Conference Call with David Barton
On Monday, we had a conference call with David Barton. David Barton is the Founder and President of WallBuilders (a national pro-family organization that presents America's forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on our moral, religious and constitutional heritage).
We discussed the significant role women can play in elections and impacting the nation and had some time for questions. The call was so amazing that we wanted to share it.
Cindy: We have on the line with us David Barton. We thank You, Father, in the name of Jesus Lord for what You're doing with David. Just for those who may not be as familiar with the ministry of David Barton and WallBuilders, let me read just a little bit of his bio to you. He is the founder and president of WallBuilders, a national pro-family organization that presents America's forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on moral, religious and constitutional heritage.
David's the author of numerous best-selling books with the subjects being drawn largely from his massive library of tens of thousands of original writings from the Founding Era. He also addresses well over 400 groups each year, and I have been, Mike and I has been in that library, and I tell you it is quite impressive. His research has rendered him an expert in historical and constitutional issues and he has been called and I had concurred with this, by national news organization, American Historian. He is one of the most careful researchers, historical researcher, at least that I know in my experience. TIME Magazine calls him "a hero to millions," including some powerful politicians. In fact, TIME Magazine named him as one of America's 25 most influential evangelicals.
We want to just welcome you, David, and to share whatever is on your heart and if you would, please mute your phone. We're getting some feedback and a lot of noise on the line. If you could mute it, and Tina, maybe you could tell him how to do that. You could just mute your phone like you would normally, if you have a Mute button on your cellphone, just hit that.
All right, thank you. Well, David, thanks for doing this.
David: It's my pleasure, Cindy, thanks for having me on the Speaker Night. I'm going to hit some things that I kind of find across the country, and certainly in the travels that I have there's some recurring things that come up, and one is among Christians particularly looking at this election. There's a lot of dissatisfaction with a lot of folks on where they think election is going, and so there is a verbally expressed, a lot of intent by many folks to sit this one out. They just don't want to be part of this. They can't be part of both, neither for Trump or for Hillary, either one. Christians are ... [inaudible 00:02:43]. In looking at those qualities [inaudible 00:02:45], let me first off start by hitting a couple of things that will set the tone, because if you've got Christian friends or others or even if you're in that campus saying, "Well, I don't know that I'm going to do anything this election."
Let me hit something right off. I've got a very good Jewish rabbi, my rabbi is great, I really appreciate him. He has done so much to help save my worldview of so many areas, and Daniel Lapin is my rabbi, and Daniel pointed out to me something one time that was really kind of revolutionary for me. He said, "Now you understand that the first time God spoke to mankind He spoke in Hebrew. When He addressed Adam He was speaking in Hebrew. That was the language that God chose."
As he points out that that's the language that God chose, of course everything in that language means something. As you look over the children born to Rachel and Leah. What were they named? "This child is sorrow, so we'll name him sorrow, and this child is happiness, so we'll name ..." Whatever was going on, the names they give to kids were specifically related to what was going on at the time. Everything means something, it's not like we've got words today like George or Fred or others that we've come up with an Anglo-Saxon English language. Everything in Hebrew means something.
After he told me that he said, "Now," he said, "Do you know what word you cannot say in Hebrew at all?" I thought and say, "I don't have a clue." He said, "You cannot say the word coincidence in Hebrew because it never crossed God's mind that something was a coincidence." In other words, God never looked up and say, "Wow, I didn't see that one coming. That's a real surprise." There is no coincidence in God speaking, it's all ordained, planned by Him. You cannot say the word coincidence which is a ... that's a powerful way of thinking about what goes on around as people say, "Well, you were really lucky. Wow, we're you fortunate." No, blessed, or God blessed over something else.
I pursued that with Daniel, I said, "Rabbi, well, what else can you not say in Hebrew?" He said, "Well, you can't say the word retirement in Hebrew, it doesn't exist." It never crossed God's mind that there would be a time when we wouldn't be productive and we'd just sit back and there is that account and look where the guy said, "Man, I've got it all laid up, now I can sit back and have some rest finally." That's when the Lord said, "You fool, that's not your soul's required of it, you're not going to be productive. Let's get you out of there." You can't say the word retirement.
You also cannot say the word fair, because God's not really particularly concerned with what's fair and what's not fair, it's what works His plan. We would definitely say that what happened to Jesus was not fair, we'd say what happened to Joseph wasn't fair, what happened to Job wasn't fair, but that wasn't the point. It had nothing to do with fairness. That's a word that we as Christians shouldn't use, it never came out of God's mouth, but the other one that really is striking to me is the word rights.
You cannot say the word rights in Hebrew. What you can say is responsibilities, but you can't say the word rights because rights makes it all about you, responsibility is about what you're to do for others. With that framework here we are in America, one of the most selfish countries in the world, we are exactly where God told His people they would be after they got to the Promised Land, "You guys, are going to forget how this came about. Your blessing will be your curse. You're going to start you did this for yourself." God told the people what would happen when they got really prosperous.
Where we are now in America ... I do a lot of work with George Barna, who's a national pollster, and we really have become an entitlement society, we feel that certain things are owed to us. There's a whole mentality shift that we can show on polling over recent years, including among Christians that has become about, "What is good for me?" We even get people saved now by saying what God will do for them if they'll accept God. We used to say, "Hey, God is your creator. He is your maker. You need to get right with Him." Now we give them incentives to get saved, "If you do this God will bring you peace, and He'll bless you and pros ..." Our whole mentality shifted to an entitlement, which therefore we look at our voting as a right and we hear that we have a right to vote, and the first thing we should do is get that out of our mind.
We don't have a right to vote. We have a duty and a responsibility to vote. It's not optional for us as Christians whether we're going to sit this one out or not, that's not what we have a choice with. If you remember Luke 25, excuse me, Luke 19 and Matthew 25, the master called all the servants together and said, "Here, I'm giving you this trust. You take care of this 'til I get back." When he got back to his one guy who had not used it all what the master had given him and he's the guy that got in trouble. He had excuses. He said, "You know, you never were really fair," and he had all these reasons and the master didn't buy any of them.
That's the way we should see our vote, is the Lord gave each of us a vote said, "You take care of this vote 'til I get back. I want to see what you did with this vote." If He comes back and say, "What did you do with that vote I gave you in 2016?" "well, I decided not to use it." That's not the acceptable answer. We should first get out of our minds that we have any right to vote. We don't have a right to vote. We have a duty to vote. We have a responsibility to vote and we should tell our friends, "You don't have a choice. You will vote."
Once you get that set in your mind then the question becomes, "Now, how do we make the decision?" This is where, then it becomes difficult for Christians to make a decision because, again, going back to polling, right now only 9% of Christians read the Bible on a daily basis, and only about 5% of Christians have ever read the Bible from cover to cover. We're talking only 1 out of 20 Christians actually has read the Bible to see what's inside it.
As we go into elections as Christians we often get pulled off on the side, because every presidential election I've been involved with there have been anywhere from 30 to 40 different issues, and you check the website of the two leading presidential candidates now, yes, there are third parties out there. They are usually anywhere from 15 to 17 presidential candidates on the ballot, there's a lot of other choices, but invariably it's going to come down to one of the two big choices. It's going to be one of those two.
If you check their website you're going to find 30 to 40 different issues that they address in their website. Christians say, "Well, you know, I'm really concerned about, whatever it ... immigration or climate or military or whatever," and that's all fine but that doesn't mean that's the same thing God's concerned about just because we are. What really helps at this point, and let me draw some guidelines at that we can share with our friends, is what matters most in any election is that righteousness exalts a nation. That's the one thing we're told out of Proverbs 14:34, God will bless the nation based on the righteousness of the nation.
Now notice that's not the leaders of the nation, because you can have a really good leader like David with a heart after God, who makes a really bad policy like when he numbered the people. He said, "You know, I've won so many battles I'm sure it's because I've got such a great army count. Count the size of my army." Joab said, "David don't do that. It comes from God." David made him, "Go ahead and count the army." That was a wicked policy and as a result a plague came on the nation. Well, David's a righteous leader, yeah, but the policy was not righteous. You have Hezekiah who is a righteous king, God speaks highly of him and yet he gave away state secrets to the Assyrians, brought them in to see what we had, God brought a judgment on the nation under that righteous leader. It's not about how righteous or unrighteous your leader is, it's about the type of policies you'll get.
When God is trying to restore the nation under the prophet Isaiah, he tells Isaiah in chapter 1 He said, "I will bring this nation back to Me," which is great because Manasseh's a king under Isaiah. That's the most wicked king in Judas' history and God said, "I'm going to bring the nation back," and He says, "Here's how I'll do it." Isaiah 1:26 He said, "I'll give you judges, as at the beginning and lawyers as at the first, and then you'll be called the City of Righteousness, the Faithful City."
God says the righteousness of this is based on the type of judges you have and if you look at where America is right now, every single thing we fight in the cultural war came out of the court, came out of the courthouses long before it came out of the legislatures. Courthouses are the ones who did the same-sex marriage. They're the ones who are doing the transgender. They're the ones who did the law, all the abortion stuff. They're the ones who are saying, "You don't have a right of conscience." All these battles came out.
The first question we ought to be asking as Christians is, if we want righteousness to exalt a nation we don't really care who the candidate is, I care what kind of judges I'm going to get from that candidate. Am I going to get pro-life judges who respect the life that God gives? Am I going to get judges who respect the rights of religious conscience and think that God should be acknowledged in public? Those are all questions to asks and that's one of the first things you ask.
The second thing you ask is based from one of the very first covenants that God made and is back in Genesis 12. In Genesis 12 He says to Abraham or to Abram at that point, He says, "Here's the deal. I'm going to make a great nation out of you, and whoever bless will be blessed, whoever curse will be cursed. I'm going to make a nation and however anybody else treats that nation is how I'm going to treat them." He stakes out a claim for His nation of Israel very early on, that's a covenant, He made that with Abram very early. Then He tells us in Psalm 105 that He keeps His covenants for a thousand generations. We're only about 200 generations into that covenant since Abram, we got a long way to go. We're about a fourth of the way through what He promised to keep in that covenant. How we treat Israel becomes a very, very, very big deal.
Now our political parties in America [inaudible 00:12:11] constituents, she's well enough to know that it's really stupid to say something bad about Israel. If you check into the Democratic or Republican platform they both say very nice things about Israel. The next thing you say is, "Okay, but here is the deal, back in Genesis 12:3, do you help Israel's enemies? You maybe saying great things about Israel, but do you help ... What are you doing with Iran, and what are you doing with the Palestinians who have pledged to destroy Israel? Are you helping the Pales ... Are you asking for Israel to give up some of the land that God promised them?" That's where you get specific in this election, because everybody's smart enough to give lip service to Israel, but the question then becomes, "What are your policies with Israel's enemies?" Because if you're helping Israel's enemies God's not going to bless you. It's just real simple and that's biblical.
Then the next three things I will give you real quickly in order, I'll remind you that when God got His people out in the middle of the desert He said, "Okay, now I need to make a nation. Now you've all been slaves, you don't have a clue how a nation's supposed to run so let me help you." He gave them 613 laws and they deal with every single thing we deal with today. It deals with military and education. It deals with taxation and immigration. It deals with everything you can think of, judiciary, juvenile justice, restitution, you name it, 613 laws is everything you need to build a nation.
Then when He got done He said, "Now, by the way, here's my Top 10," we call them the 10 Commandments. In Exodus 23 He says, "This is the tenor of My teachings." This 10 right here, this is the heart and soul and the guts of what constitutes our nation. If you look at those 10 there's 3 of them that are very active in this election.
One is the first command, "I'm the Lord, thy God." Well, that's public religious acknowledgement. Will you acknowledge God or do you think a kid should not say God at graduation? Do you think there shouldn't be prayer at a high school football game? By the way, religious acknowledgment also includes the right of conscience. Do you think that a baker or a florist or a photographer should be forced to participate in a homosexual wedding? Because that's all part of the first command, that's all part of acknowledging God as Lord. Public religious acknowledgements, rights of conscience, that's a big deal and there's a vast difference between the candidates on that. You're looking to say, "God's concerned that we'd be able to acknowledge Him and follow the rights of conscience."
Another one I'll point to, the last two I'll point to, very simple stuff, one says, "Thou shall not commit adultery." What's that? God says, "Here is the deal. I want sexuality confined to a man and a woman in a life-long union. That's it, anything outside of that is a bad deal." It doesn't matter whether there's sex before marriage or sex outside of marriage, what we call adultery, it doesn't matter whether it was homosexual sex. Anything outside of a man and a woman's life-long union, God said that's a bad deal. Where do the candidates stand on what we call natural marriage, marriage between a man and a woman as opposed to other combinations? That's a big ... That's in God's Top 10.
The last one is "Thou shall not kill." In Hebrew kill means shed innocent blood. We know throughout the Bible whenever you shed innocent blood there's a curse that comes on the land, well, that's abortion. Real simple is one of His Top 10 issues is don't shed innocent blood or don't get involved in abortions. Where do the candidates stand on that?
If I look at judges on Israel, if I look at religious conscience protection, if I look at definitions of marriage, and if I look at where we are in life, those are the Top 5 issues God raises for righteousness in land regardless of who your rulers are. If you choose the right rulers you get that and then you get blessed, and as we go into the election it really doesn't matter what the name of the candidate is, it matters what policies will they give me on those five issues. By the way, if immigration is your hot button, great, but it's got to be number six on the list. Your can't just ... You [inaudible 00:15:48] what God's given us as top issues.
After you get through to the number five then you can look at immigration or then you can look at [inaudible 00:15:54] restoration, then you can look at debt or then you can look at whatever you want to, but those Top 5 issues, and we've got to get that out to our folks to understand there is a prioritization of issues. Don't worry about their websites, so they have 30 to 40, here is the ones God's concerned about, and by the way, you don't have a choice whether you're going to vote this election. You will vote.
38 million Born Again Christians did not vote last election, 38 million, with 5 million of them showing up we would have a different Supreme Court. We would have a different definition of marriage. We would have a different issue of moving with conscience. Hobby Lobby would not be an issue, Little Sisters of the Poor would not be, if 5 million of those 38 million has showed up and voted biblically last time there would not be any kind of contest going, but because they didn't we're looking at even more of them saying, "Well, I'm not going to vote this time for sure." That's a good way to hand a nation a way, in a way that God can always bring it back, but we just may have to go to a few more spankings before we get back if we keep handing it away.
That's what I thought to share with you right upfront, is kind of an overview perspective on the election. What I'm hearing from Christians, probably more than I've ever heard people saying they won't vote, they not going to be part of this election. They can't make a choice between Hillary and Trump, they're both unacceptable. That's not the issue. The issue is what are the issues each of them represent, and there is a very clear difference and Christians need to decide which one they should go with. That's up to them deciding, but those are the five issues they should look at.
Cindy: Thank you so much, David. That is just incredibly well said as always. I think that every believer in America needs to hear that succinct message that David Barton just gave us. We're going to open to some questions and answers, some Q and A. For Tina, will you fill that for us?
Tina: If you would like to ask questions at this time just hit star 6 on your key, you'll be entered into the queue and I will notify you once I have that and we have opened up your line. If anyone has questions, now is the time to hit star 6 on your phone. Does anyone have questions?
David: Wow, I make it all sound easy. Nothing to dodge or anything, wow.
Speaker 4: I guess it doesn't want me to ask it and this is [inaudible 00:19:28], so I apologize David. I was listening while I was doing a couple of things, I wrote down the five top issues, judges, Israel, marriage, abortion, and what was the other one?
David: Judges, Israel, marriage, abortion, and excuse me, and life.
Speaker 4: I appreciate that. You made it so clear.
David: Good.
Speaker 5: Hi.
Tina: Okay, go ahead and ask your question.
Speaker 5: David, what was ... What kind of response can we give to people who would say that a candidate's language and the words he uses and maybe the judgments he makes are ungodly or not holy or, what kind of a response can we give to someone who told us that?
David: Well, as long as they're looking for excuses you're not going to be able to give them adequate response no matter what you say. I can easily say, "Well, what are you going to do with someone like Cyrus who has had a pagan empire?" Not a God-guy at all and yet God used him to do really good things for the nation of Israel, and you had Nebuchadnezzar, who's the head of the Babylonian empire. Now that's antithetical to everything that Israel stands for, I mean that's Israel's sworn enemy and they have Israel in bondage and yet God says, "My servant, Nebuchadnezzar," and you have Darius and you have, and quite frankly I kid about this, only half kidding, I've been involved in politics for a long time, helped with a whole lot of campaigns. I was involved in one of the presidential campaigns for this year. My candidate didn't make it, but nonetheless I'm still involved.
I can easily point out that if I were running the opposition race to nearly anybody listed in Hebrews 11, Hebrews 11 is our Faith Hall of Fame, God put them there because they were special, there are heroes He looked ... He hold them up for us to look up to. If I'm running a race against any of them, I can show you why Christians should never vote for them. I can choose David and say, "You know David could not keep his kid under control. What happened with Adonijah and Absalom was unaccep ... and then he goes and sleeps with Bathsheba and then he murders Uriah. You want that for a national leader? Are you kidding me?
You can't have Lot. I know God calls him righteous, Lot [inaudible 00:22:13], but you do realize Lot slept with his daughter. You can't have a guy like, and oh my gosh, there's no way you can have Gideon because his kids all turned to idolatry. Gideon even created idols after God had used him to deliver him from the enemy, and there's no way for Noah, because if you remember when Noah got off the ark he had a problem with drunkenness. He got drunk and of course that led to what happened with his three kids.
I can take anybody that God elevates and show you why as a Christian we should not support them. We're back to the thing of, "You know what, quit making excuses. You've got a vote, go use it this time. You don't get a choice to decide whether you're going to use it or not. You only have a choice to decide who you're going yo use it for." That mentality is out there, people are always looking for a reason to not be engaged, because it then releases them from accountability.
I'll just point out, God doesn't always think the way we do. The leaders He chooses, the people He calls His servants are all the people that would not fit our paradigm, not by a long shot. But I will point out, I have no clue what's in store for America, but I guarantee you, God knows what we're going to need 6 months from now, 23 months from now, 47 months from now, and it maybe somebody that none of us, and maybe somebody that if we Christian had picked and gotten our hearts desire would not have been confident for what's coming.
Because I have to believe that with the highest recorded turn out, and particularly in primaries and as many evangelicals has voted, that not all of them missed hearing from God. They chose people that we would probably not choose as our first choice. It doesn't matter, God's people showed up and voted in record amounts in this election, and I got to believe that God used them to guide us to what we have as our final two choices now, or their 17 choices, but again, there's only two that's going to walk away with this thing. The best thing I can say is say, "Get on board. You're going to vote. Now figure out who you're going to vote for and quit looking for excuses."
Speaker 5: That's a great response.
Cindy: That's amazing.
Speaker 5: That's very good.
Tina: Thank you, caller. Our next question is from a phone number ending in 6000, 6-0-0-0. Go ahead and ask your question.
Speaker 6: Hi, thank you, David. I really appreciate your time. I have a question about pastors. During the foundation of our nation, as you know the pulpits were on fire, and I'm not hearing pastors saying very much, including mine. I have written a letter to them to encourage them to say something, but what can we do to get our pastors speaking to their congregations about this election?
David: If I could come up with an answer to that I could make people like Michael Dell and Bill Gates and others look like they were in poverty. If I could come up with an answer to that question. Let me kind of backup, one of the things that United Purpose does, and I'm on the board of United Purpose, and George Barna's on the board, is part of that organization, we call between 500 and 600 churches every single day. We're talking ... There's 370,000 churches in America, 500 to 600 a day, we're going to be calling for a long time, but it's enough to give us a snap shot of what the church is thinking and how it thinks. Within that framework of the church itself what we find is only 28% of churches actually believe the Bible. We're looking at 72% of Christian churches who openly acknowledge, "Hmm, we don't believe the Bible. We don't use it. We don't think it applies."
Now out of the 28% that are Bible-believing, we go to them and one of the polls that got released about three weeks ago, it's a result of a brand new research on this. We go to them and say, "Here is about two dozen issues. Do you think the Bible addresses these issues? Do you think the Bible addresses marriage or immigration or economics? Does the Bible address education? Does the Bible address the military?" We went through about 20 issues that are at stake in this election, and of those 28% of churches and pastors that say we believe the Bible, you have between 91% and 97% of those churches that the pastor said, "Yeah, I do believe the Bible speaks of those issues, whether it's immigration or economics." Between 91% and 97% of those pastors that believe the Bible addresses that, the question to then ask, "Will you address any of those issues in this election?" 90% of pastors said, "Absolutely not."
They say, "We think the Bible addresses it, but we're not about to touch it." "Now wait, wo-wo-wo-wo, you believe the Bible, but you're not going to talk about it." What you're looking at, [inaudible 00:27:15] the mapping on this, 28% of the church believes the Bible or 28% of churches believe the Bible, of that 90% of those say they will not talk about it related to the election. You're only looking at about 2.8% of American pastors who are willing to talk about what the Bible talks about in regard to this election.
We're looking at a big uphill pull. It's not that our guys are just, you know, how to get them motivated. It's how to do you get 97% of the motivated and we're talking about 90% of those who believe the Bible and that's part of the difficulty. I don't know that there's a good answer to that. One of the other surveys that we did a little earlier was, "What do God's people want to hear?" Out of those 28% of churches, church people that believe the Bible, we went to them and said, "What is it that you need to be equipped from? What do you need to hear out of the pulpit? What is it you think is crucial for you to hear so that you can be equipped to be salt and light? What does the pulpit need to talk about?"
In looking at that, what we found was that, and probably being congregations in churches, what you have is, there were 14 issues were that at least 70% of those in the church said, "Here is what I need to be trained on at the pulpit." Let me just quickly tell you what the people want.
91% of church-going people said, "I need to be trained on the issue of abortion. That's the beginning of life, right to life, contraception, unwed mothers." Number 2 on the list, 86% said, "I need my church to tell me about religious persecution, liberty, what's the government's duty, what's my duty, what's the church's duty, what are conditions in the world, how are Christians fairing." Number 3, 85% said, "Teach me about poverty. I want to know what the government's role is. I want to know what the church's role is. I want to know what my role is. I don't understand how all these lives ..." I can go through the other topics, number 4 on the list was cultural restoration, number 5 was sexual identity, LGBT issues. Number 6 was Israel, Israel and the world. Number 7 was Christian heritage in the United States. Number 8 was the proper role of government. Number 9 was [inaudible 00:29:29] ethics issue, 10, I mean ... these are what people are begging to hear out of the pulpit.
You have 70% or more of churchgoers saying, "Please, talk to me about this," and you have 90% of the pastors saying, "No way." Now I'll remind you in John 21 Jesus told us, His apostles, "Feed my sheep," and the sheep are crying for food and we're saying, "No, we hop you starve, but we're not going to give you that food." I don't have a good answer and that's why what we're doing in this election, what I'm doing with our group National Black Robe Regiment, what I'm doing with other groups, is I'm just kind of going around the pastors, because they've decided they don't want to be leaders now. But 2.8% or more, and we got probably 10,000 that have backbones as strong as Elijah had, but that leaves us about 360,000 that don't.
I'm going straight to Christian believers and saying, "Here's what the Bible says. Here's what you need to know. Here's what you have to do. Here's your responsibility." I'm just not working through the pastors very much this year because they refused to get onboard with what they know the Bible talks about. I don't mean to be the bearer of bad news on that, but that's literally what we're having to do, is just go around the churches pretty much.
Cindy: David, would you tell them, please, about the Black Robe Regiment, a snap shot of that. They might not know what it is.
David: Black Robe Regiment comes from a praise that the British gave the American pastors back in the American Revolution, and pastors back then, whether you were black or white, Catholic or Protestant, you wore a black robe, you wore clerical robes. The British complained, they said, "If it hadn't been for that black robe regiment of pastors, America would still be a happy, British colony." They blamed everything on the pastors and that's why when the British came to America they went across New York burning churches. They went across Maine burning churches, Virginia, New Jersey, because it was the pastors. When they found pastors and made them prisoners of war, that was nearly always a death sentence. They didn't come out of POW camps.
It was the highest [inaudible 00:31:33] rate of any group in the United States at that time. The pastors would get out and lead their congregation to defend the town, militarily if they needed to. They would be the first ones to run for office, get elected to make sure that the laws reflected good values that they needed to. They were the ones who started the schools and universities, I think by 1880. 91% of all universities in United States were run by a clergyman, by a pastor.
I mean we were involved in everything, and now we try to get guys out from behind the two square feet behind the pulpit, they're not moving. What we've done is start a new Black Robe Regiment saying, "All right, we need guys of leadership, who have a backbone, who are willing to speak even if they offend people," if it's what God tells them to say they should say that. Jesus offended everybody all the time, that's why He got crucified because He made everybody mad, but He told the truth. Guys like that, and we do have a good group, there's about 70,000 pastors on our list, probably about 10,000 of them are guys that we would consider to be guys with backbone and courage and integrity, who will preach God's word uncompromisingly and will apply it to what's going on.
By the way, we just talked to one of those pastors recently and he has now once a month, actually going into the pulpit once a month wearing a black robe to remind him and everybody else that, "I'm showing leadership," and all he'll talk about on that Sunday are issues that are in the news. He's been a pastor 20 something years and he said in the last two services where he's done that, the last two months he's done it, once each month talking about what's in the news and what's in the election, he said he's had more compliments in the last two services where he did that, than in the previous 20 years combined.
People are, they are hungry, they are starving for this kind of food. That's why we see polling where 70% above are asking for this, and we just have shepherds refusing to feed the sheep. When they do feed the sheep, man, do the sheep love them and hug on them and cuddle up to them and everything else. That's exactly opposite of what they all expect, they think they're going to get yelled at. You'll always get some people yelling at you. People yelled at Jesus, but it didn't shut Him up. That's what the Black Robe Regiment is.
Cindy: That's really amazing. Thank you so much. Tina, do we have any ... by the way, I should have told you, Tina is with United In Purpose and we are actually co-hosting this call. It is an amazing organization, I would just say that you ought to check that out as well on their web, but Tina, do we have any more questions in the queue?
Tina: We do have.
Cindy: Go ahead.
Peter: My name is Peter [inaudible 00:34:14] and I want to say also, thank you very much for having this call, Cindy and David. I really appreciate it.
Cindy: Yes, Hi, Peter.
Peter: Thank you so much and the information is so valuable. There's a whole group of people that will say things like, "I was born a Democrat. I'll always vote Democrat, so therefore the people of my economic or racial group ..." How would you address that?
David: Well, they have missed the whole point of the Gospel because the Gospel teaches individuality and not group. We don't get saved as a group. We don't come to Christ as a group. He didn't die for a group. He died for every individual. It has been the 20th century of Americans and post-structuralism where we divide everyone into groups and have loyalty to groups above everything else.
I love the way, you look how often Jesus took people out of the wrong groups and [inaudible 00:35:12] ... The Good Samaritan is that story, it should be the Jew, it should be the Levi helping him, and He chose somebody they all hated. He chose the good Samaritan. He talked to the Samaritan woman at the well, and then disciples said, "God, Jesus, don't You know who she is?" He kept taking people outside of the group trying to show them, "No, no, no, get out of this little quick kind of things. Get out of this mental thinking of groups." When you show a loyalty to a group above individual now you've rejected God's principles, because He didn't die for groups, He died for individuals and He really is a very, very, very unimpressed with what the name of the group is.
I'll give you a great example of how irrelevant that is. I was talking earlier this week with a parliamentarian over in Australia, who is, he's ... Australia's a very secular nation, but he's a very godly guy and took a really great stand, and they are trying to beat his brains in force. He called kind of a crisis, "Help, help me. What do I say and do?" We talked and here I am in America ... Now, as an American Christian that believes in biblical moral values, and biblical values in all aspects of life, I am considered to be very conservative. That's not the name I put on myself, that's the name that culture puts on me. I'm in the category of conservative and that's what the website say about me when they criticize me, I'm a conservative.
Well, it's interesting that in his country in Australia, if you believe the Bible and if you adhere to biblical values you are called a liberal. He is the most liberal in the Liberal Party. Now I'm probably the most conservative in the Conservative Party. We both hold the same values, what matter ... God doesn't care what the name is. He doesn't care what you call yourself, He judge a tree by its fruits. When you show a loyalty to any group or you let your thinking be directed by a group rather than by an individual, you have just denied the efficacy of Jesus. You denied what He wanted to do.
Here is the other thing that people miss, is that groups change across time. For example, if I look right now at the United Methodist Church, United Methodist Church tends to be very liberal on moral issues, on homosexuality, on marriage, on abortion, on Israel, they've been wrong. The American Methodist are really wrong. The African Methodist this year happen to bring them back in the right direction on Israel, but nonetheless that's Methodist.
Can I look back to the founder of the Methodist, which is George Whitefield and John Wesley, the two great evangelists and say, you know, Whitefield and Wesley, they were pro-abortion, they were pro-homo ... I can't say that. How come? Because the Methodist have changed over the last 200 years. They have a loyalty to the name of a group when that group often changes its values across time, it's ridiculous. Whether they say, "Hey, i', African American, I'm Anglo, I'm Hispanic, I'm Pacific Islander I got to be loyal to my group." No, you got to be loyal to God's principles. Anytime a Christian elevates loyalty to a group above loyalty to principles he got real trouble.
Cindy: That's a fabulous answer. Do we have any more questions in the queue?
Speaker 8: I have just two very quick questions. One, is there going to be a copy of this available anywhere on the internet that we can share it with other people? Then two, David, back in the beginning when you talked about voting being a responsibility rather than a right, can you give me another practical example and maybe even like a Bible verse that I can use to back that up, to back that statement?
David: The easiest, well, one is the analogy that comes out of Luke 19 and Matthew 25 where He entrusts a certain keeps, certain keeps or He put in their hands certain trusts and said, "Take care of this 'til I get back." We also have Luke 19:13 where He says, "Occupy 'til I come." You can't occupy if you're not engaged. Occupy is the same thing you think of after a military battle, you occupy a country because you're trying to reshape the culture. We occupy Japan after World War II, and in seven years we complete rebuild that nation, brought it back into the community of nations across the world totally trusted. That occupation that we did also in Germany that brought them back in the globe community very trusted.
That's what it is, you go in and help rearrange the laws, help rearrange the leaders, help rearrange the economic system, help rearrange the economic system. In Japan you get rid of military Shintoism, all the stuff that [inaudible 00:39:58]. When He says, "Occupy until I come," I mean, that's literally the command that we have.
When He also said, "Be salt and light," you can't be a salt and light if you're going to go hide your influence under a bushel, and that's what happens when you have a boat and don't use it. You said, "I've got a light here, but I'm going to put it under a bushel. I'm not going to use my light this time. I know it's dark out there in the world, but my light won't make a difference and they'll do what they want." See, what happens is we all say, "My little candle won't make a difference," but about 38 million have said that. As long as we believe that lie, that we won't make a difference that, "What's my little candle? What's my match?" Well, you told 38 matches ... 38,000 ... 38 million matches together you got a bonfire that will burn up some bad stuff.
Those are some biblical examples I think you could use, but Luke 19:13 is as easy as anyone I know. The salt and light and not hide in your bushel, that all goes to influence and ways that you can influence culture. This is certainly a way we can influence culture. The other thing I point to is our website, we have about 280 really old sermons that we have posted on the website, they deal with all these issues from 200 years ago. Because again, these 613 laws, everything that a nation needs to know it's on those laws so we dealt with them 200 years ago. What you will find is in that era where we dealt with this, you will find that we had 100% voter participation because that was the duty of a Christian.
When the great Daniel Webster ran for office in 1830's, which now we're looking 50 years after the country ... 60 years after the revolution, there were 5,000 adults in that district and all 5,000 adults had voted in that election. Now as it turns out Daniel Webster got 4.990 of them, I guess the other guy and his family is all that voted for him, but there were still, every adult cast a vote because that was our responsibility yo God.
Right now what we do is instead of us being made in His image, we make Him in our image and, "Wooh, God wouldn't like this candidate so I'm not going to vote." I didn't know God didn't like that candidate, that's not your choice, you don't get to choose who God raises up and puts down. You have a responsibility, go do something with it. Those are some other historical things that might help with that, but those are the verses I would probably use.
Cindy: See, I knew things. Well, thank you, Dave for joining us and this had been amazing. You're so articulative always and we appreciate your very ... taking a timeout in your very, very busy schedule. Thank you, Tina and United In Purpose also, and thank you all, callers, for listening and let's continue to pray and fight and get up and vote. Voting is a spiritual exercise and I just wrote an article for Charisma on [inaudible 00:43:43] myself, Charisma Magazine. Let's believe that righteousness will exalt a nation, and thank you, thank you Dave. Thank you, Tina. God bless you all.
David: Good night everybody.
Cindy: Good night.
Tina: Good night. Thank you.
Cindy: Thank you.
