The Faith of Those Who Achieved Miraculous Milestones – With Bill Federer: What do Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Broyle, Blaise Pascal, Francis Bacon (and other great innovators) have in common? What should you know about these great minds who made vital discoveries in science, medicine and innovation? Cancel Culture is trying to hide the Christian roots of many revolutionary discoverers. Tune in to hear Bill Federer share surprising facts from his new book Miraculous Milestones!

Air Date: 06/09/2021

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. We’re tackling the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. And we’re so glad you’re here to be a part of it. 

Be sure to visit our website today, wallbuilderslive.com. Wallbuilderslive.com, that’s our site where you can get a list of all of our stations, you can also get some great news of the day. You can get into our archives if you missed some programs over the last few weeks and months, especially those Good News Fridays.

You need to listen to Good News Friday, stay encouraged, know that there are victories out there locally, all over the country. And we try to bring as much of that to you as we possibly can, especially at a time where, frankly, there’s a lot of bad news coming out of Washington, D.C., our federal government is definitely taking a huge turn to the left, has become anti-biblical, and it’s just a dangerous road that we’re headed down with this administration. 

And with the current control in Washington, D.C. So you need to know that the system does work when we work it. And that’s why we do Good News Fridays to talk to you about how Christians can be salt and light and how they get good results.

Now Foundations of Freedom Thursdays, those are also in the archives. So you can go back and listen to those just to get good constitutional education. We address questions that you ask. And by the way, if you want to send some in, you can send those to [email protected]. 

But we let you drive the content of those days. You send in the questions and we address those questions from that biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. So you can check out both of those weekly programs, they’re in the archives. And then we have interviews, typically Monday through Wednesday.

AmericanMinute.com

And one of those guests that we like to have back time and time again will be our guest today, when we come back from the break. Bill Federer will be with us. He’s the author of over 20 books. I mean, just tons of great information. You can get his books at Americanminute.com, Americanminute.com. 

And we’re going to have him on today to talk about his new book, which is really cool. It’s about all kinds of miraculous milestones. In fact, that’s the name of the book, “Miraculous Milestones in Science, Medicine & Innovation- And the Faith of Those Who Achieved Them”. There’s so much there that we don’t teach today.

You know, the faith, not only of our Founders in America, the faith of the scientific community in earlier days is what led to some of the greatest discoveries and we’ve just simply lost that. We don’t teach that part anymore. 

In fact, we act like all of these guys were atheists and agnostics and deist and just simply not true, so not only with regard to the Founders, but all those great scientific achievers as well. So we’re going to dive deep into that with Bill Federer when we return. Stay with us. You’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

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Welcome Bill Federer

Rick:

Welcome back to the WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. Always good to have Bill Federer on. Brother, appreciate you so much, man, a wealth of good information and a new book coming out. Thanks for coming on and tell us about it.

Bill:

Hey, Rick, great to be with you.

Rick:

So this new one, now, what, like 20 you got over 20 books out there. You’ve covered so many topics, from faith of the founders to, I mean, you name it. And this one though, you’re reaching back into science and medicine and innovation. 

The book is called “Miraculous Milestones in Science, Medicine & Innovation- And the Faith of Those Who Achieved Them”. So I think this is going to be really exciting to see and a great reminder of when you seek the creator and you know the Creator, you can discover the secret sauce of his creation a lot better. So tell us why you decided to venture into this area.

Bill:

Well, league Cancel culture on campus, if you’re a teacher, and you say that you believe in intelligent design, they’re going to think you’re crazy and you could lose your job. If you’re a student and you mentioned God in your paper and then you believe that the creator was involved, the teacher might lower your grade.

Well, lo and behold the founders, the pioneers of the scientific revolution: Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, they all believed in a creator. And you read their statements, and they’re very profound. They believed in two books: the book of creation that revealed God’s power and glory, and the Bible as the book that reveals God’s plan of redemption. And they saw the two working hand in hand.

Copernicus, Galileo, Brahe, Tycho, Kepler, and More!

And so in this book, I sort of step you through these different scientists. Now, the scientific revolution began, more or less officially with Copernicus. He’s the one who discovered that the sun was the center of the solar system. 

And he said the universe was wrought for us by a supremely good and orderly Creator. Next is Galileo. He’s the first astronomer to use a telescope. He actually made his own telescopes. And he said, “I give infinite thanks to God who has been pleased to make me the first observer of marvelous things.”

And then there’s Tycho Brahe, he’s the one who cataloged a lot of the astronomical observations. He says “Those who study the stars have God for a teacher.” And Tycho Brahe assistant was Johannes Kepler. And he took these compiled astronomical observations, and he discovered laws of planetary motion. 

They’re called Kepler’s laws. And he even noticed that there were eight planets in the solar system and eight notes and music. And so he wrote a book called the “Harmonies of the World”. And in there, he said, “Oh, Almighty God, I am thinking thy thought after thee.”

And then there’s Isaac Newton. He has the first reflecting telescope, considered the “Father of Modern Physics”, he discovered laws of motion, laws of energy, conservation, laws of gravity, calculus, optics. He wrote more on the Bible prophecies in the book of Daniel in the book of Revelation than he did on science. 

I mean, this is amazing. Here’s Isaac Newton writing more on the book of Daniel than in science. And Isaac Newton said, “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from an intelligent and powerful being whom I call the Lord God. And so I go through…

The Father of Chemistry

Rick:

They didn’t mince words. And I’m a little bit speechless, because first of all, I’m terrible at science and don’t know a lot of even these basic discoveries. But what you have just rattled off, though, Bill, these are not small things. These are the greatest scientists in history. 

I mean, these are the major discoveries that everything that we do today is built upon. And they were unashamed of the gospel. And they were unashamed of acknowledging the Creator. So that is so different from today where most scientists reject a Creator at all.

Bill:

Well, another was Robert Boyle. He’s considered the “Father of Chemistry”. He coined the terms element, litmus test, chemical analysis. He discovered the laws of gas where you decrease the volume increases the pressure. 

You know, it’s very important for scuba divers, if you take a breath of air in a low depth, and you’re holding it, as the pressure decreases, that air is going to increase in volume and burst your lungs. But anyway, here’s Boyle.

He was a director of the British East India Company. He supported Christian missions. He started a school for Indians at the College of William and Mary. And he endowed the Boyle Lectures there in England. 

And in that, was 50 pounds set aside for an annual salary for some learning, divine or preaching minister to preach, proving the Christian religion against notorious infidels, atheists, theists, pagans, and [inaudible 08:47], and encouraging propagating the Christian religion to foreign parts. I mean, you can’t get any more wanting to promote Christianity, and here is a scientist that…

Rick:

Boyle himself did that? He set aside his own money to do that?

Blaise Pascal

Bill:

Yes, he endowed it? He paid for this. He was so convinced. And then there’s Blaise Pascal. And he’s considered the “Father of hydro statics and hydraulic engineering”, basically, the barometer and fluid mechanics. And he’s known for his Pascal’s Wager. 

And he said, “”How can anyone lose who chooses to be a Christian? If when he dies, there turns out to be no God, he has been happier in this life than his non-believing friends. If, however, there is a God and heaven and hell, that he has gained heaven, and his skeptical friends have lost everything in hell.” So that was Blaise Pascal, Pascal’s Wager.

Sir Francis Bacon. He’s the one who said “Knowledge is power”. He came up with a scientific method where you measure something and then you do the experiment and you look at the results. It’s what’s called Deductive Reasoning versus Inductive Reasoning. Inductive is what the Greeks had. 

They already had a conclusion and they’re trying to find evidence to support it. Deductive is let’s just look at the facts and see where they go. He’s known for the phrase “Knowledge is power”, which is engraved on the wall of our Library of Congress, Francis Bacon. 

But he said this, “A little philosophy inclined his men’s minds to atheism.” In other words, they get woke. They’re freshman’s on campus, right? But depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds to religion.

And he said, there are two books laid before us to study: the first, the volume of scriptures which revealed the will of God; and then the volume of the creatures which expresses his power. So they didn’t think that science studying nature was contrary to the Bible. They saw them working together.

Cancel Culture

Rick:

How does the Cancel culture, I mean, what are they going to do with these guys? I mean, you’ve got all of these scientific laws named after all the people you just went through, are they going to literally change the names of the scientific laws so that you don’t go research one of these guys and discover that they actually believe in God? I mean, I don’t know how they cancel these guys.

Bill:

Yeah, and well, it is interesting, if you read through the Wikipedia and it’ll give the facts about them, but it sort of leaves out anything that points to faith. But if you did dig into their actual writings and you see they’re acknowledging a creator. One is Sir William Herschel. He was a church organist. And in his spare time, he constructed telescopes, and he constructed the largest telescope of his day. And he discovered the planet Uranus, the third largest planet in the solar system. He was a church organist.

And his son, Sir John Herschel takes the telescope to south, the southern hemisphere to South Africa. He catalogues stars that have never been cataloged before. And Sir John Herschel said, “All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more strongly the truths come from on high and contained in the sacred writings.”

And there was even a black astronomer named Benjamin Banneker, and he was in Maryland. He was a free black. He corresponded with Thomas Jefferson. He was part of a team that surveyed Washington D.C., and he compiled [inaudible 12:13] tables, which were used in an almanac.

So he was a Quaker Christian. But what’s n [inaudible 12:20] table? They didn’t have weather forecasters back then. And so they would look at how the weather was last year when the stars were in a certain full moon, quarter moon, waxing moon, waning moon, and they could tell where the season was going to begin, if it was going to be a late spring or an early spring.

Benjamin Banneker

And they would write this down, and it would be sort of a predictive type of, so it was called an almanac. And it was Benjamin Banneker’s almanac. We’re familiar with poor Richard’s Almanac, but this was Banneker. And he was a Christian, Quaker Christian.

And then I fast forward, you have Sir Edwin Hubble, and he in the 1930s, had the big Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, California, and he sees a fuzzy star. And lo and behold, it was the Andromeda galaxy, the first galaxy discovered outside our galaxy. So prior to Edwin Hubble, everybody thought that the galaxy and universe were synonymous. Now they’re realizing that there’s this.

And Edwin Hubble also discovered something called the Redshift. So light travels in waves, blue is the fastest, and then red is the slowest. And so if you see a light from a distance, and it’s red, it would indicate that it’s moving away from you, and you’re seeing the slowest lights that are sort of trailing behind.

And that meant that the light, these galaxies were traveling away from something which meant that they had to come from something. Ultimately, this gave birth to the Big Bang Theory. And that was important, because scientists thought that everything was static: universe is here, it’s always going to be here, nothing changes.

And when they saw that the stars and universes were moving away from us with the Redshift, Einstein, who believed in the static universe goes out to Edwin Hubble’s Mount Wilson Observatory, and he looks through the telescope, he sees the Redshift and he says, I now know the necessity of a beginning. And Einstein and I have some quotes from him in there.

Einstein

He said, “I am absolutely not an atheist. I observed the laws of nature. There are not laws without a law giver.” Now, Einstein didn’t believe in a personal God, but he did believe in a Creator God.

And then I love the quotes from Vernon von Braun. He’s the “Father of modern rocketry”. And he was a German, came to America after the war. He developed our space program here in America. And he said, “I am certain that were he among us today, Christ would encourage scientific research, as modern man’s most noble striving to cooperate to comprehend and admire his Father’s handiwork.”

And then 1968, Apollo VIII circles the moon on Christmas Eve, and the astronauts led by Frank Borman read the first chapter of Genesis for the radio. And in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And anyway, he lands and then there’s a cosmonaut, and the cosmonaut interviewed and he said, I was up there, I didn’t see God.

So Vernon von Braun writes this. He goes “When astronauts Frank Borman was told that a Soviet cosmonaut commented that he had seen neither God nor angels on his life, Borman replied, no, I did not see him either, but I saw his evidence.”

And so this book is it’s a bunch of evidence that there’ll always be the step of faith. But this is evidence from the scientific realm that there is a creator. And I go through the history of writing, the history of printing, the history of the calendar, and obviously goes back to BC, AD, that was the birth of Christ.

There’s a really interesting chapter on the origins of hospitals. So here we have Christian medical professionals told to lay aside their beliefs and just go ahead and perform the abortion or the sex change surgery or the euthanasia.

Hospitals

And lo and behold, it was these Christians motivations that started hospitals. So Egyptians didn’t have health care for the poor. I mean, it was just for the wealthy and even then it was superstitious with scarabs and beetles.

And Greeks didn’t have health care for the poor. There’s was getting high on something and let the snakes crawl over you and having a dream. but still, it was just for the rich that could afford it.

When Jesus said I was sick and you visited me, and the Good Samaritan that he doctors up the guy that was beat up, put them in an inn, says, care for him. It was Christians that started caring for the sick. And so there’re Syrian Christians in the fourth century start the first university in [inaudible 16:56] Syria. There’s an Assyrian Christian book, Sheto family that had nine generations of physicians and started a Medical Academy at [inaudible 17:05] from the fifth to the ninth century until Islam came in.

But then Western Europe, 325 AD the Constância, so people, after Constantine stop the persecution of Christians, Christians would go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I want to see where Jesus walked, and they would arrive worn out. And so it’s at Constância, they decided that every Cathedral where people were making a pilgrimage to, it should have an infirmary for people to convalesce.

So these travelers on pilgrimage, the Latin word for traveler is Hosp, H-O-S-P, like where you get the word hospitality. And so they would call this place a hospital. And so it was Christians that invented hospital as they were going on pilgrimage.

There’s the St. Basil in 370 AD, and he started a hospital there in Caesarea for all these visitors. Then there’s a plague. And there’s a Saint Fabiola, wealthy Christian woman, under the Ministry of St. Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin. And she starts a hospital for the poor in Rome, cares for them herself. Then there’s the plague of Justinian 541 AD, 15 million people die, 25% of Europe. It’s a lot worse than what we’re seeing today.

Benedictine Order

And so there’s a Saint Samson, the hospitable in Constantinople, and he doctors the poor in his house. The Emperor gets sick, he takes care of me gets better. The Emperor Justinian gives him some money, he starts a hospital that last for 600 years, until Islam starts invading and then they have to have a security course to defend these hospitals and they were called Knights Hospitaller. So that’s where he gets these crusader that’s…

And then you have the Benedictine Order 592 AD they have these monasteries and they have an infirmary in each monastery. So the Benedictine Order started the oldest medical school in Europe in the ninth century in Salerno, Italy. So we’re tracing it was Christians that pioneered healthcare. 660 AD, the Paris, there’s the order of Catholic nuns following the rule of Saint Augustine and they start the [inaudible 19:03], the hotel Hospital of God.

And then 1300s, a plague comes from China. Sound familiar? And millions die in China that comes in fleas on camels across the Gobi Desert, China’s Silk Road caravans winds up in the Middle East, gets on rafts, gets on ships, comes to Constantinople. And 347 and millions die across Europe. They estimate 75 million people, 20% of the population.

And nobody wants to take care of the dead. They’re just laying them on the streets. And so there’s a Catholic order of men, they’re called Alexion brothers after a Saint Alexis who gave away his money to help the poor. And they collect these dead and give them the Christian burial. And if they’re not dead, yet they have hospice care.

And they would also collect money to ransom people who have been kidnapped by the Muslim Barbary pirates. And so one of those that was kidnapped was St. Vincent DePaul. And so he witnesses to one of his master’s wives, and he ends up telling her husband and then the husband lets him escape. He comes back to Europe. And in 1607, St. Vincent DePaul starts a hospital and the queen of France funds it. And so this is the same year, Jamestown is started, right, 1607.

Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent DePaul

And so then he gets an order of nuns, they call themselves the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent DePaul and they’re staffing these hospitals. They start hundreds of these hospitals across Europe. Matter of fact, the nuns hat, you know the little the habit hat that the nuns would wear, that turned into the nurses hat, right. And Florence Nightingale says there’s no one that knows nursing better than a Catholic nun.

Unfortunately, there is French Revolution. And the secular French government orders these nuns to give up their faith, and they don’t. And so they line them up, marching to the guillotine, and chop off their head, 1789 and hundreds of them. And they would be singing their church song and there’d be one less voicing and one less voice thing and chop, chop, chop, right. It sort of remind you of today where you read these news where the federal government sues the Little Sisters of the Poor, because they don’t want to fund abortions. Here, they’re using the power of the state to go after these innocent nuns that just want to pray and help people.

Ben Franklin starts the first Hospital in America, 1755. And the cornerstone of it mentions Christ, and it says “This building by the bounty of the government, private persons piously founded for the relief of the sick and miserable. May the God of mercy bless the undertaking”, and then of course, it says “in the year of Christ”.

Rick:

And this actually points to something that we don’t hear much about the contribution from the Christian worldview of just benevolence of actually caring for others and taking care of others and sacrificing for others. I mean, without the Christian faith, without the Judeo Christian values, you don’t get that. I mean, that’s what you just pointed out, that these things didn’t come about until it was Christian activism literally in the community.

Clara Barton

Bill:

Yeah, it wasn’t Islam inventing hospitals for the poor. I mean, it wasn’t the Chinese, they had a word for the poor. They were called [inaudible 22:17], which means base mankind. And in India, the poor were what? They believed in a reincarnation.

And if you’re suffering dying in a ditch, it was because you send in a past life, and they want to let you suffer really good so that in your next life, you’ll be reincarnated as a higher animal or something. So they would just step over the sick. That’s why was such a big deal for Mother Teresa to go over there and take care of them, like, what do you and take…

It was Christians that were motivated that gave birth in the hospitals. And Benjamin Rush is considered the “Father of American medicine”. And he did vaccinations during the smallpox epidemic. People don’t realize more soldiers died of smallpox then died in battle during the Revolutionary War. And then it was the daughters of Charity of St. Vincent DePaul that started the first hospital west of the Mississippi in 1828 in St. Louis, Missouri.

And then you have the Civil War. And we’re all familiar with Clara Barton, a school teacher following the army around helping take care of the sick. But Lincoln asked a whole order of nuns, and they followed the army around going through battlefield.

They were called “Angel in the Battlefield”. There’s actually a monument in Washington D.C., toward these sisters. And then they served during the Spanish American War. US Surgeon General, Hammond reported to Lincoln, “Volunteer nurses cannot compare in efficiency and faithfulness with the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent DePaul.” Anyway…

Important Reads

Rick:

It’s just so rich, I mean, it’s overwhelming. There’s so much there, you can’t deny it. And you cover so much in the book. And before, I only have a couple minutes left here, Bill, so two things I want to ask you about before we go. Number one, so I know the book sold out very quickly when you initially published it. Is it back in stock now, you guys have them available? And where should we go to get them?

Bill:

Well, thanks for asking. Yeah, it’s called “Miraculous Milestones in Science, Medicine & Innovation” We do have them back in print. And the website is Americanminute.com.

And you’ve given tours of the Capitol, and there’s a statue of Father Damon. He’s the [crosstalk 24:26] Hawaii who took care of the lepers, right? So here’s a religious man taking care of the sick, and just a rich heritage that gets overlooked.

And I think that, again, with the Cancel culture, wanting to say oh, get your Christian values out of medical care, we’re just going to, it’s such a new phenomenon. It was Christians that are always involved. And hopefully, with this book, “Miraculous Milestones” will claim our ground and stay involved.

Rick:

That’s right. I love it. Miraculous Milestones in Science, Medicine & Innovation- And the Faith of Those Who Achieved Them. Get it at Americanminute.com. And the last thing I wanted to ask you or at least comment on while you’re there at Americanminute.com, folks, also get Socialism – The Real History from Plato to the Present: How the Deep State Capitalizes on Crises to Consolidate Control.

Bill, you were a prophet on this when you wrote it right before COVID hit, it came out, right after COVID hit. Boy, they have capitalized on crisis. And I just wanted to recommend that. I know that’s not our show today, but I just wanted to recommend that book as well as people are getting your other book. Thank you for this.

Bill:

Oh, thank you, Rick.

Rick:

Man, just you continue to do incredible research, and so good having you on. I love just all the information. It’s rapid fire, and it’s good stuff. Let’s get you back again soon.

The Faith of Those Who Achieved Miraculous Milestones – With Bill Federer

Bill:

Hey, well, it’s always an honor to be on, and you’re the one that’s pioneering stuff. You and David and Tim, I’m just amazed at the excellent material you put out. Thank you.

Rick:

Well, let’s keep teaming up, brother, we’ll talk to you soon. Let’s get you back.

Bill:

Alright.

Rick:

We’re out of time for today, folks. Be sure to visit our website wallbuilderslive.com that’s where you can get all the stations that we’re on across the country, figure out where we’re on close to you or just continue to download the programs there at wallbuilderslive.com. And then of course, we can really thank all of you that have been going to the website and making those contributions.

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