Coral Ridge Media

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:13):
This is the City of God podcast, where Christ meets
culture and welcome to the City of God Podcast, where
we are weekly talking about today's biggest cultural issues all
through the lens of God's infallible word. I'm Pastor raw Pacienza,
and today we have a great episode an interview that
we did back in the fall of twenty twenty three

(00:34):
at the Prey Votes Stand conference in Washington, d C.
And it's an interview with my good friend and colleague,
doctor Jerry Newcomb. Doctor Jerry Newcomb is the executive director
of one of our ministry divisions, the Providence Forum. He's
also a senior producer for Coleridge Ministries, and he is
a scholar, a historian, a walking encyclopedia. And we had

(00:59):
the opportunity to sit very briefly to talk about American
history from the perspective of the Judeo Christian worldview. It's
a big debate in many circles today where we founded
as a Christian nation and what exactly does that mean
to describe America as a Christian nation. And there's nobody
better to have that conversation with to really unpack what

(01:21):
the founders were inspired by, influenced by informed by when
they were crafting the founding documents, when they were establishing
this constitutional or republic. And so here is our interview
from the Prey Vote Stand Conference in Washington, d C.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Our interview with doctor Jerry Newcomb.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Doctor Jerry Newcombe, thank you so much for joining me
on the City of God podcast Privilege.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Hey, yeah, we're recording in Washington, d C.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
At the Prey Vote Stand Conference sponsored by Family Research Council.
You've been to this conference before. It used to be
called Values Voted Value Voter Summit, But tell us a
little bit about your experience so far.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
This is a terrific conference. In fact, I got to
tell you something. D. James Kennedy in the nineteen nineties
began the Reclaiming America for Christ conferences and eventually, after
maybe seven or eight or those, they eventually pulled the plug.
But Tony Perkins was one of the speakers, Tony Perkins,
president of Family Research Council, and I asked him one

(02:27):
time in one of the interviews we've done through the
years for the Ministry D. James Kennedy Ministries. I said, Tony,
is there any link between the Reclaiming America for Christ
conferences that d. James Kennedy founded and started and did,
and this annual summit you guys are doing, And he said, absolutely,

(02:47):
it kind of grows out.

Speaker 4 (02:49):
It's amazing, you know, out of.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
That seed that was planted at Coral Ridge by doctor Kennedy.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
Jerry, you're not only a producer for the Ministry, but
you're the executive director of the Providence Forum. Tell our
audience a little bit about the Providence Forum, why it exists,
and why you're.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
So hopeful about what the future holds for the Ministry.

Speaker 4 (03:11):
Sure well.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
Providence Forum was founded by doctor Peter lowback in about.

Speaker 4 (03:15):
Fifteen to twenty years ago. He and I co wrote
a big, thick book.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
Produced by published by Providence Forum called George Washington's Sacred Fire,
which documents beyond a reasonable doubt that George Washington was
a devout eighteenth century Anglican doctor. Loback now as president
of Westminster Theological Seminary, where you earned your doctorate recently, congratulation,
thank you, doctor Rob. And so anyway, he realized, with

(03:42):
his presidency of Westminster Theological Seminary has so many commitments
this organization. He had founded Providence Forum to educate people
about America's true history are Judeo Christian roots.

Speaker 4 (03:55):
He donated it to the Ministry.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
The ministry said, well, we can accept it. We got
to have somebody within the ministry to help run it.
And since I'm an officionado of American history, I was
the logical choice. And I feel like a kid in
a candy shop, you know, dealing with America's history and
doing interviews, podcasts, columns, documentaries, snippets of the documentaries, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Providence Forum website, people can go.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
To Providenceforum dot org, providenceform dot org.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Now in the name Providence Forum, and.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
There was a specifical reason that name was chosen. You
go back to the founders and their understanding of divine Providence.
Tell our audience a little bit about why the doctrine
of divine providence is really helped inform the name of
the Providence Forum. But why that doctrine was so informative
and so important to our founders. That's an excellent question.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
In fact, one of our state capitals was named Providence,
and that name came when he founded it, Roger Williams
in sixteen forties at Rhode Island. He felt that God
providentially helped him to go out in the wilderness because
his choice was stark, you need to go back to England.

(05:10):
You know, you can't stay here in Boston anymore. But
he wanted to stay in the New World, so he
providentially made it to Providence, Rhode Island. Providence is an
old fashioned word that simply means God, but it means
God who provides for us. In other words, is the
God of the Bible, the God who answers prayers. George

(05:30):
Washington mentioned God at least one hundred times in his
writings the you know, public writings or private writings. He
mentions the word providence, which is again another word for God,
two hundred and seventy times. So the idea of Providence
is the God of the scriptures, who sees us, who

(05:53):
hears us, who provides for us, who answers prayer, who
is sovereign. And so you know, some people have said, well,
why if the founding fathers, you know, we're so Christian,
why didn't they use more of our modern Christian terms
you know that we use and why, Well, so what
George Washington, in fact, sometimes use fancy words to reference God,

(06:16):
and that grew out of his reverence for God, so
you know, the the Almighty, the great Governor of the universe,
and so forth. Doctor Peter Lomback points out that a
lot of the evangelicals of that day, you know, two
hundred and fifty years ago or so, use those same
kinds of terms. And he said, oh, and look at
this one atheist book by the one atheist of the

(06:39):
Founding Fathers who later lost his faith and became an atheist,
Thomas Paine in his book seventeen ninety three The Age
of Reason, where he's against God, against the Bible, against Jesus,
and he basically uses the words God and Lord as
opposed to, you know, as opposed to George Washington with
his baroque approach to reverence God and call them all

(07:00):
kinds of lofty names.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
I love that, and I love that the founders understanding
and the reliance on God's divine providence is what has
informed the name of this ministry Providence Form, because that's
what we're trying to do at Providence Form.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
We're trying to educate Americans.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Everywhere about God's providential hand on the founding of this nation.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
And so let's talk about the founding of this nation.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
Sure, a lot of people will criticize individuals like ourselves
who talk about America as a Christian nation. When we
call America a Christian nation, at least at its founding,
a Christian nation, What do we mean by that?

Speaker 2 (07:42):
Because I think a lot of.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
People hear that and go, are you saying that every
founder was an evangelical Christian?

Speaker 2 (07:49):
What do we not mean by that? But what are
we trying to say?

Speaker 3 (07:52):
Well, basically, what we're saying is that the Bible helped
shape and create the major institutions of the United States States,
the founding documents of America, and they're all written down
and anybody can access them online. Go to Yale University's
Avalon project and there you have all the key documents

(08:15):
beginning with the Mayflower Compact. Well even earlier than that,
that's sixteen twenty, sixteen oh seven. When James Sound was settled,
they talked about they did this for.

Speaker 4 (08:25):
The Christian faith, to spread the Christian faith.

Speaker 3 (08:28):
One of the first things they did was they planted
across at Cape Henry.

Speaker 4 (08:31):
I'm talking again about the James Sound Settlement.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
One of the things they said there was every plantation
which our Heavenly Father has not planted, shall be uprooted,
is something to that effect. And that was because there
were a lot of unsuccessful attempts in creating Virginia, but
James Sound was successful. The pilgrims jumping ahead, they wanted

(08:58):
to worship Jesus and the purity the Gospel. When they
saw this success the durability of the Jamestown settlement, they said, well,
maybe we can get permission to go to the northern
parts of Virginia and worship Jesus in the purity the Gospel.
They get blown off course. Some of the men that
were there with them, who were sympathetic to the overall

(09:18):
goal of starting a Bible commonwealth in the new world, realized, wow,
the King James patent for permission for this colony is
no longer in effect because we're blown off course two
hundred and fifty miles away from the northern parts of Virginia.

Speaker 4 (09:34):
So what the pilgrim.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
Fathers did before one foot was placed on the new soil,
they wrote up a document, an agreement for self government.

Speaker 4 (09:43):
It's called the Mayflower Compact.

Speaker 3 (09:45):
November eleventh, sixteen twenty begins in the name of God,
Amen d James Kennedy, I like to point out, hey,
how did America begin in the name of God?

Speaker 4 (09:53):
Amen?

Speaker 3 (09:54):
And they talked about how having undertaken a voyage for
the glory of God in the advancement of the Christian faith,
and they created a civil body politic and.

Speaker 4 (10:02):
They had all the men on board sign that document.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
That became the first step in the creation ultimately of
the two key founding documents of America. The Declaration of
Independence seventeen seventy six, so about one hundred fifty years later,
and then the Constitution seventeen eighty seven, which was signed
in the year of Our Lord seventeen eighty seven. This
is important to realize though, because in between the Mayflower

(10:28):
Compact and the Declaration and the Constitution were about at
least one hundred maybe even more charters, frames of government.
Many of these things, again are available online at the
Avalon Project of Yale University. I mentioned that because read
the documents for yourself and you see, wow, the Christian
faith is really important.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
So let's talk about the document, the Declaration of Independence.
We're done extensive research and you've written about the Declaration
of Independence.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
That document alone.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
Speak to us about that document and how it shows
emphatically the founders reliance on God, divine providence, and the
Christian faith as being foundational to the creation of this
constitutional republic.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
The Declaration of Independence explains why we exist as a country.
The Constitution, by the way, explains how is the government
going to work, but that was produced eleven years later.
The Declaration of Independence, in explaining the reason we exist
as a nation, you can sum it up this way.
It's the consent of the governed under God. It said

(11:36):
that God is the source of our rights. All men
are created equal and are endowed by their creator with
certain unalienable rights, and among these are the right to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. The right to life, of course,
is much at risk today, you know, with the abortion
ethic and so forth.

Speaker 4 (11:54):
But the Founders have.

Speaker 3 (11:55):
Basically said that what we have comes from the hand
of God. Government must acknowledge that or they become illegitimate.
Whoa I mean, that's a revolutionary document, you know, in
its day was revolutionary. It's revolutionary even today we'll be
celebrating the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of that. And
it also mentions that they had a firm reliance on

(12:18):
divine providence, and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and
their sacred honor. And actually those words were echoing words
from a Christian Presbyterian elders produced document a year before
the Mecklenburg Declaration of seventeen seventy five, a bunch of
Presbyterian elders in North Carolina, and they sent that forward

(12:38):
to Philadelphia.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
And I think that's so important.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
Eefferson, you know, incorporated those ideas and so forth.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
I think it's so important what we're talking about, because
when we understand the foundations of American liberty being produced
from a Judeo Christian worldview, it really does help inform
particularly the next generation that's getting swept away by the

(13:07):
ideologies of cultural Marxism, the ideologies of the sixteen nineteen
project that want to erase history and rewrite history and
rewrite our history books.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
And I think it helps to show that the last.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
Thing that the founders were thinking about was setting up
a secular government or a secular society.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
But I think it's fair to say that.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
Although Deism was prevalent in the eighteenth century, that it
wasn't even a deistic worldview that was the predominant worldview
that was instrumental in the founding of our country as well.
They believed in a God that was active in the
affairs of humanity, Providence that was active in the founding
of this country.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
And I think that's so helpful when we're.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
Having conversations concerning America's founding and what we mean by
a Christian nation.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Now, could I add to that absolutely? Okay.

Speaker 3 (14:01):
A major study that was done in the nineteen eighties
isolated the key documents and sources that the Founding fathers
were quoting and citing in their writings. And so this
would be about maybe seventeen fifty to around eighteen hundred
about that.

Speaker 4 (14:17):
Heineman and Lutz were the names of the two people.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
By the way, I had the privilege for the Ministry
to interview Donald Lutz about fifteen years ago.

Speaker 4 (14:28):
He was one of the two who did this study,
and he was so important.

Speaker 3 (14:31):
He wrote a great book called The Origins of the
American Constitutionalism, and the essence of his book showed well
the biblical concept the Covenant gave rise to the American covenants,
covenants and ultimately the American Constitution. So anyway, so these
two social scientists, they studied all these documents and they said, okay,

(14:53):
four times more than any other author or source. The
founders quoted the Bible, and then of the human authors they.

Speaker 4 (15:02):
Quoted, they were citing Christian writers.

Speaker 3 (15:06):
Baron Montascue also in this order, by the way, Sir
William Blackstone, and then John Locke.

Speaker 4 (15:13):
And John Locke.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
Wrote a book called The Reasonableness of Christianity. You're the
senior pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church.

Speaker 4 (15:23):
God bless you.

Speaker 3 (15:24):
I once attended a Sunday school class at Coral Ridge,
taught by a man who earned his PhD at Yale University,
and he was writing about John Locke.

Speaker 4 (15:37):
By reading John Locke's book.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
Written in the I don't know, sixteen nineties or so,
The Reasonableness of Christianity, doctor Greg Forster became born again
and then later would go on to teach a Sunday
school class or two at Coral Ridge.

Speaker 4 (15:51):
I mean, it's just it's amazing.

Speaker 3 (15:52):
But the point is these Christian sources were extremely important.

Speaker 4 (15:57):
And it wasn't just it was a Christian world view.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
It's you know, all men having power ought to be distrusted.
That's a quote from James Madison Key, architect to the Constitution.
It reflects a Biblical worldview, all men for all of
sin and fallen short of the glory of God.

Speaker 4 (16:14):
So the link.

Speaker 3 (16:15):
Between the Bible and our key documents is just amazing
if you're willing to take the time and look into it.
And doctor Daniel Dreisbach, by the way of American University,
has written a lot about that, and you know he
shows he For example, there's a famous painting of the
Constitutional Convention.

Speaker 4 (16:32):
You've seen it many times.

Speaker 3 (16:34):
I didn't realize as much as I've studied, I didn't
realize that to the left in the bottom Okay, if
you look at the painting in the bottom right hand corner,
the bottom right hand corner, there's a large open Bible,
and it's like, wow, how fitting. Ben Franklin not the
most religious religious of the of the Founding.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
Five by the least religious, but yeah, it starts quoting scripture.

Speaker 2 (16:56):
It's amazing.

Speaker 3 (16:57):
You know, we need to pray because if the Lord
does not build a house, you know, those of labor
labor in vain. And a variation of his request was adopted.
The Founding Fathers met into prayer service soon after and
prayed to.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
Get undeniable that the Christian worldview and the Bible had
the most and the greatest impact on the founding of
our nation. Now, one of the controversies we're dealing with
now in the twenty first century, and one of the
tacks we get from the secular left concerning us, you know,
calling America a Christian nation is they go.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Yeah, but how about slavery?

Speaker 1 (17:33):
How about the systemic racism that existed in the founding
of America. So how can you on the one hand
call America a Christian nation and then on the other
hand know that our founders own slaves and didn't eradicate
slavery at the founding of our constitution. How do we
reconcile those two things, particularly in a cultural moment where

(17:55):
they're using that against individuals like ourselves and our ministry
that want to promot America as a Christian nation.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
Well, as you know, as part of the Providence Forum,
we have made a whole series of films called The
Foundation of American Liberty about thirty different guests, including Dennis Praeger,
my good friend Bill Federer, Alvida King, and Eric Matexas
and ozgenists. But one of the interviews it was with
doctor Walter Williams, now the late Walter Williams, longtime professor

(18:25):
at George Mason University and African American scholar tremendous, and
I asked him about slavery and the American Founding. He said, listen,
slavery has been mankind's fair from the beginning of Western
of written history. It's been there everywhere, everywhere slavery, and

(18:46):
in fact it still exists in some places. But he said,
what was unique about the Western world was how they
spent so many considerable resources to uproot slavery, to get
rid of it. Some of the Founding fathers even wanted
to to uproot slavery right then and there in Philadelphia.
And you know in seventeen seventy six with the Declaration.

(19:08):
In fact, there's a whole section in the Declaration that
was cut out where it denounced King George the Third
for practicing this evil thing with slavery and the slave
trade and all these things. And so anyway, they struck
that out because they wanted to have a united front,
and they knew that Georgia and South Carolina wouldn't go

(19:28):
on board and be unanimous in getting this freedom. But
doctor Williams goes on to say that the idea of
Africans even being enslaved is a relatively new.

Speaker 4 (19:42):
Thing in terms of world history.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
So by the time you get to the United States
being founded, slavery's practice all over the place. So what's
unique about America is that the founding documents said declaration
that all men are created equal. When jumping forward to
Abraham Lincoln when he said his famous speech, the Gettysburg

(20:06):
Address four score and seven years ago, do the math
eighteen sixty three. Going back, you're talking about seventeen seventy
six when he said all men are created ego, and
so he's basically getting back to that. So it was
an inherent contradiction, no question about it. It was not
aberrational for the time. And thankfully because of the Christian

(20:28):
conscience of people like men like William Wolverforce, who's in
the league of his owner.

Speaker 4 (20:33):
He was from.

Speaker 3 (20:33):
Britain, but he helped end the slave trade, and he ended
up ending slavery in the British Empire once and for all,
and that helped inspire the abolitionist movement in America, which
you know slavery was ended, you know, by the end
of the Civil War. And of course we had all
the bloody the Civil War. But as Abraham Lincoln said,

(20:54):
you know, maybe this war is God's punishment for us
for all those two hundred five the years or so
of unrequitted toil. You know, every lash that was drawing blood.
Now that blood is being drawn in the swords.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
And then the I think that's such an important point
you make.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
You know that we don't turn a blind eye to
our nation's history with slavery, and we call it out
for what it is. But it's so important that we
understand that our founders established a government and wrote the
founding documents that actually provided, yeah, the abolition of slavery
that led to the abolition of slavery in America.

Speaker 4 (21:32):
That is exactly right and so important.

Speaker 3 (21:35):
They even did something and this is prior, This is
fascinating in seventeen eighty seven when they wrote the Constitution.
One of the stipulations they had was that within twenty
years of this going into effect, there will be no
more slave trade. That's not the words they use, but
the wording is that there should be no more importation

(21:56):
of this now by the time that went into effect
in a The fact of the matter is there were
so many you know, African Americans here that the slavery
unfortunately continued in the cotton gin then increased the demand
for that and so forick. But it's very important to
realize we shouldn't be judged by the badness. In fact,

(22:18):
this is a point that Dennis Prager made in our
Foundation film series of Providenceforum dot Org, is that, you know,
badness in human history is the norm. What's exceptional. What's
different about America is it's goodness. And he said, unfortunately,
there's not a kid in an American school that's learning
that today.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (22:37):
Absolutely, that's exactly.

Speaker 3 (22:40):
That's why we're just trying to trying to bang the drama,
get the word out there, you know. And and Rabbi Lappin,
for example, says in our program that he says, listen,
he says, some people will say, well, Thomas Jefferson should
be canceled because Thomas Jefferson, even though he said all
men are created equal, he personally owned slaves. Yeah, you know,

(23:02):
it was inherited and all that stuff. By the time
he died, he was so heavily in debt, that he
could not free his slaves, which George Washington did. When
George Washington died, he free his slaves. Certainly that Jefferson
could not. And so anyway, so some people want to
cancel him. They've already removed the statue of Thomas Jefferson
in the City Hall of New York City a couple

(23:22):
of years ago because he was a slaveholder.

Speaker 4 (23:25):
Well, here's what Rabbi Lappin says.

Speaker 3 (23:29):
He says, how can you have a situation of justice
where people are going to be judged by criterion that
comes later. So in other words, like what if somebody said, okay, rob,
you're under arrest.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
What for?

Speaker 3 (23:43):
Well, for a law that's going to be passed one
hundred and fifty years from now. I mean that means
seems I'm obscure, you know, a you.

Speaker 4 (23:51):
Know, ridiculous, absurd.

Speaker 3 (23:52):
But the fact of the matter is people should be
judged in the context of their times. Jefferson helped create
the framework by which slavery would they be un uprooted,
and it was.

Speaker 4 (24:03):
And there's nobody out there now saying.

Speaker 3 (24:04):
We need slavery, you know, to occur, And of course
slavery is occurring.

Speaker 4 (24:09):
But people on the left have a blind eye to it.

Speaker 3 (24:12):
I mean it was Christians for the most part who
are banging the drama, but sound of freedom and other
proh you know, freedom, anti slavery, you know efforts in
our time.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
Absolutely yeah, absolutely well, Jerry, thank you so much for
your time on the UH on the City of God podcast.
Let's remind our people Providenceforum dot org. They can find resources, books, blog, post,
your podcast with incredible guests, and just so grateful that
Providence form exists.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
I really believe that God is.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Going to use Providence for him to help reclaim civics
in America and to really recapture the hearts and the
minds of the next generation, to really get back to
the true story of America's founding. And it really is
the Judeo Christian worldview that made America a great two
hundred and fifty years ago. And I think if we're

(25:05):
going to see revival and reformation in this nation again,
it's going to be through the efforts of ministries like
Providence Forum going into the homes and the schools and
the Sunday school classes across our nation.

Speaker 3 (25:16):
And I've got to say thank you, Rob to you
you understand the biblical worldview and why it matters, and
how the Judeo Christian views the Biblical principles are. What
are the key founding elements You chose to study under
doctor Peter Loback, the founder of Providence Form, the founding president.

Speaker 4 (25:40):
For which I serve as executive director.

Speaker 3 (25:42):
But that's tremendous You studied under him to essentially say,
let's take these founding principles and proclaim them to the
next generation.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
So thank you, absolutely appreciate you, definitely God bless you.
I really hope you enjoyed our interview with doctor Jerry
Newcomb today on the City of God podcast. If you
were informed and courage inspired by today's conversation, we pray
that you would pass along to family and friends introduce
them to this podcast. We hope to see you back
here next week on the City of God. The City

(26:15):
of God podcast is produced by core Ridge Ministries and
made in partnership with the Institute for Faith and Culture.
Visit us at cityogodpodcast dot com to access all of
our previous episodes.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
You can also listen on Apple.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or anywhere you get podcasts.
A full video version of this podcast is available on YouTube.
This is the City of God podcast where Christ meets culture.