Courage and Boldness – on Good News Friday: Today on Good News Friday, we work through David and Tim’s stack of good news. A supreme court decision rules in favor of a Romanian immigrant who was unjustly fined 2.7 million dollars. Pensacola Christian College stands up for righteousness when a band wants to perform, but has an ungodly lifestyle. A United Methodist church in Plano, Texas stands up for gender & sexuality. A girl’s varsity basketball team puts their foot down and refuses to compete when confronted with a male identifying as a female on the opposing team. All of this and more on Good News Friday!

Air Date: 3/10/2023

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

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Transcription:

Rick Green 0:11
You found your way to the intersection of faith in the culture. Thanks for joining us today on WallBuilders. Check out our websites today at wallbuilders.com and WallBuildersLive.com. Both resources available for you. And by the way, when you’re there, consider making a one time or monthly contribution come alongside us lock shields with us when you make that investment in freedom, it allows us to train more pastors, more legislators, more young people. It allows us to add more stations, reach more people, new materials coming out. All of those things are helping to educate and equip the culture and equip people in churches. You know, one of the main things I hear people saying all the time, we need pastors to get involved, we need churches to get involved. Well, what does that mean, to say get involved, right? They’ve got to have the education, they’ve got to have that biblical and civic literacy, they’ve got to learn how to influence the culture and be good biblical citizens. That’s what we do here at WallBuilders. And you help us reach more people when you make that donation. So please consider that today WallBuilders.com . I’m Rick Green, America’s constitution coach here with David and Tim Barton. David, of course, America’s premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders, Tim’s a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. And all three of us just looking to serve you and bring you a biblical perspective. So everything we talk about here is, we take on hot topics of the day, but we always look at it from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. And today, it’s going to be all about good news. We’re going to be sharing good news stories with you from across the nation, most of which you haven’t heard, almost all of which I haven’t heard. That’s why I enjoy good news Friday. And special thanks to Tim and David for the homework and doing the research to find the stories, and then share them with us here on WallBuilders. David, what’s our first piece of good news today?

David Barton 1:41
Okay, guys, I’m jumping into the US Supreme Court term. Now the term actually started back in October. And so over those first few months, they hear the arguments and listen to cases that’s going to be going from now to June, but usually about March and April is when they start coming down with decisions. Well, they’ve come down with one, it’s one of the early decisions, but it’s a really good decision. And it deals with the IRS. Now the IRS, you know, one of the things we’ve done a good news Fridays in previous weeks is talk about what’s happened since Republicans got control of the House. And part of that was, the first thing they did was say, hey, we’re not going to fund those 87,000 IRS agents. And so they stopped that funding and it’s interesting, here’s where, how do you want to say this? You know, it’s like a show horse, you got a show horse, and Biden is out there talking about, they need greater customer service with the IRS, etc. Well, when you looked into the funding, only 4% of the IRS funding he asked for went to customer service. 58% went to enforcement services. So, they’re really going after taking more money from you rather than being better about how they handle things. But that didn’t come out in the news. Somehow CNN and MSNBC didn’t report all that, they just talked about the need for more service in the IRS and it turns out to be enforcement services. This decision from the Supreme Court is a good example of why you don’t want more enforcement service. It deals with a man who was in Romania back under the communist domination, the Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain, all the stuff that was there. He was able to escape from Romania, he came to the United States, he took a job here, became a citizen of the United States under all the communist oppression. Back before the Iron Curtain fell, the Berlin Wall came down, that kind of stuff. So when the Iron Curtain fell in 1990, he goes back to Romania, and he lives in Romania for the next 21 years. He’s back in his home country. He’s a dual citizen. He’s a citizen of America and of Romania. But now it’s a free Romania. He goes back for 21 years, he runs all these businesses in Romania, does a really good job, just been very successful businessman, etc. As it turns out, the IRS has a provision in the code that if you’re an American citizen, even a dual citizen, and you live anywhere else overseas, you have to send the IRS notification of your bank accounts overseas, even though not American bank accounts, even though you can’t be taxed on them. You have to give all sorts of notification to the IRS about where you are and what you’re doing. Which, I mean, this just doesn’t even make sense. If you got no jurisdiction over a foreign account. Why should you have to report it, etc, etc, nonetheless. So the IRS has all these provisions and he comes back to United States in 2011, been running all these businesses for years. He’s back here. And he does his American accounts and America books. And the accountant says, Well, you know, you there’s this provision in the IRS that you really need to report your other foreign accounts. He says, really? All the foreign business? Yeah. And so he files that and so it turns out that he missed five years of filing on that, when the law was passed, missed five years. And so the IRS looks at that and says, Well, you know, you’ve had more than 25 different accounts and business accounts and personal accounts over in Romania. And we’re going to fine you for each one of those accounts you did not report on and it’s… there’s nothing the IRS can do with with anything he has over there, but we’re going to fine you for that. And so they came up, grab this guys, they came left with $2.72 million worth of fines for not reporting his accounts over there that they can’t even deal with. So he obviously says, wait a minute, $2.72 million in fines for something you can’t even enforce? And he takes it to Court and the Supreme Court said no, no, IRS can’t do that. There is a maximum of $10,000 you can do for the… each year he didn’t respond. So the maximum fine is 50,000. Well, the IRS found a way to come up with $2.72 million. The good news is the IRS got slapped down on this. The better news is that this is not going to be the standard for what’s going forth because of the fact that we got those 87,000 IRS agents defunded. So good news for taxpayers all around.

Tim Barton 5:45
Well, I also hope that maybe in the decision from the Supreme Court, it covered enough expenses that it included the $50,000 it maybe allegedly owe the IRS, so that hopefully the IRS was paying themselves for his account.

David Barton 5:58
Wait a minute, the IRS doesn’t pay themselves. They take our money; they’re robbing our money to pay themselves.

Tim Barton 6:03
That’s a good point. I don’t want to pay off this guy’s account.

David Barton 6:05
I don’t want to pay off those guys either.

Tim Barton 6:06
However, I’m sure they have enough in their budget. They can find it somewhere. Anyway, that’s…

David Barton 6:11
Maybe if they had some more agents, that would help them get that.

Tim Barton 6:13
Yes, that would be great.

Rick Green 6:15
Well, let’s get some more of that good news out there. Tim, what’s your first piece of good news today?

Tim Barton 6:20
Well, guys, this one is coming out of Pensacola, Florida and it’s Pensacola Christian College. The title of the article says Christian College cancels singing groups concert over lifestyle that contradicts Scripture. Now what the article identifies is there was an organization a acapella group from some… it says a British group. So I’m guessing somewhere over England or Great Britain somewhere in that general vicinity. They were known as the King’s Singers. And when I first saw that “Kings”, I’m not sure if that means like the king of England, or like Jesus Christ being the King. I’m not sure, but they were the King singers. They were going to come perform a concert at Pensacola Christian in February, and Pensacola Christian announced that they were not going to, in fact, hold this performance because one of the individuals in this acapella group openly lives a lifestyle that they identified as being specifically contradictory to scripture. In their release, they explained that they’re founded upon and guided by the Bible. This is meaning Pensacola Christian college. They said the college cannot knowingly give an implied or direct endorsement of anything that violates the Holy Scripture, the foundation for our sincerely held beliefs. The article goes on to point out that actually the university paid the group, they were given a full remuneration, which means financially, they were compensated, even though they said that we’re not going to host this concert. And guys, we have seen in the midst of a political divide in the midst of sometimes a moral divide, a lack of backbone, literally for decades, we’ve not seen colleges and universities standing up, or maybe even Christian groups in general. And we have seen so much over the last couple weeks. In fact, I’ve got in my stack of good news, things dealing with basketball teams or cheerleaders or all kinds of stuff. We’ve been seeing people more and more and more having the courage and boldness to stand up. And this is just a great example of a Christian university saying, Look, we’re not going to compromise on the foundation of Scripture where the Bible says that certain things in a lifestyle are wrong, we’re not going to put that person on stage to let them perform, and then give a de facto endorsement of that. And I get some people out there might have different convictions, and they might say, look, you know, it’s fine to listen to a concert with someone that maybe has a different belief system because you appreciate the gift God’s given them, and the musical talent and ability. That’s totally fine if you have a different conviction, but I really respect that Pensacola Christian has taken a stand saying we don’t want to compromise on the Word of God with anyone that takes our stage because we want to make sure the people we put in front of our students are people that are representing a outwardly biblical lifestyle. And that is, to me a really encouraging position. Again, something we’re seeing all over the nation right now, we have more good news coming on that probably later in this program. But this is encouraging from Pensacola Christian College.

David Barton 8:59
And let me pile on to that with one that kind of goes right down that line. I was going to get to this later, but it deals with the fact that, Tim, as you mentioned, we’re starting to see some courage in a lot of ways. People are starting to stand for their convictions. It would be easy for Pensacola Christian to just kind of blown that off and said, well, it’s a big group and there’s only one member and it so… Overall, it’s a Christian group that took a stand. And that took a stand. And that’s a good message to send to the kids, that look there are moral rights and wrongs. And you don’t compromise that, whether it’s 1 Corinthians 7 or anything else. If you violate one of those moral stands, that’s a public issue and it needs to be a public issue. So good for them for having that conviction. They undoubtedly are going to get criticized over that, but that doesn’t matter. They did the right thing on this at biblically, there’s a lot of justification for it. And going with that we’ve talked in previous programs about how many churches in the United Methodist Church are leaving because of the position they’ve taken on marriage and sexuality and etc. And so this continues, and this is one that really struck me as unusual, how deep these convictions are starting to go. And it appears, what we’re seeing in polling now, it appears that even though most people been silent about their convictions on gender and sexuality, etc, that nearly the overwhelming majority of the nation is clearly on the traditional side. And they’re starting to stand up for that. And so the article I’ve got here deals with the United Methodist Church in Plano. Now, this is why I think it’s significant. Plano is one of the more liberal parts of the Dallas / Fort Worth area. Anytime you get around a large city in any state, that large city is more liberal than the rural parts of that state. And I don’t care if it’s a conservative state like Oklahoma. Tulsa is much more liberal than what you’re going to find out in Woodward, Oklahoma or somewhere else. So the big cities always tend to be much more blue. And it’s that way with Texas, our five big cities in San Antonio and Houston and Dallas, etc. They’re very, very blue. And Plano is one of the suburbs just outside of Dallas. It’s kind of where wealthy folks have gone for a long time. And it’s kind of an upper suburb, and tends to be that in a place like that you tend to be a little more liberal than other places, and yet this United Methodist Church of Plano, and it’s the big United Methodist Church of Plano overwhelming said, no, we’re not going to be part of this group anymore, if this is what they’re going to do with gender, sexuality. And this is what really struck me, was when the congregation voted on it, the vote was 859 to 12. So only 12 folks in the United Methodist Church in Plano, which is, you know, really big town, that’s a really prosperous city, only 12 said, no we’re going against the biblical position. 859, which again, that’s a big church said, no, we’re going with biblical position… And that kind of goes with what you’re saying, Tim, with that singing group, we’re starting to see a lot of conviction coming out. And that’s a really healthy thing for the nation, when morals start becoming important again,

Rick Green 11:52
and it’s the exact opposite of what we saw for so many years, right? I mean, for the most part, very few people were willing to take that stand because of the cultural popularity of the whole, you know, homosexual movement and the destruction of marriage and all of the things that have happened. So, man, for a church to do it, for a university to do it. Of course, PCC has always been willing to take heat. But here, like you said, it was kind of like, I mean, they could have just kind of glossed over it. It wasn’t somebody that was going to be there on staff. It was a one time event. It would have been easy for them to find excuses or find reasons. And they did it in a loving way. I mean, I just echo everything y’all are saying, this is really good news and a really good sign and you know, I grew up right next door to Plano, so I know exactly what you’re talking about, David. I grew up in Wylie, which is right next door. In fact, we didn’t even have a movie theater. So we went to Plano to go to the movies. And the fact that a Methodist Church in Plano took this position, man, I got goosebumps. I mean that gives… that is such an encouraging piece of of good news. We’re going to take a quick break, guys, we’ve got more good news to share. We’ll be back in just a moment, you’re listening to WallBuilders.

Tim Barton 12:53
This is Tim Barton with WallBuilders. And as you’ve had the opportunity to listen to WallBuilders Live, you’ve probably heard the wealth of information about our nation, about our spiritual heritage, about the religious liberties, about all the things that makes America exceptional. And you might be thinking as incredible as this information is, I wish there was a way that I could get one of the WallBuilders guys to come to my area and share with my group, whether it be a church, whether it be a Christian school, or public school, or some political event or activity. If you’re interested in having a WallBuilders speaker come to your area, you can get on our website www.WallBuilders.com. And there’s a tab for scheduling. And if you’ll click on that tab, you’ll notice there’s a list of information from speakers bios to events that are already going on. And there’s a section where you can request an event to bring this information about who we are, where we came from, our religious liberties and freedoms. Go to the WallBuilders website and bring a speaker to your area.

Rick Green 14:02
We’re back here on WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us on this good news Friday. We’ve got a lot more good news coming up. Just a quick sharing some good news from an individual that’s been blessed by some of the things we did in February. With all of our heroes. It was phenomenal. And I’ve heard this from a lot of other people. But one of the emails that came in from Dave Nichols, he said, Thank you so much for taking the time to create the biographies of all of our black heroes. We donated them to our children’s elementary school and several teachers use them. Thanks so much for all that you do. David And Tim, I think one of the things that really has made WallBuilders unique and made it stand out over the years is the hidden history, the stuff you guys have found and pulled out that was just lost, quite literally for you know, more than a century in some cases, two centuries in some cases, and bringing those stories forward. And it gives people hope it gives them encouragement. I mean, if you’re, you know, if you’re a teenage girl, when you hear the story of a Sybil Ludington or Dicey Langston, you realize wow, they did that the revolution of 15 or 16 I could do something you know, if you’re a little black boy growing up in American everybody’s telling you if you’re black in America, you don’t have ownership in the dream, and then you find out about all these great black heroes in the Revolutionary period, you look at your nation different, you look at your own life difference. So I couldn’t agree with Dave more. I really enjoyed those stories in February. Tim, you, I know you put a lot of extra effort into preparing to have that for every day, throughout February. But I know that was a blessing to our listeners.

Tim Barton 15:16
Well, we were happy to do it. And we did social media videos as well. And it’s something that we’ve already now had people asking us for continued series along the way. And I’ve joked with some of our team here, there was a lot of research that went into that. There was a lot of effort, it was a labor of love, we are looking forward to next February, when we can roll out the second series of these black heroes from American history. But at some point, we’ll come out with the 56 signers of the Declaration, we’ll come out with the 39 signers of the constitution, we’ll come out with some of the early presidents and some of these different individuals. There are so many incredible contributors to American history that have largely been forgotten today. And we really do enjoy retelling those stories.

Rick Green 16:00
Well, if only we had recorded the ones that you… Oh, wait, we did! That’s right. Yeah, that was actually on radio. So hey, folks in our archive section, you can go there and [listen to] it, or you can go watch the videos that were made. It’s all available. So don’t, you don’t have to get upset. If you missed our February programs. It’s all available for you. Go check it out. Okay, so let’s see, Tim, you up next?

David Barton 16:19
Well, before we do that, Rick, let me just comment that, that little testimony that you just gave is part of what we hoped would happen. We really believe that if people had some of these resources in their hands, it would get into the schools that we get into political arenas that people are hungry for this stuff. And we believe that’s what changes a lot of the debate. I mean, we wouldn’t be having a CRT debate if we knew the story of black history and those heroes. And so the fact that that got into elementary schools, where teachers were teaching their kids about this, that’s the kind of stuff that’ll change the direction of the nation in the future. And that’s really what we’d hoped would happen. That’s great to hear.

Rick Green 16:52
Well, in fact, what you’re saying, David, is that, you know, the truth is, it’s the inoculation against a lie. If they know the truth, and they’re solid in the in the history, and they and they know the civics and they know the biblical worldview, they won’t fall for the lie. But when we don’t have… when we’re ignorant, civically, and biblically, that’s the petri dish, where bad government grows, where the lies about who we are as a people and what makes a good society, all of those lies, tend to seep in, because we weren’t inoculated, if you will, with truth. So the more we know the truth, the better. And I think that’s what we did with those stories. And frankly, with all the different things that we share here on WallBuilders. So folks share these programs. If you want your community to be stronger, get this information, in as many hands as you possibly can. Alright Tim, where we headed with our next piece of good news?

Tim Barton 17:36
Well, this one’s from Vermont, and I teased that earlier in the program that we would have other examples of people having the courage to stand up. This is from a girl’s varsity basketball team. The headline says Christian high school girls basketball team takes a stand forfeits playoff game rather than compete against male opponents. And specifically, this is Mid Vermont Christian school. They’re the Eagles of White River Junction. They’re number 12 in the state for their division and in the playoffs, the first round they’re supposed to go up against the number 5 team the Long Trail Mountain Lions of Dorset, and they decided to forfeit the first game, or this first round of the playoffs, because on the Lions, the Mountain Lions, they have a biological male on the team who identifies as female and plays in the female basketball team. And this Christian school, said that that’s not what we signed our girls up for girls basketball to do. This is part of the the statement from their leader. They said we withdrew from the tournament because we believe playing against an opponent with a biological male jeopardizes the fairness of the game and safety of our players. This is from the head of school Vicky Fogg from MVCS. She continued, allowing biological males to participate in women’s sports sets a bad precedent for the future of women’s sports in general, on the school’s website, this is again Mid Vermont Christian School. On their website, they say their mission is to glorify God by preparing students for college and for life through a program of academic excellence, established in biblical truth. On their basketball page for the Lady Eagles, they explained that women’s basketball team is a group of young ladies enjoying the sport of basketball while they learn and grow in their faith in Christ. And so this is something from the school, this is very clear where they’re coming from, from a biblical perspective, also happens to be biologically Correct. God made them male and female. And they identified that this is part of women’s sports, which one of the great ironies of what the left does in this movement, is they’re literally defeating this notion of Title Nine, where there used to be an idea that we wanted to protect women, but now we’re having a hard time defining women and therefore if you can’t define women, you can’t protect women. This is the hypocrisy and the lunacy of the left. But again, it’s so encouraging not just to see people standing up. It’s one thing when people stand up and it costs them nothing. But when you are a school and you have competed your entire year to make the playoffs, to have a chance to the state championship, and you get in the playoff, the first round, your convictions now are in front of you, and you’re going to have to decide what you’re going to do. And they made the choice that cost them something seemingly significant, but they were willing to do it because of their faith. And this is such an example to us that we should be willing to do the hard thing, even if it costs us something, something significant, an opportunity cost as the case might be. But this is so encouraging, and just kudos to that school, to the girls my basketball team. Certainly this is one of the things we believe that there are crowns and treasures stored up in heaven for these kinds of decisions. When you promote godliness, and righteousness of temporal and superficial things, where Jesus made it very clear, what profit is it for a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul. When you are putting the soul as the number one thing, you are doing the right thing. So this is just a great piece of news coming out of Vermont.

Rick Green 20:54
I feel like our theme today guys is courage. Courage, courage, courage, all these people standing up, all these people being willing to speak truth to the culture right now. So good, good stuff. David, what’s our next piece of good news?

David Barton 21:04
Next piece comes out of Washington, DC, and I’ve been on this since the elections back in November, since the house flipped control back in January. Just looking at the things that are coming out of the house that the national media’s is not covering. It’s not stuff that is part of the progressive agenda. And most of the national media is progressive. They don’t like what’s happening. So they’re not going to cover it. Just silence is the way that they handle this, but I’m loving what I’m seeing. And for people who say, Well, there’s no difference between Republicans and Democrats. No, no, no, back up. Listen to our previous good news Friday programs that all the things that are coming out of the house. And you can say, well, it won’t make any difference, because Biden won’t sign it and the Senate won’t do it. Well, you know what, that’s probably true. But I will point out, and Rick you remember this, back when you were in politics, there’s no use in us trying to do anything with this. No, use trying to pass it because it can’t go anywhere, the governor is going to veto it or the Senate is going to kill… These guys are still putting out the right stuff, even though they know it won’t go anywhere. And Biden is going to veto it. And Schumer is not going to let it have a hearing in the Senate. This is great. This is courage. Again, this is what we believe. We’re going to put it out there. This, you know…

Rick Green 22:10
It forces the discussion and moves the ball down the field. It educates people, I mean, there’s so many positives, even if it’s not ultimately going to pass, this session.

David Barton 22:18
the stuff that we’ve been covering for last several weeks, that’s coming out every week out of the house, is stuff that at least from our standpoint, as conservatives and as traditional moral people, we love what’s going on, we’re cheering for this. It’s a restoration of constitutional values. It’s good stuff. And I got two more that are happening now. Now, this goes back to the fact that Washington DC, under the Constitution, is not separate. It cannot be a state for those that want statehood for DC and the license plate in Washington, DC calls for statehood. Sorry, that’s unconstitutional. You can’t be a state, you have to be a separate entity. If you want to be a state, we’ve got to move the federal government somewhere else. So the Constitution requires that the federal government be in a place that’s not part of any state. And that eliminates the jealousy that’s between states, because you have higher employment where the federal government is, higher income, higher every… Every state would want that. So this whole thing of DC, it’s… they have city rules. So back in the cities, Congress said, well, we’ll let you guys have a mayor and city council, you can have some self rule, but we get the final word on it. So in what’s called the House Oversight Committee, the House Oversight Committee looks at what goes on in DC, anything they don’t like that’s going on in the city, they can kill through the house. And again, it depends on whether Republicans or Democrats are in charge of it. But since Republicans are in charge right now, they’re looking at two measures that recently got done by the city council. And one measure from the city council in Washington, DC said, we believe that anybody in the city can vote in the elections, and that’s fine. We want to let that happen. Now, that’s okay for cities to do if it’s not a federal election, the Federal Constitution sets the requirements for federal elections. That’s simple. But if a city says we want everybody to vote, that’s up to the people in the city, if they want to do that. Well, Washington DC did that. But the House said, no, we don’t like that. Because you see Washington DC in saying that everybody could vote, they also allowed the Chinese Embassy workers to vote in the elections. They allowed everybody in the city from every foreign nation, every foreign embassy to have a voice in the elections. And Congress said, no, we’re not going to do that. So that’s one where the house has stepped in and passed a bill that said we’re not… Now probably Biden is going to veto that. So they will end up having the Chinese voting in local elections. But the other bill that came out of DC that turned what the city was doing, the city said, hey, we don’t like this punishing criminal kind of stuff. And even though we have a skyrocketing amount of crime in Washington, DC, we’re going to lower the standards. We’re not going to have life imprisonment for typical violent crimes. And so they’re just they’re trying to make it easy on crime. And again, Congress stepped in and said, no, we’re not doing that. This is when we should be upping the crime, punishment, not lowering it. So two really good things coming out of Congress. Again, they may not get past Biden, but this is where leadership does make a difference. And there is a difference between Republicans and Democrats, at least right now. And you can see it in things like crime and things like citizenship and sovereignty. So good news out of the house.

Rick Green 25:16
Alright folks, we’re out of time for good news today. But there is more at our website, be sure and check that out today at WallBuildersLive.com. Just go into the archive section, you can find some more of those Friday programs to get some more good news, you may want to listen to some Thursday programs for those foundations of freedom questions that we get from you, our audience. You can send those in to [email protected] , [email protected]. We’ll get to as many as we possibly can. And you can listen to them, in the archive section if you missed the live program. And then of course, Monday through Wednesday are interviews with all kinds of great folks that are out there, in the culture, on the front lines, doing amazing things. God’s moving, folks. There’s lots of great things happening in America right now. I know you hear the bad. I know, there’s a lot of bad stuff as well. The reason we like to have these Friday programs and emphasize the good is so that you can see that happening, so that you know that that’s happening across the nation. And even in the darkest times. I mean, that’s where God likes to show off and just, you know, use the remnant, to defeat evil, use the remnant to restore. And that’s what’s happening in America right now. So Learn more today at our website WallBuilders.com And then get those archives at WallBuildersLive.com. And when I say learn more, I mean there’s a lot of great tools that are available for you. I hope you’ve done the biblical citizenship class if you haven’t done that yet, get that at WallBuilders.com , maybe become a coach yourself and host it in your home or at your church. Lots of different ways you can be a part of the solution. Thanks for listening today to WallBuilders.