Miracles In American History “€“ With Bill Federer: America’s history is intertwined with faith. Today Bill Federer shares inspiring stories from his new book, stories of revivals and captivating courage that shaped the nation. Tune in today to be inspired by what God has done in our past and can do again!

Air Date: 01/22/202

Guest: Bill Federer

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, it’s WallBuilders Live where we’re talking about today’s hottest topics on policy, faith and the culture. We always do that from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. Now what that means is that any issue of the day, whatever it might be, it might be something that the President did, it might be something that your own kid did or that you’re talking about with somebody at the water fountain at work or something that’s being discussed it at the church, whatever issue is impacting your life, your family, your property, your business, all of those things that happen to us on a daily basis.

If we want to know the right answer to how to respond to that, we need to look at what the Bible says about it, what’s the correct position on that thing from a biblical perspective. And then if it’s a policy issue impacting our society around us, we got to look at a constitutional perspective, how does our particular constitutional republic work, how does our society work, what’s the right response and the right process for responding to that.

And then the reason we always look at a historical perspective is because if we know what happened in history, if we can go back and look it and you know, nothing is new under the Sun, so if we can go back and look at how things have happened in the past, how people responded, then we can see what works well, what doesn’t work well, with the reason we know socialism, never, ever works, with the reason we know it’s so bad is.

Who We Are

Because we can see that everywhere it’s ever been tried in any country in history that it results in destruction, it destroys an economy, it destroys the people, it destroys values and it always leads to tyranny in the end. And so that’s why when you look in history, you can learn so much so biblical, historical and constitutional perspective, that’s what we do here at WallBuilders Live.

We are founded by David Barton, he’s America’s premier historian and I am a beneficiary of David Barton’s obedience to do what God called him to do. I’ve been listening to David since the early 90s with cassette tapes, for those of you that remember what those were and it became my university on wheels. He brought history to life for me. I’m so thankful for David’s teachings and what he’s done with the WallBuilders. Tim Barton is also with us here at WallBuilders. He is the president of WallBuilders. He’s a national speaker and pastor and has just done a phenomenal job at carrying that torch on with what David started so many years ago. And it’s my privilege, my name is Rick Green I’m a former Texas Legislature and an America’s Constitution coach, is my privilege to get to work alongside these two guys, to get to do this radio program with them on a daily basis and get to see the impact that WallBuilders is having out there in the country.

Easy for the Average Citizen

One of the things that WallBuilders has done so well is made it to where history and government, the Constitution that these things are tangible and easy to learn for the average citizen so that every single one of us can play a part, we can fulfill our role. And so if you visit www.wallbuilders.com today, there is a wealth of information and materials available to you to be able to learn about these things and actually put it into action, actually, be a good citizen. How do you live this out? How do you vote correctly? How do you find out about candidates? How do you possibly run for office? How do you teach your kids more about these things? So many things at www.wallbuilders.com today that will equip you to do those things well, so encourage you to visit www.wallbuilders.com today.

And also www.wallbuilderslive.com, that’s our radio site, you may even be listening to the program there. If you’re listening on one of the 300 stations around the country that carry the program, we encourage you to visit www.wallbuilderslive.com. And there at the website, you can do something to come alongside us and help us to teach and encourage and inspire and equip even more Americans this year in 2020. What you can do is click on that contribute button and make that one-time or monthly contribution and I don’t hesitate at all to ask you to do that because I know the impact that it has.

Join Us!

When you come alongside us financially, we’re able to reach more people. This is a listener-supported program, which means it doesn’t happen without your support as listeners. So thank you, thank you to all of you across the country that send in those contributions, whether it’s $5 or $500 or whatever you can do, thank you for what you’ve already done. And if you’ve never done that before, this year in this very important year, we encourage you to do that and help us to increase the impact so that we can restore America’s constitutional republic.

We’re going to take a quick break, when we come back we have a special guest today that also makes history fun to learn. Bill Federer, he’s going to be sharing some really cool stories with us that some of which you might be slightly familiar with and then some that you’ve never heard of before. So this going to be fun. Stay with us, Bill Federer, our special guest today on WallBuilders Live.

Moment from American History

This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. Many today assert that religion is something private that it has no place in the public square and that it is incompatible with government, but the founding fathers believe exactly the opposite. They held that religion was absolutely necessary in order to maintain our free system of government.

For example John Adams declared, “€œWe have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.”€ And signer of the Declaration, Benjamin Rush, similarly affirmed “€œWithout religion there can be no virtue and without virtue of there cannot be no liberty and liberty is the object and life of all Republican governments. The founding fathers understood that limited government required public morality from the people and that public morality was produced by the Christian religion.

For more information by the founding fathers views on religion and public life, go to www.wallbuilders.com.

Welcome Bill Federer

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live, thanks for staying with us. Our good friend Bill Federer back with us again, always good to have you sir and excited about your new book, “€˜Miracles in American History, Vol 2.

Bill:

Yes. Yes. Well, what we did is put together revivals and miracles from battles to famous leaders throughout America’s history and this is a really inspiring book and love to share a couple of stories if you’re interested.

Rick:

Yeah, absolutely. And before we dive into this one specifically, you’ve got a ton of great books and so I want to write at the beginning the interview in case anybody ends up having to, you know, get out of the car and not be able to hear the whole interview know where to go to get this book and your other resources. So best website to find you.

Bill:

Oh, thanks. It’s www.americanminute.com, www.americanminute.com.

Rick:

www.americanminute.com, folks go there and get some of those fantastic resources. Let’s talk specifically about this one, “€œMiracles in American History”€, how many different stories did you compile on this one?

Bill:

It was 40 stories, everything from William Penn 45,000 who [inaudible 06:45] square miles and he did a holy experiment to see if people of different Christian denominations could live together in the same colony. That became an area where revival started because it was this concept of conscious instead of you having to believe but the King says or you get burnt at the stake. Here, you get a chance to decide and so this gave birth to revival meetings and the first Great Awakening, you know what, William Penn let’s set it up. So George Whitefield came there and preached seven times up and down the colonies.

George Whitefield

And then when Whitfield died, they got a young guy, 24 year old named Francis Asbury left England and he became what we call Circuit Riding Preachers and he went all the way from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, 300,000 miles, there’s a statue of him in Washington DC and he would ordain lots and lots of other Methodist ministers. I even have the story of Pierre Marquette. This is the French missionary canoes bound from Canada down the Mississippi River, evangelizes the Indians.

One of the stories, he starts a settlement that turns into Chicago, but he has 1,500 Indians and chiefs gathered together and he preaches the gospel to him, just an amazing story, there’s a statue of him in the US Capitol.

Rick:

When is that? That would be, put me in a context of time here.

Bill:

Right. This is the late 1600s.

Rick:

Okay and he’s preaching to 1,500 Indians?

Bill:

Right. To get these Indian chiefs together, they talk about the valley being filled, full of smoke from all the, you know, teepees and their fires and so forth and you know, it was like the night before Easter and so he talked about how Christ died on the cross to pay for their sins. But everything west of the Appalachians was claimed by France. And it’s interesting, his wording. He talks about even claiming the land for Jesus Christ and you know, taking possession of it for Jesus Christ.

But, story goes on were early 1800, some students in Williams College in Massachusetts are walking back to class across a field and it starts pouring down rain, they hide under a haystack. While they’re there, they pray for World Missions, they commit their lives to World Missions.

The American Board of Foreign Missions

The rain stops, they go back to class, tell the rest of their students they just committed the rest of their lives to world missions, it starts to revive [inaudible 09:14]. They formed the American Board of Foreign Missions and send in the next 10 years hundreds and hundreds of these missionaries to Burma. And you know, I had an arm Jetson and then to the Caribbean and then the Hawaii.

And then I have the story of how Princess Kaiulani defies Pele, the volcano goddess. She walked down in the crater and eats some forbidden taboo berries and comes out alive and this breaks the fear of Pele and this Christian revival spreads the [inaudible 09:49]. Itt”€™s considered a Great Awakening. And then at the second boatload of missionaries to Hawaii had a black woman, Betsy stopped him and she’s the first single female sent out as a missionary from America. And she starts these schools to teach them the gospel, teach them how to read and all these things. Who would have thought this?

And then the first missionary that was sent out was a black missionary, George Lyle went from South Carolina to Jamaica, gets 8,000 people saved, starts a Baptist Church. I go through Charles Finney and his revival and how he influenced, he was an attorney. And when he got saved, he preached the gospel with a conviction of a lawyer in a courtroom. And he was the one who invented altar calls. Before, they would have what’s called an Anxious Seat on the front row, you sit there, if you were seeking. And he said no, you serve the devil openly, I’m going to call for you to stand up right where you’re at and say that you’re going to serve Christ openly.

William and Katherine Booth

His preaching influence William and Katherine Booth to start the Salvation Army, influence George Williams who started the YMCA. And then that continue, it go through from the timeline all the way up to the present, I don’t know if I can share some of the other stories.

Rick:

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely, hold it for the break though, we’re going to take a very quick break. You’re listening to WallBuilders Live, Bill Federer, our special guest today, we’ll be right back.

Online Resources

Hey guys, this is Tim Barton with WallBuilders and I know you hear my dad and Rick talk a lot about our founding fathers, about the original intent of our nation, that constitutional heritage that we have and really we’ve seen how far we’ve slipped away from that. And I know a lot of us as we hear my dad and Rick talk think, I wish there was a place that I could go and I could see these documents and I could read and learn about the founding fathers firsthand, see the things they did and I want to give you some websites today that can help you accomplish that very thing.

If you get online, you can go to places like Library of Congress and you can look under there century of lawmaking or historical documents, you can go to the Avalon project, to the Founders Constitution at Google Books or even the internet archives or you can just go to WallBuilders website, we have a section for our library, then under that section, we have different subgroups for historical documents, historical writings, even a place where you can get helpful links to find out more information about other websites where you can do research for yourself and find the truth for yourself. Friends, this is a time that we need to know who we are and where we came from, www.wallbuilders.com is a great place to go.

Charles Finney

Rick:

We’re background WallBuilders Live, Bill Federer, our special guest today. We’re talking about stories out of his new book, Miracles in American History, Vol 2. You can get it at his website today www.americanminute.com. And Bill, as we were going to break, you were talking about Charles Finney, just to put us in the context of time here, when in the 1800s are we talking about?

Bill:

So his preaching, he lectures on revival and he basically says, you have to preach the law before people will seek [inaudible 12:56] for the lamb. You have to teach that God is just, which means he has to judge every sin. If he doesn’t judge the sin, he’s effectively giving consent to the sin. And he’s not going to give consent to sin, so his own nature drives him to have to judge every single sin. But God his love and that he himself provided the lamb to take the just for the sin. And so that’s why if we approach God through the lamb. And so, you know, see the Apostle Paul said the law is a mirror to, in other words, you don’t know how dirty your face is until you look in a mirror, then you see your need for the soap. If you just preach Jesus without preaching the God is just God, people will say, well, so what did God love me, big deal, you know, he loves everybody, everybody is going to go to heaven. It”€™s no, you’re missing it. God is a just. He can”€™t change. It”€™s his nature, he has to judge every sin. But you know, loving God in that he provided the lamb to take the judgment, so just approach him through the lamb. Anyway.

Jeremy Lamphere

But then 1857, a layman named Jeremy Lamphere puts out a sign on the street in New York, saying come in at lunchtime and pray, one person comes in. Well, the next week, a dozen; the next week, hundreds; the next week is thousands, it starts this layman’s prayer revival. And it goes from thousands in New York to Chicago to Philadelphia to Boston even Los Angeles and it’s not organized by a church, it’s just Laitanan praying and tens of thousands of people across America.

Well, one of those people was in Chicago was DL Moody, he”€™s shoe salesman. He’s in a poor neighborhood, he takes an abandoned saloon and starts a Sunday school for poor kids in the inner city. He says it’s the greatest lie of the devil to think the kids can’t understand the gospel when Jesus himself chose the child to be an example of faith, right, unless you have the faith as a little child.

And so this Sunday school class of DL Moody’s grows to 1,500. And by 1860, Lincoln gets elected president, he takes a train from Springfield to Chicago before going to Washington DC, he stops off and goes DL Moody’s Sunday School class. After the class, DL Moody can’t help, he says Mr President, do you have anything you’d like to tell these students? He goes, yes, if you all do what this man tells you, you’ll be just fine.

DL Moody

Anyway, DL Moody goes on to preach to millions PT Barnum, Barnum and Bailey Circus, they have a big Roman Hippodrome in New York City. Well, they don’t have it on Sunday because they’ve still honored the Sunday back then. They let DL moody use it for revival meetings. And then when PT Barnum took a circus on the road, they gave it to him. And so he got to use this and all these rich guys, you know, Cornelius Vanderbilt and everybody is donating money, 25,000 people having church on Sunday, there’s like 5,000 in the choir.

And anyway, he preaches over in England when he’s on his way back, he’s older now. It’s 1890. The ship breaks the rudder and it starts to sink and is drifting out of the ceilings and they’re sinking more and more, nobody is responding and the boat’s tilting and he’s on, get everybody on deck and he’s preaching to them and they’re praying and lo and behold, they finally get rescued and he says that he wasn’t going to go to the Chicago World’s Fair. But after that, he decided he’d give it his last shot. Well, at that Chicago World’s Fair, there’s literally millions of people that come from around the world, he preaches his huge revival meetings and ends up impacting the world. So that’s DL Moody.

Then we [inaudible 16:36] Booker T Washington, right he’s  [inaudible 16:38] the civil war ends and he walks 500 miles to the Hampton Institute and then he goes to Wayland Bible College and then he speaks at the graduation back at Hampton Institute. He does a good job, they offer good job and so [inaudible 16:57] there’s an idea for another Freeman’s college in Tuskegee.

Booker T Washington

And so he is recommended. He’s the first black president of a college, this former slave Booker T Washington. It ends up growing and he ends up meeting with presidents from, you know, McKinley and Coolidge, Eleanor Roosevelt later went down there after he died. But he ends up impacting the world and one of the people was of course Booker T Washington.

Rick:

And had enough of an impact if I’m reading the chapters, right, you devoted two chapters to him?

Bill:

Right. Just because he came out against the [inaudible 17:40] of hate. In other words, here are these the blacks in the South had been treated terrible entering slavery. And he said that Jesus Christ had taken all the hate out of his heart and he’s forgiven a southern white man for all the ills that he had done to his race and he says that we need to nurture love with our neighbor no matter what color they are. He gives this powerful sermon. So here we have, you know, to talked about the Chicago World’s Fair, now we have the Atlanta Exposition and this is like a World’s Fair down there in Atlanta.

And all the blacks are looking to Booker T to say, hey, stand up for us and all the white, you know, the Democrats, of course, the Republicans were the ones that freed the slaves. So this is the Democrat South and they still had some prejudice. And they’re looking at him like, oh is this guy going to get to up but he was.

Walking a Fine Line

So he gives this sermon, he like walks this fine line. He says, first of all, I always get down on my knees and pray and ask God’s blessings on what I’m about to say. But then he said off the coast of South America, a boat was coming across the ocean was caught in the doldrums, this is place where there’s no wind but it’s at the equator and they called the horse latitudes because they’d shove horses up because [inaudible 18:54] water for him and really dangerous.

And so the ship comes across and he says, it spots another ship and says, water, water come to our rescue. And the message comes back, put your buckets down where you are. He sends the message again, no, no, we’re dying of thirst, water, water, come. The message comes back that put down your buckets where you are, because they’re doing it with flags, you know, how they would send signals from boat to boat. He does it a third time. Finally, they put the buckets down and they pull up fresh water. Lo and behold, the mountain”€¦ Amazon River. This river pushes fresh water 200 miles out into the ocean and it’s the longest river in the world.

And anyway, so but he gives this sermon and he says, now, I speak to you know, the whites that are among us, he says that you’ve tested us for centuries, you know, who we are, we put your buckets down where you are and just you know, have us join with you and make America a better place.

From Baseball Star to National Preacher

And then he says to the black and he goes, put your buckets down where you are in your situation and let’s work together with everyone”€¦ they’ll pull ourselves up. And just a powerful sermon, so that’s one of the chapters on Booker T Washington that’s in the book.

Rick:

Okay, I have a request. For our final story in today’s program, I am totally curious about baseball star to national preacher. I see that headline. I’m a baseball guy, so I got to ask this one.

Bill:

In the 1890s, you had the Chicago white stockings, you know [inaudible 20:21] of the White Sox and baseball player name [inaudible 20:23], he’s at the height of his career and he is going down the streets of Chicago and after being in a bar with some of his baseball buddies and he comes out of here singing, it’s a Pacific garden mission. They’re singing songs that his mom used to sing. So he goes over, he listens to them and he’s touched in his heart and he keeps going back in there and that he does meet a pretty young girl and the dad wouldn’t let him marry because baseball players were considered lowlife. He says you know, what are you going to do when your body wears out, you know, you can’t earn a living?

Billy Sunday

Anyway, he goes ahead, they date to get married. Billy Sunday said, I never would do anything without my wife, you know, her approval. So she ended up organizing all of his campaigns. Well, he preaches all across America to millions that they would preach for. He preached for a month at a time, they put in the newspaper, “€˜A month of Sundays”€™, because his name was Billy Sunday. And they wouldn’t use tents, they will actually build wooden auditoriums, I mean this was a big community project. They still have one there at Winona Lake in Indiana.

And anyway, radio is invented, he becomes the first radio preacher and he is preaching all across the country. Millions hear Billy Sunday preached. He would send in people a year in advance to cities and they would pray and organize prayer meetings so that when he would finally come, they would have this great revival.

A little sidenote. They didn’t have the FEC back then and so he would preach, at the same time, the baseball games were going on and he would turn his power up greater, so it would block out baseball and so people complained. And so that’s when the government started the Federal Communication Commission to help regulate radio stations. But anyway, just great stories, they all end with faith and that one person can make a big difference.

I even have a story of Buzz Aldrin having communion on the moon and but it’s all in this book Miracles in American History, Vol 2.

AmericanMinute.com

Rick:

Miracles in American History, Vol 2, you can get it at www.americanminute.com and Bill’s other resources there as well. Bill, always great, man. I love you rapid-fire and I love learning so many stories that you know, of great stories that we haven’t heard before. I mean sometimes you go into more detail about stories we do know and that’s always fun. But I love it when you bring out a lot of these folks that we’ve never even heard of before. So really, really cool. Miracles in American History, Vol 2 get it at www.americanminute.com today.

Stay with folks, we’ll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

America”€™s Hidden History

Hi, this is David Barton and this is Tim Barton. We want to let you know about a series that’s happening right now on TBN on Thursday nights. Now TBN is a Trinity Broadcasting Network. Every Thursday night there’s a series that we’ve filmed called America’s Hidden History. In this season, it’s called America’s Hidden Heroes. The reason is we highlight heroes from American history for years. We’ve been focusing on the forgotten history heroes of the nation and now we have a TV show just highlighting some of those heroes.

Some Great People You May Not Have Heard About

These are inspiring stories about some of the greatest people maybe you’ve never heard about. We go on location, we go to the site, we show you where the events happen and it’s a story of folks like Bronco Charlie and Stagecoach Mary and Jedediah Smith and Robert Smalls and so many inspiring folks.

Now, this happens every Thursday night and the time is going to be different based on where you live, either way. We think this is something that will so encourage and inspire you and learning some of these great stories from America’s Hidden History.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live, thanks for staying with us today. Special thanks to Bill Federer for sharing so much great information with us. Be sure and check out his book today at www.americanminute.com. We really appreciate you listening today.

Action Steps

And I want to just kind of end our program today in this final segment, talking about some of the action steps that you can be taking out there. This is a very important year, 2020. So as you learn these things about history and you get inspired by the stories of Americans that came before us, those who sacrificed much so that we could live in freedom, so that we could have a freedom of religion that allows us to even spread the gospel and to preach the gospel and do a lot of things that Bill was talking about in some of these stories, that freedom that creates that kind of environment, it doesn’t happen by accident. That’s a freedom that that requires a certain formula to produce that freedom. It’s a freedom that that requires certain amount of sacrifice by others to be willing to lay down their lives for us to be free, be willing to invest their lives.

Many times when we talk about sacrificing for freedom, it’s not necessarily dying for freedom, it could very much be living for freedom and that’s what we want to challenge you to do this year. Make 2020 a year that you live out your freedom, that you take the talent that God’s given you. If you think about the parable of the talents, that you’re not the one that buried the talent and what’s called a wicked and slothful servant for not living it out. But you’re one of the other two.

Miracles in American History, Vol 2 – With Bill Federer

You invest it and you work it, you multiply it, you become a force multiplier in your community. Become a catalyst in your community for freedom. Be the person in your church that stands up and says, hey, I’m going to host a biblical citizenship class or I’m going to do a voter registration drive or I want to do a Sunday school class on what it means to be a biblical citizen in our country. All kinds of things that you can do to make a difference this year, we challenge you to do that.

There’s several resources I want to give you. www.wallbuilderslive.com is our website where you can contribute today. Financially, come alongside us, investing your life your fortune and your sacred honor in freedom for the next generation. www.wallbuilderslive.com, click on that contribute button, make that one-time or monthly contribution as good as you possibly can, make it as big as you possibly can. This is a very important year and the more resources we have, the more impact that we can have.

And then also visit www.constitutioncoach.com to get signed up today is one of our Constitution coaches so that you can host those biblical citizenship classes in your community and help to be the catalyst and that’s going to preserve freedom for future generations. Thank you so much for listening today, you’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.