What do they say about that?

Yeah, so because the founding fathers were individuals, you know, 56 signers of the Declaration, there was lots of emotions.

You have people like John Adams who tended to be very emotional at times.

But what they recognized, they had a greater sense of duty than I think what we have taught in modern academia or rising generations today.

They believe that you have a responsibility before God to do the things that God has called you to do.

There's a really great letter from John Jay who was— The original Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1785, he wrote a friend, and they were talking about the cause of liberty and the price that they had paid, but the things they were going to have to do in the future.

And one of the things he said is we have to be careful that we just – We focus on doing our duty and leave the results in the hands of him who made it our duty, being neither elated by success, no matter how great, nor discouraged by defeat, no matter how mortifying it may be.

Finish that for me.

What do they say about that?

Yeah, so because the founding fathers were individuals, you know, 56 signers of the Declaration, there was lots of emotions.

You have people like John Adams who tended to be very emotional at times.

But what they recognized, they had a greater sense of duty than I think what we have taught in modern academia or rising generations today.

They believe that you have a responsibility before God to to do the things that God has called you to do.

There's a really great letter from John Jay, who was the original Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court in 1785.

He wrote a friend and they were talking about the cause of liberty and the price that they had paid, things they were going to have to do in the future.

Finish that for me.

So this means that they haven't even decided whether or not you did anything wrong.

Is that correct? That is correct.

And not only didn't they decide that, but until the entire case is final, I don't have a right to appeal many things.

And because there's been a four-year lag of the case...

There's so many things that are abnormal that they're doing, which is selling without a jury trial or anything else, that the rules that they're trying to say apply here You have no jurisdiction.

You have no right to be here because all matters have not yet been decided.

So basically, there'll be pluses, there'll be minuses.

I'll call him Weiner.

but you're the historian,

so you tell me.

Well, I think some of the things that we all saw from Charlie the last couple of years was how much he reemphasized the significance of faith in what he did.

For a long time on college campuses, and still, I mean, he was navigating the conversations as they came, but he started being much more vocal about pointing people to God, to Jesus, to the Bible, go to church.

Biblical ideas that as he was discipling them, and the reason I say that significantly is because as we look at at where we are now i think historically i can make a pretty pretty well-founded claim that not only are we in the midst of a revival but i think we very well could be in the midst of another great awakening and there's lots of reasons for that um and Actually, Rob and I both mentioned George Whitefield.

And Whitefield's life was actually more defined by opposition than by support.

But what's interesting, a lot of people think of the Great Awakening as almost like visionary unifying times.

What are you good at? How can you contribute? Ask him to analyze your heart and your mind and your intentions, and I think in that, that's where I have, at least in my own personal life, seen fruit.

I mean, honestly, who wants

lawyers that aren't doing anything And so I had to capitulate, and they got off the case.

They asked for the extension, and then they filed to have a public defender.

I think it's CJA or whatever the term is.

But basically, the court appointed a lawyer.

And, you know, amazingly, it's a Jackson-Walkerman.

We're interested to see where it goes.

Are you allowed to talk

Hey, we got people working on the Hill, so this is, like, the right crowd

I mean, you're used to looking stuff up, right? So you can go to the records of Congress from the beginning.

September 6th, 1774 is, like, the first day in Congress.

And read how did that day start.

The opening motion, and you actually, by the way, can, can go look up, uh, John Adams wrote a letter to Abigail September 16th, 1774, where he's telling the story.

He says, "Abigail, I've been so busy I haven't had time to write you until today, but I gotta tell you.

When we got together," he says, "the opening motion was made by Thomas Cushing of Massachusetts that we would open with prayer." He said, "Initially it was met with resistance from Mr.

Mm.

It's credible.

Right.

And this is this is a contrast of that.

It's very easy to show the contrast that this is not like a Bill Clinton and a George Bush.

that people could look at and be like, you know what? I don't like his tax policies.

There was minor things because both of them had kind of the same underpinning moral current, so to speak.

Not that necessarily Bill Clinton had some different morals and perspective, but the reality was when it came to governing the nation, they were not like diametrically opposed the opposite ends of the spectrum, a pendulum swing where we are looking at now is, it is the exact opposite side where you have some people that believe that America shouldn't have borders and anybody can come in and the government's going to fund everybody and you shouldn't have private property.

Visit HowToStartHomeschooling.org and start your journey today.

That's cool.

Oh, it was super fun.

We had a couple buses, and we went by, uh, Paul Revere's house.

And, uh, this...

So the Freedom Trail is super fun.

There's lots of history.

We could tell a lot of stories.

[laughs]

Drunkenness in

the military.

No swearing.

Right, no swearing.

You've just removed the vocabulary for half of the words of the military, right? It's crazy.

But literally, he says, no profanity, no cursing, and no drunkenness.

And then he says, it's also required and expected of every officer and soldier that when you are not on active duty, that you will attend divine service because we need to seek the favorable blessings of heaven for our success.

they

... and how do Christians respond to that pushback?

[clears throat] Yeah, so the, the, the way we determine religion or define religion is very, very, very significant because one of the things that's happened is over time words have lost their meaning or have changed their meaning from what they were.

If you go back when the Founding Fathers write the First Amendment, the first Congress writes, uh, the, the amendments that are then sent to the states to be ratified, that the 10 that are ratified are known as the Bill of Rights.

So that comes from the first Congress, from the Founding Fathers who were part of that first Congress.

In that Bill of Rights, the First Amendment says that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.

That's where people, people are like, "Well, okay, so we can't say America's Christian 'cause that's a religion." But the way we define religion now is Christian, and Hindu, and Buddhist, and Muslim.

Those are religions.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Zacchaeus climbed the tree to see Jesus working with people.

That's the working of God in human affairs.

That's what providence was, and the irony today that people are like, "Well, we know they were deist because they use the word providence," George Washington, when he wrote about the Revolution, he used the word providence 250 times in his letters talking about the Revolution, but what he said was, "It's so clear that the hand of providence has been upon us.

It's so conspicuous.

You must be worse than a non-believer to deny..." Like, this is one example of his letter.

He's so clear God's providence was God's hand showing up on their behalf.

Mm.

But what about this idea that Mike Johnson, Speaker Mike Johnson was communicating? Do you agree with him? And can you unpack that idea further that America is unique in that regard?

Absolutely, we were the first one founded on a set of ideals.

And the philosophy of this nation is unlike virtually anywhere else in the world.

It was the notion that our rights don't come from a king or from a political body, from the aristocracy, it comes from God.

And the primary role of government is to secure those God-given rights, which also now is great because we've given context to what government exists for.

Government doesn't exist to give us rights.

It exists to secure the rights God gave us, which actually is what you see from the biblical model as well.

It meant you can only count three-fifths of your slaves for a portion made in Congress, and there's a

What do people say about Christopher Columbus? What's true about it and what isn't?

Yeah, I mean, really, Frank, starting in the 1980s, when Howard Zinn did his book, The History of the American People, Howard Zinn was an academic who took a very Marxist approach and said, basically, everything you think you know about America is wrong because all of the people that we've celebrated for hundreds hundreds and hundreds of years actually weren't good.

And Howard Zinn started telling these stories.

And so, for example, with Columbus, that Columbus actually wasn't a brilliant navigator, that he was actually a racist monster, that he came and enslaved and murdered and did all these awful things to natives.

And now Howard Zinn goes on to talk about lots of other founding fathers, but almost everything we talked about in the first segment where you just kind of alluded to all of the bad things about America.

Howard Zinn's the one that really popularized those in the modern culture.

And unfortunately, a lot of Christians have believed a lot of these lies.

story.

Old Testament, yeah.

And so the question was, what did God do before there were kings? Well, Exodus 18, 21, choose from among you people to represent you.

Leaders of tens, fifties, hundreds, thousands.

Well, it repeats it in Deuteronomy 1, repeats it in Deuteronomy 16.

And so you go to the Constitution, and there are so many components, including the separation of powers, where George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton all wrote, the reason we have to have a separation of powers is because the heart of man is wicked and deceitful.

It can't be trusted, so we can't trust it.

centralized and by the way that's a quote from jeremiah 79 that the heart of man is wicked and deceitful it can't be trusted and and they actually didn't put the verse reference by it there's a great letter from benjamin franklin over when he was over in europe he wrote back to a pastor in america he said when i'm over here he said if i quote the bible and if i don't tell them what i'm quoting this is as foreign to them as if i'm speaking a different language he says in america I can quote the Bible and I never need a reference that I'm quoting it because everybody in America knows the Bible.

So explain that.

Mm-hmm.

Right? You have all the Stamp Act, tax things that are happening.

But at Princeton, i- i- in his tenure, he trained more Founding Fathers than any other single individual or than any other single university did.

So he literally is more involved in the Founding Fathers' lives, discipleship, mentorship.

So, so many of them take on the lessons that he taught them.

One of the things, like many Founding Fathers did in advocating for the Bible, um, this was a Bible that he did for the state of New Jersey.

It was considered a family Bible 'cause it was large enough.

Yeah, yeah.

Do the pro-life, pro-America thing, and go get seven weeks coffee.

So that's such a good question, Seth.

And for us at WallBuilders, we spend most of our time, as you know, setting original documents.

We don't care nearly as much what professor makes what claim, right? We're like, no, no, what did George Washington actually write? Like, what did he actually do and say? Not what does somebody feel about him or think about him? And one of the things you can go back to John Adams, great quote from early revolution thought, he said, Facts are stubborn things.

Now, this is also what he was, the attorney defending the British after the Boston Massacre, which he was an incredible patriot.

Now, after the Boston Massacre, there was, which he actually makes a really good argument that actually was a lot more self-defense than most patriots felt like in the moment, because they were already feeling the tension with the British.

The King thought, how do we resolve this tension? Let me send more troops.

What's something that you have been helping teach or highlight for Christians and pastors in this 250th year? that we've forgotten, that we need to remember, that you think is a powerful piece of our history that we need to reclaim if we're going to be faithful to the legacy we've been given.

Why? Why is this the narrative?

So I think one of the things that historically we can track, at least to some extent, we can track it very well to this point.

Before that, I mean, obviously, we believe there's a devil and we believe there's demonic things.

And anytime God is on the move, there's always going to be a counterattempt by the devil to stop things.

That's obviously foundationally true.

But if you go back when...

When Karl Marx is doing his thing over in Europe, there's actually several things that happen with Karl Marx where he lives in several different cities and his influence grows, again, very demonic in a lot of ways.

What is happening? Who makes the school books? Where does that come from? Who determines what's getting put in there? Is there even warfare background to how that's being established that most people wouldn't know about?

Wow, that-

...

this is gonna be amazing when millions of Americans are praying." Well, there's only three million colonists at the time, but he's saying, "No, no, everybody is going to pray in this." And, and, and, and just for the fun sake of this, um, will you skip ahead, uh, to the one that shows John Adams by himself right there at his desk? Okay, so John Adams, after this day of prayer and fasting- It, it's a couple months later, he writes Abigail, and he says, "Abigail, it is amazing the things that are happening right now." And, and he goes through this list in this letter.

Uh, and then the letter's October 26, 1777.

Um, so this is...

Now months have gone by, but he says, "Abigail." He says, "First of all, like, Colonel Smith and his men, the British attack, they repelled them," and he goes through, like, all these things that shouldn't have happened when you fight the most powerful military in the world, and they did.

But the reason I love this letter is the last thing he identifies.

Yeah.

What are we missing when it comes to our founding?

Yeah, I mean, Ryan, I think you're right.

There's a lot of people that either had a secular education or a lot of people paid attention.

And they might have gotten A's in their history classes and still don't know so much of the story.

And it's because a lot of what's been in the textbooks and curriculum has not covered the story.

As an easy example, you mentioned today's June 28th.

Well, you actually can look up, Benjamin Franklin gave his most arguably famous speech he ever gave on June 28th, 1787 during the Constitutional Convention.

Why is that so ridiculous? And you had mentioned Benjamin Franklin, but why is that so ridiculous? Yeah.

I appreciate you so much.

A- and if I can add a thought along those lines, too.

So the Department of Education, this first came out under President Obama, it's been reaffirmed even under President Trump, is that Department of Education identifies from public school, there's about 19% of high schoolers that graduate every year that are functionally illiterate, cannot even read their own diploma.

And, and part of why, again, this matters is what education is doing, it's not generally equipping students to be a success in society.

It's a indoctrination program so that they will be the faithful followers of whatever the propaganda is that is being promoted out there.

And so one of the solutions that we highly recommend is that parents and grandparents, they need to think very seriously about what they are doing with their kids or their grandkids' education.

How can I help? How can I invest? And you might need to look for some alternative forms of education.

Yeah

And I have to say, like, I want every American to be as familiar with the revolution before the revolution, just because it's so exciting and there's so many fun figures involved, most of them radical Christians.

Yes.

So to that point, you know, the film that's out, A Great Awakening, introduces you to one of those major characters, George Whitefield, because founding fathers like John Adams, and also, by the way, like Jefferson and Madison and many others, Franklin, certainly, said had it not been for Whitfield, that there never could have been a revolution.

It was his work and leadership.

And obviously, as you're talking about these outspoken Christians, one of the cool things too, John Adams writes, not just about James Otis, and although James Otis is the one who really birthed the Sons of Liberty, it was kind of his thought child that then guys like Sam Adams bring to fruition.

But John Adams talking about from the writs of assistance all the way up to the Stamp Act, he said the reason we were able to overcome those, this isn't John Adams writing, John Adams says, the reason we overcame those, he says, our pulpits thundered, meaning our pastors have been speaking boldly about this and against this.

And let me go further forward because John Adams is the guy who nominates George Washington to be the commander in chief of the Continental Army.

I completely

Yeah.

And, and instead of somebody going, "Show me the new scientific data that would validate you significantly changing this information," instead because we had produced an education system in America that teaches students to memorize, repeat, and then move on, not even to retain information, 'cause this is also a big deal for people listening today, especially if they are 40 or younger, maybe even 50 or younger.

If you think back to what did you learn in high school? If you went to college, what did you learn in college? Most of us couldn't tell you what we learned in high school and college because the way education was structured was that we would memorize, repeat, and move on.

Now, why did that happen? Part of it happens because of the Second Industrial Revolution at the turn of the century back in the early 1900s.

When you have, uh, Henry Ford does Model T, they have the assembly line.

Up to that point, education had been teaching people how to be critical thinkers and problem solvers.

And so then if we were all thrown on an assembly line, and they're like, "Hey, do it this way," we might look and be like, "I think it's actually smarter and faster to do it this way," and it frustrated some of the managers.

Yeah

That's Rutherford B. Hayes, 1876

...

the Democrats, uh, the, the House is split into kind of fragmented groups.

Uh, and the Democrats make a deal and they say, "Okay, Republicans, we will give you the presidency if you agree to remove US troops from our southern states." And they very much thoughtfully agreed to this and said, "That's fine, we just want the presidency." So they remove southern troops.

When southern troops are removed, that's when all these laws go really into effect, because now there's nobody there to enforce the 14th and 15th Amendment, or any of the Reconstruction laws that were passed.

And by the way, when at this point it, it was, it was so shortsighted what the Republicans did in Congress, because once you now have allowed these southern states to enact these Jim Crow laws, they're stopping Black people from voting, and now that they're stopping Black people from voting, these southern states now become very strong Democrat, which means Democrats now have a strong control of Congress and they've regained the presidency.

And every single one of the civil rights laws passed in Reconstruction were removed, revoked, or overturned by Democrats as soon as they had power again.

That's right