratify. There’s some people out there, Rick, that think Article V is too dangerous. 

We’re not good enough. We’re not good enough to use the Constitution. We can’t meet and discuss. We can’t even have a convention. Well, I would propose then we shouldn’t have legislative committees anymore. You know, legislative committees meet, they take evidence they discuss, they hear witnesses, and then they decide proposals that go to the legislature.

Can you imagine if somebody said we can’t have the Transportation Committee meet anymore? They might make decisions for the whole state. Article V provides a committee process of the states to consider issues, consider evidence, consider the conditions and consider proposals. 

And if they agree on a proposal, they send it out to all the states to consider whether or not they want to ratify that by a three-fourths majority. It’s an incredible opportunity that we simply haven’t made use of as the states to look at how we clarify these rules and responsibilities.

Citizen Activism

Rick:

Alright, it’s time to dive in to citizen activism. What do we do as biblical citizens to actually take action, not just talk about it. Well, we are going to talk about it. But let’s talk about what you’ve been actually doing. We are joined by three great Americans that our true biblical citizens. They don’t just talk about it. They do it.

One of our great constitution coaches, Scarlett Lani is here with us. One of our very first, I mean, literally pioneering Constitution coaches with Constitution Alive in his churches in Colorado, Ken Davis. And he has been there on the frontlines for years. We actually did events together more than a decade ago. He’s run for office, serves on the school board, has a radio program and helps others run for office as well. You all welcome, Joe Messina.

Alright. This is our final week together. And we have been laying the foundation. We’ve been talking about the Constitution. We’ve been talking about how to be biblical citizens. Now it’s time to actually take some action on these things. A lot of people that are watching this class or maybe thinking I might want to do that. I’m not sure if I want to do that. 

Ken, you were one of the pioneers. I mean, you did this before anybody suggested you do it. In fact, I didn’t even know people were hosting classes. And you just kept coming back saying I need more workbooks. I need more workbooks. I’m like, why is he buying so many workbooks?

And come to find out, talking about force multiplier, you were teaching people like crazy. What gave you the idea to do that? Because we didn’t even suggest it. You just did it.

Divine Appointments

Ken:

Yeah. So in 2012, I’m probably like a lot of people sitting there and watching TV. And I keep hearing these people say, well, that’s not constitutional. Well, that’s constitutional. And I was going, I don’t know if they’re right or wrong. So I probably should find out. So I decided I was actually going to start a small group in my church learning the Constitution.

So the first couple weeks, I was trying to design my own curriculum. Two weeks in, I go to a business conference that I attend every year and Rick was, of course, one of the main speakers. And he’s got a curriculum. So novel, a great idea. I was like, huh!

Rick:

Divine appointment.

Ken:

It really was. So two weeks in, I buy Constitution Alive and I buy a few extra workbooks. At this point, I have myself and three other people literally in a closet with a TV and a DVD player. And we are diving in, using Constitution Alive at the time. I’m so glad to see what we’re doing now. And we have…

Rick:

More people, it was you and three other people, four people total.

Ken:

Me and three other people, and then a couple of them brought a friend. In fact, we have people from outside the church. And now here we are eight years later, this past Saturday, we just wrapped up our session. I’ve pretty much done this on average three times a year, every year since 2012. We do it in 10 week blocks. Which is that’s why all the extra workbooks that I’m always ordering. And we’ve seen amazing growth. 

This past session finished, we had just over 60 people participating. In fact, the church had to give me one of the smaller auditoriums to host the class in. And truly, God has moved. And I told them this past Saturday, because I believe that this is what God has me doing, if it was still just four of us in a closet with a DVD player in a TV, I would still be doing this man.

What Happened Afterwards?

Rick:

Amen. Yes. If I were on social media, I would be saying more period of period this, period that. I mean, that is exactly that’s the deal, man. I mean, no matter what you start with. And that’s after, I mean, that’s 60 in this class.

I don’t know how many you’ve had, hundreds, that have gone through the class over the years. What have you seen as a result of that? Not just they went through the class, but what happened afterwards?

Ken:

Yeah, so a couple things. And if you didn’t catch it, I live in Colorado. And we’ve had someone that was driving down roughly 40 miles every Saturday. I host a class on Saturdays. They ran for city council and won their city council seat in what’s called Woodland Park.

We’ve had some folks run for school board. And one of the things that we actually started that was launched from this was we actually began what’s called a Culture Impact team in our church. And so I heard Pastor Rob talk about the seven mountains of influence. And really, we believe that the church is called influence and be at the top of those seven mountains. And so we’ve created a team of people. We’ve drawn people from all over the city, some from all over the state, and we are plugging them in.

So we feed them information, we tell them hey, here’s a bill that’s being presented up at the statehouse. We need people to show up in force. And we are kind of a driver of some of those things. And we bring in speakers. We’ve held School Board Forums. We held a DA. We had a new DA voted for this this past year.

We held a DA forum as well, where I get to stand up and grill them, ask them questions. We take questions from the crowd. It has been amazing what we’re seeing from people who are saying, you know what, they’re finding out, it’s my job to make the difference. And I told my class this last time, like I’m going to say to all of you, you are the solution.

You Are The Solution

Rick:

Amen. That encouraged me so much. I mean, you’ve got an army of biblical citizens. I mean, you really do, that are living out that that citizenship. Scarlett, very similar: you started your first constitution class, has it been two years already?

Scarlett:

In January, it’ll be two years.

Rick:

January, it will be two years. And you had never done anything like that before?

Scarlett:

Never. I am the unexpected constitution coach. Yes.

Rick:

Unexpected Constitution coach. So what was your catalyst, I mean, what was the driver for you to decide to do it?

Scarlett:

That I’m obedient, and so when I get a call, I do it. And it came out of nowhere. I just stumbled upon you and you were offering a free webinar, but you said, you’re launching a new program. And I said, well, I can do free and I can watch. So I did. And then I just love you, you and the other coaches that were talking about what they were doing, and I said, well, these seem like good people. 

And actually, it costs a little money to do it. And I said, oh, that’s very doable. And I think I’ll just teach my kids this stuff and keep it to myself. But then you followed up and you said, we have a training webinar. And it was free. So I said I’ll do that too. And once I…

Starting Small…Making a Big Difference

Rick:

Anybody sense a theme here?

Scarlett:

So once I did that, which is smart because you get hooked, because then I was like, oh, I could do that. I could do that. But then I said, I don’t know if I will though because I’m busy and I don’t want to take attention away from my kids. 

But the seed was planted. And like I said, there was a call there. And for some reason, I said, I want to learn this and I want my kids to learn this. And hey, if we’re doing it, why don’t I invite a few more friends to learn this?

And I don’t do anything small. So I ended up not doing it in my living room, which is actually a great way to do it because it’s nice and cozy. But I got a room at my former church and invited people, and everyone thought five would come, but we had 30.

Rick:

30 in the first one?

Scarlett:

In the first one, we probably had 24-25 and then we worked up to 30-34 as it went along. So instead of this is what’s great about this curriculum is instead of having attrition, and people just like falling off, they stay. And they want more, and you gain more people because they hear about it and they want to come and learn.

Rick:

And then you did one right here in this room and had, I don’t know?

BIBLICAL CITIZENSHIP IN MODERN AMERICA

Scarlett:

This was so amazing. We had 160 people for 10 weeks in a row. Yeah. In this very room, and I kind of think that with everything, it’s just amazing that this is being filmed in this room.

Rick:

Amen. Amen. I want to ask you real quick about, because you said you know, you didn’t want to take time away from the family and it became a family project. Your boys actually get up and quote from the Founding Fathers and the Declaration. You engaged the whole family, and that I think inspired others to want to do the same and get their family involved.

Scarlett:

Yeah. Because what you want to do is you want to make it work for you, and so I made it work for me, we’re doing that. And what’s nice about it is I took it on for us to learn, but I wanted others to learn. And I feel like when you’re blessing others, you’ll be blessed. 

We were so blessed by doing this on so many levels from my kids really just blossoming in their public speaking skills, in the buy-in. They love what they’re learning and they love their nation. And it goes deeper than just saying I’m a proud American. They know their Founding Fathers. They know the Declaration of Independence and the tie between that document and the Constitution.

And it’s like I’m so filled with pride and we pulled out other people’s kids into it because we’re trying to train up the rising generation. Did I foresee this happening when I started this? No. But when you take a leap of faith, you will be rewarded. That’s what I just love about this curriculum.

FREE

Rick:

Amen. I think the free part is a great idea. I feel like I’m like a Liberty drug dealer. It’s like, here, try this little bit of liberty and then everybody keeps coming back for more. So that seems to be working. I think that’s working. Okay. 

Okay. One thing I love to hear you talk about is you had some apprehension, didn’t want to have to know everything. And so part of what helped make it work for you was you don’t have to be an expert. You just get the people in the room and say, hey, let’s learn together.

Scarlett:

Yeah, it’s called just fake it till you make it. And it’s so easy to do because you have Rick Green and David Barton and Tim Barton and now Kirk, Cameron, and Mark Meckler, all these amazing people in the biblical citizenship curriculum that they’re the experts. So like we say, if you can press play, you could say hi to everybody when they come in the room, welcome, press play, you’re good.

Rick:

One more thing before we bring Joe in to start talking about running for office as another way to be active, because part of what we’re doing here is saying, look, this is a way you can start to build that army of biblical citizens in your area. And it’s so easy to do, to get people together. But it will also give you hope.

 And you’ll find people running for office out of these classes. But I think what I enjoy the most is how people, when they leave the class, they’ve got a hope for the nation that they haven’t had in a long time. They’ve got a feeling in their gut that you know what, this is worth saving, and it can be saved. Tell me a little bit about that and what you’ve experienced with the people that have come to the class with you.

Making a POSITIVE Difference

Joe:

It’s interesting that you bring that up. One of my good friends, I mentioned earlier that we had a couple members bring friends. One of the gentlemen that came started coming. He was very curmudgeon. He really thought…

Rick:

It’s all over, Joe, go hide out at the ranch.

Joe:

He was that guy, carried his gun in every time I saw him. And over the course, now this gentleman has virtually not missed a single class since 2012. And he is a very different person today because the first year or so, I would always go Terry, trust me, we can win this. Trust me, we can make a change. 

Trust me, we have the authority in this earth to change everything that we see in front of us. Don’t worry, God’s got you. Over and over and over, now he’s smiling, he’s happy he still has his gun.

Rick:

That’s alright, I got mine too.

Joe:

But a completely different person than the one I first met in fall of 2012. And really that is because I just pressed play because I was one of those people didn’t know a thing. Now I bring in smarter people. By the way, that’s the key. Bring in smarter people than you, that will help you explain the things that the videos don’t necessarily break down for you. And I’ve done that over the last couple years as well. And it’s worked out great.

And I love to see people encouraged because we always leave them with what the duty of a citizen is. And they walk away going, I see myself in that. I can do that.

Equipping People

Rick:

Yeah. Okay, so now, Joe, we’re talking about getting people together and learning, getting the education factor, equipping them to make a difference. But then where the rubber meets the road, actual campaign, so a lot of people today think the system’s rigged, you can’t win. We’re sitting in California. And you were on the school board in California, how did you do that?

Joe:

Because my God’s not dead.

Rick:

Amen.

Joe:

You’d to bring out the Boston in me. I don’t know whether I’m stupid or stubborn, but I ran four times to get on the school board. And the fourth time I got on… Thank you. But as you get on the board, you start to learn about what’s going on there and then the real power that you have to make a change. 

And I didn’t care what they thought about me with always that right wing Christian guy or not. Every time I went to the school board meetings, I prayed before I went into, that God would give me the guidance and the wisdom to know how to vote, to show me the things that I needed to speak up about and what to say and what have you.

Rick:

Alright, friends, very quick break, we’ll be right back. You’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

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Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. We’re doing that four part series for the rest of this week, covering week eight of biblical citizenship. Let’s dive right back in where we left off before the break.

Joe:

The thing that really was interesting at first were all the Christian teachers and administrators that wouldn’t say anything. They were stricken with fear. Isn’t that sad that our father owns every blade of grass on every piece of land on this planet, and we’re afraid to open our mouths to protect our kids? I mean, Jesus said basically, we’re supposed to take care of our kids, bring a little kids to him after they’ve been brainwashed by Caesar, or before?

The Power of Parents

You have a lot of power in this room as parents. So as I started reaching out to the community, and I made more friends to the prayer breakfast and what have you, and you start to realize the lay of the land and the politicians, once you can fill a room with 400 or 500 people, all of a sudden they become your best friend. They want to come. 

They want to speak at these events or what have you. So you got to learn about the politicians, what they wanted and what they were looking for.

After a while, the bottom line with it was you started getting just power by osmosis. I started reaching out to the pastors of the churches, I started reaching out to the men’s groups in towns. We have 81 houses of worship in the Santa Clarita Valley for 300,000 people. I can barely get four or five people to run in an election cycle for sometimes up to 15 or 20 seats.

We have 65 elected officials. And their answer every time is I have a family. I can’t go through what you go through. And all I say is praise Jesus that our Founding Fathers didn’t say that, hey, I got a family. Right? I got a livery stable to run. I can’t get involved in this stuff.

And the most precious commodity we have, the most precious product that we have is our children. Right? We send them to Caesar to be trained. That’s what we do when you send them to a public school. I’m a public school official. I’m telling you this. They’re not interested in what your kids are learning when it comes to God or the Constitution for that matter. Matter of fact, because of Mr. Green over here, and my meeting tonight, I was thinking about you as a Texas legislator.

And, I said you know what, we need to get back and we need to find a history book or create a history book that actually has our kids know what the Constitution says, know what it says, know what it stands for. And they can’t graduate that class until they answer these questions.

But the reality is that who better? I mean God tells us in His Word that we’re supposed to go out and find godly men, men that love God, and that fear God to rule over us. There isn’t a heathen on this planet that’s going to go look for a godly guy to rule over them is there. 

Who is Better?

So who better than us? Who better to shine a light on these kids and the school systems and make sure your kids don’t get the curriculum that they’re trying to shove down from Sacramento?

Rick:

Hey, Joe, I’ve got to remind the people watching that’s in California, he’s learning those battles in California. Don’t tell me you can’t do it in your community. Go ahead.

Joe:

And again, I’m from Boston, we don’t know how to be quiet, ever. Alright. And we as Christians have hidden in the corner. You know what, years ago, I said, when the homosexual community came out of the closet, we went running in, okay, five at a time because we didn’t want anybody to feel bad. But what about us? We shouldn’t feel bad. We shouldn’t be putting our kids to that. We shouldn’t be subjecting our kids to what you see in the schools nowadays.

And I’ll tell you, as a school board member, the worst thing I can see is a room filled with parents because they’re mad that we just cancel the football season. That is the most uncomfortable thing a school board member can have. Why aren’t we in there on a regular basis holding those books up? And say, why are you teaching my kid this?

The first vote that I had, you guys would appreciate, was on a book that was required reading that had descriptive rape scene in it. Okay. But this was great literature. So we tried to make it so they would simply send a permission slip home to let you parents don’t, was in a book, parents should be able to choose. It’s that simple. Put it in the book. And what happens, we, the teachers come and glued, lot of the administrators come and glued.

Biblical Citizenship in Modern America, Week 8 – Classes And Candidates

So I said alright, no problem. I pick up the book, I opened it up to the page with a descriptive rape scene is and I start reading it from the day is and everybody says oh hey, what are you doing? Well, hey, if my 14 year old daughter can read this, you bunch of adults can handle a little bit of this. What’s the problem? And I still watched four to one, but it made my point. Alright.

You need fighters. You need warriors. And you need to make sure when you’re holding somebody up, or you’re trying to get somebody elected to position, please don’t vote or support somebody just because they’ve awe on your name, or just because they go to church on Sunday. You need to see them in the community. You need to see how they act. 

You need to see how they respond when the heat’s on. If they stand for God, if they stand for your kids, if they stand for, as we do, we kept Planned Parenthood out, so we took a stand for the unborn. And you can do that at a school board level. But we need your support, and we need your help, even after we were elected. Don’t abandon us. You need to be there to support us. You need to be there to help us out.

Rick:

Man, that’s good. If you want to prevent the Marxist socialist indoctrination that’s been going on for the last 50 years, we have to take over the school boards. If you want to prevent the defunding of the police, we have to take over the city councils. So we are believing big, we’re believing for 10,000 new candidates for school board and city council all across the country to come out of these biblical citizenship classes. So we’re asking you, when you start your classes have that conversation as those classes go on.

Rick:

Okay, folks, at a time for today. We’re going to get the conclusion of Biblical Citizenship in Modern America tomorrow on WallBuilders Live. So be sure to tune in tomorrow. If you want to get the whole course, go to biblicalcitizens.com. Thanks so much for listening today to WallBuilders Live.