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I never knew this about the American Revolution with Eric Metaxas · The Becket Cook Show

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  Speaker 1: Life Audio.
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  Speaker 2: You are listening to The Becket Cook Show with your
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  Speaker 2: host Beckett Cook. For more information about Beckett and his ministry,
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  Speaker 1: Hey guys, welcome to the show today. My guest is
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  Speaker 1: Eric Metaxas, and he has a new book out called Revolution,
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  Speaker 1: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the history of
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  Speaker 1: the world. It's an amazing read. I couldn't put it down.
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  Speaker 1: There's so many details in here about the Revolution that
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  Speaker 1: I didn't know about that are fascinating. We're going to
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  Speaker 1: get into some of those. But if you don't know
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  Speaker 1: Eric Metaxas, he's been on the show several times before,
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  Speaker 1: but he's a New York Times bestselling author of many books,
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  Speaker 1: including Bonhoeffer, and this book has been on the New
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  Speaker 1: York Times bestseller list for the last seven weeks and
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  Speaker 1: still going strong. But first award from our sponsor, Please
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  Speaker 1: welcome Eric Maan Texas well.
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  Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. It makes me very happy
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  Speaker 3: to see you. I realized suddenly I haven't seen you
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  Speaker 3: a little while, so thanks.
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  Speaker 1: For Yeah, it's been a while. I mean the years
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  Speaker 1: just the days are long, the years are short, as
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  Speaker 1: they say.
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  Speaker 3: So.
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  Speaker 1: But let's talk about your book Revolution, which.
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  Speaker 3: Is why, why? Why? For what?
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  Speaker 1: But uh, you know, I read every word of this book,
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  Speaker 1: and as I said in the intro, there's so many
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  Speaker 1: just nuggets in here of there's so many things that
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  Speaker 1: I wasn't aware of about the Revolution that it just
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  Speaker 1: we're brilliant and I'm just but first let's ask why. First,
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  Speaker 1: why is it called revolution as opposed to America the
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  Speaker 1: American Revolution?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah?
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  Speaker 1: And why did you? Why did you write this? And
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  Speaker 1: how did it How did it perfectly align with the
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  Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty super centennial.
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  Speaker 3: Well, it didn't perfectly align. That's the problem. I had
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  Speaker 3: to really, really, really really write fast and read fast,
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  Speaker 3: and to get to get it to align. I would
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  Speaker 3: have liked another couple of years to work on it. Seriously.
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  Speaker 3: It was brutal, brutal. But I a couple of years ago,
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  Speaker 3: a really good friend of mine, probably my best friend,
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  Speaker 3: said to me, he just read the chapter on George
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  Speaker 3: Washington in my book Seven Men, and he said he
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  Speaker 3: was so moved by it that he says, Eric, you
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  Speaker 3: need to write the whole story, like the whole revel.
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  Speaker 3: You need to do it. And I got to tell you, Beckett,
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  Speaker 3: I don't you know. I don't like when people suggest
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  Speaker 3: books to me. It's kind of like saying, you know,
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  Speaker 3: here's a mountain you should climb tomorrow. You know, like
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  Speaker 3: I'm busy tomorrow, Like what are you talking about? So
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  Speaker 3: people always have ideas. When he said that, it really
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  Speaker 3: stopped me and I thought, huh, I wow, Like I've
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  Speaker 3: never thought ever, ever, ever of writing about the American Revolution. Never,
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  Speaker 3: But when he said it, something inside me said, that's
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  Speaker 3: that's that's something I got to think about. And the
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  Speaker 3: more I thought about it, all I can tell you is, honestly,
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  Speaker 3: and you you know me well enough, I felt this
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  Speaker 3: was God's idea, that the Lord wanted me to tell
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  Speaker 3: this story. My side of it is that, you know,
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  Speaker 3: if I'm gonna you got to count the cost. Is
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  Speaker 3: there a book out there already that tells the story
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  Speaker 3: of the American Revolution? Not really, And whenever I write
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  Speaker 3: a book, I want to make sure, like, am I
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  Speaker 3: you know, do we need a book? Do we need it? Now?
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  Speaker 3: There are many books on a revolution, but there isn't one,
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  Speaker 3: There hasn't been one recently that tells the whole story
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  Speaker 3: how did America come into being? I mean, David McCalls
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  Speaker 3: seventeen seventy six tells a part of it. There's a
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  Speaker 3: million books, but there isn't a book that tells the
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  Speaker 3: whole story, the definitive story of everything, everything you need
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  Speaker 3: to know about the American Revolution, you know, And I
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  Speaker 3: kind of thought, okay, I think a really great telling
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  Speaker 3: of that would be would be a great thing, because
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  Speaker 3: we should all know this history. I mean, we all
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  Speaker 3: have to know this history. This is like I mean,
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  Speaker 3: I guess that's another way of saying why I wrote it,
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  Speaker 3: because I thought this is actually gigantically important. I cannot
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  Speaker 3: overstate how important it is that we know this history.
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  Speaker 3: This is how this nation came into being. And so
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  Speaker 3: my assignment to myself was to tell the story. That's it,
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  Speaker 3: no angle, just like telling the story is itself a
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  Speaker 3: you know, first of all, a monumental project, but also
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  Speaker 3: monumentally important. Every American should know it, most of us don't.
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  Speaker 3: Many of us maybe we knew it, we heard it
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  Speaker 3: in school, we forgot it. This cannot continue we need
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  Speaker 3: to know it. So I just wanted to write a
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  Speaker 3: definitive book on the birth of America two and fifty
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  Speaker 3: years ago, what happened to fifty years ago. But the
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  Speaker 3: title for something really definitive just be the American Revolution.
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  Speaker 3: But the reason I just titled it Revolution to finally
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  Speaker 3: answer that part of the question is that I realized
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  Speaker 3: this was the revolution. There has never been a revolution
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  Speaker 3: in history that did what it set out to do
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  Speaker 3: in the way that the American Revolution did. You can't compare.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, when somebody says, what about the French Revolution,
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  Speaker 3: the French Revolution is a bitter, tragic joke compared to
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  Speaker 3: the American regardless. Yes, well it's not just godless because
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  Speaker 3: it's God. It failed totally. And that's the secret to
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  Speaker 3: the success of the American Revolution. The American Revolution said,
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  Speaker 3: we're going to get rid of a king, an earthly king,
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  Speaker 3: so that we can look directly to God, our King.
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  Speaker 3: How Come I didn't learn that in school? How Come
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  Speaker 3: you didn't learn that in school? How come we don't
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  Speaker 3: hear that? How come every American doesn't know that's what
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  Speaker 3: the men of the revolution we're doing. That's true, And
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  Speaker 3: in my research, I was truly astonished to see how
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  Speaker 3: clear that is, how explicit and conscious it was on
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  Speaker 3: the part of the men of the revolution. I mean,
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  Speaker 3: it's not like that was part of the story. That
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  Speaker 3: was the story. So the title of the book is
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  Speaker 3: Revolution because I said, there is no other revolution, nothing
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  Speaker 3: can compare to the American Revolution. It didn't just you know,
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  Speaker 3: create a new nation, It created a new kind of nation.
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  Speaker 3: In the history of the world. You have to go
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  Speaker 3: back three thousand years to the Sinai Covenant to find
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  Speaker 3: a people that say, we want no king, We look
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  Speaker 3: to God. That's God's idea of how mankind should govern ourselves.
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  Speaker 3: And it happened in the Sinai Desert three thousand years
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  Speaker 3: before our revolution. And then it happened again in seventeen
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  Speaker 3: seventy five, seventy six. Like that's amazing. And so that's
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  Speaker 3: why the book is called Revolution.
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  Speaker 1: And by the way, this book needs to be required
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  Speaker 1: require textbook in every public high school and private high
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  Speaker 1: school in America, because you're right, we don't learn some
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  Speaker 1: of these details that are re crucial.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, I do hope it will be a textbook.
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  Speaker 3: I hope that that smart educators at high school will understand.
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  Speaker 3: That's what I have done. I have written basically a
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  Speaker 3: textbook for you know, eleventh grade or twelfth graders, like
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  Speaker 3: this is something that you know. I it's funny because
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  Speaker 3: I wanted it to be like twelve hundred pages. I
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  Speaker 3: wanted to say everything, but I just said, no, I'm
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  Speaker 3: just gonna say what you need to say. I'm going
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  Speaker 3: to just put in here what it's kind of like,
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  Speaker 3: what's going to be on the test. Whatever's in this
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  Speaker 3: book is going to be on the test. Other stuff,
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  Speaker 3: there's plenty of other stuff that's extra credit. This is
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  Speaker 3: the absolute basics of what happened in the American Revolution.
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  Speaker 3: So I do hope homeschoolers are already telling me they're
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  Speaker 3: going to use it as a homeschool curriculum, and I hope,
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  Speaker 3: I hope others will do that, because really it's not
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  Speaker 3: like that was my intention, But in retrospect, I realize
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  Speaker 3: it would be perfect for that because I think that
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  Speaker 3: I put in everything that's really necessary, and I hope
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  Speaker 3: some stuff that's a lot of fun.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be great. Okay, So let's start at
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  Speaker 1: the very beginning, because you say in the book, most
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  Speaker 1: historians say the troubles began in seventeen sixty three, following
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  Speaker 1: the French and Indian War, when the Crown decided that
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  Speaker 1: it was time to tax the American colonists for the
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  Speaker 1: great costs incurred during that war. But you say, according
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  Speaker 1: to John Adams, it really began in the Boston court
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  Speaker 1: room and February of seventeen sixty one, what happened in
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  Speaker 1: the courtroom, I don't know.
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  Speaker 3: Uh, I don't know. Man, you're gonna You're really gonna
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  Speaker 3: grill me on this. Huh No, it's I'm joking. Basically,
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  Speaker 3: John Adams ends up being kind of like my north
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  Speaker 3: star in telling this story. It's not like I set
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  Speaker 3: out to do that, but he develops. As I did
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  Speaker 3: my research, I just thought, there is nobody like John Adams, nobody.
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  Speaker 3: The only person who compares to him is George Washington.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, John Adams deserves to be way more famous
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  Speaker 3: than Thomas Jefferson. I mean absolutely, monster figure, monster intellect,
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  Speaker 3: prophetic voice in some ways which we get into, but
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  Speaker 3: he remembered years later, because of course, you know, Washington
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  Speaker 3: dies in seventeen ninety nine. Benjamin Franklin dies in seventeen
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  Speaker 3: ninety like a lot of these guys are dying, George.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, John Adams lived a long time and of
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  Speaker 3: course as president whatever. So at some point I think
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  Speaker 3: it was around eighteen eighteen, I can't remember exactly when,
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  Speaker 3: but he's ruminating on the revolution and that's when he
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  Speaker 3: says that for him, it all began in a courtroom
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  Speaker 3: in seventeen sixty one, because of course, the whole story
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  Speaker 3: begins in Boston. The revolution begins in Boston. It all
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  Speaker 3: begins in Boston with the Sons of Liberty, and that's
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  Speaker 3: really central. It's a big part of the story and
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  Speaker 3: it's exciting. And he was there. He was a young man,
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  Speaker 3: he was a young lawyer twenty five years old in
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  Speaker 3: the courtroom when James Otis Junior, who's an important figure,
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  Speaker 3: argued against what was called the Writs of Assistance. And
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  Speaker 3: basically all you need to know is that this was
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  Speaker 3: one of the like, it's kind of like the first
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  Speaker 3: really heavy handed attempt by the British to squash colonial liberties.
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  Speaker 1: And they could go into the home, they could go
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  Speaker 1: into people's homes without it.
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  Speaker 3: Was basically, yeah, it was basically. I mean, it's complicated,
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  Speaker 3: but the simple version is that they are saying like,
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  Speaker 3: we have the right to go into your home and
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  Speaker 3: search your home or whatever. And people like James Otis Junior,
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  Speaker 3: people who understand, should our rights come from God and
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  Speaker 3: we are British subjects, we have rights, said wait a second, no, no,
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  Speaker 3: you can't come into my home. And you you know,
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  Speaker 3: my man's home is his castle. We have British law,
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  Speaker 3: we have these traditions. So but that was the first
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  Speaker 3: example to John Adams of how it all began. He goes, like,
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  Speaker 3: right there, something happened in seventeen sixty one where people
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  Speaker 3: like James Otis Junior and others said this is this
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  Speaker 3: is wrong, this is wrong. We will not submit to this.
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  Speaker 3: We're gonna we're gonna fight this, and so of course
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  Speaker 3: they fought it in a courtroom. But that really was
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  Speaker 3: It's kind of like the sounding bell for John Adams,
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  Speaker 3: as he remembered as he thought back on how this
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  Speaker 3: all happened. That's the opening scene for him.
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  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this short break and the
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  Speaker 1: great battle cry taxation without representation as tyranny came from
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  Speaker 1: otis correct.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, it's I mean, it's interesting because that phrase it
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  Speaker 3: sort of sums things up. But it is the problem
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  Speaker 3: with no taxation without representation is that it makes us
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  Speaker 3: think too much about the money. It really is about
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  Speaker 3: the principle, right, I mean, if somebody comes to you
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  Speaker 3: and says give me some money, they put a gun
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  Speaker 3: to your head, you think, do I owe you the money?
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  Speaker 3: By whose authority are you asking for the money? Jesus said,
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  Speaker 3: render under Caesar the things that are Caesar. So it's legitimate.
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  Speaker 3: Tax is legitimate. But what if somebody says give me
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  Speaker 3: the money, and you say, well, I don't think I
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  Speaker 3: owe you this tax? Where is this? So this is
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  Speaker 3: really an issue of the authority of parliament to tax
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  Speaker 3: the colonies. The colonies had all going all the way
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  Speaker 3: back to when people came here in the seventeenth century.
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  Speaker 3: They've been governing themselves, they've been taxing themselves. Right. You
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  Speaker 3: have a community and you say, hey, we need to
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  Speaker 3: build a road, we need to build a school, we
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  Speaker 3: need whatever. So everybody's gonna pitch in, We're gonna pay taxes.
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  Speaker 3: We're all agreeing to do this. So Parliament three thousand
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  Speaker 3: miles away suddenly says, hey, you owe this money. They said, no, no,
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  Speaker 3: that's that's not okay. We have. We believe in these
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  Speaker 3: principles of uh we if we're represented in Parliament, then
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  Speaker 3: that means we're taxing ourselves. Right. If I send my
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  Speaker 3: representative to Parliament, I send my representative to Congress or whatever.
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  Speaker 3: We've elected him, we've all agreed. He's our guy. He
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  Speaker 3: represents us in Congress. So if he votes for tax, okay,
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  Speaker 3: we voted for the tax. Right. Here was a case
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  Speaker 3: where somehow Parliament is saying, well, we're gonna, we're gonna
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  Speaker 3: do it. End run around that, and that's when the
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  Speaker 3: Americans said, no, we can't, we can't go along with that.
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  Speaker 3: We need some clarity on the issues. And and this
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  Speaker 3: sets up the whole theme of the book in some
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  Speaker 3: ways is that the Americans were principled. They were most
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  Speaker 3: of them serious Christians, really believed and right and wrong,
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  Speaker 3: and thought that if I go along with your lie,
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  Speaker 3: I'm disobeying God. So I have to understand that this
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  Speaker 3: is legitimate. And so it's summed up in the phrase,
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  Speaker 3: you know, taxation without representation, No taxation without representation. But
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  Speaker 3: it's the principle behind that. Really that was the bigger
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  Speaker 3: issue than the money.
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  Speaker 1: And what was the crown or the Parliament's rationale for
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  Speaker 1: taxing the colonies for the French, basically for to get
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  Speaker 1: money for the French and Indian War.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and it's not like Parliament at no point.
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  Speaker 3: But at the end of the day, you know, to
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  Speaker 3: to sum up first of all, you know, you have
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  Speaker 3: to say, what's the French and Indian War? The French
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  Speaker 3: Indian War. You know, you have to think think of
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  Speaker 3: the thirteen colonies along the east coast of America. On
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  Speaker 3: the western border of those colonies, who's on the other side, Well,
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  Speaker 3: that's the French, right. The French had you know, they
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  Speaker 3: had Canada and they came down through I'm forgetting which river,
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  Speaker 3: the Ohio River. I mean, they were on the other
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  Speaker 3: side of the thirteen colonies on the western side, and
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  Speaker 3: you know you can think of them going all the
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  Speaker 3: way down to Louisiana whatever. I mean, that's their empire
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  Speaker 3: over there. And at some point in the in the
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  Speaker 3: seventeen fifties, the British realized, you know, the French are
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  Speaker 3: building forts along that, but we don't like that. We
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  Speaker 3: need to give him some pushback. So they send a
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  Speaker 3: young man to kind of lead an expedition. Turns out
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  Speaker 3: his name is George Washington. The twenty one year old
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  Speaker 3: named George Washington. A year later, there's kind of this
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  Speaker 3: disaster that Washington is involved in, and it really triggers
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  Speaker 3: No pun intended this the French and Indian War, So
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  Speaker 3: the French were with the British, and of course the
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  Speaker 3: French have native American allies, so it's called the French
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  Speaker 3: and Indian War. It was really a world war in
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  Speaker 3: Europe they were fighting they called the Seven Years War.
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  Speaker 3: But the bottom line is, under the leadership of William Pitt,
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  Speaker 3: the British won biglely. To use a Trumpian term from
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  Speaker 3: our own era, they won big lely. They they doubled
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  Speaker 3: their empire. They in the British they doubled their empire
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  Speaker 3: and the American continent. They got all of Canada, and
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  Speaker 3: so they've doubled their empire. They won the war seventeen
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  Speaker 3: sixty three. But they've also doubled their debt, which means
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  Speaker 3: that they're thinking about, how do how do we recoup
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  Speaker 3: some of this money we've spent and they rather naturally think, oh, well,
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  Speaker 3: this benefited the American colonies, so we're going to tax them.
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  Speaker 3: But the American colony said, excuse me, this didn't really
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  Speaker 3: benefit us. This benefited the whole British Empire, not just
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  Speaker 3: us number one. Number two. We fought in this war
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  Speaker 3: alongside you, so it's not like you did this on
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  Speaker 3: our behalf and we're going to pay you. Men died,
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  Speaker 3: Americans died. There was a lot to be said in
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  Speaker 3: terms of us not agreeing that we owed this. And
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  Speaker 3: then there's the principle, as we've said, as I said
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  Speaker 3: a moment ago, do you have the right to tax us?
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  Speaker 3: We tax ourselves. I mean, Parliament is reaching three thousand
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  Speaker 3: miles across the ocean and saying give us the money.
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  Speaker 3: And they're saying, well, we have our own assemblies, we
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  Speaker 3: have our own governments. Here, we're British subjects. But we
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  Speaker 3: don't agree to this. And that's what kicks the whole
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  Speaker 3: thing off, is that conflict of do the British have
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  Speaker 3: the right? The Americans push back, push back, pushback, And
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  Speaker 3: that's the story of the seventeen sixties, and it's sort
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  Speaker 3: of an escalation over time where it's kind of funny
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  Speaker 3: because it reminds me of I wrote a biography of
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: Martin Luther, and in the story of Martin Luther. It's
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  Speaker 3: the same kind of story where you see the Vatican
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  Speaker 3: overplaying its hands so foolishly that it never there never
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  Speaker 3: should have been a Reformation. They kind of forced Luther
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  Speaker 3: in a way because they were so heavy handed. And
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  Speaker 3: you see the same thing with King George the Third
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  Speaker 3: in Parliament. This never needed to escalate, but it's like
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  Speaker 3: they just insisted. And I also say it's kind of
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  Speaker 3: like Pharaoh, you know, with with with the Israelites, where
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  Speaker 3: if you were Pharaoh's buddy, you'd be like, hey, Pharaoh,
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  Speaker 3: you know, listen these three plagues, Like I'm just letting
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  Speaker 3: you know, Like I have a funny feeling there are
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  Speaker 3: more to come, and I think you want to cut
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: your losses, let them go, Like I don't think you
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: really want to keep going. And and he's not going
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: to listen. His heart is hard. And I feel like
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: King George the Third in Parliament, like their hearts were hard,
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: they were really proud, and they did everything wrong and
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: in the end they lose the colonies and you think, wow,
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: it you know, when you study history, realize that it
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: didn't need to go that way. So it's it's actually
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: fascinating at least at least to me. It's fascinating.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And one of the main ways that this that
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: was it, one of the main inciting incidents was the
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Stamp Act, Right, Yeah, that's how they were going to
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: pay for this. But tell what is the Stamp Act exactly?
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: Well, that was just the way the British were going
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: to tax the Americans. They voted in seventeen sixty four,
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: they voted for this sugar tax, and then in seventeen
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: sixty five this big tax on I mean, it really
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: is weird. It was on every piece of paper. In
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: other words, you're going to do a contract, you're going
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: to print a newspaper, a magazine, whatever. They said, Okay,
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna make you buy
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: all your paper from us, and all the paper will
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: be officially stamped, and it'll have a special amount of
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: money that you have to pay. And you know, it's
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: kind of like a gasoline tax. You know, it's it's
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: like you buy the tax there and it's all going
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: to have this extra upcharge and that's going to go
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: to parliam and the Americans, I mean, they were against
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: it in principle, but also some of them really thought,
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: this is kind of creepy. You're taxing paper. It feels
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: like you're trying to crush our free speech. You're trying
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: to You're gonna put newspapers out of business. Is that
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: what you're really doing. You're you're trying to crush our
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: liberties because you know, tax us is one way to
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: encroach on our liberties, but on paper, you know. So
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: it was a that was the flash point. That's when
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: the American colonists said, we need to fight this with
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: everything we have, and they did. Of course, they're riots,
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: uh crazy, I mean, that's one of my favorite things,
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: is like, I never thought I get excited about the stampback,
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: but the stories of these I mean you read it.
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: It's crazy stuff, crazy, crazy, crazy, fun crazy. I mean,
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: uh so that's yeah, that's what kind of kicked it
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: all off. Now.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then let's talk about Samuel Adams. He was
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: what it was the cousins to John Adams or what was.
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: His second cousin, his second cousin.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you say in the book that the nineteenth
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: century historian James Kendall Hosmer reckoned that Samuel Adams could
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: be more properly called the Father of America rather than Washington.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: Why is that, well, I mean, this is another reason
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: I wrote the book. I said, we need to celebrate
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: these heroes. Every single American needs to know the story
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: of Samuel Adams. You would not have a country called
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: America without Samuel Adams period. That's not debatable. He was
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: definitely called the father of the Revolution. He was. He
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: was the man that made it happen. I mean, he
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: was alive to these issues in the seventeen forties, way
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: before James Otis Junior argued against the rits of Assistance
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: in seventeen sixty one. He was somebody that he really
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: saw this and was already writing about it. And you know,
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: because the British had been trying in various ways. It's
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: the beginning, you know, since the sixteen thirties and forties
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: and fifties and sixties, from the century before to kind
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: of pull America back under there, you know, to try
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: to get America to submit to the to become members
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: of the Church of England. You know, you have all
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: these people coming across to get away from the Church
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: of England to be Reformation Puritans, Protestants, not under the
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: Church of England. And so that effort was you know,
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: it goes back and forth and back and forth. My
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: next book maybe about the period before the Revolution. I
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: don't know, but I think John Adams, I'm sorry, Samuel Adams,
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: he was the leader in this and when the clash
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: happens in Boston where you know, because of the Sugar
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: Act and the standback, he's leading the way and kind
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: of grinding the propaganda mill, you know, like we've got
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: to write letters to the in the newspaper, and we've
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: got to write essays, and we've got to have street theater,
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: we've got to have you know, we've got to have
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: political theater where where we have demonstrations and we've got
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, he was the man behind all of that.
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: And it's a yeah, it's an amazing story. He is
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: such a hero, amazing hero and an amazing Christian as
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: most of these guys were, but he's at the head
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: of the pack. Yeah.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: You just in the book you disabused the idea that
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Washington was a deist.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: What a joke? What a joke? I mean, honestly, that's
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: the polite way of saying it. Like a joke. It
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: is a vile lie. It is a vile lie. It's
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: kind of like saying Jesus was a deist. It's the
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: stupidest thing I've ever heard. When you look at the evidence,
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: you think, why are they, Why are they lying like this?
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Why do historians, secular historians keep saying this? And I think,
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: to give some of them the benefit of the doubt,
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: some of them are so And I've noticed this in
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: writing many of my books that sometimes secular people they
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: just don't they don't understand the language. Right. So when
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: you and I would go like, oh, I know what's
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: going on, they'd be like, I don't know. They don't
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: understand the language of faith, or a Christian faith. So
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: when you look at George Washington, I mean, look at
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: any of them, you go, that's not a deist. You
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: know what a deist is. A deist basically barely believes
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: in God. A deist doesn't believe God acts in history
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: and is alive, and we need to worry about what
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: he thinks. Deists don't care about that. Nobody cared more
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: about that than George Washington. And so the fact that
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: he's called a deist is so insane, it's so silly.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: And so whenever I write a book. I'm not trying
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: to correct wrongs, but as I do my research, I'm
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: astonished at how much I find that is just flat
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: out wrong, not debatable, just totally wrong. But people have
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: pushed that lie, maybe because they just don't they don't
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: like the truth. They don't like the idea of God
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: being involved. They think, oh, you can get liberty, you know,
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: it's kind of like you can get life. All you
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: need is some water on a planet and life pops out.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: It's like, no, actually, you need God. And the story
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: with liberty. You do not get liber liberty without God, Like,
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: there's no such thing. Look at the French Revolution, look
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: at I mean, where do you get the idea that
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: we're equal? What is that? That comes from the Bible?
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: It doesn't come to the Koran, it doesn't come from
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: French philosophers. Where do you get that idea that that
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: that we're equal? Where do you get the idea that
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: we have liberty or rights? All this stuff comes out
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: of the Bible. And I think there are a lot
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: of people that are, you know, at least in the
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: last one hundred years, let's say, who just are uncomfortable
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: with that. So they kind of concoct this other version
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: where they say, oh, it was it was the French Enlightenment,
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: and you know, and it's simply not true.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah uh and you you you mentioned sons of liberty?
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Where does that? Where did that term that phrase come from?
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: And who who were the sons of liberty?
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: I feel like I'm being quizzed on my own book.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: I have to I have to be like, wait a minute,
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: wait a minute, can I get can I get a lifeline?
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: Can I get it? You know, the sons of liberty?
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: There was a It's important to say that there were
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: people in Parliament who agreed with the American colonists, right.
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: So one of them is William Pitt, Another wis Edmund Burke,
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: and then there's one named William. I don't know how
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: to pronounce it, but I think it's duche. He gave
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: a speech in Parliament arguing I guess it was around
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: the Stampack, so it was probably around seventeen sixty five
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: or seventeen six, early seventeen sixty six, basically saying that
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: the Americans are right, and he refers to them as
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: the sons of liberty. And when the copies of his
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: speech came over to the colonies. Some of the Bostonians said,
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: we're gonna call ourselves sons of liberty. And then there
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: were people all in all the thirteen colonies that call
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: themselves sons of liberty. So that's that's where the phrase
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: came from.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: And then just briefly mentioned or talk about Champagne Charlie,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: who who arts villain Champagne Charlie.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well he wasn't really an arts villain. I find
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: him as a comic p There's a lot of stuff
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: because you read the book where I find something so entertaining,
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: I say, I gotta stick it in the book. Most
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: you know, books on the American Revolution will not have
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: some of this stuff in there. But to me, if
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: it's funny, I got to put it in there. And
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: Champagne Charlie basically after the Stamp Act is repealed, because
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: Britain finally realizes this is not going to work, so
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: they repeal the Stamp Act and they don't but then
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: they kind of think, Okay, we still got to tax
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: the colonies. So two years later they come back with
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: the Townshend Acts. And Charles Townshend was a member of
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: Parliament who he came up with these these new taxes,
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: so they're called the Townshend Acts. But he was known,
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: you know, I discovered he was known as Champagne Charlie
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: because he liked Champagne. And there was one speech he
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: gave basically where where he went. I mean, this is
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: like classic. Again, there's a lot of this stuff's entertaining
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: to me. But like he goes, there's a session of
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: Parliament and then they all go off to dinner and
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: they're like boozing it up. So he comes back and
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: gives another speech at like ten pm or whatever, and
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: he's out of his mind blasted. And Horace Walpole, who's
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: kind of like an Oscar wild figure. I mean, he's
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: this very witty diarist who wrote tons about that era.
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: He writes about this about how after Charles Townsend's speech,
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: which was like one of the most amazing crazy things
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: he ever heard, he was kind of dubbed Champagne Charlie.
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: So I said, I got to put it in there.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: I love that. And Patrick Henry is famous for the
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: quote give me liberty or give me death. Yeah, and
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: his speech in seventeen seventy five, and he was he
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: I think you said he was the first who dared
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: to employ the word tyrant to describe George the Third.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he what was the core.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Argument in his speech? In that speech, this.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: Is like, this is like I'm trying to get my dissertation,
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: this is my PhD Oral examination. I better reread my book.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: You wrote the book.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: I forgot it. I forgot half of it. No, basically
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: that was I think that was back in seventeen sixty
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: five around the Stamp Act. Because he's known, he's most
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: famous for. Maybe I'm getting this wrong, but I'm trying
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: to remember. But basically, Patrick Henry is most famous for
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: in seventeen seventy five, right before Lexington and conquered, he's
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: down in Virginia and he gives his famous speech, give
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: me liberty or give me death. It's almost he's some
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: of these figures seemed prophetic, like they seem to see
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: what nobody else sees and they speak it out and
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: it's very powerful. But ten years earlier he was, I mean,
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: he was a trial lawyer and he he was he
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: had just entered the House of Burgesses in Virginia in
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: seventeen sixty five, so ten years earlier, and this Stamp
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: Act is, you know, being debated, and he he basically
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: says what nobody else is willing to say. And I
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: don't know if he uses the word tyrant or is
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: implying it, but they were shocked, like, wow, you know
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: you can't say that, but he said it. And it's
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: fascinating how he kind of I think somebody said that
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: that he he walked right on the line of treason,
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: like it was right on that line where people thought,
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: oh my goodness, you can get in trouble for talking
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: like that. But he was a very bold prophetic voice.
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: And in another in this list of extraordinary Christians, there's
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: no doubt that he was a very strong clea.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: She said in that speech, I think he said, Julius
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Caesar has his brutus, King Charles has his Cromwell, and
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: he didn't doubt that some good American would similarly stand
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: up for his country, although in a more mod quote
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: unquote moderate manner or.
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: So well, okay, so here's what he's saying, right, because
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: again a lot of us will maybe we don't get
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: the reference, but everybody in the room when he says
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: Julius Caesar has his In other words, Julius Caesar overreaches
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: like a tyrant, and these senators murder him. King Charles
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: in the previous century overreached and is beheaded. So he's
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: basically saying, like, if you do that, you're gonna get yours.
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: He doesn't say fafo, but if he could have, he
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: would have. And he's basically he's basically saying, like, you know,
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: if you keep this up, George the Third, like some
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: American is gonna you know, like he's basically trash talking,
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: but it's not. It's not just trash talking. Like he's
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: basically saying, this is this is unacceptable. The King of
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: England can't behave like this, and this is what's happened
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: in the past. And so he's basically saying, yeah, this
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: is a this is tyranous behavior.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think the if I'm correct, the first
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: death in the revolution was an eleven year old boy
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: named Christopher Sider. Yeah, killed in seventeen seventy eleven days
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: before the Boston massacre. What what led to that? The
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: killing of him?
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: This really is this is a quiz. But I'm passed
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: so far, so good? Okay, no, no, no, it's funny.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: So I'm just normally when I do interviews people on't
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: asking any specific questions, so I'm actually genuinely great.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: I read the I always read the books. That's why
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: I have very specific no, no.
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: No, no, it's this is like a delight for me because
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: I'm talking about stuff I don't normally talk about. Well,
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: it's kind of a weird thing, and I felt, I
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: mean again, there's a lot of stuff that I felt
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: I have to put in the book. Everybody needs to
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: know this. Everybody needs to know that a week before
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: the Boston massacre where five people were killed, it was
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: not a massacre, by the way, but five people were killed.
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: One week before an eleven years old boy is killed.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: And that's really the first time a British solution, right,
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: what's that my British No, No, it was it was
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: kind of a mob scene. Basically, here's here's what happened.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: I'll tell the story. Basically, there's this again, there's this
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: huge conflict that goes on from you know, seventeen sixty five.
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: Every year it's it's something new with Waxes and Waynes,
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: and you know, Parliament backs off and then they try again,
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: and it goes back and forth and back and forth.
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: In seventeen sixty eight because of Champagne, Charlie and the
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: Townshend acts. The Americans did not respond well to that.
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: They're like, no, we're not We're not going to put
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: up with this. So the British very foolishly send troops
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: to Boston. So if you ever wanted to like cause trouble,
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: create tension, they send troops to Boston. So there's this
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: tension because the Bostonians now feel like there's an occupying
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: force in their town of you know, uppity British soldiers
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: who talk down to them, and I mean it really
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: is a powder cake. So in seventeen seventy, in February
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: of seventeen seventy, this is kind of you know, this
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: tension builds up because there had been one of the
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: things that the Americans were doing to push back against
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: the British was boycotting British goods, which is, you know,
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: a very powerful way to send a message. It's like,
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: we're going to starve you economically. We are not going
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: to buy your goods. So you're going to suffer. Great Britain.
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: You want to you want to wear this game, you
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: want to play this game, we will not buy. We're
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: going to spin our own wool and make our own clothes.
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: We're not going to buy your luxury goods. Will suffer
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: for the cause. So at some point you have merchants
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: in Boston that say, you know what, we're tired of this,
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: we're losing, we we're in other words, there's some people
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: that are very patriotic and very American, and others that
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: were like, I want some money, you know, they were
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: kind of on the fence. So the Americans, the Patriots said,
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: if you're if you're gonna play that game, if you're
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: some merchant and you want to import British goods, we're
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: gonna harass you, like we're gonna put signs outside of
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: your store to let everybody know you're you're siding with
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: the British. So that causes tension, and at some point,
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: basically there's a mob around one of these stores and
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: it creates this tension, and there's this one guy who
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: basically sides with the British who really confronts this mob
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: and they kind of come after him. He goes into
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: his house, they start throwing rocks at his house. It
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: just becomes this violent street scene, and at some point
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: this guy is in his house. Long story short, he
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: pulls out a gun and fires. Uh, and I don't
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: I'm sure he didn't mean to kill anyone, but an
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: eleven year old boy is killed, and that just sends
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: the whole town of Boston into a tizzy because now
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: somebody has died, and so that kind of ratchets things
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: up through that week. And then at the end of
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: that week we have what's called the Boston Massacre, where
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: there's another scene. So that's really the big one of
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: the one of the big moments that leads up to
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: the war. Obviously at Lexton Concord seventeen seventy five, but
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: this is that's one of those markers that you know,
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: we all need to know these stories because this is
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: how it happened.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: Yes, and you talk about George Whitfield's influence on the Revolution,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: What was his influence on the Revolution?
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: You got me, I don't know. Okay, all right, I'll
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: tell you. I have no idea. I'll tell you no Whitfield.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: I think it's fair to say that without Woodfield there's
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: no America. The greatest evangelist maybe who ever lived ever.
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: I joke around that he makes Billy Graham and the
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: apostle Paul look like lazy agnostics, Like that's just like
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: he is. He preached eighteen thousand sermons and basically he's
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: the leading figure in what's called the Great Awakening. But
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: in preaching up and down the Thirteen Colonies, he awakens
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: something else. In other words, if if you're preaching the
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: true Gospel, you're telling people we're all equal in God's eyes.
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: So the king, the governor, the shopkeeper, we're all equal
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: before God, and we all have an equal responsibility to
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: look directly to the Lord. That's not the priest's job
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: or the king's job. That's all of our job. And
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: so that's pure Protestantism right comes out of the Reformation,
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: and so that ignites this feeling that we don't need
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: a king, we can look directly to God. We can
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: govern ourselves. So that's the short version of the story.
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: But he Whitfield was looked upon. It is kind of
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: like the Saint of America. When he died in seventeen seventy,
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: he was like revered, like he was this major figure
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: who represented the cause.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think Benedict Arnold and his friends tried to
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: get some of his stuff from his grave.
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: To That's one of my favorite stories. I mean, I
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: don't get to tell that often, but I mean it's
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: a macabre story, right that Bennedict Arnold before he goes
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: over to the dark Side. He and his troops are
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: about to go on an expedition through Maine up to Canada,
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: and they stop in the church where Whitfield preached his
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: last sermon, and he and his officers ask, can we
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: visit the grave of Whitfield? And they go down to
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: the grave of Whitfield, who they revere like the saint
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: of the cause because it was a sacred cause. They
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: saw God as central to the cause, and his prophet
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: was Whitfield. They go down to the crypt and they
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: ask the sex and can we remove the lid of
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: the coffin? And it's so creepy to us because we
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: wouldn't want to do that, But they see that his
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: body is molded to dust, but the cuffs and the
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: collar of his clerical gown are still there, and so
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: they cut those into pieces and distribute them like sacred
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: relics on this expedition. So you think, how much did
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: they revere George Woodfield that they would do this, How
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: central was this evangelist to the American cause. I mean
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: that tells a lot about who was involved in what
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: they were thinking.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you mentioned that Americans were far more literate
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: than any other people that had ever been in the
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: history of the world because of the importance that Puritan's
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: placed on the priority of reading the Bible, reading and understanding.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: So that was kind of a that was key right to.
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: Yes, it's interesting because but it comes right out. A
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: lot of people say, oh, that's the Enlightenment. No, it's
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: not the Enlightenment, it's the Reformation. The Reformation says we
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: can read the Bible for ourselves now because the printing press.
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: Everyone can read the Bible. Everyone must read the Bible.
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: Everyone must know how to think and to reason. And
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: so education was incredibly important to the Christian faith. If
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: you want to be a good Christian, you need to read.
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: You need to read the Bible. You can't just get
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: it for some priest. You need to know for yourself
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: is this true or not? And all of the I
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: guess all of the leaders of the American Revolution understood
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: that this is all tied in and that we have
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: to we have to know our rights, we have to
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: know how it all works, and so they were incredibly
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: biblically illiterate, and they also were very literate when it
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: came to I mean at the number two book. I
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: think I quote this someplace in the book that the
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: number two Book imported from England, but next to the
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: Bible was Blackstone's Legal Commentary, so Blackstone's book on law.
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: So they were familiar with all this. So it's kind
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: of an amazing level of education and literacy that you
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: find in the Thirteen Colonies. I don't think there's anything
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: comparable to it. And if we want to know today,
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: you know, what's the path back? We have to take reading,
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: educating ourselves and reading the Bible very seriously, because they did.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the Boston Tea Party, the Boston Tea Party
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: was really called the destruction of the Tea originally, right.
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they didn't call it the Boston Tea Party until
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: sometime in the nineteenth century. They just called it the
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: destruction of the Tea. But that was like really kind
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: of the point where it's like the point of no return.
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: It was a very brazen thing for the Americans to do,
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: and it was very calculated, and again Samuel Adams and
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: you know some of these heroes, Samuel Adams, John Hancock,
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: these were the major figures and we need to know
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: their stories. These were heroes. At John Hancock, I mean
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: we kind of think, o, yeah, he signed Declaration of
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: Defensive We have no idea how important he was. He
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: was so central. Same thing with doctor Joseph Warren, huge name,
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: often forgotten. I mean, these are key, key figures, and
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: I obviously include all of them in the book because
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: we need to know their stories. But the story of
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: the the t it was really an issue of the
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: principle right, Like it was like the T tax was negligible,
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: but they basically said, we're not going to be We're
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: not going to be suckered into paying attacks that we
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: think is is it's wrong, it's morally wrong that we
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: would pay attax to Great Britain. We're going to stand
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: on principle, we refuse to pay the tax. And the
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: British were kind of trying to bribe them, like trying
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: to trick them into paying it by saying, oh, we're
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: gonna we're going to deflate the price of the tea.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: We're gonna we're gonna make it so low. But we're
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: gonna sneak the tax in there, so we're gonna get
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: them to pay the tax. And they said, we can't,
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: we cannot do this. So they orchestrate this, this this
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: moment where they throw the tea into the harbor. I mean,
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: I tell the story obviously in detail in the book,
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: but it's a it's a major point. It's an extraordinary
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: thing that they even planned it out very secretly, so
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: secretly that to this day there's much we don't know
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: about it because they would not speak. They refused. It's
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: like they took an oath, like nobody's going to talk
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: about this. I mean, it really was kind of a
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: big deal, how secretive they were about it.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm drinking tea right now as we speak. Ah,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: but it's not British tea. So Thomas Paine wrote a
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: forty seven page pamphlet called Common Sense in January of
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: seventeen seventy six, and he lays out the corruptions and
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: evils of King George's monarchy. What effected that that pamphlet
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: have on the Revolution?
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: I think I say this in the book, and I
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: always joke around. I say like, look, I don't care
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: if people read the book, but it wouldn't kill you
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: to buy two or three copies. But I say in
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: the book that I think Tom Paine's pamphlet Common Sense
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: is the clearest example in the history of the world
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: of the pen is mightier than the sword. I don't
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: think there has ever been anything like it in the
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: history of the world. That that pamphlet got Americans in
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: January of seventeen seventy six to think about what most
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: of them never had thought about before, which was declaring
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: independence from Great Britain. They had problems with Great Britain,
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: but nobody's talking about independence. Maybe John Adams is thinking
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: about it, you know, Benjamin Franklin's thinking about it. But
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: most of the average Americans in the colonies, they were
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: not thinking about it. So that pamphlet was just an
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: amazingly powerful I mean I read it. We read it
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: as we were doing these Socrates in the City book clubs,
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: which anybody can can start one wherever you are, go
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: to SoccerCity dot com. It's kind of a cool thing.
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: But we read that together over the course of a
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: few weeks. And his language, he just knows how to
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: write persuasively and powerfully and that's really what tipped things
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: over into like, yes, we're going to declare independence, huge
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: departure from where they've been a year earlier.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you say that, Payne said the Reformation was
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: preceded by the discovery of America. Remind me of why
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: that why you said.
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: That, Well, this is I mean, this is actually very important.
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: Is that the men of the Revolution saw God's hand
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: in all of this. They said, God caused America to
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: be discovered by the Europeans just in time, so that
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: when the Reformation happens, you know, in the fifteen twenties
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: and thirties and forties and fifties, that suddenly all those
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: who are being persecuted by the state churches in Europe
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: they've got a place to go. So starting in sixteen
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: twenty and afterward, they're all coming over. And Thomas Paine
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: and others saw this as God's providence, that God set
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: this up so that all of these serious Christians could
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: flee persecution in Europe and form genuine Christian communities where
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: they could worship God the way they did. And so
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: now it all comes together because they've been doing this
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: in the Thirteen Colonies, but now as the British put
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: the pressure on the Thirteen colonies. They suddenly unite. They
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: were never united, but they unite. And as they unite,
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: they're kind of thinking, Hey, is this an opportunity. Is
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: this a moment in history where we can link arms
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: and create a nation based on these biblical ideas? That
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: was never that was not something they had planned. But
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: because of the British behavior, they united. Uh. And obviously
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: that's exactly what happened. So they really did see God's
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: hand in the creation of the United States of America,
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: and they saw it as God's way of saying, this
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: is what I want governments to be like, where people
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: look to me directly and govern themselves. They saw it
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: that way explicitly. And I you know, again, that needs
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: to be taught in schools. That's true American history. That's
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: not Christian history, that's American history. And Thomas Paine lays
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: that out in his pamphlet Common Sense.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: And you say that this is I mean, I think
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: this is well. I had John G. West On here
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: recently and he I don't know if he agrees with this,
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: but you say that Benjamin Franklin was the one who
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: changed in the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson's line we
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: And Franklin changed it. Ben Franklin, Yeah, Thomas Jefferson. I mean,
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: it's kind of funny. We don't have enough time here,
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: but I could go on and on about uh, you know,
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: if you want to have me back to quiz me
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: on the second half of the book anytime, I would
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: love to come on anytime. But but I think there's
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: a lot to be said about Declaration of Independence, where
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: people say Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Ptendens and
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: I feel like saying, no, no, he didn't. He They
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: gave him everything that they wanted him to say, and yes,
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: he came up with the beautiful, brilliant poetic formulation. You know,
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: a few phrases like, you know, we hold these truths
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: to be self definant, that you know, all men are
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: created equal. I mean, but it's not like these ideas
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: were original to him. He just kind of formulated them,
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: but specifically that phrase he wrote, we hold these truths
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: to be sacred and undeniable, and Benjamin Franklin said, uh, nope,
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: just change it too, we hold these shoths to be
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: self evident. So there's a whole story there. But that's
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: that's true. It's kind of amazing to think that that's
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: Benjamin Franklin. Yeah.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: And then two last questions there. You you say that
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: we celebrate independence on July fourth, but it could have
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: been July second or August second. Why are those dates
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: so important?
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: Well, July second is the day that Congress voted to
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: be independent. So that's really the day that John Adams
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: he writes these big letters to Abigail that you know,
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: we should celebrate this forever, and you know, with with
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: bonfires and illuminations and fireworks and acts of solemn devotion
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: to God and whatever. He thought it's all going to
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: happen in July second. The reason it didn't is because
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: on July third and July fourth, Congress debated the actual
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: text of the Declaration of Independence. They already declared independence,
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: but they said, we have to say it officially. What's
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: our official statement. That's what we call the declaration of Independence.
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: It's like the birth certificate. So like we did it,
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: you know, the Mother gave earth, but now we need
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: a piece of paper that kind of lays it out.
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: And so they debate that on the third and the fourth,
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: and they approve it finally on the fourth. And so
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: they then say, okay, we have made this declaration, but
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: we need to have an official version of it. So
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: they send it out to somebody to to create what's
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: called the engrossed version, this beautiful engrossed version of it.
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: And of course at the top they write July fourth,
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: you know, but that is not signed officially until August second.
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: So when we see the painting of all of them,
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: Benjamin Franklin, all this standing there and they're signing it,
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: that happened on August second, not on July fourth. So
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: that's one of the fun things about writing the book
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: for me, is discovering these things and really understanding this
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: is exactly how it went down. And it's kind of
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: fun to know the real the real story, you know,
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: and it's not unimportant, it's interesting. Yeah.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: And so so finally in the epilogue, you say, I mean,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: these are famous sayings, but Benjamin Franklin famously declared that
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: we would only could only maintain the republic if we
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: the people can keep it. John Adams said our constitution
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: was made only for a moral and religious people, it
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: is inadequate to the government of any other. My question
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: to you is are you optimistic about the next two
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years of this experiment?
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: Well, boy, there's so much to be said just on
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: those quotes. I mean, I think that the short answer
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: is yes. But I say that we're in a war now,
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: just as we were in the Revolution, where you have
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: to fight. We are not like out of the woods
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: by any means. We're in the woods. We are fighting.
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: And I think if we fight and pray, and I
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: think we need revival, and I think we were seeing
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: the beginnings of real revival. Apart from that, you cannot
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: have the liberties that we have, and we've drifted very far.
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: It's why I wrote the book. That's why I really
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: do want everybody to read the book. We need to
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: know this. This is not for history buffs. This is
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: for every American. Needs to know our story. It will
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: change you. It's important that you understand this. And I
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: think that if we don't understand this, if people don't know,
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: you know, what's in this book, we lose the country.
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: You can't have America with people not understanding this stuff.
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: This is central. Everybody needs to get this because we
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: used to get this. I mean, if you put a
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: microphone on somebody's face in nineteen sixty, everybody knew everything
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: that's in my book in nineteen sixty. We've forgotten it
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: in the last sixty or seventy years, and that is
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: why things are so messed up. That's why we're opening
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: the door to socialism or Islamo fascism, and because people
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: don't understand you can't have liberty if you let that
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: stuff in that's antithetical, that will crush liberty. Good buye
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: liberty that can't coexist with liberty. You need to understand that.
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: We needed to understand that the founders all understood this,
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: and most Americans understood it, but we have really forgotten
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: in the last fifty or sixty years. So to me,
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: this is mandatory. We need to know this stuff and
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: you're not going to get it from watching Ken Burns's
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: PBS documentary, which is horrible. I mean, I had to
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: watch it, and I got to tell you, it's almost
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: unbelievable that you could tell the story of the American
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: Revolution and miss practically everything you and I have just
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: talked about. I mean, it's absolutely mind blowing. That you
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: could also even tell the story in such a way
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: that you go, eh, like, I don't know, Like I
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: don't really see this as some amazing accomplishment. I always say,
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: it's like if you did a remake of the Rocky
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: movie and you walked out of the theater and you
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: go like, I don't know who the hero was. I'm
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: not really clear on who was the hero. You'd be like, really,
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: how can you tell that story and not see this
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: as like one of the greatest stories ever. And the
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: Americans are fighting against all odds. They should have lost
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: and they won, and Washington is this monster figure. It's
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: amazing figure. And I really feel like Americans, we need
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: to know our story. We need to celebrate our story.
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: We need to rejoice in it and teach it to
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: our kids. And you know, and I I really do
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: hope that you know a lot of homeschoolers, as I
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: think I mentioned, are saying that we're going to use
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: this as a textbook because it's like this is I
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: didn't try to correct wrongs, but as I said, a
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: lot of these wrongs have crept into the point where
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: most Americans don't know this, and it's like, that's really bad.
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: So I you know, I'll spend a rest of my
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: life talking about this.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, amen, I amen, the guys, the book is revolution,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: the birth of the greatest nation in the history of
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: the world. And thank you Eric Matexas for writing this
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: and for coming on the show to talk.
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: About well, thank you for asking me these hard questions
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: because I now I know that I have to reread
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: my book.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: Just now your book.
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I listen. I'm glad you and you like
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: the book, and I might. The greatest thing that has
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: happened to me is people keep saying to me, like,
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: you know, they enjoyed reading it. They couldn't put it
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: down like me. You know, when you're writing a book
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: like this, you're worry is that people are going to say,
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: you know, I didn't want to I didn't feel like
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: reading it, but I'm just reading the Amazon reviews. Has
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: been very gratifying to me that, you know, because I
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: think history should be exciting. It shouldn't just be like,
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: you know, you eat your porridge, but on the other hand,
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: eat your porridge because it's important. So yeah, thank you,
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: thank you so much.
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: Let's keep it on the bestseller The New York Times
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: Bestseller list for another seven weeks at least.
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: But I hope.
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, wait, don't touch that dial. Please
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: like and subscribe, and also please consider becoming a patron
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: on Patreon. For as little as five dollars a month,
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: you can really help us out on the show. The
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: link is below and we so so appreciate it.
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you for listening to this episode of
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: The Beckett Cook Show. Your support makes this content possible.
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: All episodes of The Beckett Cook Show are also available
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: on YouTube. For more information about Beckett and his ministry,
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: visit his website at Becketcook dot com.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: Thank you to the team at Life Audio for their
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: partnership with us. If you go to lifeaudio dot com,
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: you will find more faith centered podcasts about prayer, Bible study, parenting,
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  Speaker 1: and more.