Watchman on the Wall

Guest (Male): Welcome to Watchman on the Wall, a daily outreach of Southwest Radio Ministries and swrc.com. God is still on the throne and prayer changes things. We begin this brand new week together exploring what makes America great with Billy Crone. Donald Perkins will be here Tuesday to continue his study of Revelation. Micaiah Van Huss and Mac Dominick will discuss the unseen realm, and Josh Davis will report the latest headlines from the end times.

For more than nine decades, Southwest Radio Ministries has been a trusted voice pointing people to Jesus Christ and the truth of God's Word. Generations of believers have turned to this ministry for biblical teaching, prophetic insight, and encouragement during some of life's most difficult moments. Every day, we hear from listeners whose faith has been strengthened, whose understanding of scripture has grown, and whose lives have been touched through this outreach.

Those stories are possible because faithful friends chose to stand with us. Today, we're asking you to be one of those friends. If Southwest Radio Ministries has been a blessing to you, would you prayerfully consider helping us continue this work? Your gift today will help us reach more homes, more families, and more hearts with the hope of Jesus Christ. Please give today at swrc.com or call 1-800-652-1144. That's 1-800-652-1144. Thank you for helping us carry God's truth to the next generation. Now, here's our host, Dr. Larry Spargimino.

Dr. Larry Spargimino: Looking at all the angry people in different states telling the world how bad we are, I have one suggestion: they need to move out and go home, wherever that is. Is everything in our history nice? No, it's not. However, we don't change our history; we learn from it. I remember Michael Moore telling everyone if Donald Trump gets elected, he is leaving the country. Well, the last time I checked, Michael Moore is still in America.

Our guest is Pastor Billy Crone. Pastor Billy Crone has done a lot of good videography and commentary and also written several books. He has a new DVD which is a winner: "What Made America So Great." Pastor Billy, thank you for this amazing video and thank you for being with us once again.

Billy Crone: Thank you, Dr. Spargimino. It's always great to be on.

Dr. Larry Spargimino: So tell us some of the things that made America so great.

Billy Crone: Well, if you can do a synopsis on the whole study, hopefully this is about as blunt as you can get: it's called Jesus Christ. Amen. It's Jesus, God, the Bible, Christianity. The foundations of our country were certainly a Judeo-Christian ethic and that's what we deal with. We deal with the evidence of that, historical evidence, our own history as a Christian nation from the founding fathers.

We've been lied to. We've been horribly lied to as a people, as the church. You mentioned about history. It reminds me also of the other axiom about history: those who don't learn it are doomed to repeat it. Many people don't realize that it was because of a tyranny and being under the hands of oppression, even religious, i.e. Christian oppression from England that was going on at the time where the government was dictating what religion you were going to follow.

Were you going to be Catholic or were you going to be Protestant? Depending on the king or ruler that rose up, they were going to dictate. Our founding fathers came out of that environment. When they founded our nation, that's why we had things like the First Amendment, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution based on biblical principles.

It is not by chance that not the 10th Amendment, not the 100th Amendment, the very First Amendment they said that we are going to guarantee in our brand new country, especially coming out from what we came out of, is the right for the freedom of religion and the freedom of press, but another one, the right to freely assemble. All of that, Dr. Spargimino, is being attacked in our country as we speak. It's time for us, the church, to wake up and that's in a nutshell kind of what this study's about.

Dr. Larry Spargimino: Well, that's so good to hear. Should we be proud of America?

Billy Crone: Well, certainly I've had the privilege to speak around the world. I'm not saying that our country's perfect and unfortunately there's signs of us turning away from our Judeo-Christian ethic and our Christian morals and values and the foundations that our founding fathers set up in the Bible and on God. But compared to other countries, have fun.

Right now we have brothers and sisters in Christ who are literally being murdered. Their homes are being bulldozed. Their churches are being torn down, the buildings, the structures. They're under persecution where if you meet together, we will kill you. This is really going on. In fact, there's been more persecution in the last century on Christians than ever in the history of the church and it's ramping up.

I'm not saying again we're perfect and we're certainly doing a moral slide, and I think that's sad. But I'm telling you, as one guy said, we're the last vestige, our country. If America turns completely away from our Christian Judeo background and ethics, it's over. It's toast. Which doesn't surprise me because we know also what the Bible says is coming next on God's prophetic timeline.

The next event on His timeline is the Rapture of the Church, and the church is out of here. Now you remove us, the restraining influence via the Holy Spirit and presence in the church, and you think the world's bad now? You ain't seen nothing yet. It's going to get horrible. It's called the seven-year tribulation. Jesus said it's going to be the worst time in the history of mankind.

But me, I like to be the eternal optimist and maybe God has one last revival up His sleeve even for our country. I think that's the biblical mindset we need to have. You say, "Oh, it's just too late for America. It's impossible." No, it's not. Read your Bible. Didn't God bring revival to Nineveh? Granted, they still went out of existence, but they had a revival.

Dr. Larry Spargimino: Yeah, I think they lasted for about 150 years until the time of Nahum.

Billy Crone: Exactly. But you see God's mercy even on that nation. Now if any nation was wicked, Nineveh was. They were not just wicked; they were barbaric. In fact, a lot of the reasons why the people when they would go invade the nations would just immediately surrender when they see the Ninevites coming is because of how brutal they were.

They wouldn't just impale people, which later the Romans perfected and turned into the crucifixion, but they would impale people. They would literally chop their noses off, their ears off. They would put noses in their faces and drag them off into captivity. It was horrible. So when you heard that the Ninevites were coming, you just thought, "Do we really want to do this?"

But again, their behavior, but what happened? God still sent revival. Why? Because He still has mercy. What's the Bible say? God is not willing that any should perish. He's not putting up with this evil. He's not condoning the evil, whether it's the Ninevites or whether it's our own country, whether it's our wicked world system. He wants people to be saved.

What we, the church, need to be doing in this final hour is not shrinking back in fear and certainly not giving into apathy. This is our time to be unlike Jonah and get busy declaring the mercies of God because people can still get saved. He could still bring a revival to our nation. We don't know, right? But if we don't preach Christ, it'll never happen.

In fact, this is an interesting study. If you ever take a look at revival when you take a look at the scripture when it happens, I think the church has got it totally backwards to our own detriment, and we wonder why we don't see revival. Well, it says there in Chronicles, it says there, "If my people." Now stop and think about who's that?

Of course the context is the Jewish people, but it's God's people, right? So revival is not meant for the world in essence. The revival starts with the church, then it moves on to the world. So what we do is we get the cart before the horse. When we pray even if we get around to praying for revival, what do we do? We go, "Oh God, get those people out there, those wicked people."

Yet we are being hypocrites with logs in our own eye and we're not cleaning up. When you look at the statistics of the church, half the church doesn't even believe in the authority of the scripture. Almost half the church is now going along with homosexuality and other kinds of politically correct issues and things of that nature and just go on down the list of wicked behaviors. We ain't looking much different than the world.

We have lost our salt and our light. God says if my people, the church, you do it first. You pray, you humble yourself first, then pray, then seek God's face, and what? Turn from your own wicked ways. When the church turns from their own wicked ways, when you get your heart right with God, then it'll bust out into the world. It could happen, but we get it all wrong.

Or we do what Jonah did. We know that Jesus Christ is the answer to the ills of our society. We know that it's preaching and proclaiming Christ is the step in revival busting across after we get our hearts right with God across our nation. But we're like Jonah. "I ain't going to witness to those people. I don't care about them. Let them go to hell." Excuse me? You need to do a historical check on your own heart.

Don't you remember what it was like before you got saved? Were any of us worthy to receive God's grace and mercy? Were any of us worthy to walk into heaven on our own? Absolutely not. Aren't you glad that somebody, even as dark and cantankerous and nasty, at least I was, to people who tried to witness to me, aren't you glad they still did it?

Well then we need to do the same thing in kind and get busy. But again, it's a clarion call to church: wake up. We're in the final throes of God's prophetic timeline and we need to finish strong. We need to get back to the solution that will turn our country around, if a revival's going to happen, and that is Jesus Christ. Until we get back to that, nothing's going to change and it's only going to get worse.

Dr. Larry Spargimino: I'm really amazed at our country. When I look at our history, there's so much of revival: the First Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening, the Third Great Awakening. And just for example, George Washington, he was an amazing man. I mean, we've lost so much. I know he was an Anglican, but he believed in Jesus as Lord, he believed in the Trinity, believed in morality. He said if a people are not moral, you can't rule them. And today, I think so many of our young people, they go to school, history is being rewritten. You talk to a lot of young people, they don't understand what's going on. They really don't. In fact, they like socialism because well, it sounds like social media, we can all get together and have a good time.

Billy Crone: Yeah, well you call it socialism, liberalism, what you want, it's old-fashioned communism. That's exactly what it is, folks. And you look in the 40s and 50s and you got this rise of communism, the concerns, and McCarthy and that area there and you're like, "Oh boy, good thing they took care of that communism that tried to infiltrate America." Folks, what do you think's happening to our country?

It's the same attack. They've just changed the terminology. They don't call it communism because we'd freak out. They just call it socialism. And guess what? Those that were promoting that in the 50s and 60s, they didn't go away. They went into our secular school system. They hijacked the universities and our school system, let alone Hollywood and the media that also influences the brains of people, and they've been proclaiming communism.

Why do you think and this freaked me out, I just came across this two weeks ago, but this was a little nugget I discovered in the hearings in Congress when they were interviewing Mark Zuckerberg for him putting a clamp on our First Amendment rights with Facebook and social media platforms, etc. And just in that blip, one of the guys was sharing with Mr. Zuckerberg his concern that 40% of Americans, younger Americans, believe that the First Amendment is dangerous.

Now where's that coming from, folks? That's coming from the sewer pipe called the secular education system. It's been taken over and they've been producing this mindset. We laugh about it, joke about it, but it's not funny. This is why our whole parental life, my wife and I, have homeschooled our kids.

Because we couldn't stomach throwing our kids to the wolves. And it isn't just to the wolves and it isn't just the immoral ungodly behavior and it isn't just the immoral ungodly things that they're teaching, but it's this mindset of communism. As they say, the humanists who are behind it are saying, they're laughing at us. They're saying, "We are using the secular educational system to prepare your kids for the new world order."

Folks, it's in print. They admit it. And yet week after week you keep sending your kids back. Read your Bible, parents: you're going to stand accountable to God. Now the good news is even with this virus time, guess what a lot of people are doing?

Dr. Larry Spargimino: Reading their Bible.

Billy Crone: Reading their Bibles and they're also getting the kids out of school.

Dr. Larry Spargimino: Yes, they're doing home school.

Billy Crone: First of all, because they have to, but they realize, "You know what? I can actually pull this off. I can homeschool." Yeah. Well, guess what? Even long gone after this virus, how about just keep them out? And how about give them a good godly biblical education and turn this around? But you mentioned the founding fathers, George Washington.

Hey, this is what this study's about. We get into the hardcore historical proof. We quote our founding fathers, people like John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Patrick Henry, John Jay, Benjamin Rush, Noah Webster. You mentioned George Washington. Clearly evidence that they were building our country on God, the Bible, Jesus, and Christianity.

In fact, let me quote this from the Congress US House Judiciary Committee in 1854. Listen to this. They even said that if anybody ever comes along and says that our country was not built on the principles of Christianity, that's a lie from the pit of hell. Watch this. They said, "Had the people during the Revolution [the Revolutionary War] had a suspicion of any attempt to war against Christianity, that revolution would have been strangled in its cradle. In this age, there can be no substitute for Christianity. That was the religion of the founders of the republic and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendants."

Folks, that's our heritage and we've been lied to. Let me give you one more example. This one blew me away. Again, one of our presidents. Imagine if you had a president today that was doing this. This is from President James A. Garfield. He was a young major general in the Civil War and he became Speaker of the House and then he became the 20th President of the United States.

Now what most people don't realize about him is that he was a minister, you mentioned revivals, Dr. Spargimino, he was a minister during the Second Great Awakening. In fact, in one of his letters signed by President Garfield in 1858, he recounts that he had just finished preaching a revival service where he preached the gospel 19 times in the revival. He said as a result of his preaching that 34 folks came to Christ and he baptized 31 of them.

And I like what one guy said. He says, "Listen, now that doesn't sound like a typical presidential activity today." He said, "But that's what used to have as presidents in the past." And he says we've so compartmentalized Christianity in small box, the society has done it, that we don't realize that our military leaders, our ministers, our educators, in our American history are ministers, our presidents used to be ministers on and on again. And again, folks, this is part of the reprogramming that has been done. Our history has been rewritten. Our American history that's been founded on godly biblical principles they're now saying is a threat, and we wonder why everything's falling apart at the seams.

Dr. Larry Spargimino: Well, as I look at COVID-19, it is real. Some people die, but it's kind of, you know, when you read about the casualties, it's kind of directed toward those who are older. It's not very serious for young people, and yet we close schools. We do everything to destroy the country. And I see another tragedy on the horizon. There's this huge dust cloud that's supposedly coming from the Sahara. It's going to come and it's going to come toward us and I can just see the left-wing media getting on the air and say, well, it's President Trump's fault and there's poison gas or there's bugs in it or some kind of a virus. Everything is being done to undermine any attempt to get us back to the Bible. Now, President Trump has some really rough spots, no question about it, but I think his core values, as a Christian, I'm going to vote for someone who has his core values. That's non-negotiable for me.

Billy Crone: Well, exactly. And to me it's a nutshell. I say all the time, hey, I'm not saying that I have drunk the Kool-Aid with President Trump. I'm not here to defend everything that he does morally, but to me as a Christian, what do I do? I from man's perspective, God knows the timeline how much time is left here on planet Earth for the church, but what I'm trying to focus on as a Christian is who is going to give me more time from man's perspective to do what God has called me to do?

And when you take a look at that and you put it in that biblical parameter, which is how we should as Christians, it's a hands-down vote. I mean, you look at the Democrat party, they stand for everything. I'm not again saying Trump is perfect, but look at the alternative. The Democrat party, the liberal party, is anti-God, anti-Christian, anti-Bible. They're also pro-death. They want to kill children. How could you as a Christian go to sleep at night and you put your vote for that?

Dr. Larry Spargimino: It's shocking. Yeah, I don't see how it's possible because it's a question of loyalty. If you're a Christian, you're loyal to Christian principles and to those who love Jesus. And certainly the DNC in San Francisco, they actually said, "We're the party of unbelief. We're appealing to atheists and secularists." It's really hard to find the truth anymore. Even history is being rewritten to conform to some predetermined agenda that is not at all friendly to America, nor is it friendly to Christians. It's time that we set the record straight and that is exactly what Pastor Billy Crone does. Well, let's talk about the great monster that we hear so much about. "Well, you know our founding fathers believed in the separation of church and state, so you Christians need to hide and be quiet." What about that?

Billy Crone: Well, let's just be blunt about that: that's a lie from the pit of hell. And I don't just say that just because I disagree as a Christian and that's an attack on me as a Christian, but it's an attack on true history. And when you take a look at our own history, that phrase "Separation of Church and State" is completely ripped out of its historical context. I'll get to that in a second.

But basically what it's really come to mean is keep Christianity out of all sectors of societies at all costs. But what I like to do is I like to challenge people because they assume that that's in our founding documents, that phrase "Separation of Church and State." And it's not. When people come up to you and again, I challenge you Christians listening to this, when somebody comes up to you and says, "Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State, this is what our founding fathers wanted, you got to keep your mouth shut," you need to challenge them and you need to immediately ask them this: "Where does that phrase appear in our Bill of Rights?"

Guess what? It's not there. And then you need to ask them, "Where does that phrase 'Separation of Church and State' appear in our Constitution?" Guess what? It's not there. It's not in any of our founding documents. It actually came from a letter from Thomas Jefferson in 1802 to the Danbury Baptists out of Connecticut. And they were concerned at that time in history, our nation's history, that another Christian denomination at that time, along with the Baptists, that was also popular, called the Congregationalists—not so popular today, but back then they were.

Well, the Danbury Baptists wrote Thomas Jefferson and they were concerned that because the Congregationalist popularity, that they were going to become the quote, "official Christian denomination" of the United States of America. Now, first of all, notice the whole time the context. Again, it's not in the founding documents, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution; it's in a letter from Thomas Jefferson.

But the whole time, even in that letter to Thomas Jefferson, the whole context is what? Christians, Christianity is the context. And when our founding fathers talked about religion in their founding documents, they were talking by and large about their religion of Christianity. They were not talking about what we see today: oh, they meant Buddhism and Islam and Eastern mysticism and everything under the sun. No, they weren't.

And Jefferson in response to this concern by the Danbury Baptists that the Congregationalists were going to become the official Christian denomination of the United States of America, he referred them in that letter back to what we do have, which is called the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights that says, "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

In other words, Jefferson had full confidence in the original intent of our founding document, the First Amendment, that would ensure they had nothing to worry about, that quote "no Christian denomination would be chosen to be the only official Christian denomination of the United States." That's it. And again, the whole context is Christian, Christianity. Not every religion on the sun.

But that's what was meant by the phrase there, separation of church and state. It's not in our founding documents, but today, it's thrown in our face like it is a part of the Constitution or something and then somehow that means keep Christianity out. It's one of the most perverted phrases in history that I can think of. And Christians don't even know it. And again, that's the phrase: if you don't learn your history, you're doomed to repeat it. We don't even know our own history in America and it's being used against us.

They say, "Okay, that's just very nifty, but our founding fathers didn't want to build our country on Christian principles." Again, excuse me. Let me quote to you, just give you a couple quotes. This is John Jay. He is the original Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. Think, "Whoa, okay, Supreme Court guy. Surely they would know. They make rulings on stuff, right?" Here's what he said: "Mercy and grace and favor did come by Jesus Christ. By conveying the Bible to people, we certainly do them the most interesting act of kindness. The most effectual means of securing and continuing our civil and religious liberties is to always remember with reverence and gratitude the source from which they flow. That's called the Bible."

The Bible is the best of all books, for it is the Word of God, and teaches us the way to be happy in this world and in the next. Continue, therefore, to read it and to regulate your life by its precepts. And Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest in our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.

And folks, we can go on and on. Benjamin Rush. He was the father of public schools under the Constitution. And listen to what he said. He's talking about the Bible. He says, "Happy are they who are enabled to obey all of God's commands in all situations. And the great enemy of salvation of man, Satan, in my opinion," he says, "never invented a more effective means of limiting Christianity from the world than by persuading mankind that it was improper to read the Bible in schools."

Well, that's exactly what they're doing today. You say, "Well, schools, you know, they didn't want to have anything to do in school." Again, what history book are you reading? Listen to this: the first colleges formed in America, 123 out of 126, were formed on Christian principles. And up until 1900, it was very rare to find a university president who was not a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

In fact, for 210 years in the history of our country, America's first textbook that we used for over 210 years was called the New England Primer. Let me give you an example of how kids learn the alphabet. You tell me they didn't want the Bible in school. Listen to this: A: In Adam's fall, we sinned all. C: Christ crucified for sinners died. Z: Zacchaeus, he did climb the tree, our Lord to see.

The 107 questions at the end of the New England Primer, again, America's textbook for over 200 years, had questions like this: what offices does Christ execute as our Redeemer? How does Christ execute the office of a priest? What is required in the fifth commandment? What are the benefits which in this life do accompany or flow from justification, adoption, and sanctification?

I know adults that go to church services who can't even answer those questions, which is sad. George Washington, you mentioned him last time, Dr. Spargimino, he made it crystal clear that American schools would teach Indian youth the religion of Jesus Christ. Congress assisted in doing so. In fact, in 1782, Congress had 10,000 Bibles printed to be used in schools.

In fact, Thomas Jefferson, he wrote the first plan of education for Washington DC. He adopted two textbooks. And you know what they were? Number one, the Bible, and the second textbook for school was Watts' Hymnal. And then he hired clergymen to be the teachers, pastors. So imagine, you go to school, every teacher is a pastor. You have two textbooks: one's the Bible and the other one's Watts' Hymnal. Now, if you know anything about Watts' Hymnal, it was all hymns based on Bible verses.

Thomas Jefferson is the one who planned that one out. In fact, the 1854 edition of Webster's Dictionary had biblical definitions, Bible verses, and Webster's own testimony of personally receiving Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. And you look at the dictionaries today, that's been ripped out. And let me give you just one more example. America's first school was Harvard and it was founded in 1636 by Reverend John Harvard.

Now the official motto was "For Christ and the Church." And Harvard originally had several requirements which the students had to observe if you wanted to go to Harvard and here it was: "Let every scholar be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life." And you mean to tell me that our founding fathers did not want to have the Bible in schools, Christianity taught in our classrooms, and you have people saying, "Oh, it's illegal to bring a Bible to school" or "You Christians need to shut your mouth. You shouldn't get involved in politics or the things in our country, in our courtrooms and classrooms and governments and all that stuff. Our founding fathers want separation of church and state." Folks, that's a lie from the pit of hell.

Dr. Larry Spargimino: You're absolutely right. And one of the things I've noticed about the left, they're very, how should I say, deceptive, treacherously so. We're running up against the time constraint, but Pastor Billy, thank you so much for your life and ministry and especially for this tremendously important DVD. You did a great job.

Billy Crone: Well, thank you, Dr. Spargimino. And our prayer that God will use it to stir we the church on into greater action with what time we have left.

Guest (Male): As Americans, we know that July 4th is a time when we gather together to celebrate our nation's hard-won independence from tyranny and oppression. But today, many wonder if America has drifted from the very principles that once made her strong. In the powerful DVD "What Made America Great Again," Billy Crone explores the biblical foundations that shaped our nation and reveals the timeless truths that can restore hope for the future. Order your copy today for a gift of $20 or more. Visit swrc.com or call 1-800-652-1144. That's swrc.com or 1-800-652-1144. Tomorrow Donald Perkins will continue his teaching series "Understanding Revelation," so be sure to tune in. Watchman on the Wall is a production of Southwest Radio Ministries and is supported by faithful listeners like you. To learn more, visit swrc.com.