KEITH MOORE: So the school board is probably,
aside from the church, the most important issue
there is for the family and for your vote.
(Music)
GEORGE: Hello. This is George Pearsons.
Welcome to the Believer's Voice of Victory broadcast,
"Faith For Our Nation." And we are talking about
preparing for the midterm elections, also voting in these
primary elections and how important it is and the issues
that we're looking at. I have with me here this week Bishop
Keith Butler. Welcome, Bishop Butler. KEITH: Thank you for
having me. GEORGE: We're so glad you're here. Congresswoman
Michele Bachmann-- MICHELE: Thank you. GEORGE: --we are--
we are thrilled that you are able to come, with your
schedule-- MICHELE: Me, too. GEORGE: --and the things you
are doing. Welcome. And, David Barton, we so appreciate what
you bring to the table. We are thankful for you
and for your ministry, your outreach. And all of you,
for being here with us so that we can be able
to communicate to our partners and to our constituency how
important it is that we vote. MICHELE: Absolutely.
GEORGE: It's extremely important. With these primary
elections that are coming up, we need to be the ones
that are going to the polls that--so often the elections
that are ignored are the most important elections. Is that
correct? DAVID: Yeah, and it really is. And in so many ways.
Let me just give an example. We talked on the first day about
how few people vote. But that's for the more glamorous seats
like president and governor and senator and rep. If you get
out--if you remember, Fort Worth, Texas, started something
a few years ago that was really bad. They were the first school
district to say, "Hey, let's all use one bathroom. Let's all have
one locker room. We don't believe genders." A few weeks
later, President Obama essentially took what Fort Worth
did and came out and said, "You know what? If you get federal
funding, you're going to have one locker room and one
bathroom, and we don't do genders." And so, across the
country, people started saying, "No, that's not right." GEORGE:
Yeah. DAVID: And by the way, just to be really clear, that's
not right. The Bible says, for locations, God says, "And he
made them male and female"-- MICHELE: Male and female.
DAVID: --period, end of story. In nature, I'm a cowboy. We
worked 1,200--had--not long ago, had 580 calves,
and we worked all 580 calves, and nobody had
any trouble telling which was male and which was
female. It was real easy. Nature makes it really
apparent. And now there are 92 legal gender identities
you can choose. Facebook alone has 71. On your profile
on Facebook, you can have 71 gender identities. GEORGE: 71?
MICHELE: That's called fiction, not fact. That's what that is.
DAVID: So-- KEITH: Romans 1-- MICHELE: Amen.
KEITH: -- "Having become wise--" DAVID: That's right.
KEITH: "--they became fools." MICHELE: Amen.
DAVID: That's exactly it. And that's what it is because it's
ridiculous. And so there were people who said, "You're not
doing that in my school district." And so, for example,
there was a town of 40,000 individuals, and there was a
Christian lady in that town who said, "I'm running for school
board. We're not going to do this in my school." And she ran
and she got elected. A town of 40,000 individuals, she got
elected-- MICHELE: How many votes? DAVID: --with a total of
35 votes cast in the whole election. 35 votes cast in the
whole election, she wins the race with 35 total votes. There
was another guy who also said, "Oh, not in my school district."
And he ran. He was a farmer, and it turned out, on election day,
he got busy and did not go vote for himself. And don't jump to
conclusions, because it's not that he lost by one vote. Nobody
voted in the entire election. Had he voted for himself, he
would have been the entire school board. Nobody voted in
that election. And so when you get to a local election, you're
looking usually at a 2-to-4-percent turnout and
sometimes less than that. And what happens is, when you choose
school board officials, they often become city council
people, they become mayors, they become state reps, they--that's
building a farm team. And you ought to really pay attention to
those local elections, get the right. And all the stuff we've
been talking about this week-- GEORGE: Yes, yes. DAVID: --man,
I--you know, I get people coming to me for whatever reason. They
think if I endorse, it'll help them. So get a dog catcher come
and say, "Will you endorse me for dog catcher?" I go, "Okay,
what's your stand on abortion?" "Abortion? We don't do that with
dogs." "I know, but you may not stay a dog catcher. You might
run for governor. And I'd rather knock you off as a dog catcher
than have to fight you as a governor." (Laughter) And so
what--all the stuff we're talking about right now, this
week, you want to apply it at every level-- GEORGE: Yes, yeah.
DAVID: --even for school board. "Well, school board doesn't do
anything to this role." "That doesn't matter. I want to know
your philosophy because you might not stay on school board.
You might be my mayor someday." GEORGE: That's right. MICHELE:
David's right about that. The other thing is these local
offices can actually impact people's lives personally even
more than the presidential office because in your backyard
it may be your local county guy who decides if a casino--
GEORGE: Yeah. MICHELE: --is going to get built in your
backyard-- GEORGE: Sure. MICHELE: --or if there's going
to be some other--maybe like a liquor store or maybe like a
pornography shop, they're going to make that decision. GEORGE:
Right. MICHELE: So the guy who's running for board of soil
and water may have more to say about your land than--
GEORGE: That's true. That's so true. MICHELE: --anybody
else. And David is 1,000 percent right. These local
races are everything. And that's why I wish every
church would take this on as a project and designate
somebody in their church to go through and, you know,
not tell you who to vote for, but tell you where people
stand, to have a shortcut method. GEORGE: Yes. MICHELE:
People I think do want to do the right thing, George. GEORGE:
Yep. MICHELE: I think they want to vote for godly people, but
they just don't take the time. They don't know where to start.
GEORGE: Exactly. MICHELE: But there's a lot of people who do
go out. And David, what's the name of that website where
people-- DAVID: Christianvoterguide.com.
MICHELE: Christianvoterguide.com.
And that's something I think if everybody would remember that,
christianvoterguide.com, it's a place where you can go and issue
sets will allowed. And it's easy. And that's a part of--we
need to know who we're voting for, not just go in there and
throw our hands up. But we need to know who this is with these
positions because if you can have somebody not get elected to
school board because zero people voted--when David says only two
to four percent, that means out of 100 people, only two people
to four people voted. Well, think, believers could own every
single office-- GEORGE: That's right. That's right. MICHELE:
--if we could just get up off of our-- GEORGE: Yeah. KEITH:
That's where I was going with that. (Laughter) MICHELE: No.
Thank you, because I didn't know where I was going to go. So
thank you. KEITH: That believers would come and actually vote
because--particularly at these levels, and it's about your
kids. MICHELE: Amen, brother. GEORGE: Mm-hmm. KEITH: Okay,
I mean, you think about school board--what school boards--and I
once served in a city council, but I had an issue between when
I'd run for the school board or city council. And, at the time,
I'd been sitting around for council. DAVID: And that was
Detroit. KEITH: That was in Detroit. DAVID: And Detroit--is
there a million people in Detroit? KEITH: At the time, it
was over a million people in Detroit, yeah. DAVID: And so how
many of us cast in the election, 20,000, 15,000? KEITH: I don't
even remember exactly what--how many votes it were. DAVID: It's
going to be tiny compared to a million. KEITH: It was--it
was--because it was a off year. It was 1989. MICHELE: And that's
what this year is, a, quote, "off year." KEITH: It was a
off-year election there. MICHELE: Yeah. KEITH: Okay.
So percentage-wise, it was fairly small. But what I was
about to say was that the school board had a--had
a lot to say about what wound up being the curriculum of
the issues like you're talking about that happened. That
influenced the minds of the kids that determined
whether or not the kids believed in the Bible,
believed something else, and turned out to be--you
see--as a pastor, I see it in church all the time.
"I brought my kids to church, you know, once a week, you
know, on Sunday morning." How many hours did the school have
with your child? GEORGE: Yeah. MICHELE: That's right.
KEITH: 30 hours a week that they've got to indoctrinate your
child, and then you come and complain that church is two
hours long? GEORGE: Yeah. (Laughs) KEITH: Okay, one time a
week, and, "Well, I did what the Bible said." No, you didn't do
what the Bible said. GEORGE: Yeah. KEITH: Okay. The Bible
said you're--in Deuteronomy, it said, "You get up in the
morning, you read the Word of God. You go to bed with them,
okay, you read them the Word of God. You can walk through the
day with them. You read the Word of God and you make sure,"
because whatever seed you plant, you can harvest-- DAVID: That's
right. KEITH: --you make sure what they're hearing and where
they're going. And you can't always have--people don't always
have the money to pay for private schools. But then, if
that's the case, you've got to make sure who's elected to
school board is somebody that has biblical values and
understanding. MICHELE: Well, amen, because if you look at
this last presidential election, and if you look on one political
party, 65 percent of the young people voted for Bernie Sanders.
Where did Bernie Sanders as a candidate come down? He calls
himself a socialist. GEORGE: Yeah. MICHELE: That's what he
calls himself. Well, what is a socialist? That's somebody who
believes that government should make the decisions that the
founders thought we should all be making. And so if you have
the government making my monetary decisions, well, my
labor--all my labor is, when I go to work, it gets translated
into money from my employer. And so if the government is making
the decision about the money that I get from my job, and I'm
not, then that means I don't have control anymore over it,
over my money. And it's--two-thirds of the young
people in America voted for someone who calls themselves a
socialist, who thinks government should make all these decisions
and control my money? Something really different happened
because that's not what the Bible says. DAVID: Well, and
let's-- MICHELE: And the Bible's not socialism. DAVID: Let's go a
step further because, in that election, 65 percent there voted
for Bernie in the first primary. But, nationally, it was a margin
of 75 to 17 that they supported Bernie over other candidates. So
75 percent. Now, as of two weeks ago, a poll came out that showed
college students today prefer socialism, communism, or fascism
to free-market economics. They choose three over that one, and
it's because we know nothing about it. We teach--only 3
percent of universities require any course in economics for
graduation, so we no longer get it taught. We don't get it
taught at high school. Only two states out of 50 require any
testing on it. MICHELE: And yet the Bible is an--almost an
economics textbook. DAVID: It is. KEITH: Absolutely, yeah.
MICHELE: It's filled with, "How do you deal with spending? How
do you deal with taxes?" KEITH: Yeah. MICHELE: "How do you deal
with being a steward with all that it is that God gives you?"
KEITH: Right. GEORGE: So how do you vote? How do you vote?
DAVID: Well, the Bible--I mean, the Bible specifically says, "An
estate tax is wrong" -- MICHELE: Amen. DAVID: --dead out. There's
numerous verses from Proverbs 13 all the way through-- MICHELE:
An estate tax is what you might have heard being called a death
tax-- DAVID: A death tax. MICHELE: --so that when you die,
you've paid taxes all your life on your money and then the state
wants to come in and essentially put its hand into the coffin--
KEITH: And take it from your children. MICHELE: --and say,
"You're going to--" take it from your children. DAVID: Up to 55
percent. And, by the way, that was--that-- MICHELE: 55 percent,
that's more than half of everything you have. DAVID: And
that's particularly what was--we had such a good upturn in
minority businesses, small businesses-- KEITH: Yeah. DAVID:
--and they went out of business because when the parents died
and tried to give it to the kids, the government wanted 55
percent of it just because you had the audacity to die.
MICHELE: You can't keep going. DAVID: But people say, "Well--"
MICHELE: That's right. And farmers, too. Farmers are losing
their farms. DAVID: Farmers--their farms--
KEITH: Yeah. MICHELE: And then the government--I'm a
tax lawyer. And then they came in what was called
the unlimited marital deduction so you could at
least transfer your farm or your business
back and forth between the husband and wife. But then,
when it went down to the kids, you didn't have that deduction--
KEITH: Yeah. MICHELE: --and you'd lose your shoe store--
KEITH: All of this is-- MICHELE: --and you'd lose your gas
station. KEITH: Yeah. And all of this is because the--all the
school systems moved away from the Bible-- DAVID: That's right.
MICHELE: Mm-hmm. KEITH: --as the book in the standard. So it
goes back again to, even at the school board level, they've got
to be a very strong-- DAVID: That's right. KEITH: --believer
who is Word-taught. Even the dog catcher--everybody's got to
be about this. And this starts with, the churches have to go
back away from entertainment. MICHELE: Amen. Preach it! Preach
it! KEITH: And they have to go back to teaching-- MICHELE:
We're for you. KEITH: --the Word line upon line upon line.
MICHELE: Amen. KEITH: If you don't teach the people line upon
line upon line, they will not know what the Scripture says.
GEORGE: Yeah. KEITH: And I don't know how many places I go and
preach, and the people don't know the very basics of the
Bible anymore. MICHELE: So many people think that, "Okay,
well, maybe I'm with you, that it isn't political to preach
from the pulpit about marriage or about pro-life, but certainly
not on taxes, certainly not on spending, certainly not on
economics." And yet so much of the Bible, that's what it's
about. GEORGE: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. MICHELE: It's about
how we handle the resources-- DAVID: It is. MICHELE: --that
God gives us. DAVID: And to give you an example, if I started
throwing at Christians, "What does the Bible say about the
capital gains tax?" "It doesn't say nothing." Yeah, it does.
MICHELE: Oh, yes. DAVID: Luke 19, Matthew 25, you're supposed
to not tax the profit makers. The--if you make profit, you
reward profit makers. You don't tax them. Well, the state
tax--we've already mentioned the state tax. You can choose things
like what we call a capitation tax or progressive income tax.
The Bible clearly comes down against progressive taxes. It
stands for capitation taxes. So the Bible is really clear
on what we would call the capital gains tax,
because the capital gains tax says, "Oh, you've made too
much profit. We're gonna take some away from you,
and give it to everybody else." No, no, no. The Bible does not
support what we call the capital gains tax. In the same way, the
Bible does not support what we call the estate or the death
tax. The Bible says the government is not to take away
the land from the people or from the heirs of the people. And so
with the estate tax, because I have the audacity to die, the
government says, "Well, we get to keep 55% of what you made,
and you can't pass it on to your kids." Well, Proverbs 13:22
says, "A wise man leaves an inheritance to his children's
children." I'm supposed to be able to pass down what I own for
at least two generations. But now the government comes in and
says, "No, you died, so we'll keep 55% of it." And then when
my kids die, they'll keep 55% of that. So all I can do is pass
down 27% to my children's children. That's not what God
intends, that's not what He wants. This right here, what
I've got right here, this came out in 1776. This
is called, "The Wealth of Nations," done by Adam Smith.
Adam Smith, economists today say he's the father of modern
economics. Well, kinda. But America had a free-market
economics system 100 years before this came out. So we
already beat this, but granted, he's the guy who kind of
popularized it. But what's significant that they never
cover in college is, is these two books right here. Now, these
came out in 1776, "The Wealth of Nations." This came out in 1758.
It's "The Theory of Moral Settlements." If you don't have
a moral biblical foundation, your economy's not going to work
right. MICHELE: Mm-hmm, that's right. DAVID: And so they like
to look at the economic side and not the moral side. MICHELE:
Amen. GEORGE: Yeah, yeah. DAVID: And if you take a free--you see,
I--to be pretty gross here, let me be pretty gross for a minute.
We assume morality on the part of business owners. If I go into
a restaurant and order a bowl of spaghetti, I am counting on the
waiter not having spit in my spaghetti when he was in back.
Now, I wouldn't know if he did or not, but morality says you
don't do that. GEORGE: Yeah. DAVID: So there's got to be a
standard right and wrong for businesses to work right,
because if you don't have that moral standard--and where do you
get the moral standards? Not from our own determinations,
from biblical teachings. So if I go in to take my car to get an
oil change, I'm assuming that the guy actually changed the
oil. Now, he could have just taken the valve off, put it back
on, and billed me for it. MICHELE: Yeah, yeah.
DAVID: We assume. And see, that's the thing, economics
doesn't work without morality. Oh, guess what?
Wall Street's not working real good right now. We
have taught there is no morality. We remove
morality-- MICHELE: Well, yeah, that whole concept of just
weights and measures--my husband and I were just at the Museum of
the Bible in Washington, D.C. GEORGE: Oh, yeah. MICHELE: And
they showed from ancient times the weights. So the scripture
that talks about just weights and measure-- DAVID: Weights and
measures. GEORGE: Mm-hmm. MICHELE: --and they had them
from-- DAVID: That's a business reference. MICHELE: That's a
business reference, you're right. And from the little tiny
weights all the way up to the big ones-- GEORGE: Yeah.
MICHELE: --the idea of a pan-balanced scale-- GEORGE:
Yep. MICHELE: --the things need to be right. And that really is
reflective, again, of the heart of God and who God is. GEORGE:
That's right. MICHELE: Because God is just. And so, therefore,
He wants us to have just relations with each other. How
can you have a society when you're thieving from each other?
And I've had occasion as a member of Congress to literally
travel all over the world. And the one unifying aspect around
the world is corruption. You see corruption in government after
government. GEORGE: Yeah, yeah. MICHELE: And the more failed the
government, the more they're attached to corruption. The more
you have a biblical standard in that government-- DAVID: The
less. MICHELE: --the less you have corruption. That's not
saying the U.S. is perfect or Israel is perfect, but they try
to adhere to a biblical line. And that's why I think it's so
important for pastors--and I know, Bishop, you feel this
way--for pastors to continue to preach biblically. We have 52
Sundays, you have an opportunity 52 Sundays to preach biblical.
KEITH: You've got to teach. MICHELE: Then when election time
comes around-- KEITH: You've got to teach. GEORGE: Yeah. MICHELE:
You've got to teach, that's right. KEITH: Not preach. DAVID:
Yeah. KEITH: See, the purpose of preaching to Christians who are
already born again is just to inspire them to what they have
already been taught. But if you have not taught them, the only
thing you do is get emotion. MICHELE: Amen. KEITH: You have
to teach them line by line what it says on these things. GEORGE:
Yeah. KEITH: Now, I know I have done that. And when you do that,
people--people then choose sides. "Oh, well, you're
teaching the doctrine of this party or that party." No. DAVID:
No. I'm line by line-- MICHELE: You've been accused by that?
You've been accused of that. KEITH: Well, I've never been
accused by that. But what you're doing is you're teaching what it
says. I didn't write the Bible. MICHELE: Mm-hmm. KEITH: Okay.
None of us wrote the Bible. It says what it says about just
measures. It says what it says in Romans 13 about taxes. It
says, "Owe no man nothing but to love him." I mean, it talks
about the role of government and what it does. The Bible covers
every aspect of life, why there are poor, how you get out of
poverty. DAVID: That's right. KEITH: It talks about all of the
economic stuff. The answers are already here. Now, what's
happened is that the--again, our educational institutions, which
I think, other than the Church, is the most important thing
there is. MICHELE: Mm-hmm. KEITH: The educational
institutions have moved away from this. This used to be the--
MICHELE: Our standard. KEITH: --180 years, I think it was,
right, historian? MICHELE: Yes. KEITH: You know, 180 years, the
Bible was the textbook, I think, right? MICHELE: Yeah, yeah.
DAVID: Actually, you might--got to make 320 years-- KEITH: Okay,
right. DAVID: --because from the time--the first public school
law passed in America, 1647, was to make sure students read the
Bible. And it was 1962, the court said, "No more Bible
reading in school." KEITH: Oh, okay. DAVID: So 320 years.
MICHELE: That's the first time I saw you on television. I saw you
talking about--you had the charts that show that when we
moved away from having the Bible in schools and prayer in
schools-- KEITH: That's where I was going. MICHELE: --that's
when we saw the United States go down. So when you said 300-how
many years? DAVID: 320. MICHELE: Okay, 320 years of the Bible
being the standard in our schools, you're talking about
from 1962. It's now 2018. Think of how quickly we fall apart--
DAVID: You have. MICHELE: --when the Bible isn't our standard.
DAVID: Three educational generations that have now gone
through without the Bible. And going back to what you said, why
schools are so important, Jesus, in Luke 6:40, said, "Every
student when he's fully taught will be like his teacher." So
you've got a bunch of secular progressives in school. They're
teaching all the wrong stuff, and we can't figure out why our
kids are acting the way they are. MICHELE: Amen, amen. KEITH:
And it goes back to school board elections and for the whole
purpose of this broadcast. Who's running for school board? What
do they believe? You talk to those people. School boards,
you're talking about--if they're not your own children, how about
your grandchildren, how about your--I'm sure you've
got nieces, nephews. Every one of those-- DAVID: Sure. But I
definitely got the guy who's going to be ruling my life
coming in that school because they're going to be my--
MICHELE: I'm so glad you are saying this, because very few
people have figured out the centrality of the Department of
Education. And when you think, "That's our kids, and they're
learning. Their heads are being entrusted to the Department of
Education and what they teach." And if people understood that
the United States was always local control, that parents
influence the local school boards, and that's how we were
able to keep biblical standards, and it wasn't until
when President Jimmy Carter came in in 1978, that's when--or
'76, that's when we first established a Federal Department
of Education. If you look at one of David Barton's famous charts,
you would see education practically taking a straight
downward spiral since the federal government has gotten
involved. One of the best things we could do is shut down the
Federal Department of Education, push it back to the local
communities so that parents could insist on-- DAVID: That's
right. MICHELE: --Biblical values coming back into our
schools. KEITH: See, if you're a minority parent, a vast majority
of minority parents cannot send their children to a Christian
school. DAVID: That's right. That's right. KEITH: It costs
too much. DAVID: That's right. KEITH: Very few minority
churches have a Christian school, period, because they
can't afford to do it. DAVID: It's expensive. KEITH: It's
extremely expensive education to do it. I ran one for 20 years.
And so that means they are left to the public system. MICHELE:
Amen. KEITH: This is why you have what's happening in the
cities. MICHELE: More than 90 percent of all kids are
in public schools. KEITH: Yeah, but in minority communities like
99 percent-- DAVID: It's--yeah, it's high. KEITH:
--99-point-whatever, okay? So the school board is probably,
aside from the church, the most important issue there is for the
family and for your vote. That's-- DAVID: And let me go on
record right now with that because, right now in America,
you can teach the Bible in public schools for credit, the
National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools.
You can have what are called good news clubs even led by
teachers that do evangelism in public schools. There is so much
a school board member can do that is legal, that is
constitutional, that the courts will oppose, but you've got to
get people in there who are willing to get God back in the
classroom. KEITH: What--when-- DAVID: We just had a law passed
in Arkansas that every classroom in Arkansas gets to put, "In God
we trust," very prominently, 32,000 classrooms in Arkansas.
That's local school folks that can do that. MICHELE: That's
hope. That's inspiration. That's hope. GEORGE: One minute left.
You were going to finish your sentence. What were you about to
say? KEITH: No, I was just talking about the fact
that--that your seed is going to come back to you. Your seedtime
and harvest is going to come back to you and your kids and
your grandkids and your nieces and nephews. It's going to be
your vote on the school board. MICHELE: Hallelujah. GEORGE:
Father, in the name of Jesus, we come together and we stand in
agreement where this issue is concerned. MICHELE: Yes, Father.
GEORGE: We are getting revelation of how important it
is to vote, even in these primary elections, even in
the midterm elections. It has everything to do with
our children and their future. Lord, we will not drop the
ball. In Jesus' name, amen. MICHELE: Amen.
GEORGE: Amen. MICHELE: Amen. GEORGE: Amen. I'll
be right back with you. Stay with us.
MICHELE: The balance of power in government is this:
It's a genius idea from our founders. And what it says is
this: We can't trust any one person with power, because,
remember, what was the experience of the founders? They
had a tyrannical king. And they saw how dangerous it was to
concentrate all power in one individual. And so they divided
power because they understood human nature. They understood
that man tends to be evil, that we're born in original sin, and
we're--because we're born in sin, we have to be tamped down
from our evil ways. So what the founders decided is there would
be power for federal issues at the federal level; there would
be state power, state government officials; and local officials.
So they divided power vertically between federal, state, and
local. Then they divided power horizontally, meaning, at the
federal level, there is a president, there is a Congress,
and there is a judiciary. The president makes the executive
decisions, but he doesn't make the laws. He enforces and
carries out the laws. The law makers are the Congress. That's
the House and the Senate. So even though there's a Congress,
their power is divided between the Senate, which was meant to
uphold and look after state interests, and the House, which
was meant to look after local, smaller issues in a local
district. Then there was the judiciary. The--the Congress
makes laws, and then those laws are applied in the court system.
So law--so power was divided both from federal, local, and
state, and then also from the federal--from the federal
government--president to the Congress to the judiciary. And
the same happens at the local level, too. When all of these
areas work in their correct balance, in other words, when
judges don't act like lawmakers, they act like judges, when
lawmakers act like lawmakers and not the President of the United
States, and when the president acts with just enforcing the
laws on the books rather than trying to act like he is the
Supreme Court, or she is the Supreme Court, then our
government maintains its proper balance, and it's finely tuned.
ANNOUNCER: We hope you enjoyed today's teaching from Kenneth
Copeland Ministries. And remember Jesus is Lord.
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