Guest
host Adam McManus examines
a recent talk by
David Barton,
founder of WallBuilders,
in which he explained that most Christians are only two-thirds
Christians. They treasure only two of God’s three institutions–the family and the church. But, to their peril, they ignore the
importance and influence of the civil government. Forty million
Evangelical Christian are not
even
registered to vote. And, on Election Day, too few Christians show up
to cast an informed ballot. We need to be fully three-thirds
Christians!
Our disobedience is an outgrowth of our disregard for daily Bible reading. In 2021, 26 million fewer Americans read their Bible, according to the American Bible Society report. Amazingly, President John Quincy Adams wrote a book urging 10-year-olds to read through the Bible in a year, cover-to-cover, because that’s what Americans did.
You’ll hear how the Great Awakening was really the story of thousands of little revivals which were planted by George Whitefield, the British preacher, who spoke 18,000 times in 34 years. Remarkably, 80% of Americans had heard Whitfield preach in person. When revival broke out in Boston, for example, Pastor Sam Cooper kept it going another decade there. The same thing was true of the stewardship of Pastor Gilbert Tennent in Philadelphia and Pastor Samuel Davies in the woods of Virginia.
Barton said, “Christians must do their duty to the country as part of their duty to God as because we're a stewardship nation. We don't have kings that tell us what to do. We tell them what to do! God put the government in our hands. Christians have a responsibility. God will bless or curse this nation according to the course that Christians take in politics.
“Why is that true? Because we know in Proverbs 14:34 it says, ‘Righteousness exalts a nation and sin is a reproach to any people.’ We love to sing God bless America. But if we want God to bless America, we’ve got to give Him something to work with. It takes righteousness that He can bless. So, how do you get righteousness? Proverbs 29:2 says, ‘When the righteous rule, the people rejoice. When the wicked rule, the people groan.’ ”
Listen for inspiring examples of what has happened in Virginia and Texas when pastors preach the importance of Christians voting, when Christians gets registered, and then cast Biblically-informed votes.
Homeschooled himself in the 1960's and 70's, Kevin Swanson and his wife, Brenda, are now homeschooling their five children. Since graduating from his homeschool and then serving as student body president of a large west coast university, he has gone on to other leadership positions in corporate management, church, and other non-profits.