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By Andrew Wommack
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I just finished recording two weeks of very important Gospel Truth television programs with David Barton. I’m sure many of you are well acquainted with him, but for those of you who are not, let me introduce him.
David is a leading expert of American Christian history. He has one of the world’s largest private collections of early American documents relating to the founding of our nation. The Lord has raised him up to remind the world that it was God who birthed this nation and the principles it stands for. I must say he’s doing a great job.
I have long felt a need to counter the increasing secularization of society at home and abroad. I do this primarily by teaching God’s Word. When the Word is taught without compromise, it is very countercultural to today’s secular, immoral society. I seldom get away from the pure teaching of the Word, because that’s all I know.
Worldwide humanism has taken its toll, even among us as Christians. We are constantly being told that religion or faith has no place in today’s modern, “enlightened” world. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is the influence of true Christianity that has given the West its dominating influence in the world and the vast majority of our scientific advances.
America, in particular, has such a rich Christian history that it’s ludicrous to try and explain it away or attribute the tremendous blessings those Christian roots have produced to human wisdom. The secular humanists who are trying to exclude all influence of Christianity in the public arenas are burying their heads in the sand of ignorance and denial. History has proven many times over that immorality, whether expressed through paganism or secularism, is destructive.
Therefore, I want to spotlight these truths, supported by historical facts, in a way that will help people see the truth about what made America great. Satan preys on ignorance (Hos. 4:6). Christians, as a whole, are grossly ignorant of our godly Christian heritage. We have been slowly indoctrinated and deceived as history has been rewritten.
So I invited David Barton to join me on the Gospel Truth program to fill in the historical facts in a way I never could. I must say I was overwhelmed. Having been brought up in the “belt buckle” of the “Bible Belt,” I thought I was spared the secular bias in my education, but I wasn’t. I was shocked to learn how much of our history was misrepresented to me.
People often tell me they are intimidated by my knowledge of Scripture. That’s how I felt around David. He quotes historical facts like I quote scriptures. To prove the truth of his statements, he displays original documents in much the same way I use scriptures to prove the truth of what I teach, and he totally convinced me. I never realized just how much I didn’t know. In fact, it made me mad because I was not only ignorant, but I had been lied to about much of our Christian heritage.
I came away with impressions from the taping that are too numerous to relate in this letter, but I want to highlight a few. I was against being “politically correct” before, but even more so now. This is so pervasive in our nation today that it has paralyzed many from speaking out against evil. That isn’t the way this nation started. Christians boldly proclaimed the truth, not only in pulpits, but in the public square.
For instance, I was shocked to learn that George Washington dealt with homosexuality among his troops when he was a general. The term “drummed out” actually came from George Washington’s treatment of a homosexual. He had this man publicly humiliated and marched out of the army to the beating of drums as all the other troops watched. The man called “the father of our country” publicly humiliated homosexuals for such shameful behavior. How would the homosexual activists respond to that type of treatment today?
On the issue of slavery, I assumed that America embraced slavery until our Civil War, when the slaves were freed. That is not accurate at all. Two-thirds of the founding fathers were opposed to slavery. They took steps to eliminate it at the founding of this country. However, they compromised because they needed the southern slave states’ support if they were to defeat the British and gain their independence.
Boston integrated their schools in the 1780s. Blacks were elected to legislature positions in the north in the early 1800s. There was always a movement by large numbers of people to stop the slave trade and free the slaves since the very beginning. But the Democratic party of the 1800s staunchly opposed all the abolitionists’ attempts.
Upon the surrender of the South at the end of our Civil War, the vice president of the Confederate States organized the Ku Klux Klan to oppose the integration of blacks into our society, with the full support of the Democratic Party. This, coupled with the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865, severely limited the opportunities of freed blacks in American society until the Civil Rights Movements of the 1960s.
I learned that although ungodly men have certainly done shameful things to Indians and blacks in America, there were also very godly people fighting against all these injustices since the very beginning. The unjust label of “bigot” that had been attached to conservative Christians has shamed many into silence and paralyzed many from standing for truth.
How could this nation have changed so radically? David Barton made it very clear that the majority of the blame lies with the clergy. Sermons on freedom, principles of godly government, and social interaction formed the basis of our Constitution and laws. You can read them. In that day, all sermons were printed out, and the preacher read his sermons.
Preachers back then were social activists. But as the controversy over slavery heated up, the fundamentalists and evangelicals arose. They promoted a philosophy that said the church should stick to the fundamentals of eternal salvation and evangelism and leave politics alone. The withdrawal of Christians from commenting on the current issues in society left the ungodly with the upper hand in public debate.
Next, our judicial branch of the government has been rewriting the Constitution, not just interpreting it. David spoke of a case he argued before the Supreme Court on praying at public school functions. He gave many examples of the signers of the Constitution and the writers of the First Amendment, who publicly prayed and preached at school functions.
However, this will shock you: One of our current Supreme Court justices said that obviously our founding fathers didn’t understand what they had written in the Constitution, or they were hypocrites. The Court came out against the very thing the founding fathers supported.
This blatant activism on the part of liberal judges has given ungodly minorities the upper hand. They have forced Christians into an inferior position that limits their ability to influence their generation as the salt of the earth (Matt. 5:13). The devil has tried to silence us, and it’s time we speak out.
I’m not talking about hate and condemnation. That goes against what Jesus taught (Luke 6:31). But it’s the truth that sets us free (John 8:32), and the church is God’s guardian of truth. We have to speak out against the ungodliness in our world in a greater way and counter the darkness that is trying to put out our light.
This impacted and motivated me in a profound way, and I believe it will do the same for you. I strongly encourage you to get copies of the television programs David and I made, which we call God and Country. They are available on our website or on DVD. Be sure to watch the actual airings of this special two-week series starting June 29. Tell your friends to watch. They will be glad they did.
