Expansion of Christianity in the Culture – on Good News Friday:Our black history segment today is on John Marrant, the first black missionary to Native American tribes. We follow up with some good news segments out of David and Tim’s stack- A House Energy and Commerce Committee meetings starts off with everyone being given a Bible. A revival is happening at a Christian University in Ohio. More organizations and government projects are now denying Chinese products and involvement. All of this and more on Good News Friday!

Air Date: 2/24/2023

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

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Transcription:

Rick Green
Welcome to the intersection of faith in the culture, it’s WallBuilders. We’re taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. Of course, as you’ve heard of say, if you’re a longtime listener, many, many times we believe it’s really important to know what the Bible says about any issue we’re facing today. There’s there’s no area that is off limits- everything that deals with our personal relationships, our, you know, work relationships, how we run our business, or how we work as an employee, or independent contractor, whatever your role is, the Bible speaks to all of that. Well, it also speaks to how we form our society, how we treat our neighbors, what kind of leaders we elect, if we are in public service, or we’re serving in any way the… you know, in politics or anything like that. The Bible has a lot to say about how we should do that. So biblical perspective on everything in life, incredibly important. And then, of course, historical perspective, we think you can learn from history, you know, if you look back in history, you can see what works, what doesn’t work. So we’re big on studying that history, knowing that history as Ronald Reagan said, If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. America is facing a crisis of conscience, we don’t know who we are. And so we’re sliding into socialism, we’re sliding into all of these totalitarian type things. It’s just crazy. It’s because we don’t know our history. So WallBuilders is all about bringing back that history bringing back that foundation. In fact, WallBuilders comes from the book of Nehemiah where it says arise and rebuild the walls that we may no longer be a reproach. The walls were the strength of a nation back then you had to have that. Today, the Foundation of America is what needs to be rebuilt, bringing back these principles of liberty, and making sure that we understand them and how to apply them. And so we get a biblical perspective, a historical perspective and a constitutional perspective. How do we apply this in our country? So we can have a biblical perspective, but then we have to know how to do that in our particular nation under our constitution in a constitutional republic. How does this work? So that’s our perspective on on WallBuilders. That’s what we do everyday here, around this program. But on Fridays, we do something a little bit special, we call it good news Friday, and it’s a chance to dive into a lot of good news that you wouldn’t hear otherwise, most of the stories that David and Tim are going to share today, you haven’t heard from anybody else. But before we get to the good news, Tim, we’re going to continue our heroes of history throughout this month, every day getting a new hero of history. And by the way, Tim is Tim Barton, national speaker, pastor and president of WallBuilders. And also David Barton, America’s premier historian and our founder here at WallBuilders. And I’m Rick Green, America’s constitution coach. So Tim, what is our hero of history today?

Tim Barton
Yeah, Rick, our hero today is John Marrant. And first of all, let me say, I’m really glad it’s good news Friday, because yesterday, I felt a little pressured that we had to go quick, because we really wanted to hear the rest of Bob McEwen. And we had to leave time for all that in the program. I’m glad today that we have a little more time, because this is a story that deserves more time, and arguably all the stories deserve more time, but I’m just glad we get to do it today. So John Marrant, is considered the first black missionary to Native Americans in American history. The first one to successfully evangelize Native Americans. And he did it when he was 13 and 14 years old. As always, we’ve told people that if you want to find out more of these stories, you go to WallBuilders.com. We have this page and a half bio. But what’s unique about this one, specifically, is at the end of all of these stories, we give the footnotes… Just a glimpse of some of the footnotes for how much is actually there. But we give some footnotes people to find out more, well in this one, If you go to the footnotes on John Marrant, what you actually find is there’s only one and it’s not really a footnote, what it says is all of the quotes and significant facts are taken directly from John Marrant’s autobiography, and it tells you the name. Well, the reason I point this out is because this is a story taken from his autobiography. And the autobiography is 30 or 40 pages, and we’ve condensed it to a page and a half to give some of the big picture highlights to understand who he was. You need to, everybody listening, you need to go look up the story, read all 30 or 40 pages, you actually can go to Google Books, you can find this online. It is so remarkable. But to give the abbreviated version, John Marrant was actually born as a free black in America. We’ve talked about some of these individuals and heroes who were born as slaves, born into slavery. Well John Marrant was different than many of those because he was born free in New York. He gets an education. It finishes when he’s 11 years old. When he’s 11 he is sent to South Carolina to go live with his sister and her family and really to find a job to find a profession, a career. He’s gonna go apprentice somewhere. While he’s in town his sister is, right, presumably taking him around showing them all these places. Well, he says they’re going through town and they passed a facility where they heard music and he was so impressed with the music, He said I want to learn to play music. His sister is pushing back like hey, that’s not what Mom told us we had to do. You got to find an apprenticeship, find a job. He says no, I want to play music. Sister essentially tell him, well, you better call and ask Mom, right? Write and ask Mom because Mom told us we have to do something different. You need to get her permission. Mom finally acquiesced, says okay, you can do this. And he goes and apprentices… or goes and learns music. He does this for a year and gained so much proficiency in a year that the teacher of the school actually asked him to stay on and help start teaching the younger students with John just becomes a prodigy. He’s so good at the violin, he’s so good with the French horn. And he’s so good, he starts getting requests to go perform in different locations. Well, while he’s going to perform in different locations, one of the things that he said about himself was he was getting paid very well for this. So much so he said that, I was a stranger to want, being supplied with as much money as I had any occasion for. Meaning, anything I wanted to buy, I could buy. This is a 13 year old at this time. Now, obviously, 13 back then, a little different than 13 today. Nonetheless, imagine being a young person, and you’re making such good money. You’re like, man, I can buy anything I want, anything looks good. I’m going to buy that. That was his life. Well, one day he and a friend are traveling to a location where they’re supposed to put on a concert. And on the way they’re passing through a town. They went by this big hall, and he said he heard someone inside halooing ing at a crowd. And they stopped to listen and they decided to go in. Well, the person that was halooing at the crowd was the Reverend George Whitfield. They didn’t know George Whitfield was at the time. But just like we mentioned earlier in the week, the Reverend Francis Asbury was one of the significant early leaders in [the] Second Great Awakening. Well, if you go back to the first Great Awakening, the most significant leader from the First Great Awakening was the Reverend George Whitfield, now Dad, we’ve talked about Francis Asbury, and him going approximately 300,000 miles on horseback. Well, Whitfield didn’t go quite that far. But when you look at the amount of years, he was a missionary and the amount of sermons he delivered, Whitfield had an amazing influence in America.

David Barton
Yeah, Whitfield is the guy that even the Founding Fathers look back and point to him as the reason that we became a nation. Whitfield was the guy who helped us get out of this thing of, well, you’re South Carolina, and we’re in New York, and we’re two nations and we’ll never meet each other. So he got them out of this mentality of we’re all different instead of look at all the things we have in common. And he did that particularly with the sermon called Father Abraham sermon, which was talked about but John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin and others, but Whitfield Covered America. I mean, for 34 years, he preached, he preached some 32,000 sermons, and I don’t know, horseback-wise what he did. I know it did a lot on horseback. But I think it was 16 trips he made back and forth between England and America. And when you’re talking trips on a ship, that’s like three months at a shot. So he spent years on ships on the ocean, going back and forth, preaching in America and preaching there, but he had a huge impact, had so many followers and that’s what happened with John Marrant, John Marrant went to one of these meetings, actually went there not planning to go there and have anything happened to him. But he did. And that’s what turned his life around, which literally changed relations between blacks and Native Americans and whites and all sorts of things.

Tim Barton
Well, in fairness, John Marrant did go to the meeting expecting something significant to happen, just not that it would happen to him, because his friend said, hey, let’s go to this meeting. But his friend dared them to blow the french horn and disrupt the meeting, right? I mean, these were young teenage boys, they thought this would be so funny. Let’s mess the meeting up. And so John stands up in the middle of [the] meeting, he takes a breath to blow the french horn. And at this moment, George Whitfield points to him and says, prepare to meet thy God, oh, Israel. And John goes paralyzed. He says he can’t move. He fell to the floor. People came over. They don’t know what’s wrong. They tried to help them up and he falls back down, and try to help him up again, he falls back down, they finally decide, ah, just leave them on the ground. We’ll deal with them later. Well, the end of service, they took them into the back of the church. They put them on a pew in the back. George Whitfield comes to him and says, it appears Jesus has gotten a hold of you at last. And George Whitfield tells him, hey, I got to go out of town. And John Marrant still can’t move. He’s just frozen. Whitfield says, I got to leave, but I’m going to send a pastor to you and, and he’ll help coach you on what happened. He’ll talk to you more about Jesus, discipleship. Well, George Whitfield leaves and it’s three days before the pastor shows up. The pastor shows up and John Marrant is just sick, can’t move. He’s in bed, doesn’t feel good. Pastor says, well, we should pray for you. So the pastor goes to pray for John. Now John didn’t want to be prayed for, but the pastor grabs him. The pastor starts praying for him. And at the end, the pastor says, how do you feel? John tells him, I feel terrible. The pastor says, well, then we should pray again. So the pastor grabs his hands and prayed a second time. John didn’t feel any better. So the pastor concludes, we need to pray again. John says that he thought he was trying to kill me. He… I was worse every time he prayed, but the pastor grabbed him, and the third time they prayed, everything changed. And John said that he just felt different. He felt this peace in this joy and He didn’t feel sick anymore. And the pastor began to talk to him and coach him, teach them about Jesus about the Bible, discipled him. Well, John Marrant gets a Bible, and he falls in love with Jesus, falls in love with the Bible, the only thing he wants to do is read his Bible and talk to and about Jesus. So much so that… he’s living with his sister’s family. They’re not saved yet. And they get so annoyed with him just talking about Jesus all the time, that finally they’re like, You need to leave. In fact, he says that they called him every name except one, which was good. And so he decides that he’s so rejected, he’s just gonna go to the woods by himself, and maybe he’s just gonna go die in the woods because nobody seems to want him. But he loves Jesus, and he believes he’s going to spend eternity with Jesus. So it’s okay for him to die. Because when he dies, so see Jesus. While he’s in the woods, he meets a Cherokee brave, and this Cherokee had done some trading in their town and this Cherokee recognize John, and so he came to him and said, hey, do you need help? And John told him, I got nowhere to go. The Cherokee says, Come with me, I’ll help take care of you. The Cherokee was gathering furs and so right, probably some hunting some fishing stuff going on. And John stays with him for the next eight or ten weeks. John is learning some Cherokee, as he’s engaging with this Cherokee brave, the Cherokee at the end of this time in the woods decides he wants to go back to his village, he invites John to come, John goes back with him to the village. But when he gets to the village, the chief recognizes John’s not one of the tribe. In fact, John’s an outsider, and the law of the tribe was that no outsiders were allowed. If any outsider came in the camp, they’d be killed. So the chief ordered John Marrant to be bound to be captured. And when they grab him, they tie him up, they bind him. And John says, they decided they were going to execute him the next morning, and they went, and they locked him up in this little huts. And there was a guard on the outside, and they’d already told them how they were going to execute him, the next morning. It was pretty graphic, it wasn’t a nice way to die at all. They were going to torture him to death. And they explained how they were going to torture him to death. So he’s in the cell, but he has his Paul and Silas moment. He begins praying, and really then becomes… begins to praise God because he realizes that even though he’s going to die a horrible death, that once he dies, he gets to be with Jesus. And that’s going to be great. Well, when he starts rejoicing and praising God and thanking Jesus, one of these, these Native American guards, they open up and they look inside, and they said, hey, who are you talking to? And John told them, I’m talking to Jesus. The guard looks around, says I don’t see anybody in here. And John tells him, oh, Jesus is with us right now. And he begins to tell the guard about Jesus. Now, he also had his Bible with him. So I would imagine, right, he probably is talking about how the Bible has told us about right, the coming Messiah, the Savior, the Son of God. And either way, he whatever it is, he explains it to this native in whatever Cherokee knows, the native tells him, I’ve got to get someone. I’ll be back. The native comes back with elders of that tribe. And the native tells him you need… John, you need to tell them what you told me about this Jesus guy, John tells them, they’re so impressed they get the Chief (John actually called the chief, the king), but they get the chief, and John has sent before the chief. And over time John’s able to explain Jesus, explain the gospel, the chief ends up getting saved, the tribe ends up converting to Christianity, they freed John, they make him a prince of the tribe. In the midst of this, they asked John to live with them for the next many weeks, and to teach them more about Jesus, teach them from this great book. So John stays with them. He mentors them to Christianity. And then the chief has this idea that you know, there’s other tribes that have never heard about this Jesus, we want them to hear about Jesus. So he sends John out as a missionary from their tribe to other tribes. The Chief sends his 50 warrior… bravest warriors with John as an escort to keep John safe until he told these tribes about Jesus. John does this. He turns 14 years old, while he’s a missionary with these native tribes. At the end of these many, many months, he’s been out there, he finally gets a little homesick and says, hey, guys, I want to go back home. And as the story goes on, it’s… his parents, his mom doesn’t even recognize when he gets home, because he said he’d been gone so long. He wore a loin cloth. He had his chest painted, was… had feathers in his hair. He dressed just like the natives that he had been with, and his mom didn’t recognize him. But finally, he’s restored to the family. I mean, it’s this amazing story, and I’ve abbreviated 30, or 40 pages in these 12 minutes. But the point is that this is the incredible story of a 13 or 14 year old young man who was the first black American to successfully evangelize Native Americans. And when you have organizations like the 1619 project, or you have these movements of critical race theory that are presumably suggesting we should learn more of the black history in America, I just noticed they leave out a lot of these really important heroes of American history, including someone like John Marrant. If we want to look back at some amazing stories of some incredible men and women of American history, John Marrant’s name has to be on the list. For anyone who wants to know more. Again, I encourage you, go to the WallBuilders website, but look up John Marrant’s autobiography. Read that 30 or 40 pages. You will not be disappointed. John Marrant is certainly one of those American heroes that we should remember today.

Rick Green
Alright guys, let’s take a quick break. When we come back from the break, we’ll jump into some of that good news. Stay with us, you’re listening to WallBuilders.

Tim Barton
Hi, Friends, this is Tim Barton of WallBuilders. This is a time when most Americans don’t know much about American history or even heroes of the faith. And I know oftentimes for parents, we’re trying to find good content for our kids to read. And if you remember back to the Bible to the book of Hebrews, it has the faith hall of fame where they outline the leaders of faith that had gone before them. Well, this is something that as Americans, we really want to go back and outline some of these heroes, not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity in our faith as well. I want to let you know about some biographical sketches we have available on our website. One is called the courageous leaders collection. And this collection includes people like Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, George Washington Carver, Susanna Wesley, even the Wright brothers, and there’s a second collection called Heroes of history. In this collection, you’ll read about people like Benjamin Franklin, or Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Harriet Tubman… Friends, the list goes on and on. This is a great collection for your young person to have and read and it’s a providential view of American and Christian history. This is available WallBuilders.com. That’s www.WallBuilders.com .

Rick Green
We’re back here on WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. And it’s time for David to give us some good news. David, what’s our first piece of good news today?

David Barton
Okay, Rick. So I have talked on several good news Fridays about the cool things going on in Congress, not really covered very well by media, because it’s good news. And they’re not after that, particularly when it’s good news for conservatives and faith people. But nonetheless, here’s another one. And it just deals with the kind of people we’ve got in Congress that we don’t hear much about. Because the the composition of the house change. Republicans are now in charge of all the committees, they’re 19 Major committees, and so Republicans have it, the Democrats had it. And so Kathy McMorris Rogers out of the state of Washington, is the new chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. And that’s a super big committee. That’s one of the powerful ones. Of course, they’re the ones fighting ESG right now, where Biden is trying to push it forward and Commerce Committee as well, all the business stuff. And it’s interesting the way that Cathy McMorris Rogers started the meeting, all… and this is a big committee, this like Judiciary Committee, and like the Armed Services Committee, like budget and appropriations. These are your really big tier committees. And so there’s a lot of members on the committee, and she opens it up and what she did, she says, I want to give every one of you a book. And she did. And she gave them books and said I want to invite all of us to read through this together, in 2023. It’s an all time bestseller. I read it for the first time a few years ago, and it changed my life. My encouragement is for all of you to read this book in your lifetime. So let’s do it. Now, in 2023. It’s the Bible. She gave every committee member a copy of the Bible and said, guys, we all need to read this together. She said, The Bible is structured if you’ll read 15 minutes a day, you can read a little in the Old Testament, a little New Testament, little and Psalms or Proverbs. She says, I pray this will be a blessing to all of you. And it sounds really like a one year Bible because that’s the way the one year Bible is set up. And it’s easy. 15 minutes a day, you’ll cover the entire Bible in a year. It’s only 3.2 chapters a day, you have to read the Bible. It’s an easy thing to do. But I love the fact that the chairman of this super big powerful committee starts out by saying, hey, every one of us, we all need to get in the Bible and read through this, this year. We need to go cover to cover on this. And by the way, not just for committee members, not just for Congressman every single one of us need to do the same thing. So it’s great to see Kathy McMorris Rogers do this.

Rick Green
Alright Tim, what’s your first piece of good news today?

Tim Barton
Yeah, well, guys, the first one I have is from Cedarville University and actually I’m going to acknowledge I filibustered the first segment so all I’m going to say… I’m only going to mention this because it ties in with the Kathy McMorris Rogers encouraging people to read the Bible. I’m reminded of what Jesus said in Matthew where he said, blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled. And I think it’s so cool that we are seeing people hungering and thirsting for God. We’ve talked about the move going on at Asbury University, or Asbury college. Well, this article says Cedarville University experiencing outpouring of Lord and campus revival, and this is a Christian University in Ohio, that is seeing their chapel service that is now just grown and people are just hungering and thirsting after God. And I know there’s a lot of thoughts out there where people want to critique and criticize what’s happening or what’s not happening Asbury or even what… at this Christian University in Ohio. But the point is that we should acknowledge it’s great that people are hungering and thirsting after God, after righteousness. None… not the least of which, when you have a congresswoman, encouraging everybody to read and study and know the Bible make that a commitment to read the Bible in a year. Guys, God is moving and doing something and it’s super encouraging. This is some really good news. Now not to filibuster longer, Dad, I’m throwing back to you. So you can get one or two more of these stories in before we wrap up the day.

David Barton
Yeah, the good news I want to hit right now, this starts… and it’s a whole series of stories, I’m just going to kind of hit the headlines. But we’ve seen what happened with the Chinese balloon. And I think some Americans, hopefully some Democrats in Congress are figuring out China is not their friend. They’ve been talking nice to China wanting to get along with China. China wants to see us destroyed. We are their enemy. And they’re going to smile at us and hold their hand out to us and all for everything that we’ll take, with the hope that it’ll destroy us. And so we’re starting to see some states say, hey, this TikTok thing is not good. There’s a lot of anti security stuff embedded here. They’re getting lots of personal information. This is to help them against America. But now we see that in North Dakota, they struck down a Chinese corn mill project. And by the way, all over America, the Chinese are buying up land near security sites, just like the balloon went over a lot of those sites in Montana and Wyoming, elsewhere, where we have a lot of national defense stuff. They’re buying land by that farmland they’re starting… and this is a Chinese corn mill and North Dakota said ain’t doing it. We got security concerns. We’re not letting the Chinese buy land here near some of the stuff. So that’s good news that we’re starting to wake up to the Chinese stuff. Same thing happened in New York City, New York City actually closed down the Chinese police station that the Chinese opened in New York City, that in itself ought to be a red alarm going off when the Chinese send their people here to enforce the law in New York City. But New York City said no, no, no out of here, you’re getting out of here. And so all over the country, it’s like people are starting to wake up and hopefully TikTok is another one I’ve seen. A whole bunch of states now ban it for state websites and for state use, young people need to get off it as well, old people need to get off it. Everybody needs to get off TikTok. But here’s another headline, Australia just ripped out 900 Chinese made security cameras from their government buildings. So Chinese are willing to make cheaper products and sell it cheaper, so that we’ll take it. And then we take it, and they’ve got all sorts of stuff embedded in it. And so good for the Australians, they’re starting to see what the rest of the world is starting to recognize. China is not our friend. And they ripped out these 900 security cameras, and they may be security cameras, but they really give the Chinese most likely a lot of information. At least that’s the way their other cameras have been. So just good news to see that we’re starting to wake up and China is an enemy. And we’re recognizing that. Now, a couple other things that I want to throw in. It’s really good… North Dakota, just talking North Dakota about how they said no to that Chinese corn mill, North Dakota also just passed a measure that declare that people are actually superior to animals and to inanimate objects. And that is a huge thing that really is a reflection of biblical thinking. If you go back to the book of Romans in the Bible, Romans 1, it talks about that when you love the creation more than the Creator, how your worldview gets flipped. And really, the progressives love the creation more than the Creator. They’ll inconvenience people all day long to save the planet. They’ll inconvenience people to save the animals, everything is worth more than a human is, including human life. We’re happy to take that in abortion at they’re thinking. So here North Dakota says no, no, we’re just telling you, people are the most important thing. They’re higher than animals. They’re higher than an inanimate objects, people. That’s what this is all about. And that is a… you’re not going to get that from progressives. And you’re not going to get that from liberal Democrats. That’s coming from a better worldview. And that’s a healthy thing to have in America.

Tim Barton
Well and guys, how ironic is it that we are celebrating something that is so basic, like how far is our culture gone? That now we’re having to celebrate when someone says something is basic as yeah, a human life really is more important than a bird, right? A human life is really more important than a fish. But this is how backwards… you know, Dad, to your point over Romans 1. This is how backwards we become in our lack of morality. And you know, one of the reasons that obviously we exist is try to promote the restoration of biblical values that we were founded on. Looking back to the religious, the moral, constitutional Foundation of the nation, the founding fathers, pretty much without exception point to the Bible as the bedrock of freedom in this nation, where you have John Adams saying that our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It’s wholly inadequate to the governor of any other when George Washington in his farewell address said that religion and morality are the indispensable supports of our political prosperity. They understood without a moral foundation, that religious people that had a moral foundation, our nation wouldn’t survive. And so the reason I think we can celebrate this so much, is because it gives an indication that maybe we are seeing the restoration of some basic moral values that have at least been decaying as there’s been an attack, if not completely eroded, but it’s so great to see a renewal on some level of some of these basic values, some of this common sense thought that is happening In some of these states.

Rick Green
Alright guys, I think we’ve got time for one more piece of good news. David, what are we going to close out with?

David Barton
And the final piece of good news I’ve got comes from a real surprise for me. I haven’t been able to do this literally in years. But over recent months, we’ve had two or three these stories this is good news out of Massachusetts. And it’s the Massachusetts Supreme Court has ruled that unborn babies are actually persons. Now even though they’ve got you know, just unlimited abortion up there. The Supreme Court said no, no, an unborn baby is actually a baby. And it dealt with the fact that there was a guy up there that killed a pregnant woman and in killing the pregnant woman. It killed the unborn child. And so he said, wait a minute, you can’t convict me of two murders. I’ve only got one. This was an unborn child. And they said yeah, but then an unborn child is actually a person. And so the Supreme Court of Massachusetts for all places has actually upheld the fact that an unborn child is actually a human life. That’s great news.

Tim Barton
Well and it is and that is obviously the correct position. It does make you wonder then, what’s going to happen with the abortion industry if we’re acknowledging it’s an unborn child. I feel like this would be a great time to be a pro life center up in Massachusetts, maybe bring some kind of challenge with the abortion laws based on what’s going on, nonetheless, really good news for Massachusetts.

Rick Green
All right, gentlemen, we are out of time for today. But there’s more good news at our website WallBuildersLive.com. Jump in the archives there and go to any Friday program. And you can get some more good news but David and Tim will have more good news for you next week. Thanks so much for listening. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders.