In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the need for individuals, families, churches, and communities to turn back to God and bring about a revival. He encourages listeners to approach their city fathers and local authorities to address the violation of God's principles in their communities. The speaker highlights the importance of repentance and acknowledges that America is in a desperate situation due to turning away from God and accepting unbiblical teachings and doctrines. He shares a powerful story of a man who was protected by God in battle, illustrating the significance of American history intertwined with faith.

Proverbs 14, 34 says, Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. Heavenly Father, I pray that today you'd minister to us, that we'd be open to what the Holy Spirit has to say to us as a people and also as a nation. In Jesus' name, amen. I'd like to continue on with you if I could, and share a little bit with you about our country in the next two or three weeks. And I'd like to share with you a message that I shared, I think it was a couple years ago, about America's Godly Heritage by David Barton. I was on the phone with them this morning and double-checked, and it was okay to play this tape out over the air. And I'd like for you, if you'd like to get some information on America's Godly Heritage, write down this address so you can write to them. It's Wall Builders, Box 397, Aledo, Texas, 76008. And I'll give you this address again before we play the tape to you, and then after we get done playing the tape, or part of the tape, because of the time we can't play it all in one week, and I don't even think even in two weeks. So it may take two to three weeks to play this. But I want you to listen to this, because I have seen, and it's going on in our country, to where we are accepting in our country things, teachings, doctrines, governmental doctrines, and ideas that are destroying and taking away our freedom. Now, I believe that we are in a very desperate situation in America. Those of you that are on the know, if you listen to programs like Point of View, and you have information going on, you know that we are in bad shape. Our problem, though, as we shared last week, is spiritual. We have turned from God, and when we accept things that are unbiblical, and do not stand up for them, then we just go into further captivity. I was talking with my father-in-law the other day. He's fixing to go up to the county and share with them some information he has about how other counties are trying to take back their counties from the government. Down in New Mexico this started, if you've read the article by Lee Pitts. We in America are being taken over by the government. We were given this land by God to worship freely, and I believe it will take nothing but a revival to get us back to God. But I'm sharing these things with you in the next few weeks to try to turn us back to God. One of the things we need to do is we need to repent of our wickedness, our personal wickedness. I think it was Alex DeTocqueville that said, America is great because America is good. But if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great. Something like that, probably a loose paraphrase. Goodness, goodness, true goodness, only comes from godliness. And godliness only comes from the Holy Spirit as He produces the life of God in us. Now, as I share this tape with you, you think about what God would have you to do in your own personal life, in your family life, in your church life, and even in your community to bring about a revival of turning us back to God. Many are going into their city, fathers, the local authorities, and sharing with them God's principles that we have violated as communities. Not only as individual citizens, but as communities we have gone against God. And if we start where we're at, where you're at, and start there, then we can reach our nation. America needs to turn back to God. We need to repent. We need to repent. All the way from the bottom, where I'm at, where you're at down here, we say, well, I'm not too significant. Well, you are significant. You are one, and one makes a difference. All the way up to the White House. We have extreme wickedness in our government. And unless we repent, we will be judged by God. And as I've shared, we're already in that judgment, but it can be stopped. I, along with many others, believe that God can and will bring a great awakening in our land. I believe God is preparing us for a mighty awakening. The thing that bothers us is the thing that we will have to go through. The persecutions, the trials, the tribulations, whatever that we'll have to go through. But the reason I'm sharing these things with you is we can make a difference. We are seeing the difference made in certain communities in our country. The civil authorities, the leaders, mayors, are turning to God's Word, turning back. So it can happen in your community. Now, I'm going to play this tape, America's Godly Heritage, by David Barton. And if you want to write to them and get information, they have books, videos, audiotapes, and other information available from Wall Builders. It's Wall Builders, an excellent, excellent outfit. And God is using David Barton in our land. It's Wall Builders. Here's the address. Box 397, Aledo, Texas, A-L-E-D-O, Texas. The zip code is 76008. And I'll throw in the phone number if you want that. It's 817-441-6044. Now, I'm going to play part of this tape, and then I'll give you a little goodbye at the end. But you listen as we play America's Godly Heritage by David Barton. Does America really have a godly heritage? Well, did you realize that out of the 55 founding fathers who worked on the Constitution, that 52 out of the 55 were Orthodox evangelical Christians? We don't hear that part of our history anymore. This 1856 Maryland history textbook contains a story about George Washington that you've probably never heard. It was a story of how his life hung in the balance for over two hours, and how that only by the direct intervention of God was his life spared. We'll get to this story in just a moment. Wall Builders, Incorporated presents America's Godly Heritage with David Barton. Benjamin Franklin said, Whoever will introduce into public affairs the principles of Christianity will change the face of the world. This 1856 Maryland history textbook contains a story about George Washington that once appeared in virtually every student text in America. We haven't seen it in the last 40 years, but this story deals with George Washington when he was a young man. Only 23 years old, he was involved in the French and the Indian War. Now, the French and the Indian War happened about 20 years before the American Revolution, and it was the British against the French, and the Americans sided with the British, and most of the Indians sided with the French. Now, Great Britain and France had been arguing over who owned the colonies. They both claimed they owned the colonies. They were unable to settle it diplomatically, so Great Britain decided to send 2,300 hand-picked veteran British troops to America with General Edward Braddock to chase the French out of America. Well, they arrived in American Virginia, and George Washington was the colonel of the Virginia militia, and he and a hundred buckskins joined in with General Braddock to go chase the French out. They divided their force into two, and so General Braddock and George Washington and 1,300 troops marched north toward Fort Duquesne. Now, we now call that Pittsburgh, but then it was a French fort. They were marching toward that fort to expel the French from the region. They were seven miles from the area. They were going through a wooded area, ravines, and they got ambushed. They'd walked right into an ambush, and the French and the Indians started opening fire on them from both sides. Well, these were British veterans. They knew exactly what to do. The problem was they were veterans of European wars, and in the European wars, what happened was you got out on an open field. One army got at one end. The other army got at this end. They looked at each other. They aimed at each other, and they fired. That was European warfare. It was all open, and here they were in the Pennsylvania woods, the French and the Indians up in the tops of trees and behind rocks and under logs. So when the British were open fire on, they started lining shoulder to shoulder in the bottom of the ravine, which led to a butchery. For over two hours, they were slaughtered in the bottom of that ravine. It was such a lopsided battle that at the end of two hours, out of the 1,300 British and American troops, 714 had been shot down. Only 30 of the French and Indians had been shot down. There were 86 British and American officers involved in that battle, and at the end of the battle, George Washington was the only officer who had not been shot down off his horse. He was the only one left on horseback. Well, after the two-hour battle, they retreated and went back to Fort Cumberland in Northern Maryland, and when they arrived there, they arrived there on July the 17th of 1755, and the next day, George Washington wrote his mother and his brother a letter telling them about the battle, and those letters were contained in a textbook, and Washington told them, he said, after the battle was over, he said, I took off my jacket, he said, and I had four bullet holes through my jacket, but not a single bullet had touched me. He said, when I brushed my hair, he said, I had bullet fragments in my hair, but I've not been scratched. He said, I had several horses shot out from under me, but I was not harmed. He said, God's hand was on me, God protected me, and God kept me through that battle. Now, that's an interesting story, but that's not where it stops. The text continues to go on and say that 15 years later, now time of peace, 1770, that George Washington and a close personal friend, Dr. Craig, returned to those same Pennsylvania woods, and an old Indian chief from far away, having heard that Washington had come back to those woods, traveled a long way just to meet with Washington. He sat down with him face to face, and over a council fire, he told Washington, he said, you don't know me, he said, but 15 years ago, you and I were in this woods together. He said, I was the chief in charge of the Indians you were fighting that day. He said, we saw you riding through the woods, knew that you were one of the leaders, and knew that if we could kill you, we could scatter the troops. He said, so I told my braves to single you out and fire at you. He said, I personally fired my rifle at you 17 different times. He said, when we saw that none of the bullets were having any effect on you, he said, I told my braves to stop shooting at you. He said, I've traveled all this way just to meet the man that God would not let die in battle. Now, that's an amazing story. Couldn't you enjoy American history with stories like that? Well, that's the way American history textbooks used to be. There's so many things that we don't hear anymore. For example, Patrick Henry. We're told now that our founding fathers were atheists, agnostics, and deists. Well, look at this statement by Patrick Henry. Now, we know Patrick Henry, he's famous now for the statement, give me liberty or give me death. But in old years, he was famous for a different statement. The statement he made was this. He said, it cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists, but by Christians. Not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, that's a strong statement. That's not very pluralistic. That's right to the point, and that's what used to appear in the textbooks. An indication of that would be this book from March of 1825. It's by the American Tract Society. Now, the American Tract Society still exists today in Garland, Texas, and they publish gospel tracts and gospel literatures for soul winning, for evangelization. Well, they existed in the early 1800s. And in March of 1825, they decided they would take all their tracts and bind them together into one volume. This is volume one of the American Tract Society tracts. And as you go through this, it's fascinating to read the tracts and to read the Bible verses and to read the messages they have. But it's even more fascinating to see who it was that was writing the gospel tracts. The same men that signed our founding documents were writing tracts for the American Tract Society. And as you get into the beginning of the book and look at the executive board of directors for the American Tract Society, you find that the American Tract Society was started by the founding fathers, as was the American Bible Society, as was the Philadelphia Bible Society, as was the Christian Constitutional Society. So many other groups that still exist today in America were founded by the founding fathers. Well, another famous founder was John Quincy Adams. Now, John Quincy Adams was an early president. He spent 18 years in the House of Representatives. He was Secretary of State. He had a whole list of accomplishments. But before we look at what he said, I want to look at education as it was at the time of the founders. This is a textbook from 1795. It's called the New England Primer. Now, the New England Primer was first introduced into America in 1690. And for 200 years, this was the textbook of America's schools. If you went to schools in America, you learned to read from the New England Primer. We would now call it a first grade textbook or first grade reader, but they didn't have grade levels then, so they called it a primer. Now, as you get into the primer and look at what was taught in America's schools for 200 years, they start out with the alphabet, and they go through the alphabet, and they show students how to make one, two, and three-letter syllables and how to put those syllables together to make words. And then about a fourth of the way through the book, they come back to the alphabet. And this time, they take the alphabet, and they add a phrase to each letter of the alphabet, and the students memorize those phrases. Now, let me read you the phrases that comprise the alphabet of America's schools for 200 years. Notice that every one of these phrases is the Bible verse. It says, A. A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother. B. Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble therewith. C. Come unto Christ, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and he will give you rest. D. Do not the abominable thing which I hate, saith the Lord. E. Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And right on through the alphabet. Now, that was the alphabet of America's schools for over 200 years. And as you got on into some of the lessons, notice one of the lessons. Who's the first man? Who's the first woman? Who's the first murderer? Who's the first martyr? Who's the first translated? Who's the oldest man? Who built the ark? Who's the most faithful man? The meekest man? The most patient? Sounds like a Sunday school lesson. That was the lesson in America's schools for 200 years. And as you got into the back of the book, there were several questions here. And remember, this is first grade reader, first grade questions. Questions like this. What's the fifth commandment? What's forbidden in the fifth commandment? What's the reason annexed to the fifth commandment? What's the sixth commandment? What's required in the sixth commandment? What's forbidden in the sixth commandment? Right on through. Now, that was the foundation of America's schools for 200 years. Now, think of John Quincy Adams. He went through this type of educational system, as did all the founding fathers. But imagine this. When John Quincy Adams was 14 years old, under this system of education, he received a congressional diplomatic appointment overseas to the court of Catherine the Great in Russia. Can you imagine sending a 14-year-old overseas to represent the United States in Russia? It's hard to imagine today, but that was typical for that time, that type of education. Well, this is a statement that John Quincy Adams made. He said the highest glory of the American Revolution was this, that it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of Christianity with the principles of civil government. Now, notice what he said. He said the biggest victory we won was that now Christian principles and government will be tied together in an indissoluble bond, never to be separated. But today we hear that it's just the opposite, that they wanted separation. No, that's not what the founders said. As a matter of fact, this next statement is by John Jay. Now, John Jay is the original chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Our first chief justice, he's one of the three men most responsible for the Constitution, and look what our first chief justice said. He said, Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest, of a Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for its rulers. Now, how long has it been since we've heard the Supreme Court say, Make sure you elect Christians in this next election. We haven't heard that in years, but did John Jay know what he was talking about? Yes, he's the original chief justice. He's one of the three men that gave us the Constitution, and he said that we should elect Christians for our rulers. Well, that was not a limited sentiment. As a matter of fact, this is a textbook that contains George Washington's farewell address. Now, students were taught in these textbooks that George Washington's farewell address was the most significant political speech ever given to the nation. Why not? He's the father of the country. He spent 45 years of his life in public service, everything from commander in chief through two terms as president. He's the man who was president of the convention that gave us the Constitution. He's the man that was president of the United States who called for the First Amendment Bill of Rights. He's the man who oversaw the formation of the First Amendment Bill of Rights. And now, after two terms in office, he says, This is America. This is what has brought us to this point. This is what we have to do to keep going. And yet, that farewell speech hasn't been seen in most textbooks for nearly 30 years. Why not? Doesn't Washington have anything to say anymore? No, the problem is what he says, because in the last half of this farewell speech, Washington goes into great detail about something. He says, Do not let anyone claim to be a true American. He says, Don't let them claim the tribute of American patriotism if they ever attempt to remove religion from politics. He says, Because if they do that, they can't be called true Americans. Well, those are the type of statements that we don't hear much anymore, but those were the statements of America's founding and America's history. Now, our founding fathers have delivered to us a system of government that has been remarkably successful. We're over 200 years under the same document, the same piece of paper, the same Constitution, and that's almost unheard of for contemporary nations. For example, take France. France, in the last 200 years, has gone through seven completely different forms of government. Italy is now in its 48th form of government. We're still in our first. That's amazing. Where did our founding fathers get the ideas that have caused us to last so long when other contemporary nations can't last that long? Well, that was a question asked by political science professors at the University of Houston. They wanted to see where the founding fathers got their ideas, and they felt, very rightfully so, that if they could collect some of the writings of the founding fathers and see who the founders were quoting, that they would know where they got their ideas. So they collected 15,000 writings of the founding fathers. From that, they boiled it down to a group of 3,154 writings that they felt had significant impact on the founding of America. And they went through those writings looking to see who the founders quoted. It took them 10 years, but at the end of 10 years, they had found all the quotes of the founders. They knew who the founders had quoted, where the quote came from. They found that the three men quoted most often in America were Blackstone, Montesquieu, and John Locke. Now that's a tribute to those three men, but what they found that they did not expect was that they quoted 16 times more often than they quoted Blackstone, 16 times more often than the founders quoted John Locke, 16 times more often than the founders quoted directly out of the Bible. 34% of all quotes of the founding fathers came out of the Bible, and on top of that, another 60% of their quotes, they were quoting men who had used the Bible to arrive at their conclusions. For example, I mentioned that Blackstone was one of the three men the founders quoted most often. This is his work, Blackstone's Commentaries on the Law. This was first introduced in America in 1758. Now this is the 1889 version, but for 160 years, this was the law textbook of America. You couldn't go to law school in America without knowing Blackstone. This was the Bible for lawyers. The Supreme Court quoted from this regularly to settle disputes and to define words and to look at procedure. Where did Blackstone get his ideas? Well, think of Charles Finney. Now Charles Finney is like the Billy Graham of the early 1800s. He was in the middle of one of America's greatest revivals. He was a revivalist, an evangelist, a preacher. But Finney didn't start out having a call from God that he felt to be a minister, to be a preacher. No, he wanted to be a lawyer. So he did what all other law students did. He entered law school and he studied Blackstone's Commentaries on the Law. And in the process of studying Blackstone's Commentaries on the Law, every time it gave the laws, it gave the Bible verses on which the laws were based. So much so, that in the process of studying to become a lawyer, Charles Finney became a Christian in the process of studying to be law. That's hard for us to imagine today. But does that tell you where Blackstone got his ideas for law? They found that out of the quotes of the founders, 94% of the quotes of the founders were based on the Bible. 34% came directly out of the Bible and another 60% were based from men who had used the Bible to write up their conclusions. Now, that leads to a lot of interesting things that we have in our government now. For example, we've got things that make us very unusual for other nations in the world. We established 200 years ago three branches of government. And those three branches of government that our founders set up were quite unlike any other nations around them. They didn't copy Britain's. They didn't copy France. Where did they get the ideas for our three branches of government that we have now? And on top of that, when the founding fathers established those three branches, they put in constitutionally guaranteed separation of powers to keep each branch away from the others. Well, the idea for the three branches of government came from Isaiah 33, 22. And the idea for the separation of powers the founders found in Jeremiah chapter 17. The ideas that have been so unique that has caused America to last for so long were ideas that the founders took directly out of the Bible. For example, another one. Tax exemption for churches. The founders gave tax exemptions to churches at their early days. Well, that's unheard of today. We still have tax exemptions, but you go to our closest northern and southern neighbors like Canada and Mexico, they don't give tax exemptions to churches. So where did the founders come up with an idea like tax exemptions? They found it in Ezra 7, 24. It's amazing to read the early records of Congress and see how many times a congressman came on to the floor of the House or the Senate and said, look what I found in the Bible. They would discuss it on the floor of the House and Senate, they'd vote on it, and they'd put it in the government with a statement that said, well, if it's in the Bible, that's what we want in our government. Now, that's the type of heritage we have, but we don't hear much about that anymore. Did you know the favorite book quoted by the founders, the book quoted more often than any other books, was Deuteronomy? Now, Deuteronomy is not your light reading book. That's not your devotional type book. They were students of the Bible. They were students of the Word, and they even knew the tough books. Now, this was so well understood in the early years that the Supreme Court continued to rule in that intention, keeping God's rules at the basis. For example, notice this case from 1892. Look what the Supreme Court said. It said, our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based on and must include the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. That's a strong statement, and they continued. They said, it's impossible for it to be otherwise. In this sense, to this extent, our civilizations and our institutions are emphatically Christian. Now, what would lead the court to that conclusion? Why would they come to such a strong conclusion that the teachings of Christ had to be in everything that we did, that we're emphatically a Christian nation? Well, that case, it was not long. It was only 16 pages long in court history, but it gave 87 different historical precedents to prove that. They quoted the founding fathers, and the acts of the founding fathers, and the acts of the congresses, the acts of the state committees. They got to the end of 87, and the court said, now we could keep going like this for a long time, but 87 is sufficient to say that our laws and our institutions must be based on and must include the teachings of Jesus Christ. Now, remember those 87 precedents. We'll come back to that a little later, because the court, when it makes decisions, it bases its own precedents. The court will go back and look and see how it had ruled in previous cases, and it uses that as precedents to try to continue forward to be consistent in their ruling. We'll continue on this next week. I'm sorry we have to break it up, but we just don't have enough time to record. Remember, God said, If I shut up heaven, that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, if My people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. My friend, we have problems. We have problems up on the hill in the White House, but we also have serious problems in our churches. He said, If My people will turn from their wicked ways, we have a wickedness that has permeated the church today, a wickedness where the Holy Spirit is not the Lord of the church, where we have systems where men are looked upon almost as God, and men sometimes teach their people to look upon them as the authority. My friend, when we have teachings where man is the authority and not God and His Word, then we have got into the area of false doctrine. And heresy actually has to do with church government and church operation in the church, if you'll study your New Testament carefully. And we have heresy in some of our churches where we are not letting a plurality of godly men lead us. The elders lead our churches as under the direction of the Holy Spirit, as God has instituted in the church. And we have gone on our own wicked ways. And we're playing this tape to show you not only how America started out great and godly, but also the church has gone the way of America, where she started out great and godly and powerful, but as she went her ways and turned to the ways of man and the reasoning of man, she became weak and sick, as we have in America. Well, we'll continue on this next week. Till next time, may God bless you. And remember, Jesus Christ is all you need, but is He all you want? Well, may God bless you, my friend.