TBN Thanksgiving Program With WallBuilders Part One: Happy Thanksgiving! For the next three days, we are doing a special program in honor of Thanksgiving! David and Tim had the opportunity to partner with TBN to make this special program just in time for the holidays. Tune in now to hear some of your most asked Thanksgiving questions answered!

Air Date: 11/27/2019

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

Listen:

Download: Click Here

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 culture. This is WallBuilders Live where we talk about today’s hottest topics on policy, faith and the culture. We always do that from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. Now, normally you’d have David Barton, Tim Barton and myself, Rick Green, here in the studio for the day. We’d have some great guests on or would be doing Good News Friday and bringing you lots of good news or maybe Foundations of Freedom Thursday.

But it’s Thanksgiving week, so we are doing something a little bit special here. In fact, it’s a special program that David and Tim had the opportunity to do with TBN. It has all kinds of great history, and they get to go to some incredible places!

And so we are going to share the audio with you here on WallBuilders Live over the next three days. And then you can actually go watch the full special and see them on the ground going to these cool places if you go to TBN and check out their schedule this week.

So, today, tomorrow, and Friday we’re going to have this special Thanksgiving programming for you. It’ll be David and Tim Barton and their Thanksgiving special for TBN so be sure and check it all out at WallBuildersLive.com.

Also before we dive into the program, just a quick reminder we’re a listener supported program. We cannot bring you these very special shows without your support. So many of you across the country have just been so great at donating and contributing, being monthly donors to WallBuilders Live. You can do that all at WallBuildersLive.com or WallBuilder.com, either place. You can make it a five dollar a month donation, you can make it a special donation for the holiday season this year or maybe you want to come alongside us with a significant donation on a monthly basis that helps us to add stations across the country, helps us to bring this great programming to you; the interviews, the education, the empowering and educating of people across the country on the constitutional principles, the biblical foundation that made our nation great in the first place.

We are restoring America’s constitution, and it’s happening because of you. So, please go to WallBuildersLive.com today and make a donation that helps make it possible.

Let’s dive right in. Here is David and Tim Barton with their Thanksgiving special for TBN.

 

Tim:

Hi, I”€™m Tim Barton from Wallbuilders, and this is America’s hidden history where we learn about events from history and the people that shape those events. Today, we’re talking about Thanksgiving and really the history of the Pilgrims. Now we’re going to learn today about what led the Pilgrims out of England to Holland and finally to America. We’re going to discover what they did here at Plymouth. And things that we still do in America today that we do because of the contribution of the Pilgrims. They truly were remarkable people and who they were and what they contributed to America is America’s hidden history.

 

Moment from American History

Tim:

This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. Too often today history education excludes great black heroes from the American founding such as Lemn Haynes. Haynes, abandoned as a baby pioneered churches across upper New England. He became the first black American pastor a white congregation, to receive an honorary master’s degree and to be ordained by a mainstream Christian denomination,  The Congregationalists. He was a soldier during the American Revolution, and in his churches on George Washington’s birthday, he regularly preached sermons honoring George Washington. Even late in his life, he expressed his willingness to go back to battle necessary to protect America, which he called a sacred Ark.

American history is filled with numerous examples of black heroes who are largely ignored by mainstream education today.

For more information about pastor Lemn Haynes and other colonial patriots, go to WallBuilders.com.

 

The Pilgrims

Tim:

So, we are here at Plymouth Rock, and this is actually where the Pilgrims landed when they came to America and because it’s around Thanksgiving, right, every Thanksgiving one of the groups we talk about is the Pilgrims. But if we are going to talking about the Pilgrims, really we have to back up just a little bit to understand more of who they are and actually why they even came to America.

 

David:

And while the Pilgrims are important to us today and our Thanksgiving holiday kind of centers around them, the Pilgrims have been important for centuries, literally. I mean here we are in Massachusetts where the Pilgrims landed. And this is the home of John Adams and John Hancock and Sam Adams and so many founding fathers. And it’s interesting that the people we call founding fathers thought the Pilgrims were their founding fathers. They were actually here at this spot. They gave famous speeches about their founding fathers, the Pilgrims. And so the Pilgrims became in America, the model of religious liberty, and of civil liberty, and of rule by law, and of written documents, and so many good things. And so those folks we called Pilgrims, we’ve respected them in America for hundreds of years. But their story really goes back even hundreds of years before, that to what we now call the Reformation.

 

The Reformers – Back to the Bible

Tim:

Yeah, if you are going to understand the Pilgrims you really have to go back to understand part of why the Reformation even happened because that’s what built leading up to the Pilgrims because the Reformation go back to, guys like Wycliffe, Tyndale. People that really helped bring the Bible back to common man. At that point, the Bible was it provided for common man. It wasn’t in a language that that normal person could read and understand that. And these guys are saying, we need to get back to the Bible, but for their efforts, they were executed.

David:

That’s right

 

Tim:

The early guys trying to produce the Bible, the early reformers, many of them were burned at the stake, or they were beheaded, or all of these terrible things happened to them because at that point the government didn’t really want people going back to the Bible.

 

The Dark Ages, state-established churches and the Monarchy

David:

Yeah. They had been almost a thousand years before the Pilgrims where you could not have a Bible yourself. You could go to the church, but you weren’t really reading. It was high illiteracy, what we call the Dark Ages. They’re saying these guys, they”€™re reading the Bible like Tyndale and like Wycliffe and Huss and so many others said, “€˜everybody needs to read God’s word,”€™ and they get killed for that. But it just takes a while to be able to get that working down. So it’s really a span of about 250 years before the Pilgrims, and seven different nations with almost two dozen different reformers saying, back to the Bible, back to the Bible, back to the Bible. And there’s so much resistance because you had state-established churches back then and the more the people got back to the Bible, more they wanted freedom, the more they wanted to live according to the Bible and the more that’s bad for kings. And so, particularly with the Pilgrims being English, you go to Henry VIII. And Henry VIII was a king who said no Bible reading allowed because he created a church in his own name, literally. I mean, created his own state church to have his own doctrines, and he didn’t want people to differ from those doctrines.

 

Tim:

Well, and it is because of the doctrines of the church at that point, didn’t allow him to do what he wanted to do, right? Because he was trying to have a son and his wife wouldn’t give him a son until he wanted a divorce. But at that time, you couldn’t get a divorce in the church. He actually said you know what, I’ll just create my own denomination, and I will grant divorce. And so he starts his own denomination, starts his own church where he can grant what he wants and actually begins changing laws at that time. And this is one of the things that is interesting about the reformers; is they were already writing things about what kings like King Henry VIII was doing, making really religion their own image and they were saying, wait a second that’s not what the Bible says. Here is what the Bible says. And so, King Henry VIII is a great example of someone who distorts religion just to promote what they want to do.

 

David:

And they want to shut up the critics. And a great example is King Henry VIII’s daughter, Mary, becomes the queen after him. And Mary just kills everybody who doesn’t

 

Tim:

Bloody Mary. That was her.

 

The Puritans

David:

She has flat kills you. If you read the Bible or if you disagree with what she says as a monarch. So you get those hard-fisted, state-established church, this tyranny going on. And at the same time, you’ve got these people saying, no that’s wrong. Here’s what the Bible says. Don’t care what you say, here’s what the Bible says.

And so it starts this movement if you will – they were called Puritans. They want to purify the church. They want the church to go back to what the Bible says, not what the king or queen says. And so, these Puritans started really growing in England, and they’re trying to get to the Bible.

And then, you come to King Henry VIII”€™s another daughter, Elizabeth. And Elizabeth, as soon as she becomes queen, she says national announcement I’m head of the church and the state. With this Puritans, one of their leaders John Greenwood who’s their pastor. He said, excuse me Jesus Christ is head of the church. She executed him.

Now it’s at about that point in time, that all these reformers all they have been saying for 250 years, they finally get it together in a single Bible called the Geneva Bible, because it was printed in Geneva. And that’s what the Puritans took and used. And they were studied that Bible. It is the first Bible available for the common man in the English language. Again a thousand years, without having a bible you can read. Now the English people have a Bible they can read and the more they read that Bible, the more problems it causes for their leaders.

 

King James Bible

Tim:

Well, this Bible was also full of commentary from all these early reformers, and so these reformers are pointing out things that the kings are doing that are not with the Bible actually says. And so this Bible is incredibly unpopular, especially to the kings. So then, you have King James come to the throne. King James is very tyrannical he says there will be no more Bible reading any more of that Geneva Bible, bans the Geneva Bible there in England because it has commentary that says things that are against what he’s doing and so he says, but I will give you a Bible. And this was the entrance of the King James Bible and the significant thing between the Geneva and the King James Bible; the King James Bible although we can talk about sure it’s very scholarly, it”€™s very well translated, it removed all the commentary from reformers. And King James then starts having his church promote, we’ve always had kings and kings are God’s idea and we’re wonderful people, and you should do everything we say. But under him, there’s still so much persecution that this is where the Puritans are realizing this really isn’t a very comfortable spot for us to be.

David:

While he targets them and said I’m going to harry them, which means harass, I’m going to harass them out of the country. And so he started passing policies, and acting policies against the Puritans and a group of the Puritans said let’s just leave, let’s get out here. Some of them said no we need to stay and reform it but the ones that left are called Separatists, and that’s the one we call the Pilgrims. Because he passed a law that says, anyone who criticizes the ecclesiastical supremacy of the King you’re going to prison without bail. You’re not getting out. Now, prisons back then were not nice. They were very dungeon kind of places, and that’s when the Pilgrims said okay, we’re out of here. And they went to Holland at that point because in Holland you could have religious liberty. Now you weren’t English citizens, you were in a new country, but at least you can have religious liberty which you could not have in England.

 

Moment from American History

David:

This is David Barton with another moment from America’s history. Federal courts have made several amazing rulings recently, ordering the removal of a cross from a cemetery, banning religious holiday displays, removing the Ten Commandments from public view, prohibiting student prayers whether verbal or silent and numerous other similar restrictive rulings. As one current Justice has noted the Supreme Court has now become “€œa national board of theology.”€ Our founding fathers would be astounded. They designed the First Amendment to keep the federal courts completely out of this issue. As Thomas Jefferson forcefully declared, “€œI consider the federal government as prohibited by the Constitution from meddling with religious exercises.”€

The First Amendment was designed to keep decisions on religious expression out of the federal courts and in the hands of the local communities.

For more information on God’s hand in American history contact WallBuilders at 1 800 8 REBUILD.

 

The Move to Holland

Tim:

So we’re here at Plymouth Rock and talking about Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims. And so we looked at the fact that the Pilgrims are dealing with a lot of persecution, in fact, all over Europe. There’s a lot of tyrannical kings. It’s very much the same way in England. A lot of tyranny, they’re losing their civil and their religious liberties. And they’re thinking; we need to find a place we can enjoy freedom, we want to raise our kids and our families in a place where they have some freedom where can we go. This is when they find Holland. Now in Holland, there is a large Dutch community. The Dutch have been driven out of Spain very similar to what the Pilgrims were going through.

The Dutch had lost their religious freedom and their oppression against them and the tyranny against them. So they had fled. So the Dutch establish a colony in Holland and in this colony they promote religious toleration and civil freedom. And so the Pilgrims go to this place where now they can have the civil and religious freedom in Holland.

 

The Challenges of Living Holland

David:

And it’s really a different culture for them. They’ve been agriculture their whole life in England. Now they’re in Holland, and it’s more mechanical. They don’t have the same agriculture there. And in addition to that, they still got their home churches going, they”€™re still doing the bible studies, doing good stuff, reading the Bible but having to learn a new language as well and that’s not a really easy language, the Dutch language. And it’s a different culture, I mean they’ve been Englishman their whole lives. Their families have an Englishman, they’ve got the Magna Carta and the English traditions even though the kings are violent and so much of their civil, religious freedom. So they’ve got this thing going on where they really get to practice their faith. But it’s a little more difficult for them.

And unbeknownst to them, while they’re there and that situation on the other side of the globe essentially, there’s something going on there’s going to be important for them. Because here in America we don’t have New England yet. There haven’t been any settlers up here, so we do have the Virginia Colony hundreds of miles south of here. And the man who was the governor of the Virginia Colony, John Smith is actually an explorer. And he came exploring up into this area. So he’s up in this area, he’s mapping out the New England area. He kind of names it New England, which becomes important for where the Pilgrims need to come later. But they don’t know that’s happening yet. So they’re back and Holland.

Tim:

And so if they’re going to find a new place, well the problem with that point is the kings own everything. Even though they start making contact with the Virginia Company, they have to get permission from the king before they can even come to the new land. They find out that they will be allowed to come to the new land under this charter and there are certain provisions and work requirements are going to be put on them.

David:

And the king kind of gives them a wink and a nod says, okay you get way over there away for me I won’t pay attention to you.

 

The Speedwell and the Mayflower

Tim:

So they’re required to go to Virginia. Now, we’re in Massachusetts which is where they landed so we have something happening along the way that doesn’t work out well. So when they’re leaving even Holland, they actually get a ship, and they get the Speedwell, and then they’re going to go, and they actually go back, and they connect in England. This is where the Mayflower is. And so in England, there’s the Mayflower and the Speedwell, and there are two ships that are going together. But as they leave England to come to the new world, the Speedwell starts leaking.

David:

And it keeps leaking, and the guys on the Speedwell did not want to go to the new land. That”€™s wild savage land there, and we don’t we don’t want to go there.

Tim:

So the accusation is that; crewmen people on board the Speedwell actually were drilling holes in the boat on purpose because they did not want to go to the new world. And it just keeps leaking. Argh, we will just have to not go. So they end up turning and sailing back to England because they thought, we can’t cross the ocean with all these holes in the boat, so they get back to England. The Pilgrims are so determined, no we want to go to this new world, that the Pilgrims were able to get on the Mayflower, 102 of them. They are on the Mayflower and are now coming to America, but there are several weeks maybe even months behind when they were hoping to get here. And so now, when they’re going to arrive, it’s going to be really late. Again, they have to sail to Virginia.

 

Mayflower Compact

Problem is, as they get closer, there are some strong prevailing winds, so they get to Cape Cod in November, and before they even get off the ship, they realize there’s a lot of different views because it wasn’t just Pilgrims on the ship. And they said, there’s a lot of different views, and because they’re landing at a place that’s not established, they were supposed to land in Virginia where there’s already an established colony. Now we’re coming to a place where there’s not an established colony, which means there’s not established law.

So how do we determine what’s right and wrong? Who’s going to be in charge? They realized we’re going to have to form a civil body politic, form our own  government before we get off or it’s going to be chaos.

So this is when they write the Mayflower Compact, and there’s 41 of them, of the men who actually signed this document.

 

John Carver Elected As Governor

David:

And then on top of that, they had an election. They chose their own governor. So it’s not by birth you have this hereditary King Henry VIII.

Tim:

Or appointed by a king

David:

That’s right.

Tim:

The king saying that’s their leader.

David:

Unanimous, They actually chose John Carver to be their first governor. But this is the first civil document ever written in North America was on that ship, and then they elect their leaders. I mean what a difference that is.

 

Plymouth Rock

Tim:

Well then, they have to send out explorers to figure out where can we have a community because they tried to sail south but the winds were blowing north, and so they couldn’t sail south. They said we’re going to have to stay somewhere up here and they remembered John Smith actually discovered some of these places for the north, his New England area and so they sail further north. And this is where they land. The end of December of 1620, they get here. There’s already snow on the ground. Winter is already here

David:

Their boat was right out there. They got out of the boat in the shallow cold. They waded ashore, and they came ashore over here at what’s called Plymouth Rock. Now Plymouth Rock was famous. It was known as this the where the forefathers landed. From the 1860″€™s they built this area over to protect Plymouth Rock, and in 1880 they moved the rock back here, and they carved 1620 on it. The land in time of the Pilgrims. So that’s what you see, that’s Plymouth Rock that’s how it came to be. But this is where the Pilgrims came ashore back in 1620.

 

Front Sight Firearms Training Institute

Rick:

Hey friends, Rick Green here, from WallBuilders Live. What do Dennis Prager, Larry Elder, Ben Shapiro, Rick Greene, Tim Barton, David Barton, have in common other than the fact that they’re conservative commentators that defend the Constitution?

They’re raving about Front Sight Firearms Training Institute. Go to my website right now at RickGreen.com. You can watch the video of Dennis Prager training at Front Sight, or Larry Elder, or Tim Barton and myself out there. It’s an opportunity for you to learn how to defend yourself and your family. It is a fantastic place to train. They train 30 to 40,000 people a year, and they’re just wonderful to work with. You can go with us. We’re headed back out.

We’re going to have a great time out there, and if you’re a supporter of WallBuilders, we’re going to treat you. If you’re a donor of WallBuilders, you”€™ll be able to go to this Front Sight class for free. It normally costs a thousand dollars, go to FrontSight.com right now. You’ll see that it’s a thousand dollars to attend their two-day class. You are going to be able to go for free if you’re a supporter of WallBuilders Live.

So, check out that information at RickGreen.com and join us. We are going once a month for the next three months. You can pick one of those classes. All of our previous classes have filled up. Make sure that you get online today and get signed up. Whether you’ve never shot before, or you’ve shot your whole life, you will enjoy this class. You”€™ll enjoy the fellowship. We’ll be training on the range during the day and studying the Constitution at night. What a great combination. Check it out today at RickGreen.com

 

William Bradford

Tim:

So right by Plymouth Rock, there’s a statue of William Bradford who is the most famous governor of the Pilgrims. Bradford was a guy who really did a lot to help establish the Pilgrims and even a lot that first winter that was such brutal condition when they landed.

David:

And we know a lot about those brutal conditions because he’s the historian for the Pilgrims. He wrote it all down. He’s one of the guys who actually explored this harbor when they were looking for a place to live. So he came here, he helped bring the ship back. They get off at Plymouth Rock. When they get here, it is really, really tough. It is a Massachusetts, late December winter. There’s snow everywhere, they don’t have any place to live. They get off, and they’re looking, and they actually find some Indian Wigwams and places where people have lived but it’s all abandoned, there’s no one there.

So, they’re looking for places to build homes. Every day they go out exploring, and then they come back, and at night they have to get back on the ship which is sitting in the water with no heat, I mean, it is a rough, rough time.

Governor Bradford reports that at one time out of 102 of them there were only seven that were not sick. And those seven are trying to take care of everyone else, trying to build homes. It is so rough that by the time they get through that first winter, half of the Pilgrims died, they just weren’t prepared to live there. They didn’t know what to do in this land.

 

Somma Said and Squanto

Tim:

Probably many more of them would have died maybe all of them except there was an instrument of Providence that was sent to them. At least is the way Bradford kind of describes it and that was Somma Said. There was an Indian they met and actually spoke some English, but Somma Said didn’t speak very much English, I’ve got someone that can get to you, and he speaks a little more, and this is where Squanto enters the scene.

And Squanto”€™s backstory is actually kind of interesting. So John Smith is the guy who would come to America who had explored. When John Smith was here, there were other captains, other crews that had come.  One of them was Thomas Hunt, and he was part of John Smith’s crew at least part of it, they traveled together. So, John Smith, he leaves on a ship, Thomas Hunt stays behind. And Thomas Hunt actually went and captured 27 Indians. He was taking them back to Europe. So Thomas Hunt brings those Indians and actually start selling them into slavery. There’s a group of monks that saw what he was doing, and they went, and they bought all the Indians, and he hadn’t yet sold into slavery. They brought them back to their mission. They taught them English. They’re promoting Christian values through them. This is where Squanto learns English. Well in 1619, John Smith brings Squanto back to America. And so, Squanto has been over in England; he’s learned English, has learned these Christian values and principles. So Squanto actually teaches them how to live in this new world; how to survive,  how to hunt, how to fish, how to plant. So he is really the one that helps them be able to make it.

 

David:

And it”€™s key because while he was gone, his entire tribe was wiped out by a plague. And that’s what the Pilgrims had found when they got here was all these uninhabited places. So Squanto gets back to his people, and oh my gosh his people are gone. But here’s a bunch of guys that don’t know how to live in the land and they’re in the same area. And he takes it as his mission to show them how to survive in this land. As a matter of fact, he showed them how to fish. In the entire preceding several months, they only caught one fish, and then he takes them out and shows them how to fish. And so suddenly they start having food like they’ve never had because they went through that first winter starving essentially.

 

The First Thanksgiving

Tim:

And this is where at the end of that year, the first Thanksgiving happens and you have Chief Massasoit, and he actually brings in 90 Indian braves; they’ve hunted, they’ve gathered, so they’re providing a lot for this party. They had three days of festivities, of activities. But part of what they did was thank God for the relationship that God had given them with Somma Said, with Squanto even chief Massasoit in these Indians and they made a treaty with them. And that was actually the longest lasting treaty between any Anglos and any Indians; I mean really impressive stuff. They have this first Thanksgiving which is even where today we have our tradition where they’re thanking God for what God had done. And so things were going very well until, the spring of 1623. And at this point, they had more people that are coming in. More people are joining their community, they are now growing, they’re expanding, and as they’re planting their crops, the problem is they don’t get rain. And as everybody who’s ever had a garden or somebody who’s ever done any kind of farming or paid attention in any kind of earth science knows, if you don’t have rain your crops aren’t going to grow, and they recognized with no crops we’re not going to survive.

 

Miracle of Rain

David:

And so what happened at that point was they set aside a day for fasting. They said if we don’t get rain if we don’t get God to send rain we’re going to be in real trouble, and they started praying, and the clouds gathered, and a gentle rain started falling on the crops, and an Indian came to them said, we just saw it. We saw you pray and fast; we saw your God answer. We don’t get that kind of rain this time of year; we don’t get gentle rains. If we get rain, it’s a destructive kind of storm the stuff that goes with hail and beats the crops down. I want to know your God. And literally, God answering their prayer caused that Indian to want to become a Christian as a result.

 

Rick:

Well, friends, we are out of time for today. We’re going to pick it up tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day and I sure hope you’re going to have a blessed Thanksgiving this year. Hope you get to have some great time with your friends and family and others and that you actually talk about and literally list out what you are thankful for. And certainly on our list, is being thankful for freedom, thankful that we live in a country where we can worship the Lord as we choose, that we can experience that freedom of family and even being able to assemble together. There are so many things that we have to be thankful for. So make sure that you’re doing that not just tomorrow for Thanksgiving but throughout this weekend and sharing that with your friends and family.

We will pick up where we left off today. So this is only the first third of this special program with David and Tim Barton. So make sure you tune in tomorrow. Thanks for listening to WallBuilders Live.