Is America a Christian Nation? | Eric Metaxas on Faith, History & the Roots of Revolution | Live Interview - The Greg Laurie Show

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Life Audio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
America cannot go forward unless we understand who we are,
unless we understand our founding, unless we understand the men
of the founding saw this as an.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
Explicitly Christian project.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
What they were doing. That's not just a couple of them,
they all understood that.

Speaker 4 (00:33):
Well, Eric, welcome. You know we have known each other
quite a long time now, haven't we.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
I wouldn't go that far.

Speaker 4 (00:39):
We have been in Washington, d C. Many times together.
And by the way, we should mention your brand new
book Revolution, subtitled The Birth of the Greatest Nation in
the history of the world, has been endorsed by a
certain president of the United States.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
It's hard to believe that Jimmy Carter rose from the grave.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
No, a lot of people don't believe that, but it
could happen.

Speaker 4 (01:04):
So Donald John not big enough, Donald Trump and Dorishlo Trump.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
I listened these.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
I have to joke because it's so hard to process
what a blessing from the Lord.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
That something like that could happen. He would be willing
to do that, so that that means so much to me.
And thanks for mentioning it. It's extraordinary. I praise God.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
It's amazing and we were in Israel together years ago.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
We went on a trip to Israel and we were
given the opportunity to meet with Benjamin Netanyahu a large
group of US, and he spoke to us, and I
was asked to ask a question. Do you remember that
the Prime minister? A question preloaded in my brain? And
then the guy who said you should ask a question

(01:49):
of the prime minister said you should ask this. So
I traded to combine the two questions, and I asked it,
and then Yahuo looked at me and said, I don't
understand what you're asking me. One of the most embarrassing moments.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
When I had the gift is a special gift in
our friendship of sharing tremendously embarrassing moments with each other
with heads of state, with President Trump, with Netanyahu.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Well, someone's got to do it.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
I get I guess so, but it's it's funny, at
least to us. It's funny. Yeah, no, I remember that.
I don't remember the question though.

Speaker 4 (02:26):
Well I don't really either, and we're going to try
to forget it now. So this new book revolution, would
you You didn't call it American revolution, You just called
it revolution.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Yes, I did.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
There's a reason for that.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, well, I guess I should say first that I
wanted to write a definitive book about the American Revolution,
about what happened two and fifty years ago.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
That was my goal.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
And when I say that, I mean not a book
about the Christian roots of America, not just a book
that tells the story of the run up to Lexington
and Conquered and Bunker Hill and Washington, just to just
the story of the American Revolution. I said, this is
the two and fiftieth anniversary, which is the super centennial.

(03:09):
That's the term super Centennials on the cover of the book.
And that was all I wanted to do. And so
I thought to write a definitive book on the American Revolution.
The titles should just be the American Revolution, whatever. But
as I thought about it, I said, you know what,
the word American in this case is redundant. It's unnecessary
because there has only been one revolution in the history

(03:33):
of the world that ever succeeded, and that was the
American Revolution. And there are people that would have you believe, no, no, no,
the French Revolution. The French Revolution is a failed nightmare.
They wanted to do theoretically, the same thing. But why
did their revolution end in a blood bath where they

(03:54):
traded a king for a dictator emperor they got nothing.
Or the Bolshevik revolution which is satanic, or the Marxist
revolution in China. They all say the revolutions, but they
are fake revolutions, false revolutions. Our revolution is the only
revolution in the history of.

Speaker 3 (04:11):
The world that said we are going to govern ourselves,
We're going to let the people govern and it actually worked.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
And the reason for that is super simple. And I
didn't know this until I really wrote the book and understood.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
I really understood this that.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
In our revolution, the men of the revolution understood what
we're doing is we're going back to the Sinai Covenant.
We are going back This hasn't been done in three
thousand years in history, where yeah, we're going to get
rid of an earthly king, but we're going to look
to God our king as our sovereign.

Speaker 3 (04:46):
They really understood that, and.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
In the course of doing the research, I was astonished
that they all understood that, and that we haven't heard
this and it's not taught in schools, where if it
was ever taught, it's been forgotten. That is true, and
it's clear, and I thought, this is amazing, and of
course because because of that, they.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
Succeeded, and so.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
It really gave me a completely different view of America
in a way, and of the revolution. I said, this
is something that God allowed in history which had never
been done before. And we need to be filled with
gratitude that we get to live in a country where
we genuinely govern ourselves, and we have to take it seriously,
and we have to understand what it means and we

(05:31):
have to live into it. We can't take it for granted.
So that's a long answer. If you before the short answer,
I could give that also.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
That was good.

Speaker 4 (05:38):
Well, before there was a revolution, you might say, there
was a revelation, there was a work of the Holy Spirit,
and the colonies threw a man from England named George Whitfield. Yes,
and he had this incredibly powerful voice. He was hoping
to be a stage actor, and he was for a
period of time, but he came to Christ. His life
was radically changed, and he preached in England, actually was

(06:02):
thrown out of the churches there, started preaching in the
open fields of coal mines, and then eventually came to
America and he was sort of the tip of the
spear of his spiritual awakening. I think I read somewhere
that over eighty percent of the people living in the
area the colonists heard him in person.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
Is that something.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
I'm sure you read that in my book probably dead, Yes,
in my previous book ten years ago, if you can
keep it.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
No, that's just a great book. He was, he was.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
I mean, it's it's difficult to exaggerate about George Whitfield.
There was no evangelists in the history ever. I always
always I joke around that he makes the Apostle Paul
and Billy Graham look like lazy agnostics.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
That's the level of wild man.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
He appreached thousands and thousands and thousands of sermons, but
God used him to really as the forefront of the
Great Awakening. So revival was kindled all up and down
the Thirteen Colonies. It changed things so dramatically that by
the time you get to the American Revolution, people were
ready to govern themselves. They basically said, we look to God,

(07:10):
and because we look to God, we can govern ourselves.
And the leaders in the revolution understand we have a
population capable of pulling this off. Because they are looking
to God, they're virtuous. Without that, people cannot govern themselves.
And all the founders understood that idea, and I quoted
in the book, and it's been quoted many times. John
Adams said, I should remember the exact quote. I don't,

(07:31):
but basically it's it's useless unless you have a virtuous
and moral population. If the people are truly moral and virtuous,
then we can govern ourselves, and we can. You know,
our constitutional works otherwise.

Speaker 4 (07:45):
Quote from Adam Swiss. Our constitution was made for a
moral and religious people. It's wholly inadequate for the government
of many others.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
I'm going to say, true, that's correct.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
It came from your book.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yes, no, but I mean it's an amazing quote. And
he's and he is not the only one that said that.
I mean many of the men of that time they
understood this very clearly. This is what we're doing. We're
going back to Sinai. We're going to do what hasn't
been done in three thousand years, and we can only
do it with the Lord's help. They were very humble.

(08:17):
They knew we cannot do this in our own strength.
We have to humble ourselves before God. We want to
have a covenantal relationship that if we obey the Lord,
the Lord will bless us. If we do not obey
the Lord, he will not please. That was really vivid,
not just to you know, John Adams and Samuel Adams,
but to George Washington. So that's why these lies that

(08:40):
we've lived with, you know that oh they were deists,
or that it's complete.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
Let's that, soloney, what is a deist?

Speaker 2 (08:47):
A deist is basically someone who would say, oh, I
believe in God. Okay, you realize, well, it's not a
Christian so I believe in God. Well, you know, the
devil also believes in God. Do you trust in God?
Do you love him?

Speaker 3 (09:01):
Do you get you know?

Speaker 2 (09:02):
And so a lot of secular Historyans have dismissed a
lot of the Founders as deis. And you know, Deism was,
I guess popular in the French Enlightenment. But it's it's
not Christianity. It's kind of a vague, sort of useless
believe that.

Speaker 4 (09:19):
God's really not involved in our lives. He perhaps say,
with acknowledge he created us. Yes, and the Bible is
an interesting book of inspiration in Jefferson even had his
own version of the Bible where he cut out sections.
But we as Christians believe that God, yes he created us,
but he's actively involved in our lives. He's leading us.

(09:39):
And I think it's clear that God was leading these
Founding Fathers and especially George Washington.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Well, that's what's so interesting to me is that they
all wrote letters that would make it obvious that they
believed God is active in history, that he responds to
our prayers. Deis do not talk like that ever. That's
and so it's a total lie. And I have to
say it gets me angry when to the research. I thought,

(10:06):
this is a lie, this is not this is not
this is not a but in my anger, I did
not sin good but no, but I.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
Said, it really is.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
It's it's ugly when you see historians taking a view distortion. Yes,
it's intentional, and it confuses people and misleads people. And
so I didn't write this book to correct anything at all.
I just wrote the truth. But I was startled by
some of the truth because I thought I never knew
it was so obvious that they all believed this way.

(10:37):
I mean, maybe you make the case that Jefferson is
a deist, Okay, but even Jefferson buys the idea that
they're going back to Sinai, that this is that's okay.
He as did Benjamin Franklin, And Benjamin Franklin could not
be a deist. He wouldn't say at the Constitutional Convention that,
you know, if a sparrow cannot fall without you know.
He knew that God is a god of history, and

(11:00):
maybe he didn't know when he was a younger man,
but he knew it later on.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Well.

Speaker 4 (11:03):
In fact, Benjamin Franklin pd key role in exploding the
ministry of George Whitfield publishing the sermons. I think maybe
Franklin was motivated a bit by the monetary game, but
he knew what Whitfield was saying. He appreciated what he
was bringing to the colonies, and so he really played
a part, like it or not, And I think he
probably did like it in the spiritual awakening that preceded

(11:25):
the American Revolution.

Speaker 3 (11:26):
No doubt about it. Yes, I agree.

Speaker 4 (11:29):
So let's go back to George Washington. What a fascinating
character he is. It's hard for us to wrap our
mind around him because he almost seems a bit at
times like a biblical figure. Yeah, but also seems one dimensional,
but like, who this man that everyone agreed should become.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Our first president? He was very reluctant.

Speaker 4 (11:49):
He led the continental forces into victory, and that's a
whole other story. How on God's green earth could this
ragtag army of farmers and patriots and some soldiers and
others defeat the most powerful military on the face of
the year.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
The British Army led.

Speaker 4 (12:08):
But George Washington was a brilliant tactician, and we want
to give them credit for that. Why would they choose
him instead of Jefferson or Adams to be the first president?

Speaker 3 (12:19):
Well, my book doesn't go that far.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
My book.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
You know when I say.

Speaker 1 (12:22):
Tied to a revolution, that you need to write another way?

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, yes, so I got right after this, you know,
I'll no, Honestly, my book starts it's just about the revolution.
So it ends in seventeen eighty three, which is when
they signed the Treaty of Paris, and okay, we're done.
But the story of Washington, it's it's so fascinating. There's
a sort of there's some subplots.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
In my book.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
And again, I don't want anybody have the impression like
I knew all this stuff and I said, oh, and
I got to write a book. I didn't know a
lot of this stuff. I just knew I want to
write a story of the revolution. It's worthy, It's more
than worthy of our attention. Every single American needs to
know these stories, like we are shame on us if
we don't. So I'm going to put in one book
so everybody can can read it or you know, I
don't care if you steal the book. But the point

(13:07):
is we really need to know these stories. And in
the course of it, one of the subplots that I
kind of discovered, which I'm fascinating, there were two generals
more qualified than Washington, and he would have said so.
He did say so, probably Charles Lee and Horatio Gates.
But what did they have that or what did Washington

(13:29):
have that they didn't have? And that is very simple.
The word is character.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
Washington was a man of towering.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
Character and virtue, and everybody around him knew it.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
And it was he suffered.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
You could see that this was a man who well,
if you read the book you'll see, but I mean,
he was a man of tremendous character, and I think
God chose him to be the commander in chief because
you needed that kind of a man. Anyone else would
not have been able to who would stand the pressures
and the agony of the years and years. You needed

(14:09):
a man of tremendous virtue and character to put up with.
What he put up with Congress was awful.

Speaker 3 (14:14):
In many ways.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
He humbled himself to the process. He sort of trusted
God with this process. No one else would have done that.
And Charles Lee and Horatio Gates. It's kind of funny
because I'm discovering this as I'm doing the research, I
realized these are not such great guys, and in some
ways they're not at all great guys. And they were
trying to undermine Washington because they wanted his job and

(14:37):
he didn't want the job, and he didn't want the job.
Now doesn't that tell you everything. Here's a humble man
who doesn't really want the job. But of course God
gives it to the one who says I want to
the job, right, And Charles Lee and Horatio Gates are
gunning for his job. They're not men of particular virtue,
and certainly Charles Lee is not. And both of them

(14:59):
get their humiliating come upance in the story and that's
like if you're writing a movie, you tell you oh,
you know so and so should you know by the end,
but it actually happens that way. So I was astonished
as I'm doing the research, I thought, you know, these bums,
they're shooting for his job instead of seeing what God sees.
It's like, he's the man I chose. This is the

(15:20):
man I chose for the job. You know, get behind him. No,
they wanted his job, and in the course of trying
to undermine him and trying to get their own glory,
they end up humiliating themselves and destroying their reputations. So
the two generals that are ostensibly more qualified as military
commanders completely fail militarily and in every other way. And

(15:42):
Washington God exalts him because Washington humbles himself. I mean,
it's really so clear, you know, and it's beautiful.

Speaker 4 (15:51):
And he never was shot on the battlefield. His horses
were shot up from under him. It was just incredible
that they would fire bullets at him. I think there
were bullet holes in his hat and his coat. Yeah,
I mean the Lord literally preserved him.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
Well, yeah, I think you know that's in early in
his life, I mean, way before the Revolution. But even
in the Revolution, you see, it's like God's hand is
on this man. It seems undeniable, you know, and people
could see that somehow that he was created for this.
And he's such an extraordinary character. You think, where did

(16:28):
he come from? He's an amazing figure. I mean, and
I write about that in the book. He's there's nobody
like him. And the only one that I would compare
to him in terms of greatness is John Adams, who
is not often enough recognized, and in my opinion, he
is head and shoulders beyond Jefferson. I mean, he should

(16:48):
be a thousand times more famous than Thomas Jefferson. John
Adams was a great man of God and great in
many many ways, and his hand was in everything. And
a monument is finally being built to him in Washington,
d c. And it is two hundred years overdue.

Speaker 4 (17:05):
Yeah, And didn't they both die on the fourth of
July in their later years.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
Jefferson and Adams both died on July fourth, eighteen twenty
six in I believe it was a motorcycle accident. No,
just kidding, No, they both died on the exact fiftieth anniversary.

Speaker 3 (17:27):
This is like amazing of July.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
Fourth, seventeen seventy six. That is, that's amazing, that's an
amazing thing.

Speaker 4 (17:34):
Wasn't John Adams the first occupant of the White House?

Speaker 1 (17:39):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (17:39):
John Adams was, in fact of her.

Speaker 4 (17:41):
So why is he overlooked? I mean he was, he
was in many ways. He helped to frame the Declaration
of Independence. Jefferson participated, wrote some opening lines, but he
doesn't get the credit he deserved. He could have done that.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
He could have taken the credit until now. Until now.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
No, It's kind of funny, Greg, because I didn't set
out to do anything. I never set out to but
as I'm doing to reach something and wait a minute,
John Adams is the architect of independence.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
Yes, and people keep.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
Saying Jefferson, Jefferson, Jefferson.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
It's exactly like you know if if you know, you
rush to the hospital somebody's given birth and you run in,
and you run in and you're you're all excited, You're
all excited somebody's given birth.

Speaker 3 (18:22):
You're like, where where is he? Where is he? Where's who?

Speaker 2 (18:24):
Where's the guy who printed the birth certific And I
kai I want to meet this man? And he'd be like, well, really,
it's the mother here that gave birth, you know. And
in a weird way, John Adams is the man who
brings about independence, and then they think, well, you know,
we're going to need some kind of a document officially
to kind of say what's going But they've already decided

(18:46):
on independence.

Speaker 3 (18:47):
It's this is it's a done deal.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
But we need somebody to put together a document to
kind of lay out what we're doing and whatever. And
everybody says John Adams should write it, and John Adams says, no, no, no,
I insist Jefferson has to write it because he has
a felicity with language and he's the guy for it.

Speaker 3 (19:04):
Plus he's from Virginia.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
Why was that important?

Speaker 2 (19:07):
Because it's important because all of this really originated in Boston,
in Massachusetts. I mean that the Puritan ideas that lead
to the Reformation, that lead these Reformation, Puritan ideas that
lead to the Revolution, that lead to all of this

(19:28):
started in Massachusetts. So the first you one hundred pages
of book or so, it's all about what's going on
in Massachusetts, in Boston.

Speaker 3 (19:34):
That's where it comes from.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
So by the time everybody meets in the Continental Congress
seventeen seventy four or seventy five, whatever, everybody's thinking. This
all started in Massachusetts. They're kind of a bunch of
hot heads, and so Adams politically says, well, we need
to we need to pull Virginia into this because we
don't want it to look like we're pushing this.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
If everything's we're pushing it, they're not going to go
for it.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
It has to be, you know, sort of bipartisan, or
it has to look like a broader thing. So he
gets Richard Henry Lee from Virginia to put forth the
declaration in Congress that we are free in independent states,
you know, which is this major thing. He gets Virginally the Virginian.
He wants George Washington, the Virginian, to lead the Continental Army.

(20:24):
And then he taps the Virginian Jefferson to pen the
Declaration of Independence, because he says, people are going to
think it's just me and my crazy cousin Samuel Adams
that were the hot heads, the Puritans behind this stuff.
We need to broaden it. So he gets Jefferson to
do that. But Jefferson, even when people say Jefferson wrote
the Declaration of Independence, I bristle because he wasn't writing

(20:45):
anything that they didn't all know and hadn't known for years.
They'd known this stuff for years, and they had in
other documents and stuff. They just wanted somebody to kind
of pull it together in this thing. And of course
he does beautifully. I mean this, I write about this
all in the book.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
It's his.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
I detail it because I was so fascinated. But even
the line we hold these truths to be self evident
was not written by Jefferson. He wrote we hold these
truths to be sacred and undeniable. And Ben Franklin sees
the first draft and he goes, no self evident, because
Franklin was of course a great writer, and he kind
of thought this just is better.

Speaker 3 (21:23):
But so it's so funny that even that line.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
So this is not to take anything away really from Jefferson,
but to pretend like he came up with this stuff.
He did not come up with this stuff. This stuff
had been come up with from the Bible, through the Reformation,
through pure in theology, and everybody understood this, who was involved.
It wasn't like after they declare independence they read Jefferson,
they go, oh, well we never heard of this, but yeah,

(21:48):
good will sign this they all knew, and I think
that that needs to be corrected.

Speaker 4 (21:54):
Well, speaking of Adam, Samuel Adams, you call him the
father of the revolution.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
They all did, the father of the revolution.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
He was the man, well, he was awake to all
this stuff, to liberty and to you know, God's role
in giving us liberty and why we need to stand
for our liberties against the British. From the seventeen forties
and even before this conflict, you know, with the British,
he was already sensing it and he was alive to

(22:22):
this conflict in a sense before it really became a
public conflict. And he was the driver. I mean in
the seventeen sixties, you know, the after the French and
Indian War was when the British said, hey, we got
to you know, we've.

Speaker 3 (22:39):
Just to say.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
You know, if somebody says, how did the revolution start,
you'd say, well, the British fought the French and Indian War.
They won, They double the size of their empire, they
got Canada, they did all, you know, but they also
doubled their debt. And then they said in seventeen sixty
three sixty four, well we got to raise some money
from the colonists because we won the French and Indian War
and the over there, and so the colonists benefited, so

(23:01):
we need to tax them. So the colonists, the Americans said, well,
that's not quite true. First of all, we fought in
the war, we paid money towards the war, and then
the war didn't benefit us. It benefited the whole empire,
not just us. But the real issue was this issue
in the stamp tax and the sugar tax that the
British were for the first time asserting their power with

(23:23):
the colonists and saying, we are going to ask you
to pay these We're going to demand that you pay
this tax. And everything explodes because the Americans are very sensitive.
Our liberties come from God. We govern ourselves. You don't
have any right to tax us any more than any
thug with a gun says, give me your money.

Speaker 3 (23:42):
We're not going to go with this.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
So when that happens, Samuel Adams in Boston really leads
the whole thing, ginning up supports against the stamp tax.
He's the kind of you know, driving the propaganda, getting
the Bostonians and the people in the Massachusetts Assembly to
push back hard against this I mean, he's the mastermind,

(24:05):
and he's the one that you know. There's other amazing figures.
I mean John Hancock, who knew. I never understood what
a hero he was. Doctor Joseph Warren, another gigantic hero.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
Most of us don't know his names. It's shameful. And
I say this about myself.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
I didn't know this, and I thought every American needs
to know these figures. But the chief among them is
Samuel Adams. He really was the driver of the whole thing.

Speaker 4 (24:29):
And so another George in this narrative, there's George Whitfield,
there's George Washington. Then there's King George of England. Yeah,
and what was he thinking? I mean, did he have
any idea what was going on over here in the colonies?

Speaker 1 (24:43):
And why would he go to war against them?

Speaker 2 (24:46):
Well, it's kind of funny. There's a chapter in the
book where I write about John Wesley. Yes, John Wesley
writes a letter to Lord Dartmouth. Lord Dartmouth was the
secretary for the colonies, and just as and I'll come
back to George more about your But just after Lexington

(25:09):
and conquered, John Wesley writes this letter to Lord Dartmouth.
Now Lord Dartmouth is an evangelical, So there's very few,
if any evangelicals. Elite British society was very godless, very irreligious,
mocking of religion. So Lord Dartmouth stood out as an evangelical.
So John Wesley writes to him and basically says, is

(25:31):
this wise that.

Speaker 3 (25:33):
We're going to war?

Speaker 2 (25:34):
You know, even if you take the side of the
king and the Parliament, is this wisdom for us to
go to war with them? And then he says, remember
real boom and he brings up Ria Bohm and other
examples not just from the scriptures. But you know that
in their arrogance they lost I mean, you know the
story better than I do.

Speaker 3 (25:55):
So there's a.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
Sense that the British are out of touch and arrogant
and that they're going to lose everything in their arrogance,
their foolishness. But to me, the clear case is it's
just like Pharaoh. I mean, I say, like, hey, if
you were a buddy of Pharaoh's after three plagues, you'd
be like, hey, Pharaoh, you know I listen. I'm just
getting a sense this is not going to go well
for you. These three plagues have been pretty bad. I

(26:16):
think there might be more. And if I were you,
I would just I'd let him go. I'd let his
people go, trust me, And Pharaoh would say, no, I
don't think so, I don't think so I know better.
God hardened Pharaoh's heart. I see the same thing when
my book on Luther the Vatican. I mean, the pope
at the time behaved preposterously. He should have understood this.

Speaker 3 (26:39):
Is not going to go well.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
You know, just as Ria Bohm lost ten tribes, and
just as if you don't see things clearly, if you're foolish,
you can make tremendous mistakes. So we see that with Pharaoh.
You see that with Pope Leo, the Pope Leo the
fifth or tenth. Sorry, but I mean in the time
of Luther that you would think that people around him

(27:01):
would have said, hey, hey, Luther's making a lot of
good points here, he's trying to help us, And somehow
he didn't get that, and so he almost drives Luther
to this point. That's what you see with King George.
It's the same thing.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
It was all orchestrated by the Lord.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
Ultimately, ultimately, yes, yes, I do, and I think that,
But it's kind of funny because there was no way
they needed to lose the colonies. This is never inevitable.
In fact, nobody in the colonies wanted to break away.
I mean nobody, None of them wanted to break away.
It's just they got more and more the British paid

(27:41):
more and more foolishly and drove them and drove them.
But it's a lot again, it's a lot like the
story of Martin Luther, where he just got more and
more angry because he was treated more and more poorly,
over and over and over. And you know, he thought,
I've run out of ability to you know, now, I
guess I have to break away, but I didn't want
to do that. Ever, the thirteen colonies, the leaders, none

(28:04):
of them was talking about independence ever, and even to
the very end many of them.

Speaker 3 (28:09):
Didn't want independence.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
So it's kind of amazing that King George the Third
could be so myopic foolish. But also, and this gets
to one of the big themes of the book, which
again I didn't know.

Speaker 3 (28:20):
Until I did the research. The British really were the.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
Bad guys, in the sense that the Americans were largely like,
really Christian, and the British were really godless. The British
elites were really sneering at religion and everything that goes
along with that. So you think about it. So the
British elites were very cynical, they were very corrupt, and
King George the Third, who was not a particularly evil man,

(28:44):
but the corruption, he had the money to pay off
people to vote his way. So even the check and
balance that Parliament could have been, he just bought the
votes that he wanted to continue the war. So it
really is amazing how corruption and cynicism and godlessness and
sin made this happen, something I had never seen within.

Speaker 4 (29:06):
King George ultimately say, if once Washington, once America, once
we won the war in Washington was the first president,
didn't he say something to the effective he doesn't make
himself king.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
What was that exactly?

Speaker 3 (29:20):
Well, we don't know exactly.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
In the end of the book I write about this
where there are two examps, two cases, where in one
of the cases he said, and we don't know which
it was, But the bottom line is he saw that
George Washington really believed in these principles. And this is
to me the key through the whole thing. The British
never believed and we've all met people like this, right.

Speaker 3 (29:43):
People are like, yeah, come on, I know what you're
really thinking. Greg.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
They don't really believe that you believe what you say
you believe, like, yeah, come on, come on, push comes
to show if you're gonna do what everybody else does,
and you say, well, no, I actually have principles. I
actually fear God, I'm going to do the right thing.
King George was aghast that George Washington really believed this stuff,
and that when he had the opportunity and many people
would say the right to to say, okay, I have

(30:08):
done everything, so of course you're going to make me
king and I'll be a good king, he says, no,
I don't want any of it.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
I'm going to go back to my farm.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
Yes, like Cincinnatus and his plow, the story of the
Roman Senator, I mean King George the Third that if
this is true, he is the greatest character of the age.
So King George, you know, in time, came to see
that that didn't virtue in this man.

Speaker 3 (30:34):
Like I'm astonished. He was astonished.

Speaker 4 (30:37):
It's really sad, you know, when you think of George
Washington leading our troops into battle, winning the Revolutionary War,
becoming our first president, and I think they wanted them
to serve another term. But he wanted to retire to
his farm. And he's just how riding around on his
farm and he it reigns and his coat is damp
and he comes home and their medical care back in

(30:59):
those days, it's pretty pathetic.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
Let's bleed him.

Speaker 4 (31:02):
Now, let's take the blood, because that was actually part
of what they didn't. Oh yea, and the way he died,
even that was not poetic because it's tragic.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
He died at a younger age. But everything about his
life is just unique.

Speaker 3 (31:17):
Well, I mean, I think it's clear.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
This purpose in this generation in the Lord calls him home.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
Yeah yeah, And you know, if you're not a believer,
you think, oh, how sad, But if you believe in Jesus,
you'd be like, oh, he gets to go to Glory,
which is way better than Mount Vernon, even better than
Mount Vernon.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
You've been to Mount Vernon.

Speaker 3 (31:38):
I haven't been to Glory, but I've been to Mount Vernon.

Speaker 4 (31:40):
Yes, we went there and we took the tour, and
there was such a bias and I would call a
wokeness of course, to the whole presentation, really missing the
point completely missing the faith element of Washington's life. I mean,
it was non existent, and I felt they did a
disservice to his memory.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
That's putting it graciously. It's scandalous. It's vile that they
are pushing these lies. They're lies, that these are not
sort of lies, they're lies.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
There.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
It's it's a it's willful ignorance. They don't want to
know the truth. Willful truth makes them uncomfortable. And so
I mean, again, I didn't write my book to correct.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
All this stuff, but it does.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
It's just if you tell the truth, it pushes against
stuff that we've been hearing our whole lives.

Speaker 4 (32:32):
You didn't set out to write a Christian book America. No,
you set out to write a book about the Revolutionary War,
how America came to be. But it turns out it's
a very Christian story because God was at work all throughout.

Speaker 3 (32:48):
It's it's inescapable. And so I think that.

Speaker 2 (32:50):
But you know, this is a book I hope people
will give to anybody. This is not you know, don't
just give it to your Christian friends. But I think
it's Look, it's simply true. It's not Christian history. It's
history that's right, and history speaks for itself and it
is what it is. But I think there are a
lot of people, if they're honest, they're going to read
it and they're going to think, you know what, I

(33:12):
didn't know this, I never heard this.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
Why have I never heard this? You know?

Speaker 2 (33:15):
And it's important that we know this. It's not a
side issue. It's central to everything. America cannot go forward, Yes,
unless we understand who we are, unless we understand our founding,
unless we understand the men of the founding saw this
as an explicitly Christian project, what they were doing.

Speaker 3 (33:34):
That's not just a couple of them. They all understood that.

Speaker 4 (33:37):
I think some would want to say today, if you
believe in the inniqueness of America, that God has a
plan for us, that you're a Christian nationalist, which to
me is just an artificial term created to create a
category for people that are patriots and believe that God

(33:57):
established this country. But think about this, Imagine a world
without America, the difference that we have made historically. Well,
I mean, what would have happened in World War Two
if there was not a United States? Speaking of England,
they were on their heels. Winston Churchill courageously was holding
his ground that France had already capitulated, and as had Poland.

(34:20):
And there's Churchill fighting for his life. But you know,
the United States stepped in and it changed it. Think
about the Holocaust, think about what's happening to the Jewish people.
We have our flaws, every nation does. But I believe
in American exceptionalism. I believe God established this station.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
I agree, and I don't think, yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (34:41):
Don't think it's debatable.

Speaker 2 (34:42):
I mean, from my point of view, it's simply not debatable.
And there are plenty people, even people probably friends of ours, evangelicals,
they love Jesus, but they don't like the idea of
celebrating America. To them, they think, oh, we're under judgment
and I'm about the Kingdom of God. And I think, no, no, no,
If you're about the Kingdom of God, you know, it's
kind of like saying I'm about Jesus, so I don't

(35:03):
love my wife. Yeah, if you loved Jesus, you love
your family more. If you love Jesus, you can love
your country more wherever you are. And I think if
you look at God's hand, I mean, the whole idea
of the Reformation. That to me looks like providential dispensation history,
God moving in history and then having this continent discovered

(35:25):
by Europeans, so that when the Reformation happens and you
have all these people dissenting from the established religions in Europe,
that they have a place to go and to be
free and to govern themselves, and then one hundred and
something years in the future they band together and create
a nation based on those ideas. I mean to say, oh, yeah,
it just happened, you know that.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
Listen.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
There are plenty of people who believe the same big
thing about Israel. Like I, Listen, it just happened. It's
got nothing to do with God. And I think you
can have a lot of different views on Israel. But
if you don't see God's hand that after thousands of years,
he brings these people together in the land whatever I mean,
make of it what you will. But to say it's
no big deal or God had nothing to do with

(36:07):
it seems preposterous. And I feel the same way about
the story of the United States of America. It just
seems ridiculous that you would not see God's hand in that.
But again, there are a lot of people that's just
out of bounds. They can't handle it. But again, there
are a lot of Christians that have that view that
they say, I'm about a kingdom, I don't care about America,
and I think they're I simply think they're theologically and

(36:30):
historically mistaken in that few.

Speaker 4 (36:32):
Well, maybe your book will help to correct that for
a lot of people, I hope will tell us. About
Patrick Kendrick, we remember, of course this famous statement give
me liberty or give me death. That there's a lot
to his story, isn't there.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
Well, there's so.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
This is what's so interesting is like I keep saying that,
you know, if you went to mainStreet, America nineteen sixty,
everybody knew all these characters, could tell you all about them,
tell you all the stories, whatever. And we have forgotten that.
And that is a horror and a shame. And it
is central to going forward that we know this stuff.
And Patrick Henry is one of these classic figures. First
of all, like almost everybody in the book, he was

(37:06):
a serious Christian. It's amazing, and the Great Awakening affected
him in Virginia. We think the Great Awakening it was northeast, no, no, no,
in Virginia and so he took on this thing called
the Parsons cause. But it really this stuff was going on. Well,
it's kind of complicated. I don't want to get it's
down a rabbit trail, but the bottom line is that

(37:28):
there were threats to freedom, you know, going back, that
the British would would make these efforts and make these
laws and stuff. So it doesn't like explode until seventeen
sixty five, but even before that. And so Patrick Henry
was a fiery orator, an amazing orator. I mean, so
he did extremely well as a lawyer arguing cases, but

(37:52):
he also seems to have been a prophetic voice. I
think already in seventeen sixty five he becomes a member
of the House of Burgesses and he gives a speech
against the Stamp Act where he says things that nobody
else would dare to say.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
Well, was the Stamp Act.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
The stamp I don't know. I thought you knew that one. Well, okay,
the Stamp Act, thank you for asking me that. The
Stamp Act was when the British realized, oh, we're going
to tax the colonies. They came up with this big
law called the Stamp Act, and that was simply, how
are we going to raise money. Well, we're going to
make the people in the thirteen colonies legally they can

(38:31):
only use official paper that we have stamped with the
royal stamp, and it's going to be more expensive, and
we're going to use that income to pay, you know,
down our debt or whatever. So every single piece of
paper that you would print, a newspaper, that you would
print an almanact, that you would print, legal paper, whatever.
It was all official stamped paper and all kinds of

(38:54):
other stuff. And so, you know, the American colonist said, wow,
this is We're not we can't, We're not going to
do this. And also they saw it as a threat
to kind of you know it. This is going to
put some newspapers out of business here, you know. So
it was a threat to free speech. So that that
was a big thing. And so in seventeen sixty five,

(39:17):
Patrick Henry gives a famous speech. Then now he's most
famous for his seventeen seventy five speech, and he says,
give me liberty or give me death. But he gives
a speech in seventeen sixty five where he's already like
pushing things as far as they can go saying things
that a lot of people, even the House of Burgesses,
for things, Oh that's treason us, hey, pal you know,

(39:39):
watch it, watch it. But he followed the logic that
if they're trying to do this, what they're doing is
wrong and we must oppose it. And this gets to
Romans thirteen. The Puritans, the Christians in the Thirteen Colonies,
most of them understood that if the government says do
something Romans thirteen doesn't mean Okay, we better do it,

(40:02):
you know, any more than we're going to bow down
to Nemeginezzer or say, hey, Hayman's a great guy, whatever
he says. You know, they had that wisdom. But that
was coming from the Pulpits, and it's an amazing thing.
There was a famous Boston preacher named Jonathan Mayhew in
seventeen fifty says it all comes out of this pure
in theology. He preaches a sermon exactly about this, about

(40:23):
disobeying government but obeying God right. And John Adams said
that that sermon by Jonathan masrom seventeen fifty was read
by everybody, was printed, everybody had gotten the memo. So
the Americans were awake to this idea that because of
our Christian faith, we will not tolerate tyranny. We will
not tolerate you know, man demanding something. We're gonna obey

(40:45):
God instead of man. And so that was coming from
the Pulpits and Patrick Henry he's a good example of that.

Speaker 4 (40:52):
Basically, what would the founding fathers think of America today?
The way that we're governing, the way that I think
there are some that would like to take us to
a place of tyranny, towards socialism, some even outright communism.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
There is no doubt that I keep saying we're in
the third existential crisis of our history. The first is
the Revolution, the second is the Civil War. We are
now in the third existential crisis of our history. We're
dealing with forces that, if they win, America is over.
This is not about a slightly different version of America.
This is about America as it has existed, not existing.

(41:27):
So that's existential and the forces. I mean, look, you
know the Democratic Party, when the Democratic Party was you
know Tip O'Neil, Michael d'acacis dick getpart.

Speaker 3 (41:38):
You know, we're not talking about that.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
We're now talking about people that are openly advocating Marxist ideas,
ideas that are fundamentally against all of our founding documents.

Speaker 3 (41:49):
I mean fundamentally, and we've not had that. That's a
big deal.

Speaker 2 (41:52):
So to have a whole party effectively giving itself over that,
people need to get serious, like that's a big thing.
This is not a slight difference in our views on
how tax should go or something like that.

Speaker 4 (42:02):
I think that's a really important insight. And I can't
emphasize enough how important it is for us as Christians
to be informed of these issues and to get out
there and vote, you know, Christians alone, just the church,
if we would register and vote and educate ourselves biblically
because sometimes it said, well, vote your conscience. No, I

(42:23):
don't say vote your conscience. I say vote biblically, because
your conscience can mislead you depending on what you're reading,
what you're exposing yourself to. Think biblically, think clearly, and
vote for candidates that represent these values. That is the
way our nation was set up, and we've strayed so.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
Far from that.

Speaker 3 (42:40):
Yeah, Amen, Amen and amen. Yeah, Now that's something. As
you know, I've written a lot about that.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
I wrote a book called Letter to the American Church,
because I've seen this happening in American churches and among
the evangelicals, and I thought, wow, these are not biblical ideas.

Speaker 3 (42:55):
These are bad ideas.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
Yes, but they are somehow convinced that this is right,
or that they're holier by not voting at all, or
anythink no, really mistaken. And it's funny because again, doing
the research on this book, I thought all of the
men in the pulpits at that time, they really got
that they drove this and they were the ones driving
the revolution basically, which is an astonishing thing.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
That could be a really good book.

Speaker 4 (43:21):
Your next book, The third existential crisis, I mean talking
about this, yeah, I mean the first being the Revolutionary War,
then the Civil War and what we're facing right now.
I don't know if people have both have woken up
to this, just see what we're really dealing with right now.
Maybe because it's been a little subtle, but it doesn't
seem subtle anymore. It's becoming quite overt.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
Well, the good news is that the more overt it gets,
the more people wake up. I think that there are
people that were not on our team that they're coming
on board. I just say it's you're on team reality.
You know, you don't need to believe in Jesus, you
don't need to believe, you don't need to be a Republican.

Speaker 3 (43:55):
You just know a man cannot become a woman.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
Yes, you know, but.

Speaker 3 (43:59):
There are plenty of people, Oh, you can't say that. I
think a lot of people say, oh no, I could
say it. And it's true. A man cannot become a woman.
Woman cannot come man.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
Islam is incompatible with Western or American or Biblical values.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
That's a fact.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
That doesn't mean that my neighbor can't be a Muslim
or that we can't have a Muslims, but the concept
is not compatible. And we need to be aware that
if that gains ground in America, we will lose America.
And by the way, that's happening in Europe, they are
it's absolutely happening here. And why is it happening because

(44:34):
of a lack of cultural confidence. Because if you don't
believe anything, really, if you're just a secular person you
want to live your life, those guys will win. You
have to really believe in something, Like the men in
the Revolution said, we will fight for what is right
and true, and we believe we know is what is
right and true. We're not kind of like, who's to
say they believe that in the biblical ideas, they believed

(44:55):
in all that stuff, they took it seriously, and they
were willing to die for it.

Speaker 3 (44:59):
And I think that that's why we owe them a debt.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
We need to know their stories, we need to follow
in their footsteps and and say that I want to
know what's true, and I want to live for what's true,
and I want to be willing to die for what
is true. That's how the Lord wants us to live,
not to be indifferent to suffering and to misery around
the world, but to say, no, this is God's plan,
and I want to participate in that. And I think

(45:23):
many people have come very passive. But I think because
things have gotten so bad, many people have woken up.
And I'm so for that reason, I'm actually hopeful. We
were in a war. We're in a fight. But I
think a lot of people are awake to this. And
I keep saying, it's like if you went to George
Washington in seventeen seventy six and he said, look, I
know how it turns out.

Speaker 3 (45:42):
You're going to win, right, you.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Know, he would say, well, okay, but in the meantime,
men are going to die, We're going to suffer, So
we still have to fight and pray and fight and
pray and fight and pray, and the Lord will give
us the victory when he wants to give us the victory.
But we don't just say, well, here's how it turns out,
and we're going to sit in our hands. So they
were really dedicated. It's really humbling to see they're dying

(46:08):
in a battlefield. We're asking people to go and just vote. Yeah,
how about we start there? Yeah, you know, we can
all do that, and we all have a voice in
this thinking. I know you didn't write about this in
your book, but who do I mean? I'm sure if
we were to categorize the greatest president's the most significant president,
certainly Washington would be number one. I think Lincoln, you

(46:28):
mentioned the Civil War number two? But maybe have more
modern presidents? Yeah, who would be individuals that stand out
to you that you thought maybe change the game?

Speaker 3 (46:38):
Well, I would say, without a doubt, Reagan.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
Yes, But at the top of the list I would
put President Trump. I honestly, I think I am astonished
by his courage. I'm absolutely astonished by his courage and
by his getting what Republicans before him didn't get and

(47:02):
they weren't fighting, and what we kind of put up with,
you know, we'd say, Oh, he's a great guy, he's
a great guy, and you realize they really weren't willing
to fight.

Speaker 3 (47:09):
Yeah, they weren't. Really, they didn't. They didn't seem to
care that much.

Speaker 2 (47:13):
And I feel that he has a proper sense of
outrage at injustice and doesn't care if if he's attacked
that he's going to fight.

Speaker 4 (47:21):
And so there have been three assassination attempts on this president, absolutely,
and he knows that God preserved his life, especially.

Speaker 3 (47:29):
I told him to his face.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
I mean, I haven't had a lot of opportunities to
uh to meet him, but one opportunity, I really felt
God wanted me to say that to him. And I
didn't doubt that many others have said it.

Speaker 3 (47:41):
Yes, I know for a fact they have. Of course, yes, And.

Speaker 4 (47:45):
Johnson told me that shortly after the president, the assassination
on the president in Pennsylvania, that he spent time with him,
and Mike is a very committed believer and he prayed
for the president, shared scripture with him, and because people
have said to me, why doesn't someone share the gospel
with President Trump? Because as he'll say things periodically, it

(48:07):
will say, wait what, But the Gospel has been shared
yes with the President.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
Many many times.

Speaker 4 (48:14):
And I even know of some very specific conversations happened
behind closed doors. And you know, people have asked me,
his President Trump a Christian? You know, that's for God
to decide. He's professed faith, he says he is. I
would not question that. But I can say this, and
you know that seric, you've been with him a different
settings where someone will say, maybe we pray for you,

(48:35):
mister President. And I really believe he welcomes that prayer.
I think he wants that prayer. And God has placed
him where he is for such a time as this,
and we should pray for him.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
Well, I think I really think he gets that. I
think he senses that I do too, and I think
Washington sense that you know that you have a job
to Lincoln too, And obviously, yeah, and that's something that
we can hardly.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
Eat and discuss it.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
But it's just it seems it seems clear, and it
seems that he is himself awake to this existential crisis,
and he is fearless in dealing with it. And I
can't say how much I thank God for him, I
really do. And this doesn't you know, you always have
to say the caveat doesn't mean I agree with everything
you know, of course not. But my goodness, you know,

(49:29):
I don't think we need a UFC fight on the
White Law, on the huh, on the White House lot,
But my goodness, I just I think that he has
given a lot of Americans hope for our future, and
that before him it was just managed decline. We had
accepted that, and shame on our leaders, on the Republicans

(49:50):
especially for accepting that and not going to war against that.
What a gigantic failure. So yeah, I thank God for
the present moment. I think we are, you know, like
Washington in the midst of the war fighting, and I
think that if we fight God's way, and this was
very important to Washington, that we're going to fight God's way.

(50:11):
We're not just going to fight to win. We're going
to do the right thing, and God will bless us
if we do the right thing. And we need to
take that seriously. God is real so our nation, our nation.

Speaker 4 (50:22):
Really is rooted in revival, and I think we really
need another revival. We've had for great spiritual awakenings in
American history. The less, interestingly enough, was called the Jesus Revolution.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
Ever heard of that one?

Speaker 4 (50:36):
And Time magazine coined that phrase because back when it
was happening, we called it the Jesus Movement. Yes, but
Time magazine thought it was revolutionary and they coined that phrase.
And it seems like we're really ready for another spiritual awakening.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
Well without it, I don't think we can go forward.
I think that's part of the whole, that's part of
what we're experiencing right now, and I think that we're
seeing the beginnings of it.

Speaker 3 (50:59):
I mean, what would be.

Speaker 4 (51:00):
Some indications we would be seeing the beginnings of a
spiritual awakening?

Speaker 3 (51:04):
The fact that we're back slidden right there?

Speaker 1 (51:06):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (51:07):
And you and me?

Speaker 1 (51:08):
Yeah, no, good start.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
I think I have noticed, and I'm very sensitive to this,
in the last five years, people speaking more openly about Jesus'
cultural figures that I just go, Wow, that was not
happening ten years ago. I've noticed this over and over
and over and over. You know, people call it a

(51:31):
vibe shift. You always have to give it some kind
of a name. It's it's a spiritual thing. God has
done something and you can feel it. And I just think,
I mean, I think I read this morning on a
news website that how many more young men are reading
the Bible and going to church.

Speaker 3 (51:46):
This is happening.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
This is happening, and I'm simply convinced this is the
Lord's will for this nation, that that's part of what
is happening. And so the details are the details. But
I think we are you know, we're in the midst
of it. It's beginning, but I don't think we've really
seen it in Flower. I think that lies ahead, by
God's grace.

Speaker 4 (52:08):
Well, we have a few questions starting to come in
and one person asks, is Eric going to start his
own collection of clothing that can be purchased the Eric
the Texas line. You know what, I think it's about time.
I think the Lord has spoken through that person. Now,
I wasn't planning on it. I wasn't planning on it.

(52:30):
I wouldn't I certainly would wouldn't rule it out. If
my country calls, I will serve yes. Okay, So here's
an actual question. I'm a college student, and I can
see among my own peers low levels at patriotism in
respect for this country. In fact, we're largely taught now
that our country is actually evil. How can us young

(52:51):
adults condense our peers to first come to Christ and
second to honor our great nation?

Speaker 1 (52:56):
Good question.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
Who's to say that, first you don't get them to
honor the great nation, which will lead them to come
to Christ.

Speaker 3 (53:02):
We don't know.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
We know it's more important to believe in Jesus, Yes,
but I think it's all part of something that is happening.
And I don't think we should fret. I think a
lot of times I get that question, what can I
say or what can I Sometimes.

Speaker 3 (53:14):
You could say nothing.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
Sometimes you don't say anything, but just ask the Lord
to lead you. And don't feel that it's up to
you that you've got to fret or wring your hands.
I've got to bring somebody to Christ. You can't bring
anyone to Christ. You can only be obedient to the
Holy Spirit, who wants them to come to Him more.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
Than you do.

Speaker 2 (53:31):
Right, And I think that we should not fret, trust
God and just be obedient to God's leading.

Speaker 3 (53:38):
But I think it is happening. I think is happening if.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
It be educated. I mean reading your book.

Speaker 4 (53:43):
This is a primer on American history, and it shows
God at work. And so know your facts, know your history.
Here's an interesting question. When did America lose its Christian
virtues and faith that that founding fathers had and why?
I would pinpoint it. Correct me if you disagree. But
somewhere around the sixties, when these young rebellious kids became adults,

(54:09):
they became professors in our colleges pushing a very strong agenda.
Did it start even before that, perhaps in the fifties or.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
Before Listen, I mean to be you know, if we
really want to be accurate, it started in the Garden
of Eden.

Speaker 1 (54:22):
That's sure.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
You can never really say there's a moment, but yes,
but listen.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
William F. Buckley, Okay, I went to Yale. I was
at Yale in the eighties.

Speaker 2 (54:31):
Yale was utterly godless and Marxist leftist in the eighties.

Speaker 3 (54:35):
Okay, so it's gotten worse.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
Originally founded as a Christian university.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
Buckley wrote his book Got Him In at Yale about
the Yale of the late forties.

Speaker 3 (54:44):
In the late forties. It had already gone atheists.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
Mark say, okay, so, but the reason I say that
is because the intellectuals were already there in the twenties.
The twenties were very godless in in elite circles.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
You know.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
Sometimes I'm watching old movies, pre Code movies, nineteen thirty one,
and you can smell the culture, sure, and then you
can go back even farther. I mean in eighteen fifty nine,
when Darwin writes The Origin of the Species, they were
in intellectual circles.

Speaker 3 (55:15):
This stuff was already going on.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
It was going on in Great Britain when I wrote
this book in the seventeen sixties and seventies, the godlessness
in Great Britain. So this stuff kind of percolates through culture,
and of course in America you could see these moments.
I mean the sixties. You know, My last big book
was called is Atheism Dead? Which is really a response

(55:38):
to the Time magazine article nineteen sixty six, is God Dead?

Speaker 3 (55:41):
Right?

Speaker 2 (55:42):
Can you imagine that in nineteen sixty six the editors
of Time magazine, who are you know, pretty leftist, godless
New York manhattanites. I live in Manhattan, right, They decided,
oh it's time to put this bummer of an idea
on every coffee table in America.

Speaker 3 (55:58):
Is God dead, black cover reversed red lettering and like that.
That's the zeitgeist, you know, So it is.

Speaker 2 (56:06):
I mean in many ways you could say it's the sixties,
but the sixties didn't just happen, right, I mean you
can already see it when I watch a lot of
films from the fifties already have that vibe in them,
you know, rebel without a cause, and you can see
this stuff fermenting. And so it's really impossible to pinpoint it.
And it doesn't matter. The fact is we've got to
turn it around to God's glory.

Speaker 4 (56:27):
Here's a good question. Can you explain? This is a
big one? But the separation of church and state, truly
me is that Jefferson wrote about in his letter to
the Danbury Back.

Speaker 3 (56:38):
Yes, I my hometown is Danbury, Connecticut.

Speaker 1 (56:40):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (56:41):
And so I feel like I'm very honored by that.

Speaker 4 (56:43):
And what did you get your clothes there?

Speaker 3 (56:46):
No? No, I did not.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
No, I don't think so I grew up in Danbury, Connecticut.
And he throws me, I'm very easily thrown, but no,
I am. Basically when Jefferson wrote that letter. I've heard
Christians say, don't believe this nonsense about the separation of
church and state. They're mistaken. The separation of church and

(57:10):
state is one hundred percent correct. It's not in the constitution,
but it's a constitutional idea. It has just been interpreted
completely wrongly for the last sixty years, where people say
separation of church and state means we can't have faith
in government, we can't have religion in government in the culture.

Speaker 3 (57:30):
That is completely wrong.

Speaker 2 (57:32):
What Jefferson was saying to the Danbury Baptist was that
the wall of separation between church and state exists to
protect the church from the state, to protect the church
from the government. That the government has no right to
tell the church what to do.

Speaker 3 (57:50):
I mean, we saw this recently with COVID. We've seen
this over and over where the government, if they're given
the ability, they'll push us around, and a lot of times,
in our graciousness, we kind of put up with it
a little bit. But Jefferson is saying.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
There is a wall and that if you're if you're
any person of faith in America, you need to know
the government has no right to tell you what to believe.
You're one hundred percent free to believe whatever you want
to believe and to do whatever you want to do
up to a point. Right, you can't say, well, I'm
killing people in the name of my religion. But that
has been going on since then, since since the revolution,

(58:30):
and so we have to you know, I think, particularly
in this day and age, we have to understand that
the founders knew that the church, particularly church, is sacred
iss sacrisanct, and that the government has no right. So
whenever you hear the separation church and state, hear it
the correct way, the way Jefferson intended it.

Speaker 1 (58:51):
Yes, here's a good question.

Speaker 4 (58:53):
Someone asked, what is the most favorite courageous thing any
of our found founding fathers have done. I think signing
the Declaration of Independence was pretty courageous.

Speaker 1 (59:03):
It could have been their death warrant.

Speaker 3 (59:05):
Oh, definitely, definitely.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
I write about that scene in the book because I
think we forget, and a couple of them write about
the feeling in the room when they did that. They knew, Wow,
this is a big thing we're doing. This is not
a little thing, this is not this is a big
thing we're doing, and we need to really honor them
by knowing that this story and revering.

Speaker 3 (59:30):
Them for their career, for their courage.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
I mean, it really is an extraordinary, beautiful thing and
it should inspire us to be courageous, you know, and
especially we have no excuse because we have Jesus and
we're supposed to believe all the stuff we claim to believe,
so we have to live it out. But they they
really did. That's what's so interesting is that they didn't
talk about it. They they risked everything. This wasn't They
weren't like a bunch of you know, Ivy League professors

(59:53):
theorizing about stuff.

Speaker 3 (59:54):
I mean, they were living this.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
They were risking their lives and their fortunes at everything
that was that was real.

Speaker 4 (01:00:01):
So yeah, not to mention the courage of General George
washing on the battlefield.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
So many of them. Honestly, it is.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
Again, it's humbling and inspiring to read what they what
they went through, what they suffered. And let's not pretend
there were many people at the time who did what
a lot of people do today. They just say, well,
you know, we don't. I don't care. I just I
don't want any trouble. I'm not going to stick my
neck out for any principles. I just want to have

(01:00:31):
a nice life. Well, we don't revere those people. We
revere the people who said, I'm going to do what
it's right and it's going to cost me, but God
is with me. That's the you know, that's the story
of the men who who were in the revolution. But
there were many at the time who either sided with
the British or I mean Benjamin Franklin's own son, Yes,

(01:00:53):
decided with the British, and then there were many that
their finger was in the wind. Which way is it going?

Speaker 3 (01:00:58):
I don't you know.

Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
I'll go with whoever wins. I'll just I'll hang back,
but I'm not going to stick my neck out.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
Did Jefferson want to get us some French revolution?

Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
It seems like it. Again, my book doesn't go that far.
It ends in seventeen eighty three, but I think Jefferson
and Thomas Paine both were bamboozled by this utopianist nonsense
of the French Revolution that somehow we could do over
there what we did here. The difference is the revolutionaries

(01:01:28):
in France totally rejected God, and the revolutionaries in this
country totally looked to the Lord knew that without the
Lord they could never succeed, and so Jefferson and Pain
got that dramatically wrong.

Speaker 4 (01:01:43):
What is your hope for America for our future? What
would you like to see happen in the next few years.

Speaker 3 (01:01:49):
Well, I like us all to become trillionaires, but that's
not going to happen.

Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
We have one now, Yeah, I heard about that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
I heard about that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:55):
Well, let's just say that I believe the Lord created
America for his purposes, Yes, to be like a shining
city on a hill that people around the world would
to us and say, what do they have there?

Speaker 3 (01:02:08):
Why do they have those freedoms?

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
What is that?

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
How do they get that? Well, you know in the book,
I make it clear it comes from God. You don't
get this apart from the Bible and apart from fidelity
to the Lord and to his and and so what
a dream it would be if the people in England today,
who are who are waking up, would say, we want
to govern ourselves in this way, on these principles. We're

(01:02:31):
not going to put up with being governed by woke,
lunatic elites who do not care that our women are
being raped by rape gangs, that we've allowed in. And
I mean if the world would wake up and stand
up and and would remained.

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
All that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
I mean to think that that is happening in Western countries.
And I think that my my dream would be that
America would become so American and that we would stand
up for what we believe in a way that we
that we would that we would come the America that
it's God's will for us to be, so that people
around the world would be inspired to do what we

(01:03:12):
did here two hundred and fifty years ago. They would say,
we're going to stand against tyranny, even if it costs
us something. These are the values that you know, again,
if they do it the way we did it, they
could succeed. If they do it on their own. You know,
when we say, oh, they're having a revolution here or here,
or the Arab spring or whatever, it's all about the people.
It never goes well. It cannot go well. If it's
not founded on the same principles as our founders.

Speaker 3 (01:03:35):
It does not succeed. It never succeeds.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
And it's amazing that people are foolish enough to think, oh,
this time it will succeed, This time it will succeed.
It's utoping this nonsense, it's striving and it is it
really is almost like a.

Speaker 3 (01:03:49):
Tower of Babbel thing.

Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
It's this idea that we can do it on our own,
and it's like, no, if you think you can do
it on your own, your fool, it's gonna be worse
than when you start it. Just like in the Bolshevik revolution,
Oh we're going to if the people are going to
we see what happened, and it happens over and over
in his But if we could really shine in this nation,
if enough of us would would understand that, and that

(01:04:13):
we would have we would go back to the spirit
of seventeen seventy six, which I think is the Lord's
will for us. That it would inspire people around the
world to do the same thing.

Speaker 3 (01:04:24):
That would be a dream, I think agreed.

Speaker 4 (01:04:27):
You know the idea of the city on a hill
that President Reagan spoke of, that other presidents have in
the past, but that's built on scripture. So Jesus said
in the Sermon on the Mountains, you're the light of
the world, You're the salt of the earth. And you know,
the salt back in Biblical times was used as a preservative,
to stop the spread the rotting, and so forth. And so,

(01:04:49):
as Christians, we are called to restrain evil, to speak
out against what is wrong, to.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
Speak up for what is right.

Speaker 4 (01:04:55):
But we are also called to let our lights so shine,
preach the gospel. It's not one of the other.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
It's both.

Speaker 4 (01:05:01):
Yes, Yes, we must preach the gospel and call people
to but amen. When we see injustice, when we see
things that are flat out wrong, we need to speak
out against those and let our voice be heard.

Speaker 3 (01:05:16):
Amen.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
Well again, this all these ideas are from the scripture.

Speaker 1 (01:05:21):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (01:05:22):
You know, they didn't just come up with it. It's
like Jefferson say, hey, we got these great ideas. No
if you pull, if you do that, you get the
French Revolution, you get a bloodbath and it ends up
in total failure. But they knew these ideas came from
the scripture. They were guided by that. And you know,
one of the examples is John Adams at one point,

(01:05:43):
this is before the Revolution, but in seventeen seventies of
Boston Masacre, he chooses as a lawyer to defend the
British soldiers because he says it's the right thing to do,
and we're going to trust God. If we do the
right thing, God will honor us. We're not just gonna
be like, hey, they're not on my team. I'm gonna
defend my team. He says, no, No, we need We
believe in fairness, we believe in what is right, we

(01:06:03):
believe in justice. We cast our lot with the Lord
in this and it's a noble and a beautiful thing.
And that's been the case I think many times in
the history of the United States. I just heard the
other day, or it was reminded the other day that
you know, after World War Two, we had every opportunity
and every right to take over Japan, to take over Germany.

Speaker 3 (01:06:26):
What do we do we help them rebuild those nations?
Who does that?

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
If that's a biblical idea America does That's America does that?
My mother, you know who is probably trying to call
me right now. She's almost ninety two, and she forgets
where I am and she calls me. She grew up
in Nazi Germany, and she remembers when in nineteen forty
five when they lost, when the Americans came in, she remembers,

(01:06:51):
those are the good guys. When the Russians came in
those are bad guys. Now what is that? I'll tell
you what that is. The American soldiers did not rape
and pillage the others did. What does that tell you
about the values of a cult? That is who America
has been, by and large. Again, it's not that we
have been perfect or without sin, but by and large
we've been the good guy. We have been the one

(01:07:12):
that rebuilds Germany and Japan and whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
Why would we do that?

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
Because we believe it's the right thing, and because even
though some people don't do it explicitly, we're honoring God
in that. And that's who we have been, and that's
who we've been from the beginning. And that's the dramatic
story of the revolution that over and over and over
again you see Washington and others very sternly commanding his officers,

(01:07:39):
we will not stoop to what the British do. We
are different. We're going to do this God's way. Now,
he wouldn't have put it that way, but it's so
clear that we are going to radically trust God and
God will give us the victory. They actually believe that,
and that's who we are and we need to rediscover
that and live it out and I think it will.

Speaker 3 (01:07:59):
It will go well for us if we do that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:01):
Well.

Speaker 4 (01:08:01):
A great way to rediscover it is is read this
new book by Eric in Texas. This is an incredible
accomplishment and there's no it's not surprising that it's a bestseller.
And I think you've come at this from a unique
perspective and you've done an amazing job. And congratulations on
it and help a lot of people read it and

(01:08:22):
process this. And God could use this book to help
us get back to those roots of our nation.

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
I believe God called me to write this book for that,
for that purpose, not just to write a book, but
it's for his purposes in history, and I trust he
will use it for that and he gets the glory.
And I praise Him for allowing me to write it,
and you know, for talking about these things. This wasn't
on my dance cardage even two years ago. It's just

(01:08:48):
something that the Lord.

Speaker 3 (01:08:49):
Gave to me.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
And I just thought, yes, I think this is something
that needs to be done. Yes, and it is actually
very important. As I've said, that we know who we are,
who we're supposed to be. Many of us have forgotten,
we've kind of drifted. I think the two hundred and
fiftieth year. This summer, this is our season to rediscover
this and to celebrate it and to go back if

(01:09:13):
we've lost our way, to go back and to figure
out what God's will is for America.

Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
It's right. Why don't we amen?

Speaker 3 (01:09:21):
Thank you, Eric, thank you?

Speaker 4 (01:09:22):
Why don't Tom? Why don't we close with a word
of prayer? And would you pray for our nation?

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
I will, Heavenly, Father, we praise your name. We come
to you in the name of Jesus, and Lord, we
acknowledged Lord that we are far from perfect. But you,
who are our loving Father, want to bring us back
to yourself where we have strayed. You want to lead
us and guide us to glorify you. And we know,

(01:09:49):
Lord that you have blessed this nation beyond anything that
we deserve. And we ask you, Father to use us
to be a blessing. You've blessed us to be a blessing.
We pray for revival, for the fire of heaven to descend,
for your Holy Spirit to course through this nation, to
glorify your name, to bring revival and salvation and redemption.

(01:10:13):
And use this nation Father, in our lifetime. Let us
see you use this nation for your glory dramatically around
the earth in Jesus' name.

Speaker 3 (01:10:24):
Amen.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
Amen, thank you Eric. Let's thank Eric for coming.

Speaker 3 (01:10:28):
God bless you, thank you.

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Is America a Christian Nation? | Eric Metaxas on Faith, History & the Roots of Revolution | Live Interview

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Is America a Christian Nation? | Eric Metaxas on Faith, History & the Roots of Revolution | Live Interview