This transcript was taken from the Stand in the Gap Today program originally aired on Feb. 24, 2020. To listen to the program, please click HERE.
Isaac Crockett: Hello and welcome to the program. I’m Isaac Crockett, joined by Dr. Gary Dull. Gary is one of our regular three Musketeers on this program and he is also the one that helps us run the Pennsylvania Pastors Network. Along with other things that he does, he’s the pastor of the Faith Baptist church in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and the president of International Missions Group and radio. And I don’t know how he finds time to help us with this, too. So Gary, thanks for being with us today, especially since Sam and Dave, neither one of them are able to be with us because of different ministry opportunities going on as well as just some health issues going on, trying to get over that. So we’re glad to have Gary with us.
Isaac Crockett: And then we have an exciting guest who’s not been on this program for at least a long time. Some of you have maybe seen his dad on our television program with us before and many of you will recognize his voice from some of the break times. We hear his voice. But that’s Tim Barton, president of WallBuilders. I know many of you that listen to us, probably listen to their radio program or have been blessed by different things going on in their ministry. We talk a lot about some of the books that they put out and some of the opportunities. So we’re excited to have Tim with us today. Tim, thanks for making time to be in our program with us.
Tim Barton: Absolutely. Pleasure to be with you guys today.
Isaac Crockett: Now, Tim, I want to talk a lot about some current things going on by looking at the context of our American history. That’s one of the neat things about going to wallbuilders.com or being any of the WallBuilders events, is to hear how these things connect and to see context of it all. We want to talk about presidents and some of the biblical precedents that have been set in our country because of godly men and sometimes even men who we don’t think of them as necessarily a godly example, but some of the things they did, that they had a biblical worldview.
Isaac Crockett: But before we get into all of that, for some of the listeners who maybe they’re new to our program or maybe just new to hearing about your ministry, the name WallBuilders might kind of leave some people scratching their heads. What are you building walls for? This has been around for a number of decades, so it’s not something to do with immigration or building a wall against Mexico or something. Could you maybe just tell us where you all get that name WallBuilders from, as well as maybe give us kind of the goals and what your ministry is all about?
Tim Barton: Absolutely. Thanks for asking that question because it is a little confusing in modern culture when there’s a president who’s kind of championing the idea of build that wall. Our organizations from Texas. So if you have a name like WallBuilders and you’re in Texas, people automatically have an association with what you do. But we started our organization back in 1988 and my dad felt a call to try to do something to help the nation. Really, it was spurred from the Bible Book of Nehemiah where, if you remember, Nehemiah was part of the Israelite captivity when Israel falls, Babylon, all that kind of stuff happens. Nehemiah is the cupbearer to the king and his heart is so grieved because he sees that the nation has really crumbled. It’s not what it used to be.
Tim Barton: Nehemiah has this burden, “I want to go back and rebuild Jerusalem. I want to go back and help rebuild strength in my nation.” In Nehemiah 2:17 he makes the call, “Come, let us rebuild the walls that we may no longer be a reproach to the people.” The idea was let’s build up Jerusalem. Let’s build up our nation again and make it strong. Back in the ’80s, my dad was looking at America and was seeing so many of the problems with the crisis of faith and morality in the nation and our nation getting away from a constitutional founding and perspective on so many regards. So when our organization was birthed, what we say is we try to present America’s forgotten history and heroes, emphasizing the religious, moral, and constitutional heritage of the nation.
Tim Barton: So what we primarily focus on is trying to help rebuild America, which is where the idea of WallBuilders comes from, that that Nehemiah called, “Let’s go rebuild the nation.” For Nehemiah, he called everybody that would, “Hey, come back. Live inside the city and let’s do this thing together.” It really was one of the first grassroots campaigns that you see in this regard when it comes to the Bible. This is kind of our heart and call is we’re calling on all Americans. Really, the challenge would be for a lot of Christians, hey, let’s get engaged in our communities and let’s help restore the prominent role that faith, that Christianity, the Bible used to have.
Tim Barton: Let’s do our job as Christian, going and making disciples. Let’s get engaged in culture. We know when Christians get involved in the process and we help promote biblical truth in the process that, once again, we can rebuild America to what we would want it to be. That’s really kind of what WallBuilders is about.
Gary Dull: Well, and it’s a tremendous ministry, Tim. Of course, we’ve known your dad for a long time. I’m a part of your dad’s bringing up again the black robe regiment. I’ve been involved with that for a number of years. So it’s a delight to have you with us today. We’re going to be talking about presidents and here in the month of February we have what is referred to as President’s Day. So my question is why do we have President’s Day as opposed to Monarch’s Day or King’s Day or something along that line?
Tim Barton: Sure. Well, and actually, so president’s day is really George Washington’s birthday, February 22nd. He was born back in 1732. But when he died in 1800, they began celebrating. Every February 22nd they would celebrate George Washington’s birthday. This was the way it was for decades. I think it was Rutherford B. Hayes that signed a law that made George Washington’s birthday a federal holiday. That was the way it was up until the late 1960s. I think in 1971 is when they started operating and saying that George Washington’s birthday was now going to be a national holiday that actually banks were even to recognize.
Tim Barton: Instead of just celebrating George Washington, let’s honor all our presidents was idea. So really it’s George Washington’s birthday that we celebrate and certainly as the first president of our nation, and really one of the greatest American heroes that we can see in all of our history. President’s day was chosen or his birthday was chosen to honor George Washington and then it was extended to all presidents. Certainly George Washington was so unique in helping set the precedent because at the end of the Revolution, Congress was really viewed as very inept by the people.
Tim Barton: Washington’s friends and other military leaders began championing Washington saying, “Hey, why don’t you just take over? You could be like the King of America because Congress is so bad. We don’t want to have them be in charge because they’re really dumb and they don’t do a good job.” Washington said, “No, we just fought a war to get away from monarchs, get away from kings. We want to put the power back in the hands of the people.” He recognized that people choose Congress. So even if Congress doesn’t do the job we want, they’re still accountable to the people. They can be replaced by the people. Washington believed that people should be in charge of this nation.
Tim Barton: So he resigned his commission. He told all his friends, “Nope, I’m not going to be the king of America.” He went back home. But once we get a constitution and we get to choose a leader, Washington was chosen unanimously. He’s the only president that’s ever been chosen unanimously. So he became the first president. There wasn’t even a term limit, so he served for two years. But then he stepped down because he said if someone keeps going, it would be like they’re king. Nobody should really serve more than two years or people will get the wrong idea of leadership. Washington was just incredible, set so many precedents for us. So really President’s Day is about honoring George Washington, but then it was extended to all presidents, appreciating the service they give to our country.
Isaac Crockett: What a great answer to that and what a godly example and precedent of the first president to say, “Hey, I’m going to limit myself. I’m going to limit the office,” but at the same time to bring prestige to the power and the leadership of the president of the United States. We want to talk about that and look at biblical precedents set by people with a biblical worldview that held that office.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Isaac Crockett: Welcome back to the program. This is Isaac Crockett and I’m joined by Pastor Gary Dull. Sam is not able to be with us today. Sam and Dave both are not able to be on for different ministry reasons and Sam is actually recovering a little bit from sickness. But we have a good friend, Tim Barton, the president of WallBuilders with us today. Those of you who listen to us regularly will recognize his voice and the ministry probably as well. If you’re not familiar with WallBuilders, you can go to wallbuilders.com and when you get to wallbuilders.com, Tim, could you maybe tell our listeners some of the things they can find? I think especially under the initiatives tab, there are all sorts of opportunities for different folks that have different leadership roles in family or church or just young people to get some special training. Maybe you could mention some of that to our listeners right now.
Tim Barton: Absolutely. We do a lot of things working with college and high school students, so there are things. We have one that’s a leadership training program. We have the Patriot Academy. Both of those, we try to find ways to pour out to young people. The leadership training program is a two week-program we host in Dallas. For two weeks we just take kids back through original sources. We actually start off, I’m doing kind of an apologetics of faith. There’s an idea in culture that truth is subjective. It’s relative. It’s what you feel. It’s what you want. It’s what you think. We say, “No. Truth does exist and ultimately stands on the word of God.” But then knowing that truth exists, we say truth also exists in history. You can look back. We don’t have to wonder what founding fathers thought or believed, et cetera.
Tim Barton: We can say, “No, here’s their actual writings.” So we spend a lot of time doing a defense of the Constitution, of the Declaration, of a lot of the founding fathers, where there’s so many attacks against them that are ungrounded. But people believe a lot of things that aren’t true because they don’t actually know what is true. When you don’t know what’s true, it’s easy to believe a lie because you don’t realize it’s a lie. So we spend a lot of time going through a defense of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the free market system, so many things we do a deep dive into, but we do it with original writings, original sources. The idea is that way when the students go to college and the professor says something crazy, they can say, “Actually no. I read in George Washington’s own writings this.” So it’s really to give them a defense for a lot of the foundation we have in the nation.
Tim Barton: Patriot Academy’s similar in giving a defense, but it’s very much with a political edge to it. We do same thing for teachers, letting teachers get their hands on original sources, seeing what education used to look like, what America is all about. We do things for pastors. We do things for state legislators. So there’s a whole lot of tabs or things under that tab for people in different kinds of areas and vocations of life. We want to help invest in them to be able to make a difference in the fields where they are. Certainly in the WallBuilders website there’s a lot of things where people can go and find things that if they want to come get some training and actually get their hands on original sources to be able to see and study those, we try to provide those opportunities.
Isaac Crockett: Thank you for that. I know one of the things that’s kind of a fun thing on there for some of you may be with children or grandchildren that you’d like to get them to do or maybe any of you just to test your own knowledge. There’s a spot on there, and maybe this is just for the month of February, Tim, but testing your knowledge about the US presidents. I took the test. I got most of the ones right on that, but there were a couple of things. There’s one in particular that I had no clue on. It’s kind of a fun thing to do. There’s some other things like that that are interactive. And then, as Tim said, these are opportunities where you can meet with people from WallBuilders and just some really amazing training opportunities for young people and other groups too.
Isaac Crockett: So some neat opportunities there. But talking about the presidents, and you mentioned some about how we ended up with a president instead of a monarch or a king in this last segment. But I was recently at an event that you were speaking for in this area and you had lots and lots and lots of examples of presidents throughout the history of our nation going back to the Bible and pointing the nation to biblical standards and to the truth of God’s word, not just accidentally mentioning something that is a quote from the Bible, but purposely giving the Bible to others. I thought maybe you could share an example like that with our listeners today as we look at the biblical worldview of really part of what made our nation so great.
Tim Barton: Absolutely. One of the things that is certainly true when you start doing some historical research and look at the lives of the leaders of our nation, one of the things that is fairly universally true with the leaders of our nation is they were people who understood the significance of the Bible, appreciated the impact of the Bible, and encouraged Americans to read and study the Bible. Even though certainly we wouldn’t argue that every president was a Bible-believing evangelical Christian, I wouldn’t make that argument. I can show you in their writings though, how so many of them promoted the Bible, defended the Bible.
Tim Barton: I mean even Andrew Jackson who is certainly not going to be somebody you would argue as a religious president, but when referring to the Bible, he said, “That book, sir, is the rock upon which our republic rests.” So Andrew Jackson is even acknowledging, yeah, the foundation of America is the Bible. Andrew Jackson is not someone that you expect to carry water, so to speak, for Christianity or the Bible. That wasn’t really his life. But he’s recognizing the impact the Bible had on the nation. You have people like Abraham Lincoln who said, “In regard for this great book, I have this to say. It is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book.”
Tim Barton: Now, Abraham Lincoln is certainly a name people recognize. Most people don’t know much of his story. His story is very unique when it comes to the faith aspect because Abraham Lincoln grew up in a Christian home, but his parents or his father specifically wasn’t someone we’d would call a very good Christian in the sense of following the Bible. Because he would make the family go to church, but his father was an alcoholic and he was very physically abusive. He would beat Abraham and members of the family. So when Abraham grew old enough and left the house, he decided he’s never doing this Christian thing again. Intentionally, he became an outspoken self-identified atheist. It was really kind of to get back at his parents, his father specifically, for the abuse that he had received.
Tim Barton: One of the things that’s really kind of humorous the way that God can cause negative things and use them for good or use negative things. I don’t think God causes them. But God can cause negative things to work together for our good, for those who love Him, called according to His purpose, what Romans 8:28 says. Abraham Lincoln, as an atheist, wanted to debate the pastor all the time. I mean after every service he wanted to go to the town square and debate the pastor. But in order to debate the pastor, he wanted to be able to show the flaws in the Bible. So Abraham Lincoln began memorizing large passages of scripture to try to prove to the pastor why they were wrong.
Tim Barton: Well, later in Abraham Lincoln’s life, he moves away from atheism. He moves back toward God and now all of the Bible verses that he’s memorized, he now knows. Even as president, Abraham Lincoln was a president who arguably quoted the Bible in his speeches and writings more than any other president. The second inaugural address is a really good example where almost the last half of that second inaugural address, he’s just quoting and explaining Bible verses and Bible themes. You certainly see this in his life. He’s just one of many presidents.
Tim Barton: I mean I can go on this whole segment and really the rest of the show if you want me to. But almost every single president has spoken about the significance of faith or the impact of the Bible in America and many times in their own life.
Gary Dull: Tim, it’s interesting to hear you talk about Abe Lincoln. I have really a twofold question for you. Number one, as it relates to Abe Lincoln, did he actually come to Christ after he went into office. Talked about his atheistic background and so forth and so on. But as far as we know, well, did he come to the Lord Jesus Christ personally as his savior and did that occur once he got into office? I say that because it’s something I was just recently reading. And then secondly, if we’ve got some time, just share with our listeners some of the other highlights of how presidents have respected the Bible down through the years.
Tim Barton: Absolutely. So first Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln, we do know that he definitely had a move toward God. There was a pastor who Abraham Lincoln attended that pastor’s church and that pastor said that he and Abraham Lincoln talked on many occasions. He has many letters about those talks. In those letters, he explains that Lincoln had told him that when he came into the presidency, he wasn’t a Christian and he wasn’t really sure what he believed about Jesus, he said. But after Gettysburg, he told me that he had essentially made a covenant with God and said, “God, if you will help bring an end to this war, I will give my life to you. I’ll dedicate my life to you.” He told the pastor. He said, “From that moment it’s been different.” He’s telling the pastor. He said, “I do believe in Jesus Christ.”
Tim Barton: Now, that is a secondhand account, but there’s a lot of reasons to believe that very well could be true. We have a letter from that pastor. There’s lots of surrounding voices who said the same thing. They witnessed the same account, that Abraham Lincoln was actually asked to preach in his pastor’s church. Abraham Lincoln said, “I’m not really sure I can do that.” The pastor said, “But hey, you know the Bible so well. You’re so good. Would you please?” So Abraham Lincoln said, “Okay, I’ll preach. I’m not sure I’m worthy of the position of preaching.” But he ends up preaching on the 10 commandments and giving a brilliant defense of the 10 commandments and how we need to live our life by the 10 commandments. All public arenas should be governed by the 10 commandments and this incredible defense. Well, there’s several people that give the account of him preaching this sermon.
Tim Barton: The reason that’s significant is it does show that he was in church, that he was making a move toward faith. It does give more credence to what this pastor says that, yeah, Lincoln makes this acknowledgement. You see Lincoln especially later in his presidency, he quotes the Bible more and more and more. So it does seem very evident from his own writings and from those around him that God was doing something in his life. I think there’s good reason to believe he did come back to faith. As far as other presidents, you have people like Ulysses S. Grant who said, “Hold fast to the Bible as the sheet anchor of your liberties. Write its precepts on your heart. Practice them within your lives. To the influence of this book, we are indebted for all the progress made in true civilization. And to this, we must look as our guide in the future. Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.”
Tim Barton: What’s significant about this statement from Ulysses S. Grant is this was put on cards and this was given to schoolchildren from the president telling all schoolchildren the importance of the Bible and reading the Bible, the benefit of the Bible. You have people like Calvin Coolidge, “To the strength of our country is the strength of its religious convictions. The foundations of our society and our government rests so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country.” Meaning if we didn’t believe in the Bible any more, we would stop doing the things we do in America because so much of it is shaped by the Bible.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Isaac Crockett: Well, welcome back to the program. I’m Isaac Crockett, joined by pastor Gary Dull and our good friend Tim Barton, president of WallBuilders. We’ve been talking to him and kind of picking his brain on some historical context and some true quotes and things from different presidents of our country and really looking at the biblical foundation that we have as a country, the biblical worldview, a need for biblical truth. If we look at those running for president right now in the primary races for the Democratic Party, I think a lot of times it really scares many of us to see some of the ideologies that they’re espousing. For quite a while we’ve seen in our country a push to get away from biblical worldview and get to a secular worldview. I think we’re now starting to see what some of that means, what some of that entails as that does happen.
Isaac Crockett: Many of you, I think, are worried for the next generation and we want to not just complain about this is wrong or that’s wrong. But we want to jump in and to help people to communicate, to mentor, to disciple people. In fact, if you’re a true Bible-believing Christian, your goal in life should be to bring glory to God and to disciple other people, to bring them to God, and to be a light in this dark world so we want to talk about that. But before we do, I just want to thank you for listening. If you’re listening today, whether you’re a first-time listener or a long-time listener, whether you’ve just started listening right now on your lunch break or while you’re driving or whether you’ve been listening to the whole program, thank you for listening. Thank you for coming here. Maybe you’re listening on the radio and you’d like to hear the whole program today.
Isaac Crockett: You can always find all of our programs are archived on standinthegapradio.com. You can also find our smartphone app on the different platforms, the Stand In The Gap app. You can listen to archives of all of this. Maybe you want to go back and listen to Tim’s dad, David Barton, when he’s been on with us before or even watch when he was on with us with Stand In The Gap TV. All of that you can find through our website or through our mobile smartphone app, and just a lot of neat opportunities. But I do want to thank those of you who have partnered with us, who are praying for us for the ministry here and the different opportunities we have, as well as those of you who partner financially, supporting this ministry and making it possible. We very much appreciate it and we want to thank all of you who are involved with this.
Isaac Crockett: Well, Tim, I often have college students tell me that their campuses are just so liberal. I feel like I’m not that far removed from when I was in college and grad school. Yet, it has been a number of years, especially since I was an undergrad. So to hear some of these young people, especially Generation Z students, just try to tell me how horrible really things have gotten in most of their campuses. It’s saddening and it’s kind of scary as a pastor, as a teacher, as an educator, as a homeschool parent, all these different things, different hats I’ve worn and different ones that our listening audience wear. It’s kind of scary.
Isaac Crockett: And yet there’s a lot of good things happening. There’s so many young people looking for truth. They’re wanting to see what can happen. You have talked some about different initiatives you all have going on to show the truth and to show the foundations of our country. But Tim, in general, from what you see and from any studies you guys have, are most young people going off to a regular college here in the United States, are most of those young people going to learn positive facts about our country? Are they going to learn about what America is doing right or are they going to learn about what America’s doing wrong or supposedly has done wrong? Which do they hear more of the good or the bad about our country?
Tim Barton: Yes. Certainly they’re hearing that America is a bad place. They’re hearing about many wrongs America has done. Some of those, I would even argue, they’re not even wrongs America has done, but they’re portrayed as wrongs America has done in some regards. Sometimes people that should be heroes for America are portrayed to be villains. The only reason that the kids can buy into this is because they don’t know the whole story. They don’t have the full perspective. They’re getting it from a very flawed view where when people think America is a really bad nation, generally it’s because we don’t have a lot to compare it to. Most people that are in college, most young students in college, they’ve never been on a mission trip with their church to third world nations. They don’t see how other governments operate.
Tim Barton: So even though I will quickly and readily acknowledge America is not a perfect nation, absolutely not, my starting place, understanding people, families, nations, just in general, this world is what the Apostle Paul said that, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” So my understanding of everybody is everybody is messed up and needs Jesus. That’s true for nations as well as for individuals. No nation’s going to be perfect, but there are some nations that do things differently. They have different systems of government that have different ideas of the rights of the people, the role of the people, responsibilities and roles of government.
Tim Barton: America’s done something that has allowed us to enjoy more stability, more freedom, more prosperity, more opportunity than any other nation in the history of the world even with all of our imperfections. The problem is college kids don’t learn about the beneficial things or the positive things America has and is doing because all we focus on are the places we mess up. Even though we have messed up, which is very true, in most of the places that people point to, we messed up less than most other nations in those exact same areas. It’s just college kids don’t know that every nation has made very similar mistakes and America’ made less of those mistakes than other nations.
Gary Dull: Tim, we have a tremendous Constitution here in the United States. Again, it’s not a perfect Constitution just like we are not a perfect nation. But of course in that Constitution it’s set up in such a way that it guarantees a lot of freedoms that we enjoy here in the United States of America even today. My question to you is, why is it that our Constitution has lasted so long in comparison to the constitutions of some of the other nations on the face of the earth? In fact, as you answer that question, do you know the average period of time that most nations maintain their constitutions without changing them?
Tim Barton: That’s a really good question, Dr. Dull. The average length of a constitution in world history is only 17 years. We are at 232 years under our Constitution. So every single year we set a new world’s record for the nation living the longest under a single governing document. It really is quite remarkable. One of the reasons that our document is so unique is it’s based on principles. It gives an illustration of how to apply principles and it allows for changes in the Constitution. We’ve had 27 amendments to the Constitution. In the midst of even allowing amendments, there was a process put in place to make sure that it’s a difficult process. So it can’t just be changed with the latest whims of people and of culture and make sure that we’ve thought through this and the majority of people agree with this.
Tim Barton: So there’s a lot of really brilliant things the founding fathers did with the Constitution. It’s just today, a lot of people don’t understand why we did it. There’s a lot of people that want to change the Constitution. There’s a really great statement that you should never take a fence down until you know why the fence was built in the first place. A lot of people look at certain aspects of the Constitution, such as the Electoral College, and they go, “Hey, we shouldn’t have the Electoral College. We should have the national popular vote.” Because to them it makes sense that the majority of the people ought to be able to choose the president.
Tim Barton: On some level it does make sense. But when you back up and look historically, the reason we went to the Electoral College was that four of the original 13 colonies had the majority of the population, and the founding fathers didn’t want four States controlling all the others. They wanted everybody to have a voice in choosing the leader of our nation. So they said, “Okay. Every state’s going to get a percentage based on population.” But you have to get X number of these delegates. So every state is accountable for so many delegates. The reason this matters more practically, there’s 3500 cities in America, roughly. The top 20 cities in population have more population than the rest of the cities in America combined.
Tim Barton: Actually, 10 cities in America have enough population that they could choose the president all by themselves. If Chicago and New York and Miami and Los Angeles and some of these major cities all voted for one candidate, they would have enough in the popular vote to win the presidency. So what does that do to Oklahoma and Arkansas and Missouri? What does that do to North Carolina and South Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee? You can go through the list of all these states that, all of a sudden, they don’t have a voice in the process. So the Electoral College made sure that you don’t just win the majority of the votes in the big cities or big states. You have to win the majority of the votes in the majority of counties in the majority of states. It was a brilliant system.
Tim Barton: A lot of people today attack the Constitution because they don’t understand the principles, why we did the things we did. But the reason it’s lasted so long is it was brilliant principles that made a lot of sense. Even in the midst of that, they’ve allowed us to change, update, and improve as we needed to, which is why we’ve done so many amendments. But it certainly is a unique and remarkable document.
Isaac Crockett: Tim, that makes so much sense. Seeing that context and that perspective, so many young people don’t hear that though. But what do we say when we are questioned about the bad things? I think two of the big ones we hear all the time, slavery and women’s rights. I know we don’t have a lot of time left in this part of the program, this segment, so if we need to get into a little more of it next one. But are there some things that we could look to for those bad things, like slavery for example?
Tim Barton: Yeah. One of the reasons that a lot of times we misunderstand the issues, we don’t have the world context of the issue. In world context, one of the things that we forget about slavery, slavery wasn’t an American problem. Slavery was a universal problem. In the history of the world, every single people group at some point has been enslaved and at some point has enslaved somebody else. So slavery is not an American issue. In fact, looking at the nations of the world, America was the first nation to abolish the slave trade in 1808. Now, England did it the same year, but America passed the law before England did.
Tim Barton: So England and America were the first two to abolish the slave trade. England abolished slavery in 1833. America didn’t do it till more than 20, really 30 years later is when America did it. However, when America ended slavery, only three nations had outlawed slavery before America, England being the first. So America was the fourth nation in the world to outlaw slavery. People still don’t have perspective that even today there’s 193 nations at the United Nations, 94 of those nations still allow slavery to be legal in their nation. So slavery is still a universal problem. There’s 40 million people that are enslaved in the world right now today.
Tim Barton: China is one of the biggest slave-holding populations in the world today. There’s more people enslaved today than at any point in the history of the world. Today, we get such a bad view of history, even in the American perspective, that we don’t know that even though there was slavery in America, as long as there were slaves in America, there were people fighting to end slavery in America. Largely, it was Christian leaders who were saying, “Hey, this violates God’s ideals.”
Isaac Crockett: That is so good. We’re going to come back to that in our last segment.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Isaac Crockett: Well, welcome back. It’s hard to believe we’re already at the last part of our program, the last segment. I’m Isaac Crockett, joined by Dr. Gary Dull. We’re so glad to have you with us today and we’re glad to be interviewing our friend, Tim Barton, the president of WallBuilders. Again, some of you listeners have heard him during our breaks and different things for a long time on our program. So to have him with us is an excellent opportunity.
Isaac Crockett: Tim, we had to go to break before really being able to finish out that last question about how we defend against the things, especially slavery is brought up so often when people are looking at what was wrong with America or what our issues were. Again, you’ve been talking about looking at everything in perspective, looking through biblical context, historical context, but seeing the perspective of what all was going on. So I’d like to go back maybe just to that real quickly as we talk to people about it. Also maybe you could include, since we’re talking about presidents, a little story about President John Quincy Adams who grew up, his dad being one of the founding leaders of our nation.
Isaac Crockett: He grew up and he was not only a president, but he held a lot of neat offices, did a lot of things for our country. Some I’d known before, but recently heard you talking about him and I learned a lot about him. But he was against slavery and he worked tirelessly against it. There was a young man that he got a chance to mentor before he passed away and that young man ended up having a great impact on it. So I didn’t know if maybe you could follow up a little bit of that with an answer to when people bring up things like slavery and maybe then give our listeners the story, historical event from the life of John Quincy Adams.
Tim Barton: Absolutely. One of the things that is really worth noting is that America, like every nation in the world, has had problems. Certainly there were atrocities in our nation, just like there have been in every nation in the history of the world. That’s true. But what’s made America very unique and different is often we have been able to end those problems and atrocities sooner than almost any other nation. That’s one of the, again, the things that makes us unique. The people that have largely done that have been Christians who followed their Christian convictions. One of those is a guy named John Quincy Adams, you mentioned.
Tim Barton: He was the son of John Adams, grew up in the Revolution when America becomes a nation. George Washington chose John Quincy Adams to be a top diplomat. Washington said that, “There’s no better diplomat for America than John Quincy Adams.” When John Adams became president, John Quincy Adams is a diplomat under his father, under Thomas Jefferson. He becomes a US Senator under James Madison. He again is chosen as a diplomat under James Monroe. He is the secretary of state. He then became the sixth president of the United States. After being president, John Quincy Adams went back and he served in Congress. The thing he did in Congress was he became a leader of the anti-slavery movement.
Tim Barton: He says, “There’s a great evil in America that must be remedied,” and it was the evil of slavery. He spent the last 17 years of his life fighting to end slavery. He fought tirelessly. The system largely was against him at that point. It was a total uphill battle, but his very last term in office, there was a young freshman, a Congressman who was elected, only served one term in Congress, this young freshman Congressman. But he heard John Quincy Adams speaking against the evils of slavery and just leading this fight day after day after day. It really impassioned and emboldened this young freshman Congressman. He wanted to get involved and make a difference.
Tim Barton: When John Quincy Adams has a stroke and dies in office, that that last term when he dies in office, this freshman actually was chosen to be one of the leaders helping arrange the funeral and one of the pallbearers and was apparently very good friends and was kind of influential in even some of this ordeal of the funeral. Well, after his two-year term is up, in Congress you have to run again after two years. So he ran again, he didn’t get elected. He then decided he’d run in the Senate, didn’t get elected in the Senate, really didn’t get elected again. So he became the president of the United States, which was Abraham Lincoln.
Tim Barton: One of the cool legacies about our nation is how often we can point to how God used godly people to mentor future generations and how then God used future generations to do something that the previous generation was unable to accomplish. Where John Quincy Adams spent so much of his life fighting against slavery and he never saw it ended in America. But he mentored the guy who helped bring an end to slavery in America. This is one of the cool legacies. I would even encourage listeners, we don’t know how God might use us. Maybe all the problems in America don’t get solved in our lifetime, but who knows that God might use us to mentor the very people that can bring an end to some of these problems in our nation, to be the leaders going forward to help America go the direction we need to go. This is one of the really cool legacies of John Quincy Adams.
Isaac Crockett: Tim, that’s a fascinating example of what we’ve been talking about and it just fits in perfectly with presidents, looking at President’s Day and different things that we’ve been doing today. Before we sign off, and I know that we only have a little bit of time left, I want to remind our listeners about wallbuilders.com. You have a lot of resources there. But there at wallbuilders.com there’s a tab that talks about the different initiatives. There’s things for pastors and teachers and patriotic Americans. But there’s a couple of things there for young people.
Isaac Crockett: You have the leadership training program. I know that you all take applications for that. I think you can even apply for it online. If someone’s listening today and he or she wants to apply, this is for young people 18 to 25 years old, on your website, maybe a parent or a grandparent or a relative or church person is listening that knows a young person that would be interested in this or would be a good candidate for it. Would it be too late to apply for this year’s leadership training? If someone wanted to apply, what would they do to go about applying for that?
Tim Barton: Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up. No, it’s not too late to apply. Absolutely I would encourage people, go to wallbuilders.com. Go under the initiatives section and click on leadership training. Absolutely we would love to have students come. We still have some spots left open for the summer. We have two sessions in the summer. There’s nowhere else you’re going to go that you’re able to actually read from and study and hold founding fathers’ original letters and writings and journals and proclamations. It absolutely is a world-changing, life-changing opportunity moment for these kids. For parents and grandparents, absolutely I would look into this. See if your kids, your grandkids are interested.
Tim Barton: This is something that we really focus on the Christian heritage of the nation, and also focus on individual lives of the students. How can we help them and grow them and equip them for what they’re hearing in culture in college? We want to help them be the leaders that help take America the direction it needs to go. But to do that, they have to know the truth of God’s word, the truth of our past, the truth of the constitution so they can promote and defend those values and culture around them.
Isaac Crockett: Tim, again, excellent. Thank you so much for that information. Thank you for making the time to be with us today. Thank you for the great work that you and your dad and your family and so many others are doing there at WallBuilders. So much exciting things that have happened in our nation and so many exciting things that we still have opportunities to do and opportunities to mentor future generations. So Pastor Gary, I’d love to turn things over to you to get your final thoughts. I know that you have trained and mentored many younger men.
Gary Dull: I’m very thankful, Tim, that you were able to be with us today. We have great concerns in America today. I’m concerned to see the way it seems like a lot of the younger generation has a bent toward socialism and it is my prayer that that won’t go very far. But as I understand human nature, I think that it will probably continue for a period of time. But I think that that’s one of the reasons why we as Christians and people who love this nation, let’s pray for this nation on a consistent basis because socialism does not line up with biblical truth at all.
Gary Dull: I know, Tim, that you don’t have the time to comment on that. I’m sure that you would if you had the time. But we just want to thank you very much for what you and your dad do. Keep up the good work there at WallBuilders. We’ll be praying for you.
Isaac Crockett: Thank you, Gary. Tim Barton, thank you so much for joining us from WallBuilders. Those of you listening, thank you for listening, for joining with us to listen to this exciting program. You can listen to the entire archive online or on our smartphone app. Please pray for all of the ministries here at the American Pastors Network. We appreciate you so much for all of you who pray for us and partner with us here at Stand In The Gap. Please again, don’t forget today to make a decision to stand in the gap for the Lord wherever you are.
Recent Comments