Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This is all the inheritance I can give to my dear family. The religion of Christ can give them one which will make them rich indeed. That was the opening line to his will. He said, I don't have a whole lot of money to leave them, but I'm leaving them. Christ,
[00:00:17] Speaker B: run your home and your dough like a biblical boss. Good day, everyone, and welcome back to Abraham's Wallet. Last week, in episode one of our series on America, we laid a universal biblical foundation, and that is that every Christian anywhere on earth is called to work for the good of their place.
That could be your street, neighborhood, your village, your state, your nation. We don't retreat. We seek the welfare of the city. We oppose worldliness with humble local faithfulness. And we labor so that our kids and neighbors experience the blessings of God's good systems. Today, we're going to zoom in on our place, the United States of America.
I know that we have listeners all over the world, but I want most of our people are in America and I'm going to talk about America. So if you can stomach it, you can stick around. Or if you and 10,000 of your friends in your nation start listening, we'll do a series on that nation as well. I'm open to that. So before we get into it, Mark, there've been significant happenings in the market today. What, what can you tell us?
[00:01:28] Speaker A: Well, we have our first in the history of modern wealth, we have our first trillionaire. Now, an individual person is worth a trillion dollars. That would be Elon Musk. He was already the world's richest man, and today was the IPO, the initial public offering of SpaceX.
And he made some money on that deal.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: What is SpaceX exactly? I've heard about it. We've all heard about it.
What's their thing?
[00:02:04] Speaker A: That's a good question that a lot of people are asking. But the thing that they're making money on today is mostly Starlink Internet.
So if you've seen the Elon rocket ships that he launches and they land, that's a unique innovation.
Unlike NASA, that used to just blast a rocket out and hope it doesn't land on someone's head when it comes back down. Elon's rockets come home and land themselves. But they'll put satellites up. I remember sitting around campfires the first time I ever saw the little line of orbiting SpaceX satellites thinking we were being attacked by aliens. But they put satellites up. You can get Internet anywhere in the world now with the right. The right. A little dish device to get Internet and that's kind of, I think, their bread and butter in terms of what's generating revenue today. But they also have the XAI arm of the Elon in Empire. So I think that's got a lot to do with your favorite robot, Grok. You, you like the Grok over there on Twitter? I do, yeah.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: He's been a great, really good friend.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: I think the AI will be involved in these horrifying humanoid robots that Tesla is retooling to start printing out and putting in people's houses.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: Don't care for those. I don't care for those.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: Yeah, we had a long conversation last night around the dinner table of would we ever accept a robot into our home? And everybody initially said, no, never. And I said, well, what if the house was perfectly clean all the time? And my wife sort of goes, I think never. But now you're starting to tempt me. I don't know.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: All the Elon companies seem to be kind of feeding off each other, but SpaceX is one that I think has a lot of potential. And the way the stock priced on this initial offering, it's so far beyond any fundamental analysis where you would look at realistic revenue multiples and sort of the things we typically do to value a stock that you're kind of just saying, I don't know, I'm just gonna take a gamble on it and hope Elon can change the whole world because this is the price doesn't really make sense based on the numbers today.
So it's an interesting day in the market and we'll see what happens. I wouldn't be surprised if that stock is doubled in six weeks or if it's halved.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Okay, well, why don't you, why don't you remind us, Mark, if people have heard hubbub in the news about SpaceX and they think, I gotta go buy some of that stock.
What's your, what's your rule of thumb as far as somebody buying an individual stock about something? Oh, there's a bunch of hullabaloo about it. I gotta go get some. What would you, what would you say to the rank and file investor on
[00:05:01] Speaker A: the street if you're listening to this and your stock portfolio is $15,000, please don't buy any SpaceX or any other individual stocks. We are a big fan of owning a broad segment of the market. You can buy index funds and accomplish that. You know, if, if you're listening to this and your investment portfolio is $2 million and you want to take 20 grand and say, I, I don't know if this is great or not, but I would like to. I have conviction and doesn't have to be SpaceX, some company, I'm okay with that. I just say keep it in kind of at a scale where this is money you could lose and it's not going to change the trajectory of your kind of what you're building financially.
So I'm not one to say you can never invest in any individual stock. I'm just tell you let it be a sort of side dish to the main entree, which is built on owning broad market sectors both in the US and internationally. Large companies, small companies, and don't try to pick stocks and don't try to time the market with the main helpings on your, on your investment plate. Now, if you want to sprinkle a little, you know, whatever company you think is a really interesting play, sometimes that works out, sometimes it doesn't. The worst thing that can happen to you is going all in big on an individual stock when you maybe only have a few bucks and you hit it and it triples. Oh my gosh, this is the way. And then you start gambling. And over the long term, when the numbers get bigger, you learn that that's a very hard game to win at consistently.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: Okay, can we get into America? Where I want, where I want to be.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: I just want to say I think that when young George Washington was thinking about the types of things that he would eventually, the kind of man he would grow into and the nation he would, he would build.
Yeah, I think probably he would not have invested in SpaceX stock. He was more concerned.
He just was trying to get across the Delaware. He didn't have any thoughts of going to Mars, so.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: No. Right, that's right.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: We're going to shift gears a little now and we're going to talk about some guys who didn't believe in buying individual stocks.
Yeah, I don't know. I was, I was swimming out there trying to find something to grab on to.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: You working for a Segway didn't really
[00:07:35] Speaker A: work, but, you know, I thought you
[00:07:37] Speaker B: were going to say he would. Did he even dream in his wildest dreams that he would get a mention someday on a podcast? On a small faith and finance podcast?
He probably couldn't have dreamt of that.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: I'm not sure that he could have dreamt of any form of broadcast or even amplified audio.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: Oh, you're right.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: You're right.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: So today we zoom in, as I said, on the United States of America, because we've been handed a Massive inheritance.
Life in a land whose roots run deep into Protestant scripture. Saturated soil.
I heard this recently from Al Mohler and really liked the idea that Christians believe in good history. We believe in having accurate history because we're people of the book.
Our book that we believe God is has given us through men is historically accurate. And if it is not historically accurate, then I'll quote Paul as saying we above all people should be pitied if what we believe isn't true. But we believe true truth means that it's true philosophically, it's true socially, it's true historically.
So we preserve the record of God's acts. And I think that preserving the history of our country is important too. I think that ignoring or distorting the historical record makes us unspiritual, it makes us ungrateful, and it makes us unprepared to steward that which we have received.
So I think that gratitude for this land strengthens our theology. I think it fuels multi generational legacy and I think it equips us to build on what's been given to us rather than squander it. So I'll just say as our lead in for today, I'm just going to. I'm going to talk about our founders. I'm going to tell a couple of stories about God's grace on our history.
And I just want to say that America's story is unique compared to most nations.
From the earliest colonies, a biblical worldview shaped our laws, our culture, our education and our public life.
You might not know this history that the Great Awakenings that poured gasoline on whatever faith was present in the colonies happened in the 1730s and 1740s, beginning before the Declaration of Independence was adopted.
I think sometimes we think in American history that we were founded as a nation and maybe it was sort of noble. And at some point there was a moral decline. And then the Great Awakenings happened. But the first Great Awakening happened before we were a country. We were just colonies. And there was religious and spiritual fervor right around the time, as I'll describe, of the Declaration of Independence. And then a couple of decades later was the Second Great Awakening. And so there was a real spiritual sensitivity to the colonies at the time of the founding.
That culture, that sort of landscape informed the date May 17, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress passed a resolution calling for a national day of humiliation, fasting and prayer. So this is May 17, 1776, just about six weeks before July 4th. Right. So I'm just going to quote some of this language that The Congress used calling for this national day of humiliation, fasting and prayer, which should be stunning. I think it's stunning to us to think that that came from the top down. In those early days, the Congress urged the colonies to confess and bewail their manifold sins and transgressions, to engage in sincere repentance, to appease God's righteous displeasure with our sins, and to seek his pardon through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ.
Finally, they encourage people to pray for divine assistance and in the cause of liberty. If that doesn't sound multicultural to you, it's because it was not.
It was specifically biblical, specifically Christian. If you understand that that was happening in the country, that kind of attitude leading up to July 4, then the declaration of Independence makes a lot more sense to you if you've read it or if, yeah, as you read it, you don't get a picture of a bunch of cocksure blowhards who want to create their own nation. That's not the image I get reading the Declaration of Independence. We think we've got a pretty good idea here. Let's go. I get the sense of this is a group of humble men who are troubled. That's the feeling I get reading the Declaration of Independence. These guys are troubled and they feel constrained to create a new government system because so called Christian England under King George III was unjust and wicked. And they felt that they had no choice. And they said in effect to God, lord, stop us if this isn't right, but we are moving forward in faith. We think that this is your will. And I just want to. I'm going to make a couple of recommendations today, but I want to encourage you dads to read the Declaration of Independence and certainly read it on July 4th. I mean, I don't know if you do any sort of patriotic gathering on July 4th. I'm for that.
I want to lead you to get ready for that day. So that's one of my recos is that you read the Declaration of Independence. It's not very long.
See what it says and maybe that'll prep you to read it to your family and you could react to it with some of your thoughts.
These founders were not perfect, but they built a nation the best they could on the rock of biblical truth in ways that produced unprecedented fruitfulness, opportunity and freedom to worship and to disciple your homes. That heritage is not something to be ashamed of. I want to uncover it, dust it off and hand it back to our families and say it's something that we should celebrate. It's something we should teach our kids and it's something that we should build on as stewards in this geography that we, that we live in. I'm going to talk a little bit about some important founders and their faith, but any first blush reactions?
[00:14:21] Speaker A: Mark, I think what you're saying, it's been erased. I would say from what we learn in school, I you and I just drove back from Texas to our respective homes and I tried to dial up one of the podcasts that we like to listen to when we're on road trips.
Is this Survival Stories. It's really fun, it's really well produced, but they just produced a new series that they were advertising. So I said, oh, this is perfect. I'm going to be ready for our Founding Fathers in America talk.
And man, I made it 15 minutes in before we just got into the thickness of not only are we going to tell you about how these men built this nation, we're also going to tell you all the people that they screwed over on their way. And it's like we can't even talk about the good things that have happened in the building of America without feeling the need to hang dog and apologize for the fact that they weren't perfect. And then even in many cases, to create a narrative that's just flat out not true about some of their approaches to the world. So I would just encourage you to, you know, whatever you're doing this year to commemorate the fourth, we're going to be in another country, which is a little unfortunate, but whatever you're doing, like, take a minute to just go back and look at the source documents and ask yourself, is this what I have been feeling about the Founding Fathers, about the birth of the nation?
Because what I've gathered, even from your encouragement as we've prepared for this series, Stephen, is that most of us kind of have a false idea that's come about maybe in the last 15 years or so about who these guys were and what was important to them. It's like apologizing for things more than it's celebrating things. So anyways, I would say try to look at some of these documents and stories with fresh eyes.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: Yeah, you've prompted me.
There's a couple of things, as I said, I want to encourage people to do. One of them is if this all feels like it's left field from you, and you kind of go like, where did he get this information?
Where is this coming from?
I would love to recommend a couple of books to you that again, I just believe that Christians are good historians that we want accurate history and we don't want hearsay and we don't want revisionist history. I think that's all super dangerous and we want truth. So let me recommend a couple of things to you. My wife and I did a conference in Nashville and one of the speakers was Eric Metaxas.
Now, I know he's political and he has a podcast and he does a lot of shouting about Trump.
That's true.
But he's also a good historian and he's written a couple of books and he's released a book that's out right now. I think it's somewhere high up on the history charts. It's a book called Revolution and it's just a review of the American Revolution. He wanted to time it for the 250th.
I definitely recommend that book. Eric is an outspoken believer.
I want to recommend one other thing.
The Light and the Glory is a book that covers 1492-1793.
It digs deeper into the broader providential story from Columbus through the early Republic and it highlights. This is why I recommend this book specifically. It highlights God's hand and just highlighting the spiritual story of the planting of the colonies, the Great Awakening and into the improbable birth of the nation. And little bonus, one of the authors. There's two authors of the book the Light and the Glory, and one of them's named Manuel. So seems great to me. Maybe that'll help you remember. The Light and the Glory by Manuel and Eric Metaxas. Revolution I have to throw out. Also, one of the places that I'm getting information and have developed my opinions is that you might know that we have an online community called ur.
If you join our little online community, you get a little app on your phone and then we can all talk and share videos about various subjects. And we had a study group from UR that went through a class called Constitution 101 and loved was excellent fodder for this kind of thing. I was just so stunned and pleased by what I found about our nation's history. And just the scholarly, balanced approach that these men took towards establishing this nation are amazing. And as I mentioned, er, I have to throw out here. I know I'm interrupting this episode.
I'll get back to America. I just want to throw out if you would love to be around a group of men who are talking like Mark and I are talking right now and you think, how could I be around those kind of UR people so that I could have safe conversations about something like politics I'm not. That feels like an explosive subject around me or something. Or how could I be around Abrahamic dads who are all pulling in the same direction? We'd love to get you out to our retreat. We're having a retreat August 20th, the weekend of August 21st. You can go to abrahamswallet.com retreat and find out all about it. And we'd love to have you there. I gotta throw that out.
Let's get back to what we were saying. Okay. I want to talk about the founders a little bit. Let's meet some of these wonderful founders, these men who honored scripture. As you're going to hear. These were not. I mean, I remember hearing this in high school onward. Certainly in college.
I heard the phrase secular deists all the time. These are secular deists. A secular deist is somebody who believes that God. The metaphor that's always given is that God wound up the world like a clock.
He set it down and he walked away. And he goes, good luck, everybody. And now he's done.
That's what a secular deist believes, not that God actually inserted himself into history and came to save us, et cetera.
That's all I heard about the Founding Fathers, secular deists, and that they dreamt up a humanistic republic free of God, based more than anything else on the French Enlightenment.
What you see historically is that these were men shaped by the Bible and our common Protestant heritage. Like the things I believe.
George Washington would sign off on a doctrinal statement. That's like my local Baptist church for sure. So I'm going to tell you about a couple of these founders. It's not going to be a huge history lesson. I just want to hit some high spots. Let's talk about George Washington, who you mentioned, Mark.
This is a George Washington quote to the distinguished character of patriot. It should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.
He repeatedly appealed to Providence. And that was just a common. You know how in all of our worship songs now we say, lord, that's. That's like our. That's kind of a hot way to describe God.
In the 1700s, providence would be the most common way to refer to God. He would refer to Providence over and over. The hand of God guiding the affairs of men. He called his troops to live as Christian soldiers, which is what I would do if I was general in an army. His prayer dedicating the nation to God, by the way, is on a massive bronze plaque inside St. Paul's Chapel in New York City, which I've seen. I went and toured all of that stuff after 9. 11 happen. There's an amazing story around St. Paul's Chapel, but Washington's Prayer is etched into this massive plaque on the wall. It's just down the street from foundation hall in New York City, where the nation's capital was.
This dude called for days of prayer and fasting when he was the commander in chief of the Continental Army. He called for days of prayer and fasting on at least eight occasions during the Revolutionary War.
Like, what's about to happen is very important. Everyone fasts today. And they're all going, we're cold and are marching all day long. Do we have to fast today? He's like, yes, everyone fasts and prays today.
A great guy. And by the way, my family visited his home, Mount Vernon. And it strikes me now, in retrospect, we should have done an Abrahamic tent tour of Mount Vernon because this dude's family was so utterly productive.
There were five capitals oozing out their pores in every way.
They were. They're just an amazing, amazing family.
And he was a great guy. That's George Washington. Just going to tick him off. And I'm moving on to John Adams. Unless you would like to weigh in on George Washington.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: No, I just endorse the visit to Mount Vernon.
It's really good. So.
[00:24:00] Speaker B: Yes, so good. And don't do what many people do. We have four things to do in D.C. and Mount Vernon is one of the things.
It's a day at least.
Same thing if you ever go visit.
I think the first time that I visited Lincoln's presidential library in Springfield, Illinois, I think I thought, we'll kind of see the memorials, see if there's a library, I don't know. And then we'll move on. Holy cow, it's a wonderland. You got to take a day to do it. Okay, next guy. John Adams. I'm going to quote John Adams.
I just learned something on Trivial Pursuit yesterday. Do you know who the first president was that had a middle name, had any middle name was Mark.
You'll recognize the middle name when I say it because it's part of his name.
And my hint is I just said John Adams.
[00:24:56] Speaker A: I'm thinking it's Quincy.
[00:24:58] Speaker B: It's John Quincy Adams. That was our first president that even had a middle name. Fascinating. Okay, back to John Adams. He's talking about the founders. The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity, which I love as I do the Christian religion, and which are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.
He could have been a pastor. The more I read about John Adams, I'm like, this guy is amazing.
I'll give you a couple of anecdotes about him. During the tense days of the continental Congress in 1776, Benjamin Rush, a fellow signer of the Declaration and a devout Christian, sat next to John Adams. Rush leaned over and whispered a question about whether the American cause against Great Britain would succeed. Adams replied without hesitation, yes, if we fear God and repent of our sins.
Rush later recorded this exchange and reflected that it taught his own sons an important lesson, that one could reach the highest levels of political usefulness and fame without renouncing Christianity or biblical morality.
Adams's answer reveals a deep awareness that national success wasn't ultimately rooted in military strategy, alliances, or human wisdom alone, but in humble dependence upon God who repentance and the fear of the Lord.
I also throw in one more little anecdote about Adams. In a letter to his wife Abigail on July 3, 1776, day before the Declaration was adopted, he wrote, you know, he's kind of given her the lay of the land about everything. And he finally says, but I must ultimately submit all my hopes and fears to an overruling providence in which, unfashionable as this faith may be, I firmly believe.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: Whoa.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: What a guy.
Lastly, I've got to touch. I wanted to touch on this guy because I think he's probably the most controversial of the, of the Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson. And one thing I wanted to recommend to people who are listening and interested in all this stuff is that you take your family to Washington, D.C.
and you, you don't just sign up for a tour. Take us wherever you want to go. But dad, you could curate the stops that your family goes to and like, carefully put together the schedule of. I think it's good for us to go here and here. Let's learn about, I don't know, the Supreme Court. We're going to try to meet our senator. Do whatever you want to do in Washington, D.C.
but please, I beg of you, if you go, would you please put on your agenda to go to the Museum of the Bible?
It's not only a fascinating history of the Bible's creation and how it spread around the world, but there's a whole floor which is the impact of the Bible in American history. And it'll walk you through things like the Great Awakening, etc. So the reason that comes to mind is because I'm going to talk about Thomas Jefferson. And in the annals of Christianity, Thomas Jefferson isn't a great guy.
So in the Bible Museum, they have Thomas Jefferson's Bible, where he literally. Do you know what he did, Mark with his Bible?
[00:28:34] Speaker A: Yeah, you've told me. Do you want me to say it?
[00:28:36] Speaker B: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: Didn't he redact and reword things to fit his own wacky theologies and even some of his proclivities towards specific sin?
[00:28:50] Speaker B: Yes.
So what he did was. It's really weird, this, this move of his. And it kind of shows you how deep the Christian worldview went at the time, which was he feared God.
He didn't take the Scripture at face value, and I'll just take all of it and I submit to it.
But he didn't. He didn't just make up a new religion either. He thought, I have to take the revealed word of God and I will reshape it the way that I want.
It's a strange way of, like, acknowledging the authority of scriptures and also putting himself above it. And yes, literally, you can look at his Bible in the Bible Museum and see that he cut out everything that's miraculous in the New Testament.
He cuts out everything that refers to the divinity of Christ.
And yet he has the chutzpah to think, oh, there's really good teachings of Jesus. Like, well, it all rises and falls on him being God incarnate. But all that to one side. I still want to look at the guy and say, he's not an example of Christian faith. He's not someone you want to be like.
But there was a fear of God in him, and he believed in God's word. He believed that God was the judge of mankind.
In a weird way, I think of him as a Trump parallel, which is, we've talked about this before on this podcast. I don't see that Donald Trump is a born again believer, but there's something in him that he's kind of like the Roman and at the foot of the cross. There is a fear of God there, which is a good baseline, at least for the President of the United States. So Thomas Jefferson was not orthodox.
Was not orthodox. But here's what he said. The doctrines of Jesus are simple and they tend all to the happiness of man.
I am a real Christian. Okay, no, you're not. But that's what he said. That is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus Christ. What he means is the. The moral teachings of Jesus. So he saw biblical morality as essential for society. In a letter to a young namesake. This is later in his life, he's writing to a kid who's named Thomas Jefferson Smith. And he wrote, adore God, reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself and your country. More than life. Be just, be true. Murmur not at the ways of providence and the life into which you have been entered will be one of eternal and ineffable bliss. So you can see in his writing that he believes that following the Judeo Christian biblical moral code just ends up in societal success.
In his second inaugural address in 1805, he called the nation to join him in prayers. Let's all pray to that being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers as he did Israel of old.
So again, I'm just painting a picture of even what I would call a non Christian. I don't think Thomas Jefferson had a saving faith in Jesus, but it was so common among the founders. We believe in the God of the Bible and we should follow him. And our society is created to follow him.
[00:32:17] Speaker A: If you wanted to cause the average liberal white woman in America to light their hair on fire, you would say basically that Donald Trump is a modern day Thomas Jefferson.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: Right?
[00:32:34] Speaker A: Because the funny guy, like what you're saying about Jefferson, he also didn't really act according to what he said. Like we know of all the founding fathers, maybe, maybe Benjamin Franklin was the more degenerate of the founding fathers right behind.
And then right behind him would have maybe been Thomas Jefferson.
He had a penchant for making children with the help.
So there were some.
[00:33:05] Speaker B: Not really the goal of this particular episode, but a true statement. Yes.
[00:33:12] Speaker A: Second, and I don't have your notes today, but okay, I did collect a couple of zinger quotes from guys. Are you going to get to either of my guys? Which would be no. Patrick Henry and John Jay.
[00:33:29] Speaker B: I was going to mention John Jay. I'll just. Let me just say in passing also, if you ever make it up around Virginia and you want to tour Monticello, is it Monticello or Monticello?
[00:33:41] Speaker A: Monticello.
I think it's Monticello.
[00:33:44] Speaker B: A Monticello, if you want to tour that place, it's fascinating and yes, it exposes some of his sins as well. I was just going to say that other men like Samuel Adams, Charles Carroll, and yes, your boy John Jay openly trusted in Christ and recommended the scriptures repeatedly. So why don't you talk about Patrick Henry and John Jay?
[00:34:05] Speaker A: Well, since we're on John Jay, he was the first Chief justice in the United States. And, and you know, I feel like the Supreme Court has become this thing where we're like, it's so important that whether they be religious or not, everyone on the Supreme Court could. They must completely disavow that government and religion have anything to do with each other. Like, that's core to.
[00:34:34] Speaker B: That's a modern notion.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: By the way, our country was founded on one of the. You would think one of the principles was our modern conception of what the separation of church and state means. That's what you would think if we just listened to people talk.
[00:34:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:34:50] Speaker A: Well, the first Supreme Court justice ever.
[00:34:53] Speaker B: Let's go.
[00:34:54] Speaker A: Said, let's go. It is a duty that providence has given to Americans to prefer Christians for their rulers.
[00:35:03] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.
So I'm going to get there.
Yeah, go on.
[00:35:09] Speaker A: Maybe we'll talk.
And this, we acknowledge that we're stepping into territory here, that there's a lot of buzz around what Christian nationalism. What is Christian nationalism? If you ask 10 people, you'll get 10 different. Different definitions of that. We're not going to talk about that today. Let's just say that you and I would both agree that there's some things that the Christian nationalists say that we think are fantastic. And there's some chuckleheads out there that call themselves Christian nationalists that we'd probably disagree with a lot of. But these guys were not of the mind that you should check your Christian beliefs at the door or even that you should just be so multicultural in your approach that, yeah, you can just be a Christian as long as you don't show favoritism to other Christians. No, the Chief justice said, yeah, it's actually your duty to show favoritism to other Christians when you go to vote.
[00:36:08] Speaker B: Yes, they did.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: And we could talk about that for a long time. I think that, you know, we've gotten into a tricky spot now where up until very recently, you had to call yourself a Christian to have a chance of getting elected in this country.
[00:36:26] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:36:27] Speaker A: And so we had a lot of people, even in pretty recent history that we would go, well, yeah, they attend church.
We can kind of look at their lives and go, I don't think this person had any relationship with Christ.
But I think it's interesting how the narrative has changed from founding fathers and instrumental early builders of our country who didn't just say this was allowable, they said it was required of any Christian to. Now, this fake story that's been told is that these guys would have wanted you to absolutely, like, throw away, be totally neutral. Exactly. And that's just not the case. I really like Patrick Henry had some zinger quotes.
My favorite was this one. 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.
[00:37:35] Speaker B: Let's go Pat.
[00:37:36] Speaker A: So this is not somebody who's like you should know that we were men of faith. That doesn't sound like deists to me. Now we're not denying that a Jefferson was a part of the mix and God used him.
But Patrick Henry says no, this is not who it's built on. Another thing that he said was this is all the inheritance I can give to my dear family. The religion of Christ can give them one which will make them rich indeed. So upon that was the opening line to his will.
He said, I don't have a whole lot of money to leave them, but I'm leaving them Christ and he's going to make them rich beyond their dreams. So pretty cool guy.
[00:38:23] Speaker B: Well you're reminding me of this clip. I don't know if you, our, our listeners have seen this famous clip of Charlie Kirk where like a 20 year old tells him what we're, what we're describing and he is representing the modern culture that says well everybody knows that our, our nation's founders weren't Christian. And Charlie goes, pardon me. And then Charlie rattles off about 20 facts. And one of them that he said was at the time of the founding, 13 out of 13 original state constitutions required, required a declaration of faith for any public office.
You have to say I believe in Jesus Christ to, to be a mayor, to be a local judge.
Nine out of 13 required you to be a Protestant and Maryland was Catholic but still required faith.
So they, you know, if you, if you'd said I'm a universalist, they would have said well that you, you're not getting in. Sorry you can't run for city council.
They believed a citizenry and leaders rooted in Christian character were non negotiable for liberty to work.
That's what John Adams famously said that this nation was constructed for a citizenry of Christians. That's how it'll work. They believed Proverbs 14:34.
Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.
They were so baptized in the scriptures that that's why there was this continual call for fasting, repentance, let's continually repent before God because sin is a reproach to any people. But righteousness exalts a nation. How could we have a hope of going forward as a nation, unless we glorify God's righteousness among us, which only comes by God's mercy and grace.
So I think that's so important for us as fathers to know now, because what is our hope going forward?
Good morality.
That the IRS will come correct and only charge us the taxes that they should. That all sounds great, but that's all downwind of having a nation that proceeds in repentance and contrition before God. So I can't change that for my state, but I can do that in my household. I could lead my household towards a life of repentance. So all these founders connected civil government with Christian principles and that they were bonded together. I want to tell a couple of anecdotes from our history and then we'll close up shop.
I want to talk about God's grace in our history.
God's providence shows up in so many moments in American history, which I think reading those books will help you.
As I said, we saw Eric Metaxas very recently, and he retold the story of Washington's daring Christmas crossing of the Delaware river in 1776.
So this is part of the revolution. You've seen the picture of.
There's a painting of Washington. He's got one hand across his breast, and he's bravely at the front of a little rowboat.
And there was a storm going on at the time. Snow, sleet and ice. And it looked like we were going to doom the operation. And Metaxas knows all these details about a dude that lost his boots and had to walk 10 miles or everything was lost. I mean, it's just amazing stories. But they thought this. This oncoming storm was going to doom their. Their plan to surprise the British.
And what ended up happening is we've got to make a move now. It's got to happen now. Well, it was. There's some reason that everybody was late kind of getting to shore and oh, no, the sun's coming up. So our surprise we're going to be seeing. They're up there on the hill. They're going to blow us out of the water.
What happened was this nor' Easter came and created this dense fog and this bad weather. And they were able to cross the Delaware without being seen because these clouds moved in and protected them. And everyone, including Washington, saw that this pivotal victory at Trenton was saved by God himself, by the way that he controlled the weather.
Another anecdote, War of 1812. After the British burned Washington, D.C. there was a sudden violence to storm. I never. I didn't know this story.
A violent storm, tornadoes, hurricane force winds and torrential rain. That one devastated the invaders, killed more British soldiers than American arms. Had this storm. God's like, y' all are not doing this very well. I could do better. And secondly, extinguished all of the fires in D.C. this, this storm in New Orleans, which was the end of the War of 1812, which didn't end until 1814, but the end of War of 1812. We've got Andrew Jackson in New Orleans.
And he and others credited divine intervention as British shots missed while American fire found its mark. The little ragtag. I mean this is the story, if you know any of Israelis, Israel's history, modern history, whether it's the Six Days War. I mean they should have been blown out of the water so many times. But there were just bizarre things that happened. Like they can't hit a straight shot with their guns and all of our guns are hitting their mark. And Andrew Jackson said, it's the hand of God. He said these weren't random. There were moments that preserved the young nation.
[00:44:21] Speaker A: I just, if you, you should go to these places, I guess is what I would say because I totally. When I was in college, you know this Steve. But the listener might not. I was on the cycling team.
And if you're going to be like a very, very avid cyclist spending six hours a day on your bicycle, I could recommend better places than the east coast for that. Because we would go on these mega long rides all winter long and they were pretty miserable. But maybe our most standard long bike ride, we would just say we're going to Washington's Crossing and it would be sleeting and 28 and we would ride our bikes out. You had. There's a bridge right where Washington crossed the Delaware and it's, it's one of those. I don't see them ever except on the East Coast. They're like steel waffle. So that when you're standing on it, you look down and you can see the river underneath your feet.
[00:45:21] Speaker B: Gotcha.
[00:45:22] Speaker A: And there's like a one way walk on the side of the bridge and we would have to get off the bikes and like kind of waddle across in our gear and our cleats and stuff.
[00:45:31] Speaker B: But your clickety clack shoes.
[00:45:34] Speaker A: It's just true that every. I went across that. I've gone across that bridge a hundred times and every time you go this is freaking incredible. And it's even a little extra incredible when you do it in the middle of a snowstorm and it's foggy in that river or something like that. So just one example to say, I think if you get a chance to go to some of these places, just like if you've been to Gettysburg and felt the gravity of what happened there, you know, it's worth it. And it would make a great, you know, just to get our little financial plug in for Abraham's wallet. It would make a great way to spend some money on a family travel is to go visit some of these places. Maybe you say between July 4, 2026 and July 4, 2027, we're going to pick three American heritage sites and go hit them up. You can drive to them if you live anywhere close.
And I think that would be money and time well spent, dude.
[00:46:35] Speaker B: Great. Great reco. I'm just. I'm going to throw this out just because I just saw it yesterday on. On the drive back from Texas.
We go. We go right up. I hold on now. I.
I 65 south of Louisville, and we go right by Abraham Lincoln's birthplace, which is so worth seeing. It's just a profound moment. And it's like 20 minutes off the interstate. I mean, you could do it in an hour.
I recommend dads be known as the history, the American history geek in the family and wear that with pride and say, heck, yes, I am. And yes, we're going to go to Appomattox and we're gonna go wherever because these locations and this history matters. So this history that we're talking about today isn't just for nostalgia.
Although, yes, do order some bunting because July 4th is coming. I believe that you can see how I think these things overlap. I think it honors God for us to cheer and glorify him for our history.
So, yes, order some bunting. You can get it cheap. You can get the cheap nylon stuff where you could get nice wool bunting, use it year after year. So, yes, do that. But we're not just talking about this for nostalgia's sake. We really believe that it's fuel for gratitude and telling an accurate historical story to your family.
Teach it to your kids so that they receive the inheritance with thanks instead of shame. There's a thousand great books out there about American history, including little children's books, chapter books you could read with your young ones. Do it. So my sort of step that I recommend this week is read one founder quote or a short history story aloud with your family.
Fly the flag outside your home. July 4th is coming up.
I kind of like, for the 250th, why not fly your flag from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Why not have it up all summer? Our bunting's up at our house.
And do it with prayerful thanks, not in idolatry of the nation, but as Abraham McDad stewarding this particular place for God's glory.
If this episode stirred something in you, man, I want my buddies to hear this, share it with another dad. And next week we're going to talk about the fact that politics is not dirty and reclaiming Christian civic engagement. Until then, love your family, seek the good of your place, and trust the Lord. I'm going to leave you.
I want to read a little patriotic hymn the lyrics to you every week. I'm going to do that again this week, and I'm going to close this week with my country. Tis of thee. Tis of thee. Please don't turn this off. Cause I want you to hear the verse that you have not been taught. Just like the weird history of America that you haven't been taught. It captures the spirit of what we're saying beautifully. Listen to this. Here's the verse. You know, my country tis of thee Sweet land of liberty of thee I sing the land where my fathers died the land of the pilgrim's pride. From every mountainside let freedom ring. There's a couple more verses. Here's the last verse.
Our father's God to thee Author of liberty to thee we sing.
Long may our land be bright with freedom's holy light.
Protect us by thy might. Great God our king.
This is written obviously against the idea. Well, England has a king. It's King George. We don't think he's a very good guy. We have a king also, and it's not a man. It's the great God is our king. So my country tis of the.
[00:50:31] Speaker A: What a.
[00:50:32] Speaker B: What a winner. All right, we'll see you next week, everybody.
Thanks for tuning in.
