Revival Or Awakening

A surge of spiritual interest is sweeping the country, but will it last long enough to change anything? We dig into the hard truth: revivals inspire; awakenings transform. That transformation only happens when people are discipled to live out Jesus’ full teaching, the kind that speaks plainly about marriage, gender, and the purpose of covenant—without losing sight of grace, redemption, and the path back.

We share encouraging shifts from the pulpit as national voices tackle no-fault divorce and explain why God’s commands are for our flourishing. Then we zoom out to culture and policy. Scouting America announces a slate of reforms—dropping DEI mandates, restoring membership by biological sex, and honoring military families—after high-level pressure to reclaim clarity and standards. Across the Atlantic, Marco Rubio earns applause in Europe by calling leaders back to the shared roots of Western civilization, Christian identity, and actionable security. At home, a key court win in Vermont protects foster families’ religious freedom and common-sense boundaries in a system that desperately needs willing parents.

Finally, we confront the education paradox: nearly a million more students have left public schools for private, Christian, and homeschool options, even as districts add staff and pass higher costs to taxpayers. We break down what this means for families, classrooms, and local budgets—and how citizens can act. If you’ve been asking how faith can move from Sunday morning to everyday life, this conversation offers a roadmap: discipleship that forms character, engagement that shapes policy, and courage that tells the truth in love.

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Transcript

Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture, this is The WallBuilders Show, taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. Today's Friday, so it's Good News Friday. We get to get into a lot of the good news that's happened in the last week or two, and it's a chance to, you know, see that the principles actually work. Rick Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton. I say it every week, Friday’s my favorite day of WallBuilders because I love hearing this good news. Sends me into the weekend. knowing that if we work hard and we do our duty, God will take care of the results. Don't always get the results we want guys, but you know, sometimes we get to see some of those, some of these victories right in front of us. So David, start us off, man. What's the first piece of good news you want to talk about today? 

David Barton [00:00:44] So every year we do the WallBuilders Legislators Conference and we have all these experts come in from across the country to address different topics and invariably we'll choose some of those programs and share them with folks because we think it's really good information to have. And I know that that you guys chose one of the ones I did this year and it was kind of the opening night that we did with the legislators and was talking about whether America's in a revival or not and what that means. And we kind of went through and looked at the stats and said yeah America's definitely in a revival but the problem with that is if you go back for the last 300 years, America's had eight historically recognized revivals and five of them did not change the nation. The first three did, the last five didn't. And it's because the first three were awakenings and the last were just revivals. And so revivals don't necessarily change things unless they get discipled. So, what happens is people think, oh, if we can get people to become Christian, come to Christ, it'll change everything. And that's not true. Because if you're not discipled and don't know God's word, it doesn't necessarily change behavior. So, I'm not gonna say that Biden's not a Christian. I'm gonna say Pelosi's not because they both claim they are. I'm going to say that if they are, they're not discipled because they don't do what's biblical. They don't follow what the Bible says. So, we're in this thing that if we can get people to say the sinner's prayer, it's gonna save America. And that's just absolutely not true. And so that was what we shared that opening night for the legislators is, look, we're at a great time of revival, unquestionably, what's what we're seeing across the nation. But if we don't change public policy to reflect that, that new heart, then it's not going to make any difference. And so one of the, one of the examples I gave was out of Matthew 19, where Jesus told His disciples, which means us, He said, you go and tell them everything I've told you. And the problem we have now is often that usually it's just something like the sinner's prayer. If we get you to say the sinner’s prayer, that's what Jesus wants. No, no, no. Look at what He said. He said, tell them everything I taught you. And so, one of the things I pointed to was Matthew 19, where then in 15 verses, Jesus says, okay, here is the definition of marriage. Here is the definition of genders, and you're not supposed to have no fault divorce. Now, those are three things Jesus taught in that one passage. And I pointed out at that time that, you know, here I am with all the white hair. I have not in my lifetime ever heard a sermon against no-fault divorce and yet Jesus gave one to His followers and said hey guys teach them everything I'm teaching you. So, Jesus made it really clear and at the time He said guys no fault divorce is out, they said yeah but Moses let us have no fault divorce in the Old Testament. He said yeah, but that was not what God wanted. Moses did that because the hardness of your heart but here's what God wanted. He said, let two be joined together and don't let them be put asunder. In other words, no divorce. And so Jesus made it really clear that even what Moses has said is not what God had wanted in that case on marriage. Well, since I said that, and that's only been a few weeks since we played that thing, there have been two really big national voices that have come out and said, hey, no fault divorce is not acceptable, according to the Bible. And by the way, all 50 states have it. We didn't have no fault divorce till 1968. Of all things, Ronald Reagan is the first governor to sign a no-fault divorce law, and he talked about how much he regretted that after he had done that years later, didn't recognize what it was gonna do to open the floodgates and destroying families. And so, all states have it now, and most recent generations, last three generations, have grown up knowing nothing but no-fault divorce. That's all that they've ever known in America. And so, Josh Howerton, who is a mega pastor with lots and lots of churches. Tim sent me a text and said, hey, look at this. Josh Howerton just covered no fault divorce. And then the other one that I recently came across was Andrew Wommack. And so, Andrew Wommack, another national Bible teacher, he put out a piece and I'm just going to read it because it's so good. And for people who haven't ever heard any teaching on this, he just did a great job. He says commandments lead to happiness. He quotes Matthew 5:32. He says, but I say to you that whoever shall put away his wife save for the cause of fornication, causes her to commit adultery and whoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery. That's Jesus talking. He's quoting Jesus’ teachings there and that's right before Jesus' sermon on the Mount. So, he continues, he says, God's commandments are not intended to make us miserable. They're meant for our own happiness. Satan's lie in the Garden of Eden caused Eve to question God's motives behind his commands. Genesis 3:5. Malachi 2:15 says God hates divorce. God doesn't hate the people who divorce. He hates the act of divorce because of the damage it does to people. God loves people. Today, people see divorce as an easy way out of marital problems. But this is based on the misconception that the mate is the problem, which is rarely the case. People who blame their mate for their problems give in easily divorce, thinking that a new partner will solve the situation. Yet second marriages have over twice the failure rate of first marriages. That's because we take ourselves and all of our unresolved problems into the next marriage with us. You can't control other people, not even your mate. But through obeying the Lord, you can control yourself and have fullness of joy. God's commands tell us what will produce true happiness for us. So that is such a great, simple presentation. And here we are twice in the last few months. We're hearing stuff. I've never heard in my life. I do think that's a tremendous sign that we may be getting into an awakening rather than a revival. 

Tim Barton [00:06:30] One of the things, too, that I would point out is, Josh Howerton did a beautiful job. And of course, Andrew Wommack would say the same thing. They both presented biblical truth, but as pastors. And as pastors, they said, look, if you've gone through these situations, right, there's forgiveness, there's redemption, et cetera, et cetera. And so, this is not coming from a place of condemnation, but it's laying out for people. Here's what the Bible says. God said things on purpose for a reason. He designed life to work a certain way. It's better when we do it His way. And so even as we say this, I want to be as clear as we can and represent the pastor's heart that shared this, and of course as believers we would want to represent the same thing, that we know the Bible tells us there's no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus. And so if people have done something that was biblically wrong, there is still forgiveness for some of those things, although Josh Howerton did point out that sometimes there's decisions need to be made after the fact to maybe redirect some of what we have done that was wrong to rectify some of those situations and so I would encourage people to go back and listen to his sermon on marriage. But all of this to say is what's great about this is they really presented the truth in love which is so much of what Jesus did. Jesus didn't sidestep the hard controversial issues or say well if it offends somebody, I'm not going to say it out loud because remember for those who have read the Gospels before. There were many times the disciples came to Him and they're like, Lord, that was a hard message, right? Or, Jesus, you're offending people. You're driving them away. That didn't stop Jesus from saying true things. And so, Dad, to your point, it's so encouraging that there are pastors now saying some of these hard truths out loud in an area where we have not seen this. And we actually talked earlier this week about a new study that came out. It showed that to this point since, for example, Charlie Kirk's assassination, there's not good indication that a Christian worldview is on the rise in America. And I would say, and we again, we talked about this, I would see, well, that's not overly concerning to me right now, because one of the things we can track is there are many pastors that very visibly have shifted toward discipleship, but it takes several years of discipleship before you really start to see things through a biblical lens. And so, I would say right now, it's not discouraging that more of America doesn't have a biblical worldview. It's actually encouraging that we now have pastors teaching things that will lead to more Americans having a biblical world view and going that right direction. So, Dad, again, echoing some of those thoughts, I definitely think it's indicative that we are in another great awakening. 

Rick Green [00:09:21] And appropriate timing that we've got a movie coming out next month, A Great Awakening about George Whitfield and some great scenes from the Constitutional Convention. They did a phenomenal job and we're going to have the producer and writer of that movie with us next week to talk about the movie before it comes out. So yeah, man, revival, awakening. And again, just to drive it home, David, what you said, the difference discipleship, discipleship, discipleship. We got to get it done. So I think there's more and more, I think y'all are right, more and more pastors are awakening to that need to disciple. And there's lots of great tools out there to disciple, so folks go to wallbuilders.com, get you a copy of Biblical Citizenship in Modern America, open up that class in your church and start discipling on this issue of how to be a good citizen. All right, Tim, first piece of good news from you today. 

Tim Barton [00:10:08] All right, guys, this one is coming from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. And the headline says, Hegseth put the Boy Scouts on notice. And already, I have a problem with this title of the article because there are no Boy Scouts anymore. They are the Scouts of America. Why? Because they're no longer for boys. So not to digress against the Boy Scouts, that's probably going to come in a minute. But there's a six-minute history lesson on the Boy Scouts, the decline that the Secretary of War has covered. And part of Hegseth going through this, he actually goes through it in 2012, or after 2012, the Boy Scouts lost their way. Once a great organization became gravely wounded, DEI crept in, the name was changed to Scouting America, girls were accepted, the focus on God as the Ruler of the Universe was watered down to include openness to humanism and Earth-centered pagan religions. Now, let's remember, this is the Secretary Of War calling out who used to be the Boy Scouts now Scouting America for getting away from God, to going toward DEI, to changing from boys to now girls, but also then the gender fluidness, etc. And which is his next line, he says they even welcome the destructive myth of gender fluidity and transgenderism, continuing he says, along the way standards were lowered and merit destroyed in favor of an insidious, radical, woke ideology that is anti-America and anti-American, the result, membership craters. So, he's identifying, they've had so many issues and they, instead of correcting course, they have gone harder in the crazy direction and Hegseth met with them. Because it used to be that there was some level of alliance between our military service, if you had gone through Boy Scouts and you were an Eagle Scout or had so many badges whatever it was there was was some benefit that you could get in service and so much has changed. So, Hegseth said that he met with them and he said Scouting America agreed to make several key reforms He said let me briefly highlight a few of them. And I'm just gonna go high level. He said first they agreed to comply immediately with the provisions of executive order from the President, that includes reviewing and replacing anything DEI related. So, he says no more DEI, zero. Secondly, the citizen and society merit badge that encourages people to explore diversity, equity, inclusion, and identity, which he points out is just the mask of wokeness, he says that's been discontinued. Thirdly, Scouting America will modify its policy to make clear that membership will be based solely on biological sex at birth not gender identity. What does that mean? He points out it means on the application there's only two designations: male and female. No more of the other or the list of whatever fluidity examples they come up with. Fourth, Scouting America will honor those who serve by waiving the registration fee of active duty, guard and reserve families. Meaning that if somebody's in the service and their kids want to be part of the Scouts, we're not charging service members to be part of Scouting America. And fifth, in partnership with the War Department, Scouting American will introduce a new military service merit badge. So many positive things that are coming. And guys, sometimes we talk about that culture is downstream of politics, or politics are downstream of culture, and it can go back and forth. And some people think that, no, it's only one direction. Well, really, I think it's a two-lane highway that we're navigating, but to see people in these high-level government positions like the Secretary of War, when he is calling out the formerly Boy Scouts of America now Scouting America for some of their wokeness they've embraced, and really told them you're gonna lose any kind of government connectivity, military connectivity if you keep going this way. And they didn't want to do that. To see the government actually encouraging people to go back to more traditional foundational positions, it is so encouraging. And again, coming from the Secretary of War, who... in the midst of all that's going on in the world right now, in Iran in so many other things, it's easy to go, you know, he's probably got a lot more important things to do on his plate. And yet, in the midst of all he is doing, this was the end of February. So, we're talking, this was just a week or two ago that this came up, he is prioritizing things that are not just pressing in the moment, but recognizing the value of the future of training the rising generation in more of these traditional values. This is so encouraging. And makes me like Pete Hegseth a little bit more, which I wasn't sure was even possible. 

Rick Green [00:15:03] Yeah, can you even add to that? Here's a guy that we already respected greatly before he even served as Secretary of War, but even now just continues to get better. Hey guys, quick break. We've got more good news coming folks. Stay with us. You're listening to The WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:16:23] Welcome back to The WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us on this Good News Friday. Diving back in with David for his next piece of good news. 

David Barton [00:16:29] This one deals with Marco Rubio. Of course, he's been all over the world dealing with all kinds of issues. And this one, he was delivering a speech in Europe and he got, as the article says, he received sustained applause Saturday after his speech at a major European security conference in which he praised Christianity as a central part of Western identity and urged tighter border controls. Now, to have a European conference of European leaders, give an ovation like that, serious applause for we're Christian and we are tighter border controls. I haven't heard that coming out of Europe in a long, long time. And so, Marco went through and said, look guys, this multilateral stuff we've been doing, trying to get all the nations together to put pressure on. He said, that's not working. Look how it did not work in Gaza. It did not work in Ukraine. It did work in Venezuela. We had to take definite actions. We couldn't just sit around and have a conference and talk about it, how can we get the stop? He said, we had to take action. And he went on to say that the United States and Europe are part of a single civilizational block linked by shared history, language, and Christian faith. He said for the United States and Europe, we belong together. America was founded 250 years ago, but the roots here began on this continent in Europe long before. The men who settled and built the nation of my birth, America, arrived on our shores carrying the memories and the traditions of the Christian faith and their ancestors as a shared inheritance. An unbreakable link between the old and new world. We are part of one civilization, Western civilization. We're bound to one another by the deepest bonds that our nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have now fallen heir. So, I love the fact that he's calling Europe back to their roots. We've seen the DEI stuff spread across European leaders like crazy. The multilateral stuff that let's be a one global world, the World Economic Forum, so many things. It is so good to see European leaders saying, hey, we kind of lost our way and, and cheering him for recognizing the roots of their identity, which is the Christian faith and Western civilization, great stuff, Marco. 

Rick Green [00:18:48] All right. So, are we allowed to give any good news? That's not from the Trump administration today. I don't know. We got, so we got Hegseth. We got Rubio. Let's see, Tim. I don't know. Maybe Brooke Rollins. We haven't talked about Brooke Rollin's in a long time. How they do it over at the Department of Ag? No, I'm kidding, man. What is your piece of good news. 

Tim Barton [00:19:06] Well, and we did start with some pastors actually teaching more things from the Bible. 

Rick Green [00:19:10] That's right.  

Tim Barton [00:19:12] So lots of great connection. This one is actually from Vermont. Which I'm pretty sure I have not talked about since maybe White Christmas Where they went to Vermont for some snow.

Rick Green [00:19:24] Have we ever talked about Vermont on WallBuilders? I had 20 years to do it, I don't remember Vermont.... 

Tim Barton [00:19:28] Maybe the green mountain boys maybe, you know somebody America Revolution ish.... 

Rick Green [00:19:35] Is that a city...Vermont? Is that a city or is that yeah, I'm sorry. Go ahead. That's rude. I Shouldn't be like this 

Tim Barton [00:19:41] The good news is coming because some of the craziness in Vermont was stopped. So, our friends over at Alliance Defending Freedom, they represented some foster families in Vermont because Vermont officials had come up with a policy. And the policy was that you can't foster kids in Vermont if you are not going to support them wanting to change their gender. And identify as something different, and maybe even support that from a medical standpoint. You're not fit to foster children if you don't support their delusion, was the position from these Vermont officials. Alliance Defending Freedom got involved, and specifically there were two families. They appealed a lower court ruling, which again, the craziness on some of this, when you have lower courts with these judges, sometimes in states, depending on the level of judge, whether they're elected, they're appointed, et cetera. But having judges that go, oh, yeah, that makes sense. You shouldn't be allowed to parent kids unless you support the delusion of a boy thinking he's a girl, girl thinking boy. If you don't support maybe some of the gender and medical intervention, the castrations, et cetera, if you don't support that, you're not fit to foster kids in this state. Just crazy for lots of reasons. Well, lower courts had upheld that. And so, when... Alliance Defending Freedom gets involved, that actually goes to the second court of appeals. And that's where they were able to speak up and say, look, this violates their First Amendment protected religious beliefs. And it's also guys a little crazy to me that they had to argue this case from a religious belief, which certainly is true. I mean, fundamentally we believe that there's only male and female because that's what the Bible tells us. But even if there wasn't the Bible, the laws of nature tell us there's male and female. Science, biology tells us there is male and female. So, it's crazy that they had to appeal this on their religious belief only. But the great news is that they did get a win in this. And so, part of what also they pointed out is that Vermont is desperate for finding foster families to watch kids. And so, the fact that you're going to exclude these families because. They have a clearly held religious belief that God made people male and female, and therefore they're not fit to foster these kids who don't have a parent. That's crazy. So, they did get this win, which is the great news. So, kudos to those two families. It's crazy that it had to go this far. But again, it does indicate as we are in the middle of a midterm primary season all over the nation. It does make a difference that we get involved because elections have consequences and when you elect crazy people you get crazy policies coming from them. And fortunately, we have a constitution that is built on protecting our God-given and inalienable rights, which is wonderful, but we need better people in office so we get better policies. So, make sure you are involved in primary season. But this is a great win coming against officials from Vermont. 

Rick Green [00:22:50] I face a dilemma here with about four minutes left in our program. Does David get the last word and therefore get an extra piece of good news or does he do a fast one and we toss back to Tim for a fast when we'll see what happens. David, what's the next piece of Good News? 

David Barton [00:23:03] This is a piece of good news in the sense that the stats now show that last year nearly a million American kids no longer attend public schools, they're going to private schools other things. So, the good news is that's another million kids that are not in the secular indoctrination system of all the DEI craziness stuff. 

Tim Barton [00:23:26] And dad you're saying an additional million to the ones that are already homeschooling or Christian schools, whatever else. So a additional million has now joined, which means the number's not a million. The number's far higher than a million, but a million new students have now left public schools to join the homeschool, Christian school, whatever other kind of options there might be, but they've left the public-school institution. That is great news! 

David Barton [00:23:47] So I could stop there and let Tim have the last piece of good news, but I'm not going to. I'm going to throw in something. This is not good news. This is one where I scratch my head and say, I don't think I understand here, except it just confirms how, I dunno, illogical, stupid. How many adjectives, adverbs can I use to describe the craziness in that system? Take this. So, here's an example. Los Angeles, they have declined 26% enrollment in Los Angeles. So, there's a crazy town and public-school enrollment down 26%. Now, you ready for this one? They increase staff by 19%. How do you drop the clientele and increase the staff? And that's what this report has is nearly a million kids have left the system. And 700,000 new personnel have been hired in the system. So, we got a shrinking system, so we're gonna make it bigger government. It's crazy. 

Tim Barton [00:24:53] Well, that's why we need to raise taxes, because we have to pay for more people that now are there. And obviously, they're going to have retirement. And we got to give raises, because they don't get paid enough. Forget the fact, Dad, as you’re kind of addressing. The ratio is ridiculous. And the ratio of people that are on staff, as compared to how many students are there, and when people talk about the challenge of education, and specifically in these public schools, in looking at some of the teacher ratio where it's sometimes one teacher to 20 or 30 kids in a class, which is a high ratio, and yet if you look at the admin office and recognize in many school districts there's more people that work in the admin Office than work actually in classrooms. The ratio could be far better if we stopped hiring the wrong people aka more admin offices which make higher salaries and take more tax dollars, etc. But, government doesn't have to make sense. They just want us to pay them 

David Barton [00:25:44] And going to your point, Tim, the article points out that most states raise their money for schools through property taxes. And so, while the enrollment is going down, they're having more expenses because they're hiring more staff, which means taxes will go up. So, hey, citizens, this is something you can do about this in local areas. You need to take care of this with some different leaders, different educational heads in these districts. 

Rick Green [00:26:09] I just had this image in my head of, you know, all these kids are leaving the public school and going to get a better education somewhere. So, all these new hires are actually adults and they're putting them in those little desks in the, in the... they just want to fill their classroom. I don't know why I pictured that in my mind. They're putting all these extra staff people in the student’s chairs. All right, folks, lots of good news for you today, but not enough. So, there's more at our website, wallbuilders.show, wallbuilders.show. You can scroll back through some of those previous Friday programs and of course we'll have more for you next week as well. Don't miss the interviews on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then we'll have Foundations of Freedom Thursday for you next Thursday and more good news on Friday. Have a great weekend. You've been listening to the WallBuilders Show.