... 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

Wow

... kept slavery alive in America.

Slavery was on its way out.

It was going down, just not economically feasible.

And then when it takes off, now you're having a moral argument.

It's no longer an economic argument on whether it's gonna survive.

Now it's, oh, I can, more slaves I have, the more money I can make 'cause each one can do what 60 did.

Mm-hmm.

That's-

And it's also where, and now this is like history nerd talk, but it's nuanced, if you look at England, England does not have a written constitution to this day.

They say, well, there's laws that they have, and the laws are influenced by the monarchy and by Parliament and by the Magna Carta and by common law.

And so if you combine all those together, it kinda makes constitution.But why it is different than the American Constitution and what makes our Constitution incredibly unique is, one of the easy examples, we have a Bill of Rights.

And our Bill of Rights, it is a, a listing negatively of rights of what the federal government is never supposed to infringe upon.

So the federal government can never tell us we don't have the freedom of religion or speech or press or assembly or petition, or that we don't have the right of self-defense and self-preservation, that we can't have guns, et cetera.

The government can never tell us those things, and that's just the, the beginning of the list as we go down.

Mm.

That's-

And it's also where, and now this is like history nerd talk, but it's nuanced, if you look at England, England does not have a written constitution to this day.

They say, well, there's laws that they have, and the laws are influenced by the monarchy and by Parliament and by the Magna Carta and by common law.

And so if you combine all those together, it kinda makes constitution.

But why it is different than the American Constitution and what makes our Constitution incredibly unique is, one easy example is we have a Bill of Rights.

And our Bill of Rights, it is a, a listing negatively of rights of what the federal government is never supposed to infringe upon.

So the federal government can never tell us we don't have the freedom of religion or speech or press or assembly or petition, or that we don't have the right of self-defense and self-preservation, and we can't have guns, et cetera.

Mm.

But that's when they had that watch night service with Jefferson.

Yeah, the, what happened with the Constitution is, again, South Carolina and Georgia, they haven't tried to ban slavery.

But they all recognized that it's gonna be on its way out, and they said, "Okay, we'll address it.

We'll let Congress address it 20 years from now." And so the Constitution done in '78, and January the 1st, 2008, which is, you know, they did the Constitution in 1787.

And so, again, just like recognizing the anti-slavery nature of the Constitution, the fact that they don't even use that word in there also shows the influence of the abolitionists as they're working to stop it.

And I, I would point too that, you know, people like to look back and beat up on the Founding Fathers for slavery.

So put in context, uh, once, once we're an independent nation, by 1804, every northern state had passed a law that put slavery on, on a road to being ended.

Uh, the South did not do that until after the Civil War, 1865, or at the end of the Civil War, 1865, with the 13th Amendment.

We are a Christian nation by voluntary choice, and that's what makes us so different from many others in the world.

A- and this is something, too, going back to where we started earlier this week with Jamestown and Plymouth, uh, then going through George Whitefield, the, the, the other noted leaders of the First Great Awakening to the Founding Fathers.

What is historically not really even challengeable is the Bible was the most influential document in our founding from the very first colonies up to the Founding Fathers, which is kinda where we are now.

But one of the things we didn't get into a lot, but we teased it a little bit with, like, uh, George Whitefield, the most influential document was the Bible, but the most influential voices were the pastors.

And, and, and today, most Americans have not learned that, but this is something historians documented for generations and maybe even centuries.

We have lots of different examples.

Th- th- this is just one called They Preached Liberty.

Yeah.

He was never anti-religious.

Yeah.

And, and these are some of the, the works from some of the other Founding Fathers.

This is, uh, this has gotta be one of my favorites.

So this is the Psalms of David.

This is done by a signer of the Declaration, Francis Hopkinson.

Francis Hopkinson is the guy who designed the, uh, the Great Seal of the United States.

Unquestionably.

Man, all of that stuff.

So, a- a- and we actually have lots of sermons from George Whitefield, and I do wanna highlight some of those as we go.

Um, but one of the things, Brother Andrew, to your point, is it, it's interesting, if you go through all of these sermons, uh, a- and, and literally, we have dozens of sermons from the First...

Maybe, maybe hundreds, uh, of sermons from the First Great Awakening from noted names of the First Great Awakening.

And in almost none of the most famous sermons, 'cause for a sermon to be printed and then to be bound, that took a lot of effort and money, and you didn't do this unless there was a lot of demand.

This was a very popular sermon.

And so when you look back, what are the most popular sermons? And again, for one to be printed, a lot of time, money, and effort involved, so these are the ones that we know were the most popular 'cause of these printings.

That's discipleship, and that's what we used to do.

That's 1612, so that's the pocket size.

Yeah, so, so, so, a, a little more context in this.

So, e- even background, where kings were doing something different, and, and the Anglican Church, the Anglican Church is birthed by King Henry VIII.

And he's the one that really wants a son, and his wife keeps giving him a daughter, and he wants a divorce.

"I want a woman, I want a wife who will give me a son." And that's not how biology works at all.

Clearly, he did not understand that.

But at that time, there was a Catholic Church.

Yeah

Mm

... of the United States." So, so we, the people, we're the ones in charge.

Why does it matter? Because at this point-Th- this is not about what some monarch does that we have no control over.

No, actually, who is the king of America? It's us.

You and I are.

Right.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

That's terrible.

And it...

But, but, but this is still taught in universities to this day- That's right ... as an example for students to learn from.

And, and what academics primarily do is they say, "Well, just take our word for it." Right? "We have a PhD.

We're really smart." And we go the exact opposite direction of, well, the veracity of, of the claim should not rest on who said it, but ultimately what is the source behind what they're saying.

And so if you go back to the original documents, it says the exact opposite of what's there.

In fact, one of the things, let's start with big picture, why 250 is so special- Mm-hmm ... and then let's back up to the foundation.

So you got two very, very evangelical groups there.

Yes.

"Pray to the Lord for it, for when it goes well with the land, it goes well with you." And one of the things I think that, a- and, and some of our, our modern ChristianUh, communities.

We, we do a lot of things that teach a lot of the love of Jesus or forgiveness or faith and things that are absolutely important, but we don't always teach the depth of what the Bible says.

Mm-hmm.

And there's some really good guidance when God's speaking through Jeremiah and telling people that are being taken away as slaves, they're going to a- they don't even wanna be there.

Right.

They're being carried away captive, and he says, "Look, I, I know this is not where you wanna be, but as long as you are there, you, you need to seek to work the place where you are living.

Right