Building on the American Heritage Series - Revival and Reformation

Pray, act, endure—three simple words that upend almost everything we’re told about cultural change. We take a hard look at what revival really means in American history and Scripture, and it’s not a weekend tent meeting or an emotional spike. It’s decades of work, sacrifice that leaves a mark, and a public impact you can measure in families, cities, and laws.

We trace the long arc of the Great Awakenings and spotlight George Whitefield’s relentless schedule—thousands of sermons across colonies, a portable pulpit, and a stubborn refusal to quit even when his health broke. That kind of commitment didn’t just fill fields; it formed consciences, inspired soldiers, and even shaped early American policy debates. Revival, we argue, always stirs old-versus-new tensions in the church, crosses denominational lines, and pushes faith into the streets where it changes habits, standards, and expectations.

From there, we get practical. Prayer is the starting line: Scripture calls us to pray first for leaders, and doing that by name turns concern into action. We share simple tools like prayer calendars, strategies for interceding for staff and counselors, and examples of how consistent prayer leads to hands-on engagement. We also tackle measurement: if renewal never moves the needle on public virtue, crime, or integrity in office, it’s not revival—it’s sentiment. And we confront the urge to give up, reminding ourselves that every generation has expected the end, while the command remains to “occupy” with courage and hope.

If you’re ready to trade quick fixes for faithful presence, you’ll find a roadmap here: long-haul prayer, visible action, and mentoring the next generation so convictions outlast us.

Chapters

• 0:07 Welcome And Series Setup
• 0:32 Defining Revival And Common Myths
• 1:52 Great Awakenings And Long Timelines
• 3:15 George Whitefield’s Relentless Itinerancy
• 5:45 Opposition From Religious Establishment
• 7:02 Revival Touches Military, Economy, Policy
• 8:13 Revival Is Transgenerational
• 10:46 Praying And Acting For Revival
• 12:23 Practical Ways To Pray For Leaders
• 14:16 Measuring Revival In Life And Culture
• 17:27 Can Revival Change Government Policy
• 20:51 Is There Time For Revival
• 25:25 Hope, History, And Getting Involved
• 26:31 Closing And Resource Mention

Transcript

Rick Green [00:00:07] You found your way to the intersection of faith and politics. Wall Builders Live with David Barton and Rick Green, also found online at wallbuilderslive.com and wallbuilders.com and also on Facebook. You can follow us there as well and comment on the shows as you get a chance to listen to them. And in fact, you might have a show you'd like us to cover, a topic or an interview, you can email that to us at radio@wallbuilders.com. And we also encourage you to let your local station know if you'd like to hear us locally and we're not on a station there close to you. If you're not familiar with which station we're on close to you, then go check it out at wallboulderslive.com. Here we go to Building on the American Heritage Series with David Barton. David, today's topic we're seeing more and more out there. It's social justice. I just saw the other day in an advertisement at a fairly large church. A visiting speaker was talking about social injustice. And there's this movement saying government needs to do what the Bible says that we should be doing, and that's how we'll get social justice. Is that the right way to go? 

David Barton [00:00:59] It's a jurisdictional problem. It's not that God doesn't want justice and he doesn't want a society. He does. He makes it real clear, we're told in Jeremiah that his habitation is a place of justice and holiness. God's into social justice, but he's also into jurisdictional lines. There are certain things he told the government to do, certain things he told the family to do, certain things he told the church to do, and certain things he told the individual to do. For example, he told the government in Romans 13 that the government bears the sword in our defense, bears the sword to punish the wicked. Well, if the church picks up the sword to punish the wicked, and if the church picks up the sword to do it in defense, always ends in atrocities. It always has across history. God did not give the sword of civil government or civil justice to the church. He gave it to government. What's being advocated in social justice has in the way it's being advocated now is the government needs to do these issues. The government needs to get involved in social issues. No, that's not what God has said. As a matter of fact, that has always been a philosophy that has been associated. This is the third time it's come up in America, this modern version, and it's always associated with a socialistic mentality and a movement towards socialism on the part of government. We want to see government get more involved in the lives of individuals. We want to treat every individual the same way. We want, and not that you don't want that, but that's not the biblical role for government. And so what happens is in the 1880s, we had a social justice movement. In the 1920s, 25 is called social gospel movement. And here it is again, resurrected in the 2000 period. And it's a third time that religious leaders have stepped up and said it's time for the church to get government doing some things. Now, the right way to look at this, particularly the fact that we're trying to elevate government into letting them do more and more and more, goes actually back to Genesis. One of our good friends, Rabbi Daniel Lappin, he points out that a lot of times we as Christians get the Tower of Babel thing all goofed up. We don't do it right. And he and he starts by saying, you know, that really Hebrew language is significant language, because the first time God revealed himself to humankind, he revealed himself in the Hebrew language. That's what he spoke to was the Hebrews and children of Israel spoke to them there on the mountain, etc. So God chose that language, and Rabbi Lappin says, that means that everything that God says is of importance. And he points out that, for example, he said in the Hebrew language, it's impossible to say the word coincidence. You can't say that because coincidence never crossed God's mind. In God's mind, he has a plan for everything. Nothing's accidental. So God didn't say coincidence. You can't even say it in the Hebrew language. In the same way, you cannot say the word retirement in Hebrew. God doesn't get to a point where he says, okay, you're done with everything, just sit there and enjoy yourself. No, we got that story in Luke where the guy said, Hey, soul, take ease, rest, prosper, just enjoy yourself. You've been working really hard, and God said, You fool. Tonight your soul's required of you. If you're going to stop being productive, God's gonna take you home. 

Rick Green [00:03:40] No such thing as thing as retirement. 

David Barton [00:03:42] There's God does not have their time. You can't say the word. Well, in the same way, he points out that in the Tower of Babel story that Christians often get wrong. He said, it starts with Nimrod. When Nimrod started gathering the people around him saying, Let's make bricks. Let's make bricks, let's make bricks. And that's when got God's attention, and God came down and confused everything. Well, what's the deal with making bricks? Well, as Rabbi Lappin points out, bricks, you take a mold, you pour everything into a mold, and they all come out looking exactly alike. You have conformity. We're gonna treat everybody exactly the same. And the problem with that is God creates living stones. Every stone is created different. They all look different, they all have different characters, there's none exactly the same. God is creative. He's not into conformity. And the problem with socialism is we're going to make you all bricks. We want you to have a brick education. We're gonna treat every student exactly the same. We don't care if the student's a little more advanced than this one, if this one's a little slower than this one. We're gonna put you all in the same mold and treat you exactly as and that's what government does is it creates this conformity. And social justice says we want more of that. We we want more of government getting into whatever the realm is, and that is a real problem. Now, the other thing that social justice does is it really tries to obfuscate a lot of political issues. Because traditionally, in the last several decades, the issues that Christians have really kind of focused on has been things like abortion and and marriage and acknowledgments of God, etc. And social justice comes along and says, No, no, no, you can't focus on those issues. You also gotta focus on taking care of the poor and taking care of the planet, and you've got to focus on all these other aspects of social justice. And so what they've done is they've elevated up and said, You guys, Christians, it's time for us to get away from just voting on marriage and life. We've got to vote on all these other stuff. This is really important stuff. There's a problem with that biblically. Now, that is a government philosophy that's out there, and some religious people have embraced that, but that's not a biblical philosophy. 

Rick Green [00:05:30] Well that's not just government saying government officials saying that. That's some religious leaders saying that. 

David Barton [00:05:35] They have bought into that philosophy, but it's not biblical. In the Bible, God gives 613 laws to govern his people. That's how he governed Israel. 613 laws. Those laws deal with agriculture. They deal with immigration. They deal with marriage. They deal with the military. They deal with economics. They deal with various taxes. They deal anything that we deal with today, God gave laws to cover. They deal with the environment back then. I mean, God gave laws on every one of the health care. God deals with health care throughout the scriptures. One of the best books ever written on God's review of health care is called None of These Diseases, a book by Dr. S. I McMillan who says, you know, here's all the health code that God gave us in the Bible. As doctors today, here's all the medical studies that prove God's exactly right in how to run health care. So there's all these issues, but then God comes along after giving 613 laws to his people. He comes along and in Exodus 34:27, with Moses, he said, Moses, here's the tenor of my laws. In other words, here's the heart, the soul, the guts. Of these 613, here's the big things. And it was this. This is what he told Moses was the tenor of his laws. Now, that's the Ten Commandments. 

Rick Green [00:06:39] He takes a six thirteen, boils it down and says. 

David Barton [00:06:41] Here's My top ten. Yeah. I've given you 613 laws. I'm telling you how to take care of the poor, I'm telling you how to do health care. But here's my top ten. And by the way, this is this is actually a historically significant piece here. This was given us by the legislator in Kentucky. This is the Ten Commandments that led to the Supreme Court case in 1980, where the Supreme Court said, Oh, you can't let Consultation. 

Rick Green [00:07:00] That's the one that was actually hanging. 

David Barton [00:07:01] That's that's the one that was saying in the call in the classrooms. So back to the 613. God gives Moses his top ten. He says, this is the tenor of what I've given you. 613, but this is the big stuff. You look here in the big stuff, there's four things that make God's top ten. Number one is acknowledgement of God. I am the Lord thy God. And God we trust, under God in the Pledge of Allegiance. These are all acknowledgments of God. Oh, you can't let a kid say God at graduation. No, no, no. Acknowledgement of God is the top item on his list. So God's. 

Rick Green [00:07:28] That is an issue we should pay attention to in voting and. 

David Barton [00:07:30] Where a political person is on public, oh, separation in church and state. I don't believe you should have a nativity scene where public people could see it. I don't think you should have Ten Commandments where people can read it. If that's the position, you got problems because that will violate God's top ten. As a Christian, for anyone who wants a secular society, we got problems. And by the way, it also violates our our documents. Declaration says, hey, there is a creator and he gives us rights. Number two, on this, you'll you'll find that God talks about thou shall not kill. And the word kill actually is murder. It means shed innocent blood. So it's not like capital punishment. What it's talking about is shedding innocent blood. Well, I don't care what side of the aisle you're on, there's no way of saying that abortion is not shed in innocent blood. There's not a child that's been aborted that was guilty of anything to be aborted for. 

Rick Green [00:08:11] So those that would say that's not an issue, we have to come back and say that's one of the. 

David Barton [00:08:15] And by the way, those who have been wrongly convicted of capital punishment in the courts, it's an issue for them too. Every time you shed innocent blood, whether it's an adult or whether it is an infant, it's it's wrong. 

Rick Green [00:08:24] Because if it's guilty blood, that's the government bears the sword for that purpose. 

David Barton [00:08:28] That's exactly right. Then you get to these two down here, you don't steal and you don't covet it. That's protecting property, protecting private property. Government exists to protect private property. Now they've gotten an imminent domain, and they say, Oh no, we want your property, we want more tax dollars. I'm sorry. Eminent domain is what Ahab and Jezebel did with Nabus Vineyard, and that's why God brought a curse on Israel, was they used a little government imminent domain to take private property. So protecting private property is one of the top ten. 

Rick Green [00:08:51] Well and it also seems like coveting that's a a lot of what we do in government today is because of that. Yeah, exactly. I want insurance like you have, or I want the kind of car you drive, or want government policies that'll give me what you've got. It's coveting. 

David Barton [00:09:04] Social justice is doing what God thinks is important and God has given us his top ten. All the other things that these guys are trying to push to the top, it's not biblical. It's the third time it's been tried in America. It is associated with socialism, which is a form of government that's not good. And by the way, that's how we look at social justice. 

Rick Green [00:09:22] Alright David, let's get some questions from the audience about social justice. 

David Barton [00:09:25] Let's go for it. 

Speaker [00:09:26] Jesus told us to take care of the poor. Shouldn't that be an issue when we vote? 

Rick Green [00:09:30] Heard a lot about this back in two thousand eight, continue to hear about the idea that well, we're supposed to take care of the poor. Should we do that through government? 

David Barton [00:09:37] Well, it should be an issue when we vote, but probably not the way that most people think. It's indisputable. The Bible makes it very clear we should take care of the poor. No question. You take the Bible, you you go through the verses that deal with the poor. 205 verses talk about the poor, dealing with the poor. That's a lot of coverage. The important thing is to see where the verses are directed. There's only one thing the government's told to do with the poor. Only one thing. And that one thing is that when the poor come into court, make sure that they get justice. Don't treat them any different than you treat anyone else. 

Rick Green [00:10:07] It doesn't have anything to do with giving them money or taking care of it. 

David Barton [00:10:10] It's not there at all. It's totally different. So what what do we do? Well, let me go to a very clear passage on this. Isaiah 58. The Lord says this Is this not the fast I have chosen, says the Lord, to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke? And so people pray and fasted, that's what God wants us to do. Verse 7 says, Is it not to share your bread with the hungry? And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out. And when you see the naked, that you cover him and you do not hide yourself in your own flesh. Wait a minute. That I'm praying and fasting so that I learn to share my bread, I learn to bring the poor to my house, I learn to cover the naked and provide clothing. I do that. I I thought government's supposed to. 

Rick Green [00:10:52] So I'm not supposed to use government to come take your brand and give it to the poor. I'm supposed to do it myself. 

David Barton [00:10:57] And that's why God wants us praying and fasting so that we learn to get that in our character. You get over Matthew 25, it's a verse that a lot of people love to quote with social justice. Jesus says, I was naked and you clothed me, I was hungry and you fed me, I was imprisoned and you visited me. And the disciples said, Whoa, time out, Lord, when do we ever do that? He said, If you've done it to the least of one of these, you've done it to me. Is he talking to government there or is he talking to his disciples? And you could say that's the individual disciples, or that's the collective disciples, which would be the church, but any way you go at it, it is not government. So when you look at it, God didn't tell government to take care of the poor. He tells every one of us individually and collectively as families and churches to take care of the poor. 

Rick Green [00:11:33] Well maybe the question then, we were asked whether or not it should be factored in when we vote. So then when we vote, if we vote for people that then use government to take care of the poor instead of us doing it, they're kind of getting in the way, right? Because they're gonna take your money through higher taxes to go do that and it's gonna be harder for you to go take care of the poor. It is, and that's why I say 

David Barton [00:11:50] That it should be an issue in your vote, but probably not the way people think it should be. Let's say there was not these 205 verses that they don't exist. Wouldn't it be a good thing for government to take care of the poor? No. And here's why. Statistically speaking, the National Institute of Philanthropy, these are the guys that monitor every charitable group in the United States. So you know, Cheryl and I, we give to things like Wounded Warriors, or we'll give Salvation Army or Relief Services. We give them to these groups, and if the National Institute of Philanthropy says, if you give a dollar to a group and 60 cents out of that dollar reaches the target, that's worth giving to. So they'll allow that group to spend up to 40% on staff, on overhead, on advertising, on sending out mailing appeals, whatever it is. So 60%. 

Rick Green [00:12:31] Getting to the people in need, that's a good goal. 

David Barton [00:12:32] If you're giving to a charity and 60%'s not making it, stop giving the charity. It's a waste of money. Now, when it comes to the government, the government has given has taken $9 trillion from the nation and given $9 trillion to the poor over the last 50 years. $9 trillion is a bunch of bucks. 

Rick Green [00:12:49] Have they actually given the nine trillion? 

David Barton [00:12:51] That's the deal. When you look at the nine trillion, every dollar that we designate for the government to give the poor, how much reaches the poor? 

Rick Green [00:12:57] I'm betting it's not as good as when it's thirty percent. 

David Barton [00:13:01] 30%, half as much as any private charity. If that was a private charity, if you and I were giving to this group and only 30 cents out of every dollar made it to that group, we would stop giving to the group. That is the most inefficient waste of money you can possibly have. 

Rick Green [00:13:13] Well now I'm back to the voting. Okay, if I'm gonna vote for elected official, I don't want someone that's gonna use government instead of private organizations because I'm wasting everybody's money. 

David Barton [00:13:20] It works right when you do it God's way. If you don't do it God's way, it's not gonna work. 

Rick Green [00:13:23] Well what about a lot of these people now in politics? They wanna not only do they wanna do it all through government, they wanna punish you for giving to the charity now, not give you the tax deductions that we used to do. 

David Barton [00:13:31] That's the thing that's happening in Congress in the last couple of sessions, is they're reducing the tax deduction for giving to a charity and giving to the poor. They don't want individuals doing it. We want to do that. And there's a problem with that as well. There's a study recently done out of Yale University and out of Notre Dame. And they studied what happens across the world when governments start putting more into taking care of the poor, when governments do more of the social spending kind of stuff. And what they found was that in 33 consecutive nations, when the government ups the amount it gives to the poor, church attendance goes down by the same percentage. So what happens is if government's going to become my source, I don't need God. Why should I be involved? And what happens is the more that government gets involved in helping the poor, the more secular that nation becomes. 

Rick Green [00:14:15] Because the government is becoming the epic center of the community rather than the church. Rather than the church. 

David Barton [00:15:27] Whether it's from a scriptural standpoint, whether it's from a world survey standpoint, whether it's from an economic statistical standpoint. The government is not the entity to be helping the poor. Now the poor have got to be helped. There's no question about that. God will hold us accountable. I love the verses back, for example, he tells the priest back in Leviticus that you need to identify the poor in your neighborhood. And when you do, you go help the poor. You get the, you get the other priests and you get the people to give to help the poor. So it's a church. It's the church leaders identifying the needs and getting the money to them, the delivery mechanism. I love the fact that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both served on the vestry board in their church. And the vestry board is the is the board that in the community takes care of all the poor. And it was George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, not as political people, but as church people who would go out and identify the needs in the community and bring to bear the church resources. That's what the vestry board was to do in the Anglican Episcopal Church back then. We've got to get back to our church today having a vestry board, if you will, that says, hey, go identify the needs in the community. Let's get involved with the lives of those people. But you'll notice in the scriptures, God says to landowners, hey, when you harvest your fields, leave the corners of your crop. Leave it there for the poor to come in. And if you've got a vineyard, don't go over the vineyard twice picking grapes. Anything's left, you let the poor get, and anything that hits the ground, don't pick it off off the ground. So God makes provision for taking care of the poor, but interestingly, the poor have to do something. 

Rick Green [00:16:50] Go get it. 

David Barton [00:16:51] They have to go to the corners and harvest the corners. They've got to go in the vineyard and pick the grapes either off the ground or what's left on the on the, we just don't deliver a free mechanism. And Benjamin Franklin talked about this. He said the worst thing you can do for the poor is make them comfortable in their poverty. He said you need to drive them out of their poverty. Poverty is not supposed to be a perpetual condition, it's supposed to be a temporary condition. Government makes it a perpetual condition by not driving people out of poverty, they make them comfortable in their poverty. And the church, we say, hey, here's the problem. It's a temporary thing, and here's the lifestyle changes you can correct and make and you can you can get away from this poverty stuff. So the question is, should that be an issue when we vote? Yes. But not in the sense that if a guy promises to help the poor run for office, I'm gonna vote for him. If he promises to help the poor in office, he's the guy I don't want an office because that violates the biblical standards. It's not gonna help the poor, it's gonna hurt us, it's gonna harm the country, it's gonna make it more secular. Everything's wrong with that plan. 

Rick Green [00:17:43] Let's get another question on the issue of social justice. As Christians, shouldn't we be fighting global warming? You know, this may not be quite as hot a topic as even just a year or two ago, but it's still in the forefront. You still hear a lot of people saying we as Christians need to be involved in this. 

David Barton [00:17:56] But there's a lot of people trying to elevate it to a hot topic. When you look at national polling right now, out of 42 issues, it's at the bottom of 42 issues. But that doesn't mean it's lost ground in the church. There's still a whole element of the church that's pushing this. There's 125 evangelical leaders that came out with a declaration of evangelical responsibility toward preserving the climate, saving the climate, global warming. You have all sorts of denominations that have taken a stand that we've got to do this thing to stop global warming. And there's a problem with that from a biblical standpoint, because when you look at what global warming is, what it does, and there's huge debate over what causes global warming. And you look at all the scientific evidence that's behind it, and it was really driven by the International Panel on Climate Change. They're the ones who came out with the first report, and everybody panicked. And I mean, even what they started with, and their first report, they came out and said, hey, because of global warming, the polar ice caps are melting, and what's melting the ice caps, it's going to cause the the oceans to rise from 15 to 25 feet. All low-lying areas are going to be inundated of probably a billion people that will die as a result of flooding. They actually predicted that we'd be able to sell ships off the front steps of the U.S. Capitol because that 20 25 to 40 feet. Well, they came out in the fourth report and says, it looks like it might only be an inch or two at most. Well, from 25 feet to 25 feet. An inch or two. What happened to seven? We weren't off by that much yet. Yeah. So people panicked on the first thing, and the more scientific work they've done on it, they said, it's really not actually the ice is growing at the polar ice gaps rather than melting. And actually, we've had declining temperatures for the past 10 years. And actually the Russian scientists, the Australian scientists, and others are warning that we're entering into a period of freezing across the country. You know, so it's a cyclical thing. But there was never any question that the earth was warming up. The question was, was it cyclical or was man causing it to warm up? Yeah, or could we do anything about it in the first place? And so what happened, and this is what's really kind of funny about it. Let me tell you the science, I'll tell you the Bible on it, is from the science standpoint, we're having all these hearings. I was called to testify at the U.S. Senate on global warming, expert on global warming. So I was there. And for even those who wanted to, and there was what was called the Kyoto Protocol, and that was that was President Clinton tried to implement that and fix global warming. And the Kyoto Protocol calls for America to spend about 200 billion dollars a year for the next 40 years. And that if we can get the industrial nations to do this, we can drop the temperatures and save the planet. Even those who believe in global warming, ardent supporters of it, even they admit that if we do this for 40 years, 200 billion years for 40 years. We're talking about less than a half a degree that we might drop the temperatures. 

Rick Green [00:20:29] Two hundred billion. 

David Barton [00:20:29] TWo hundred billion years. 

Rick Green [00:20:30] Forty years. And and if everything they say is,. 

David Barton [00:20:33] If everything is right, we'll drop it a half degree. You go, wait a minute. That's that's almost too small to even measure on a thermometer. You know, but that that's what they were fighting about. So within that framework, there was all these hearings and there was all this push. It's just that people weren't getting the information. Now, what they were doing is saying, Hey, we've got to limit our lives, we've got to stop the way we live, we've got to severely alter our lifestyle so that we can save the planet. If we can do that, maybe we can save the planet and we'll inconvenience all the people we need to to 

Rick Green [00:20:59] Yeah,and distroy the economy

David Barton [00:21:01] Exactly, all along. Now, from a biblical standpoint, let's go back to where the Bible is. You go from Genesis 1 through Genesis 3, and in those three chapters of Genesis, you notice that creation occurs in an ascending order. It starts with the inanimate and it goes to the animate. It starts with the planet, then it goes upward to the fish and the birds and the animals, and then man is the last thing created. And when God got done, he says, now I'm giving you dominion over everything. This is all here. You take it, you use it, you live off it, it's yours. This is here for you. It's kind of like the Sabbath, where Jesus said, Hey, man wasn't made to serve the Sabbath, Sabbath was made to serve man. That's the way the planet was. Man wasn't made to serve the planet, planet made to serve man. But you get from Romans 1 that they ended up worshiping the creation more than the creator. They reverse things. And so for those who worship creation above creator, it goes in a descending order. The highest thing for them is the inanimate, it's the planet. And it goes all the way down to where man's at the lowest. Even animals and plants are above man. How do we know animals are above man? Because Michael Vick goes to jail for fighting dogs. Now we don't send abortionists to jail for killing babies, but we will send you to jail for fighting dogs. 

Rick Green [00:22:12] That's a great point. I mean, we we have totally reversed it. 

David Barton [00:22:14] We totally man will inconvenience man at any level to save the planet, to save the dogs, to save the animals. Whatever it takes, we go the opposite direction. So rather than man being above everything, man is under everything. That is an anti biblical approach. And one of the great proofs of that is when we testified at the U.S. Senate, 200 billion a year for 40 years. We said, hey guys, the science on this is disputed. I mean, there's no agreement on this. And they say, oh, yes, there is. No, there's no agreement on it. Read the scientists. And what we pointed out was for 200 billion dollars in one year, for one year of 200 billion dollars, we can provide clean drinking water to every person on the face of the globe. We can wipe out dysentery. 

Rick Green [00:22:55] Which would save untold number one. 

David Barton [00:22:58] tens of millions of lives. I mean, you wipe out dysentery, you wipe out cholera, you wipe out all the water diseases that kill millions of people a year in third world nations. For $200 billion, we can provide clean drinking water for everyone and say, we don't care about that. We've got to save the planet. That's at the bottom of the scale for them, isn't it? That's right. Who cares about saving human life? And so, as Christians, should we be concerned about global warming? Well, number one is you need to get the other side of the story. Proverbs 18:17 says one side sounds good until you hear the other. You hear what all the guys are saying about, oh, we've got to save the planet. Most of the guys saying that are secularists who have elevated the creation above the Creator. So what you need to do is get the science on the other side, read the Russian scientists, the Australian scientists, the Polish scientists, all these other scientific voices are saying, whoa, guys, look at the scientific evidence. So in that standpoint, is that an issue for us as voters? Shouldn't be, because we'll end up spending money on things that won't make a difference. At least science is now proving that over the last several years. That's why it is such a lower issue, because it's not going where scientists in America said it was going. It's also biblically wrong because we're elevating the planet above man. And in God's paradigm, you can't do that. And that's why it's a wrong issue. 

Rick Green [00:24:02] And that doesn't mean that we don't take care of the things got it. It doesn't mean go rape and pillage the earth. It means take care of it as best you can, but don't elevate it. 

David Barton [00:24:08] God said in 1 Corinthians 8 that we are to use the earth, not abuse the earth. But you know what? I'm a landowner. I have horses and we have sheep and we have other things on our ranch. I take care of my property. You know, I've got a car. I'm not about to beat the dickens out of my car. If you have that concept as a Christian, you're going to take care of it. Even Proverbs tells us that a godly man is kind to his animals. We're not out to abuse things, but still we are over it. Everything else is below man. Man is at the top. Everything is below man. Man is not the one to serve them. It's the other way around. 

Rick Green [00:24:43] All right, we get time for one more question on our topic of social justice today. 

Speaker [00:24:46] There's a lot more in the Bible than just abortion and marriage. Why do people get stuck on these issues? 

Rick Green [00:24:50] Yeah, I've heard some I guess criticism of those of us that are evangelicals that talk about abortion and we talk about marriage and how important those things are. We fight political battles on that and some people say, just leave those alone. There's other things we need to be worrying about. 

David Barton [00:25:04] Yeah, well you go back to what we were talking about earlier. You take God's top ten, I'm sorry, but abortion and marriage do make the top ten. You don't kill, which is take shed innocent blood, you don't murder, and that's abortion, and you don't commit adultery, and that is God says, I want you to protect marriage is the way he gave it to you. I want a relationship with one man, one woman. 

Rick Green [00:25:22] So gay marriage is outside of that. 

David Barton [00:25:24] Gay marriage is outside of that. So the marriage issue is there. And by the way, it's not just gay marriage, it's divorce reform and everything else. Anything that weakens marriage, it's you know, that there's a big move now for polyamorous marriage and polygamous marriage and all this. It doesn't matter. Anything outside the definition of one man, one woman, the way I gave it to you, Jesus came along, Matthew 19 and said, Don't forget, at the beginning he made you one man, one woman, and that's the relationship he wants. Moses allowed divorce because of the hardness of your heart, but it wasn't that way at the beginning. And that's what we got to preserve. So whether that's homosexual marriage or whether that's working on divorce reform in the states, that makes God's top ten. But you look for global warming, you look for taking care of the poor, you look for any of these other quote, social justice issues, they don't make the top ten. Does that mean they're not important? No, it doesn't mean that. But it means that these are the priorities. For us to take any other issue and raise it up as a priority is to assert the word of God. God's the one who said, These are my top ten. You need to have my interest at heart. And when we change that and alter that, it's like we were talking about earlier, that is completely rewriting what God has told us his priorities are, and we need to make his priorities our priorities. 

Rick Green [00:26:29] Thanks for listening today, folks. Many of you have the DVD set of the American Heritage Series. You could get the sequel, which is Building on the American Heritage Series, a lot of new material, some fantastic programs you wanna you wanna have in your library. You can get it at our website today at wallbuilders.com.