Seal Team Six Rescues American Missionary And Much More – Join us today for some amazing news! Seal Team Six rescues American missionary kidnapped by terrorists in Nigeria, the Supreme Court rules in favor of religious freedom and more!

Air Date: 12/04/2020

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.

 

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live and it’s Good News Friday, so excited to get some good news today. My name’s Rick Green, I’m a former Texas legislator, and America’s Constitution coach. And I have the honor of being here with David Barton. He is America’s premier historian, and he’s our founder at WallBuilders. And I just love learning from this guy. I’m telling you, all the time, something new about our history in our nation, or the Constitution, or the Bible, it’s just a great honor to be hosting this program and get to learn every day from David Barton, and Tim Barton, by the way, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders.

Now, Tim, David, myself, you can learn more about us at our website, wallbuilderslive.com. That’s our radio site where you can get a list of all the stations across the country where the program can be heard. That’s also where you can donate. That’s the place to make your contribution. If you want to help spread truth across our country, if you want to help restore America’s constitutional republic, that is the place to give, wallbuilderslive.com. You can do a one time or monthly donation, we greatly appreciate you coming alongside us.

Let’s get into that good news, guys, I think David’s going first. David, where are we started with our good news today?

David:

Over recent months, we’ve talked a lot about how governors and mayors have targeted churches and really have unfairly shut them down, treated them different than all of the businesses and said you’ve got restrictions, you can only have these many people when they let big box stores have hundreds, they’d let churches have 5 or 10, or 20, or whatever it is. And so there’s been a lot of suits on that. We noted that early on it was in state courts and won a lot of those suits, but now it’s moved to federal court.

And so here recently, you had a federal judge, strike down Governor Polis’ restriction, that’s in Colorado, that he said, hey, you can’t have these church gatherings. And by the way, some of the governors said, well, if you gather, you can’t sing, or you can’t chant or whatever. And so direct attack of that, of course, they don’t make the protesters to be quiet, they just make the Christians to be quiet and the Jewish folks to be quiet.

So the Judge struck that down, he said, look, the Constitution does not allow the state to tell congregations how large it can be when comparable secular gatherings are not so limited or to tell a congregation that his reason for wishing to remove facial coverings is less important than a restaurant or spas. So he saying you got to treat everybody the same. Well, it has now worked its way all the way to the US Supreme Court. And at the US Supreme Court, we had a 5-4 decision. And this is over Governor Cuomo.

Governor Cuomo in New York has said hey, churches and synagogues and whether you’re Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, you can’t meet or if you do, you only have so many you can have and you can’t sing or you can’t chant, and you have to have face masks a certain way. I mean, just micromanage. And he’s now got it broken down into color code. So if you’ve got red zones, and you’ve got orange zones, and you got yellow zones and whatever zone you’re in, is more restrictive there under his philosophy.

So this case out of New York that involve a couple of Catholic churches, a couple of Jewish synagogues and Orthodox Jewish synagogue as well, they all went to the federal courts, and it worked its way up to the US Supreme Court, because Cuomo was telling them just obnoxious things about what they couldn’t, can do, they wouldn’t put on any other groups. And so what happened was at the Supreme Court, it was a 5-4 narrow ruling. Amy Coney bear was a deciding vote on this, Justice Roberts went the wrong way. And it should have been a 9-0, I mean, this is a really easy one. But what happened, Roberts is he’s done over the last two years, has gotten into the minutiae. He can’t see the forest for the trees, and said, well, you know, it’s red and yellow zones, and by the time it got to the court here, those weren’t red and yellow zones anymore. They were different color zones, and so the restrictions didn’t apply. And so the restrictions they’re suing out here, they’re not even in place right now.

Rick:

Well, I was wondering why you singled out Roberts and not any of the other liberals on the court?

David:

Yeah, that’s right, other liberals, because we used to say he was about 70% Conservative, now, it’s maybe 10%, and I’m not even sure it’s that high. So Robert who, in the last two years clearly has changed his voting pattern very significantly, don’t know why. But it is radically different than it had been. This should have been a no brainer. Because the question we asked is, okay, so let’s say the court rules that because the zones are no longer the same color, doesn’t apply, what happens if Cuomo comes in the next day and says, oh, they’re red again? Do you have to go all the way back to the court for yours?

Tim:

Well, yeah, just repeal it. That’s fine. Just take your time. It’s not a big deal. We’re not going anywhere. It really is ridiculous that Robert would say because it’s not an issue anymore, they’ve already let you come back. It’s not a big deal. You don’t need to do this anymore. No, it’s the reality of the precedent that was set that you can shut down churches while everybody else can operate and function as an essential service. But churches are not essential even though they have very specific protections in the First Amendment, it doesn’t make sense, which is why this Supreme Court ruling is so good. Even though, Rick, as you pointed out for liberals went the wrong way on the US Supreme Court.

David:

I want to read you two paragraphs out of the case because it’s really strong stuff. And the majority five said “Members of this Court are not public health experts, and we should respect the judgment of those with special expertise and responsibility in this area. But even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten. The restrictions at issue here, by effectively barring many from attending religious services, strike at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty.” Amen. The Constitution does not go out of business because the pandemic comes in. You need it more during time emergency, not less.

And here’s the other thing they said that thought was so good. They said, “And the Governor has stated that factories and schools have contributed to the spread of COVID–19.” See that’s Cuomo’s argument is churches are spreading COVID-19 faster than any other organization; religious bodies are the greatest distributor of COVID-19… What a stupid statement! But well, it did come out of New York City and came out of a blue governor, Democrat, so I guess maybe that’s a logical statement to him.

Tim:

And let me point out, so these are also accusations being made without any proof.

David:

Exactly.

Tim:

Right. What proof do you have this came from a church and not from the bars, or restaurants or actually, in this case, the protests that you’ll have to have happen, where people were gathering and they weren’t socially distancing, and they weren’t all wearing masks? He’s arbitrarily choosing the things that he wants to punish, and arbitrarily allowing the things that he wants to continue to go on. It doesn’t make any sense at all. And certainly, there’s no proof this happens in churches at all.

Rick:

And Gorsuch really, really slammed him on that too, basically, saying anything secular he’s okay with, anything religious, , he’s not.

David:

Yeah. Well, say, as it points out here, of the 26, religious Catholic Diocese there in New York City, they essentially all can seat at least 500 people and 14 of them can seat 700 people and two of them can seat over 1,000 people, and he’s tell them, they can only have 10 people in their congregation. So if you can seat a 1,000 people and you’re only having 10, show me where you’re doing that for any other business with that kind of space capabilities? And so it’s just a great thing that Supreme Court had common sense and logic, but they made it very clear the Constitution does not go away.

So expect a lot more decisions to be coming down from federal courts now as a result of this, whether it be on assembly, or whether it be on protest, the positive protest, not the harmful ones, but you know, appearing in front of the governor’s mansion is saying, hey, we want you to take down the mask requirements, those kind of protests, the conservative protest they’ve been targeting while they let the violent protests go on. I mean, expect to see a lot more protection now for the First Amendment rights, not only religion, but also a petition and assembly and so many other things.

Rick:

Yeah, this is the first major chink in the armor for the COVID crackdown crowd out there: a big deal 5-4 decision. I’ll say this is we’re going to break and I go into this a lot more detail on my Front Porch Lives that I do. But one really good thing that came out of Gorsuch his concurring opinion on this as well, is he basically said that old 115 year old case, the Jacobson case that had to do with vaccines in Massachusetts on smallpox 115 years ago, and that’s the one that all the courts and all the government people that want to control everybody have been quoting and talking about. And he basically said at that one is totally different facts, circumstances, totally different situation, has nothing to do with this. That’s a really, really good sign for potential future decisions that will finally stop a lot of this nonsense that’s happening out there in the state. So, really good stuff coming out of that decision.

Quick break, we’ll be right back with more good news. You’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

BREAK

This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. After the final victory at Yorktown, the Continental Army awaiting the outcome of peace negotiations with Great Britain, Pastor Israel Evans, a chaplain in the army proposed to George Washington, but they build a structure where church services can be held during the month of waiting. Washington approved the plan, and urged his officers to ensure that the soldiers attended service.

Pastor Evans further knew, if we were to secure the liberties they had fought for, sound education would be crucial. He declared, “Every parent and every friend of the freedom of his country ought to be attentive to the improvement of our youth in the principles of freedom and good government; and then the people will stand fast in their liberty for a long time.” Our schools today need to return to teaching the principles of freedom and good government in order for America to survive and prosper.

For more information about Pastor Israel Evans and other colonial patriots, go to wallbuilders.com.

Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. It’s Good News Friday today, and I know you’re going to miss WallBuilders Live this weekend, but go to wallbuilderslive.com and you can listen to the archives, all available right there at our website WallBuilders Live. Let’s get some more good news. Tim Barton’s got our next piece of good news.

Tim:

Alright, guys, one thing that probably Got overlooked by most people because it happened right before the election was there is a special operations done by SEAL Team Six, really neat story. There was a Christian missionary over in Nigeria. His name is Philip Walton, he’s 27 years old. And there were a group of Muslim tribesmen, I think they’re called the Fulani, and they’re becoming more and more extremist. So they’re kind of being compared to groups like Boko Haram, the Islamic extremist groups that are periodically seen over in the Middle East and Southern Africa. And they begin targeting Christian villages, and they begin killing people and a lot of terrible things that have happened in the midst of what was going on.

While this 27 year old, American missionary was kidnapped on October 27th, and news got out of the kidnapping. And questions about whether or not Philip is going to be kept alive, maybe for some level of extortion or bribe or whatever they can get with him, or is he being tortured or what’s going to happen? And so, there was a decided agreement that there was going to be a rescue operation to try to get this missionary from this, essentially, Muslim extremist terror group. And so the US, Niger and Nigeria all worked together, the CIA provided intelligence, there was a marine special operation element that helped locate to see where Philip Walton was, and then SEAL Team Six went into operation, there were seven captors when they went in.

And what it says is that the operation happened very quickly, and with great precision, and killed all but one of the seven captors, rescuing Philip and getting him out. This happened on October 31st. So you’re talking about roughly 72 hours after he is kidnapped, he is rescued. And for sure, that could have been a very traumatic, very trying 72 hours that he had to go through.

But just it really incredible that we are now in a place where for the last four years, we’ve had a president that if Americans were in a bad situation overseas, things are happening, this President has really tried to care for Americans. And certainly in the situation of Philip Walton, all the props, all the kudos to the military for what they were able to do for the operations for these countries working together.

And in Nigeria, where he was kidnapped is ranked as the 12th most hostile country when it comes to the persecution of Christians. So you’re seeing a growing trend over in some nations around Europe, the Middle East, Africa that it’s not really conducive to the tolerance that we often hear the Democrats or the Left talk about in relation to we just need to get along. Well, it seems that a lot of people are not very tolerant of Christians in a lot of scenarios. But again, really good news, Philip Walton was rescued, SEAL Team Six did an incredible job, the marine special operation element that was there, CIA, so really big task force. It’s the kind of thing that movies are made out of this scenario.

And I’m just going to also say that of all the lucky people in this operation, there were seven captors and six of them were killed on the spot I have no idea what SEAL Team member had that seventh guy and did not take that dude down? I’m very curious, right, and knowing some of the communities around there. Like what’s happening to that guy that like dude, you had one job, take out the bad guy? You could even take out the bad guy. You talk about a lucky person, that one bad guy who is still alive now, hopefully, in the midst of this we can say yeah, maybe he can have a come to Jesus moment. Right? There can be forgiveness. There can be restoration a soul that is saved. But that dude is lucky that he’s still alive on this day. But also, Philip Walton, really cool that he got rescued by SEAL Team Six.

Rick:

Alright, guys, quick break, we’ll be right back with more good news. Stay with us, you’re listening to Wallbuilders Live.

BREAK

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 Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Good news Friday today, we have had good news from the US Supreme Court, good news from SEAL Team Six. I think this is the first time we’ve had that kind of a combination on Good News Friday. So what is our next piece of good news, David?

David:

Well, we’re going to do a little Israel. Good news. Say there’s a lot of stuff and overshadowed by all the controversy going now with the election. But you recall that the first two Muslim nations to make peace with Israel, President Trump negotiated that and you had Bahrain and you had the UAE? Well, jumping on with that, the third nation is now Sudan. And I’ve got to say, this is a shocker to me, because Sudan, Tim, you mentioned that Nigeria was number 12 on the persecuting Christians list aggressively doing that, Sudan was super high up there. Sudan is considered a State sponsor of terrorism. I mean, they’ve been a brutal, brutal nation. They’ve had a brutal dictator for the last several years.

But now Sudan, this largely Muslim nation has made peace with Israel. And I was going like, wait a minute, these are the guys that are the real haters and just I hadn’t heard anything about it. But they have really changed it in recent months in the last couple years. They’ve really shown a lot of courage and they’ve started combating terrorism. They’ve started building elective institutions and putting the people back in charge. They’ve started having good relations with the neighbors, not attacking them, and killing their neighbors. And so as a result, President Trump had taken them off the state sponsors of terrorism list. They’ve made so much progress in the last couple years. And now find out well, they have now made peace with Israel. So they’re the third Muslim nation to make peace with Israel.

And news also comes out that there’s five more Muslim nations waiting to make peace with Israel once all this election stuff gets settled out. So once all this stuff goes away, and we get back to normal life, whatever that is, and I’m curious if they’re still going to make peace if Biden is the president, we’ll see. But they’re planning under Trump, five more nations to make peace after all this settles out.

And one other thing that kind of goes with this, if you think of Saudi Arabia, now, Saudi Arabia, back in 911, I mean, Saudi Arabia was the country that was probably the number one sponsor of terrorism of taking down the stuff in America. They were the founders of al Qaeda. It was the radical Saudi mosques that were here in the United States as well. I mean, this was a radical side of Islam, was the Saudi side of it. And they have so changed in the last 20 years that right now 79 of polling in Saudi Arabia, 79% of the Saudis want to make peace with Israel. So I mean, what a massive change going from blowing up everything and destroyed the little Satan and the big Satan in America and Israel to now wanting to make peace? There’s just such a climate change going in the Middle East. Such a major shift, and that really is good news.

Rick:

Alright, guys, quick break, we’ll come back with more good news. But it is great to see Israel’s really image in the Middle East beginning to change and so many of these nations beginning to see Israel as a stabilizing factor and a friend. I mean, this is very good for the future of the Middle East, but certainly very good for Israel as well. Stay with us, we’ll be right back, more good news when we return on WallBuilders Live.

BREAK

Hey, guys, we want to let you know about our new resource we have here at WallBuilders called “The American Story”. For years, people have been asking us to do a history book, and we finally done it. We start with Christopher Columbus and go roughly through Abraham Lincoln. And one of the things that so often we hear today are about the imperfections of America, or how so many people in America that used to be celebrated or honored really aren’t good or honorable people.

One of the things we acknowledge quickly in the book is that the entire world is full of people who are sinful and need a savior, because the Bible even tells us that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” And yet what we see through history and certainly is evident in America is how a perfect God uses imperfect people and does great things through them. The story of America is not the story of perfect people. But you see time and time again how God got involved in the process and use these imperfect people to do great things that impacted the entire world from America. To find out more, go to wallbuilders.com and check out “The American Story”.

 Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us today. Be sure to visit our websites today a

—

This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. Today, we hear that our Founding Fathers were largely atheists, agnostics or deist. The writings of Founding Father Richard Henry Lee strongly refute that assertion. Richard Henry Lee was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and he is specifically the man who made the motion in Congress that America separate from Great Britain.

Following his death, his papers and correspondence, including numerous original handwritten letters from other prominent Founding Fathers were passed on to his grandson. After having studied those letters, this was how the grandson described our Founding Fathers. He declared, “The wise and great men of those days were not ashamed publicly, to confess the name of our blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. On behalf of the people, as their representative rulers, they acknowledge the sublime doctrine of his mediation.”

For more information on God’s hand in American history, contact WallBuilders at 1808REBUILD.

Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us for this Good News Friday. Let’s see, Tim, you’ve got the last piece of good news. And it feels almost like a normal day of radio here, it’s kind of strange. We’ve been covering election news every day for the last month. I’m sorry, I even brought it up. Let’s go to some good news.

Tim:

Yeah, it is different being able to talk about some of the positive things happening around the world. In America, one of the things happening around the world is not very long ago, the US joined with 32 other nations signing a declaration, saying that there is no international right to abortion. And this was a big deal, with these 32 nations; the document was called the Geneva Consensus Declaration on Promoting Women’s Health and Strengthening the Family.

And I love the title because we often hear in America about women’s health and safety, and women’s rights, and women’s health, but health is sewn in there so often as if the healthiest thing for a woman is to have an abortion, which of course is obviously ludicrous, not to mention the health of that unborn child. But I love in this title that they include strengthening the family, because that really should be what part of promoting women’s health should be related to when it comes to a reproductive health in this situation.

And the four main pillars that they highlight, and this comes from the US Department of Health and Human Services, they issued a statement about it, and they said there’s four main pillars we’re trying to achieve. Number one, better health for women; number two, the preservation of human life; number three, strengthening family as a foundational unit of society; and number four, protecting every nation’s national sovereignty and global politics. Those last two were really, really interesting, because again, you’re talking about nations that are part of the UN.

This is the Geneva Consensus Declaration, and not only are we recognizing the unborn, but we’re also saying we want to strengthen families, which we have argued for years, that families are the foundation, every society and so when you attack marriage, when you attack family, you are weakening and crippling that society, the nation will not do better, having weaker families or not having strong marriages, and then trying to protect every nation’s national sovereignty and global politics. Meaning that we don’t want just some group of people, the UN telling every nation, how they’re going to operate when it comes to the right to life or unborn, etc. Or part of the declaration says that every human being has the inherent right to life, which is absolutely true. And it’s really great having a government right now and some leaders in the White House, some leaders in DC who are recognizing this.

They also in this declaration make the commitment to enable women to go safely through pregnancy and childbirth and provide couples with the best chance of having a healthy infant. So actually getting back to recognizing what health services should be when it comes to the unborn or when it comes to pregnancy and family planning, it’s to help families be able to have a healthy child and raise that healthy child to make a strong family. So really neat to see coming from the US and 32 other nations.

David:

Hey, Tim, those four points you had, read the fourth one again.

Tim:

Protecting every nation’s national sovereignty and global politics.

David:

Now see, that means a whole lot to me. I don’t know how much it goes across to everybody else. But this goes back to what the Democrats had done. They created in the State Department, the Office of Global Women’s Initiatives, which sounds like a good office, but it had two objectives. And one objective was to get all the other nations to affirm abortion and make that part of their constitution.

So I remember in Kenya, particularly, they said, hey, in Kenya, you guys have in there a prohibition against abortion, you got to take that out if you want State Department money. That’s not allowing nations to be sovereign. That’s saying, if you want State Department money, you’re going to have to change your policies, you’re going to have to change even your Constitution. And in Kenya, that clause had been put in there because Christians were very active. Kenya is very high Christian percentage nation, and they were very active and wanting to protect life, which is biblical view.

So I think that even that comment that they have in there in point four about protecting a nation sovereignty goes to the fact that America was so aggressive under democrat administration, particularly under the Obama administration when Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State in pushing that. And the other thing the Global Women’s Initiative did was try to push the LGBTQ agenda on nations that have traditional values. And so that really is a significant political statement. And for the US to sign that along with 32 other nations, that’s a big mouthful they’ve just said, including politics in America.

Tim:

Well, guys, one more thing real quick before we’re out of time. In Missouri, we’ve talked about this several Good News Fridays programs over the last couple months. In Missouri, there were just several dozen victims of human trafficking that were rescued. There were five people that were found guilty of human trafficking. And so you still have units out there doing really good work fighting against human trafficking. And so there’s just so much good news, lots more in the stack, we’ll have plenty to cover in the coming weeks. But there are still good things happening in the midst of the craziness of what we’re seeing around us right now.

Rick:

So great to get so much good news today, it’s always good to have a Good News Friday. But, man, after the last few weeks of just constant chaos in the country over the presidential election, it’s good to just catch up on a lot of that good news. Folks, we got more good news for you at our website, wallbuilderslive.com, just click on the archive section there and you can scroll through those previous programs and get some of those Good News Fridays, or those Foundations of Freedom Thursdays, or some of the interviews we have on Monday through Wednesday. But check it all out at wallbuilderslive.com. Again, that’s also the place to make your contribution. We really do appreciate you.

There’s so many of you across the country that make that monthly contribution. Some of you do one-time donations or once a year, I’m telling you, it goes a long way; we do a lot with a little. In other words, we don’t raise as much money as a lot of folks do and a lot of organizations out there, but boy, we make it count. We reach a lot of people with good education, inspiration, equipping people with making a difference in their community. So we appreciate you being a part of that when you donate at wallbuilderslive.com. I hope you have a fantastic weekend. Be sure to check out those archives for the weekend.

If you need to get some more pick me up and listen to some more good news, it’s all available for you there at wallbuilderslive.com. Thanks for listening to WallBuilders Live.