Speaking from a Place of Encouragement – with Bob McEwen, part 3: Today, our black history segment today is on Betsey Stockton, an early black missionary. Next, we bring you a presentation from former Congressman Bob McEwen that he gave at the ProFamily Legislators Conference a couple months back. He offers hope for the direction of our country by reminding us of past victories and that our current trajectory can be influenced by Godly leaders.

Air Date: 2/23/2023

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

Guest: Former Congressman Bob McEwen

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Transcription:

Rick Green
Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. This is WallBuilders, where we take on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. And this week, or at least the last three days of this week, we are taking on a presentation from Bob McEwen. At the ProFamily Legislators Conference. It’s a three part series. So if you’re just tuning in, today, you’re getting the conclusion, but it’s still going to be great information, you’re going to enjoy it. But you also want to go to our website WallBuildersLive.com. And in the archive section, check out yesterday and the day before and you can get the entire presentation. But before we jump into Bob McEwen, let’s get into some of our heroes of history. By the way, I’m Rick Green, America’s constitution coach, here with David Barton, America’s premier historian and Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. Tim, who is our hero of history today?

Tim Barton
Alright, Rick. Well, today is someone that I think probably most of our listeners have no idea about. Now. If you’re listening and you’ve heard of the name, Betsey Stockton, congratulations, you are in a very, very, very small minority. And one of the things we will celebrate about her was she was America’s first black single female missionary, because she was a missionary at the time, early, mid 1800s, there was a Missions Board in America. And the only way that you could be approved to go on foreign missions was through the Mission Board. And the Mission Board required that you’d be married. Now, let’s also back up. She’s someone like many of the heroes we’ve talked about that was born into slavery. And then when she was very young, she was given as a wedding present, to another family, actually, to the family of the Reverend Ashbel Green, and she grew up in the Green family. The Reverend Green sent her to go be with another family where she could learn to be kind of more formal in the way she conducted herself. The Reverend Green then received a new position and he wanted his house to be run very well and very professional. Well, over the course of time, Betsey Stockton ends up getting saved. And when she gets saved, I can only imagine the conversations that she and the Reverend Green had, but the Reverend Green decided to emancipate her and, give her her freedom. And she stays living with the family as a free woman. The Reverend Ashbel opens up his entire library for her to continue to grow and learn. And she falls in love with Jesus and wants to go into the world and make disciples of all nations. She wants to go make a difference. And in the midst of this also, the Reverend Green is the president of Princeton University. And while he’s at Princeton, Betsey is able to go to Princeton and connect with some of the students and the students are teaching her what they’ve learned. And that would include right, the Latin and the Greek and the Hebrew, and she’s learning all of this context for the Bible. And the reason that matters because when she decides she wants to be a missionary, the rules were very clear- you can’t go as a single woman. And you also had to have some pretty in-depth knowledge when it came to the Bible. You had to know a lot about geography and Israel, where the Israelites were and were Jesus and where Paul and where the journey went. And she had to know that, and well then she had to understand not just the geography and the theology, she had to understand some Latin, some Greek and some Hebrew Well, she had learned all of this and again, a lot of it was the Reverend Ashbel helping her along the way. The Mission Board approves that she can go because she connected with another couple that was going and you know, she essentially, hey, can I go with you guys and so they work it out that she can go with his family, so she’s not going totally by herself. But she’s the first one approved to go who is not married, where they go on their missionary journey, is they go to a hungry Island, or the island you go to and you’re hungry now, I say that tongue in cheek. They went to the Sandwich Islands- sandwich, I was hungry, I got a sandwich, right, Sandwich Islands. The Sandwich Islands became known as Hawaii. What is so special about this? Betsey Stockton is one of the early Christian missionaries who helped introduce Christianity in Hawaii, when Christianity was introduced into Hawaii, Hawaii was one of many places were largely it was only the nobility that had an education. And they brought Jesus to everybody. And they brought education to everybody. And in like a year and a half they educated 8000 people and Christianity spreads, Well, over time the royalty, the King, the Queen, the prince, the princesses of Hawaii, they come to Christianity. The reason Hawaii actually joins the union, right 100 years later, is because of the influence of Christianity, because about change the island, the culture. Betsey Stockton ends up having to leave Hawaii because you got sick, which I always felt like was just kind of weird and sad. That you know, usually if you have to go to different climate for your health, like Hawaii is the place you would want to go. If I had to go somewhere to get healthy, let me go to an island in Hawaii, that that would be awesome. She had a leave because of her health. And when she left she ends up going to Canada, and while she’s there, she started to school. Then she comes back to the US and everywhere she went she started schools, and some of the places it was the first school started by a black woman in those locations and she is literally transforming the world, right lives at a time. It wasn’t just one at a time, sometimes there’s dozens at a time but she is someone if we look back and again, we’re talking about some of these people who had incredible influence in their era in their generation. Betsey Stockton is someone who should be celebrated, especially in the Christian reality, because she was someone who came to God, found restoration, right found freedom, and then she’s able to go and introduce people all over the world to Jesus changing the world. She certainly is one of the heroes that today we don’t know much about. And I’m condensing this short because I know we have more in the program we want to get to, but she’s someone that I would encourage our listeners to go find more about, and easy place, go to WallBuilders.com . You can find these articles, footnotes in the bottom, but certainly do some research because Betsey Stockton was a true American hero.

Rick Green
Alright folks, we’re going to take a quick break, we’ll be right back, you’re listening to WallBuilders.

Tim Barton
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 believed exactly the opposite. They held that religion was absolutely necessary in order to maintain our free system of government. For example, John Adams declared, we 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, without religion there can be no virtue and without virtue, there can 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 about the founding fathers views on religion and public life, go to WallBuilders.com .

Rick Green
Welcome back to WallBuilders. We’re going to pick up now, where we left off yesterday, with Bob McEwen at the ProFaimily Legislators conference. We have the conference once a year, and we try to bring you as many of the presentations as possible. There’s just so much great information. I mean, these are some of the best speakers on the planet, just a wealth of information on Economics and Policy and government and biblical perspective, historical perspective, constitutional perspective, all the things that we’re typically talking about here at WallBuilders. And of course, Bob McEwen is just amazing at all of this. And so today is going to be the conclusion of the presentation that he gave it, the ProFamily Legislators Conference. We started this two days ago. So it’s a three-part series- yesterday, the day before, and then today we get the conclusion, let’s dive in. Here’s Bob McEwen.

Bob McEwen
This nation has looked for leaders time after time after time, and God has blessed them. And those people were looking for something that maybe what they weren’t sure was going to exist. But in our case, we can look over our shoulder and say, this is wonderful. This… for George Washington had this sell a dream. And Thomas Jefferson wasn’t sure whether or not we could have the strongest military in the world when he ordered three frigates to make the entire United States Navy. But we know what America stands for. But as I said, America was not the leading nation of the world. Through my study of history, no nation has ever become the leading nation on earth, but what it didn’t pursue it and knew what it had to do to get there. It’s the single exception of the United States after World War II. And how did that happen? Well, it happens because the leader of the free world for 250 years were the British. After World War I when they got a little bit sore and tired of it in the 1930s, they decided they weren’t going to lead. And so there was a little fella, a little paper hanger from Austria. And so what had happened was that in World War One, those folks couldn’t fight. I mean, just if you want to read an interesting book, read the book, the Guns of August, how that the start of August of 1914, the world’s completely at peace. By the end of a bunch of a series of errors, if one thing had not fallen right, it would have stopped, but by the end of August, the entire world is at war. And they think that this is going to be over. Everybody goes marching off to war. They’re pleased as punch, they’re so happy, they can’t stand it. They’re all going to be home by Christmas. But it didn’t work. In 1915, they had this thing called trench warfare where you just sit there and just stared, and killed each other for a long time. And then the 1916 and ’17, the United States… In March of 1917, and the President of the United States had been reelected on… the fact, he kept us out of war. He got sworn in on March 3. By April 1 Woodrow Wilson said let’s go to war. And so he, we… but we didn’t have any war. So we got our material together. We finally showed up on May 30 of 1918. The United States, its first battle… May, June, July, August, September, October. People said it’s all over. America’s going to put a stop to this and so, on November 11, they formed an armistice and said, enough, because the Americans are going to defeat Germany and all the rest. And so they swore for an armistice. And then of course, they had the peace when… In the 1930s, Hitler went around and said, we didn’t get beat. Those bankers all sold us out. We could have fought it. They just quit too early. They’re scared of the Americans. And so they began to, to put a little army together, and Britain didn’t do anything about it. And so Hitler… what they said was you Germans keep overrunning people all the time. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to have a demilitarized zone, here in the Rhineland. And we know that if you start going in there, then we know that you’re up to something. So therefore, you’re not allowed to be in there. And in 1936, Hitler said, I don’t think… Remember, it takes leadership to stand up and do something about it. I don’t think there’s any leaders. I’m Going to do it. And then Warnock pleaded with him, don’t do that. We don’t have any army. We don’t have anything. Please don’t do this. He said, watch me. He goes in there. The army in France was 11 times greater than the army in Germany. That’s just one country. And they did nothing. And so with that, Hitler said, See, I told you. And sure enough, his popularity began to roll a little bit. And so in 1938, he goes down and he takes Austria. And when he takes Austria, there’s a fella by the name of Winston Churchill. Now Winston Churchill was a fella that, sort of like Newt Gingrich, or Donald Trump, or these other folk… people that are very, very skilled, they have opportunities to improve in other areas of their personality. And people so despised Churchill, that when you have a parliamentary system, when you all get together, the first thing you do is you decide who’s going to be Prime Minister, because you come with so many votes, and you say, I’ll vote with you if you make me foreign minister and I’ll be defense minister. And so the first vote is always who’s going to be Prime Minister, because that’s the team that’s going to set up the government. There were three times in the 1930s, in the British government, when the vote was not who shall be Prime Minister, the first vote was, we agree among us, worms, that we will not permit Winston Churchill anyplace in the cabinet. Because they knew if he sat down there as the Assistant Minister of Education, he was going to overpower all of them. And so they kept him out. And so he didn’t even go to Parliament because he couldn’t be in government. He was a backbencher. So he stayed down at Chartwell and painted on his little easel. People come to see him and send letters, they said within 36 inches of that easel was more power than all the houses of Westminster because he said, I know what that guy’s up to. And Hitler would attack not the British government, they would attack Winston Churchill. Now Winston Churchill had a portfolio of nothing. But Hitler knew that he knew who he was. And so Churchill said he’s going after Czechoslovakia. He’s got Austria on the bottom. He’s going after Czechoslovakia. Sure as the world. And so everybody said, well, Czechoslovakia means war. Czechoslovakia means war. You can’t believe how much war Czechoslovakia would mean… that mean? Really mean? He why? No, sir. Absolutely. So good ol’ Hitler said let’s see. And so he starts to move some troops into the western part of the Sudetenland. And the leader of the free world, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Neville Chamberlain, he says, Hitler says you keep… he went there in March. And so all summer long, June, July, all summer long, we’re talking about how this means war. This means war. Hitler says why don’t you come see me, I got this nice little place down in Munich, down in Berchtesgaden, come stay at my place in Munich, and we’ll talk. Neville Chamberlain, leader of the free world gets in an airplane, first airplane fight in his history, and goes to see Hitler. Now this thing is backwards. This is like the fourth grader calling the principal in the office. So let’s talk about this a bit. No, no, no, should have been the other way around. So he goes in and he says to him, Hitler says, I’ll tell you what, you know, all I want is just… I, I, I need a little bit of this part, but no more. I don’t want anything. Don’t you worry about it. And so Chamberlain being a good lawyer, he said, Would you put that in writing? And and Hitler’s Foreign Minister Ribbentrop put it in his notes. He said, Hitler literally leapt for his pen. You stupid idiot. If you fall for this, I’m… Sure I’ll give it to you. And so he signed a letter saying I’m not going to take any more countries. And so boy, ol’ good ol’, good ol’ Neville, he’s so happy with himself. So as you can… see there there, I’m just going to take this part of it. Just this part. And so he goes back and he says, I have the fuhrer signature, in my hand. It’s peace for our time, and the entire planet, the front page of every newspaper in the world, without exception, you can’t find one that didn’t have a picture of peace in our time, peace in our time. And so they go down to ask Winston Churchill. Said, see you there troublemaker? Look at that, you see he made peace. Churchill said, the Prime Minister faced a very difficult choice, whether to choose war, or shame, and he’s chosen both. He had that Newt Gingrich, the skill for making friends. And so sure enough, Hitler says I understand these guys, they’re worthless. And so he proceeded to go throughout all… And September 1 of ’39 he marches into Poland. And then he comes completely… And finally on May 10 1940, he marches into France and all of Europe is gone. And by that time, King Edward the the Eighth, who had abdicated, who was mad at his sister in law, wouldn’t let him set foot in Britain. So he’s down there making friends with Hitler. And you can read Five Days in London, how they’re within a matter of days of the leadership of… The blue bloods of Britain, are ready to sell out to Hitler in order to have peace. We’ll be able to keep our King, we’ll keep a little bit of our commonwealth, but you’ll take over the ships and things and you’ll be the world leader from here on out. And at 2:00 in the afternoon, King George the Sixth invites Winston Churchill into the house, into Buckingham Palace, talks to him a little bit. And nobody wanted Winston. But and… And he certainly didn’t fit in with the crowd very well, but after about six hours, the king gave him four hours. [At] 6:00 at night, he said, you’ll return at 10:00 tonight with a list of men who will serve with you in cabinet. If I approve, I will give you this seals of power and you will become His Majesty’s Prime Minister. Now at this point, the world is gone. It’s all done. They’re down to nothing. They’ve refused to militarize for all of these many, many years. And Hitler has them by the throat. Churchill says as he goes out through the gates of Buckingham Palace, said he felt the weight of the world and the Commonwealth descended upon his shoulders, but he knew that he would not fail, for his entire life had been but a preparation for this hour. And that’s why God has chosen you to be here, now at this moment. Now, we’re not under the gun like they are, we are in control. But I’ll just one additional thing just has a little Donald Trump touch to it. He said, then he went home that night and slept the sleep of a newborn babe, content in the knowledge that finally someone was in charge who knew what they were doing. But then, you’ve got 1940, and you got 1941 and 1942 and 1943. And finally, the day comes- June 6 1944, the Americans show up. And the Americans go across the channel, and they attack at Normandy, and they begin to march. And my whole point is to say this, if you dropped out of the sky at that day, and you could say, oh my goodness, look at this mess. They lost 3,900 men the very first day. Isn’t this terrible? And then you go on a little bit more, Oh, this town’s getting blown up, these folks are being destroyed. Oh, they got death camps are wiping people…. And yes, that’s true. But this is a war. And we’re winning and we’re moving and we’re a fourth way to Berlin. But then it’s wintertime and the first time the hun has a winter attack. And they have the Battle of the Bulge and they overrun Americans, and they’re left out with command and control where their supplies or ammunition but they’re Americans who believe in freedom and know what to do. You’ve all seen the Dirty Dozen. They said we know what to do. There’s a bridge. We’re going to take that bridge out of there. They said that in World War II, there was a special… that was the American GI, was this special talent that existed in the war.

Rick Green
Alright friends, one more break, today. Stay with us. We’ll be right back with Bob McEwen on WallBuilders.

Tim Barton
Hey, 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
Welcome back to WallBuilders. We’re going to jump right back in with Congressman McEwan over at the ProFamily Legislators conference.

Bob McEwen
And of course, as people are dying, all the chaos going on, if you drop out of nowhere and say, Isn’t this really terrible? You say yes, but we’re halfway to Berlin. And then you continue on and then finally, we’re three fourths of the way to Berlin. And in this battle, we eventually will win. What we are involved in now- If those that just want to drop out of the sky and say isn’t it really terrible what’s happening? Oh my goodness, look what they’re teaching in school. Yes, they were. But for 40 years, we couldn’t get anybody to care who was teaching anything in schools. And the seven major school districts in Florida, the seven largest school boards in Florida, six weeks ago, we won every one of them… we took them on. It’s taking over… all over the place, people are beginning to care about who’s on their school boards, once again. The same way with… we couldn’t get pastors. We’ve done pastors conferences for 30 years. And they usually get the poor guy on the low end of the totem pole, you got to go there, because we’re, you know, God and us, we’re busy, we don’t have time for this political part. And in the process of that, they begin to realize that now you’ve got some bureaucrat telling you when you’re going to have church when you can, how much toilet paper you got to wear across your nose while you’re talking to so and so and where you’re… how close you’re going to sit, then they find out, well, maybe I should get involved. And now the pastors conferences are suddenly over running, and people starting to wake up. We are three fourths the way to Berlin, I understand that we’re in a battle, but we’re in the process of winning this thing. And there’s never been a time quite like this. There are those in this room that will remember when we’ve been here before. I give a whole series of examples. Let’s just take one in my lifetime. In the 1970s, everything was rotten. If you don’t think so go ask your parents or your grandparents for picture in 1977 of their driver’s license. Every grandchild in the room will die rolling on the floor laughing because of what people looked like in the 1970s. The clothes, that they wore, were absolutely… They had these things called leisure suits. I represented a rural area. The poor little farmer stand there with a white forehead and a red… glowing like a neon light and some orange or green or chartreuse or yellow out leisure suit that his wife had put him into. You see him sitting around there at the Farm Bureau banquets. The architecture, they had seven foot ceilings. There were… they had green bathrooms, green and orange bathrooms with carpeting that you raked. They had… If you’re in a real estate business, you can’t give those things away. They’re all made… The music was even worse. We elect a president who couldn’t walk and chew gum. He shut down… we had to buy gasoline. Depending on one of the last number on your license plate on certain days, because… 18% inflation. 18%… 22% interest rates. And they said the question is not whether or not America will have a declining standard of… This is the chief motivator, the head of the Council of Economic Advisers for Jimmy Carter. In 1980, he said the question is not whether or not America will have a declining standard of living in the 1980s. The question is whether or not Americans can learn to adapt to their declining standard of living. I repeat, they can’t run anything. They… you can put them in control, they’ll foul up a city or a state or a nation. And as for the world, more nations went communist under Jimmy Carter than any president since Truman. And his first speech was… the President’s first commencement addresses is always at Notre Dame in his first year in office. He went to Notre Dame, in May of ’77 and said Americans needed to get over their inordinate fear of communism. In other words, he said to the communists, you’re just as good as anybody you have at it, we’re not going to bother you anymore. And so in 1980, the head of the conference on African Unity, it’s now called the African Union… They invited in their first meeting, the head of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev, who said this, 1989, he said, because of what we are doing, the Soviet Union, by the end of this decade we, the Soviet Union, will be able to work our will anyplace on the planet, because the correlation of forces economic, military and political are on the side of socialism and communism. We elected a president in November of that night of 1980 said, there’s nothing wrong with… Everybody said America was finished. It was over the hill. It was done. And there was reason to believe that you look around, I mean, my goodness the place was a wreck. Ronald Reagan said there’s nothing wrong with this country, proper leadership can’t cure. And so he went in, began to cut taxes. By 1989, three out of every four jobs created on this planet, in the decade of the ’80s, were created in one country, the United States of America. And by 1989, the entire world is chanting USA, from Warsaw to to Czechoslovakia, to Moscow, the entire collapse of the Soviet Union. The entire country is chanting USA, USA, USA. What’s the point? The point is that truth overcomes error. Those folks are wrong. We and America stand for truth. The entire world is hoping that we will do this. We have now been given as a result of World War II the responsibility of world leadership. We want nothing in return. Never in the history of man has one nation shed blood and treasure for the freedom of another, and never asked anything in return, except the United States of America. And never has a nation had the capacity to overrun another nation. Russia, Ukraine. Saddam Hussein, Kuwait. Never has a nation has the capacity to overrun another nation but what it didn’t do it. The only time there has been pieces when there been a balance of power, with a single exception of the United States of America after World War II when we could control the whole world, anytime. This is a nation that stands for righteousness in the world. 66% of all, maritime traffic goes up and down through the South China Sea, you’ve got the 10th largest economy in Korea, and Taiwan, fourth largest in Japan. You got second in China. It’s free because of you, because of Americans keep it free. If we fail in our responsibilities, and that turns into a Chinese Island and they say to Japan 25% tax on anything that goes through unless you break relationships with Israel. We have not seen in our lifetime what it’s like when a leader of the world is not the righteousness of the United States of America. That has now been entrusted to us. We are every bit as strong and talented as any of our predecessors. And we have much more reason to believe it than any of they did. They looked forward in faith. We know it’s true, and I have every confidence in the world that over these next few years, you are going to continue to lead for our party and thereby for our nation and thereby for the world. God bless. Thank You.

Rick Green
Alright folks, out of time. That was Bob McEwen speaking at the ProFamily Legislators Conference. You can get the entire presentation at our website, today. WallBuildersLive.com. We sure appreciate you listening. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders.