Latest / One Voice Many Conversations / Crushing Strongholds #067 Special Guest U.S Congressman Barry Loudermilk- "And Then They Prayed"

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Crushing Strongholds #067 Special Guest U.S Congressman Barry Loudermilk- "And Then They Prayed" · One Voice Many Conversations

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, everyone.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome back to another great episode of Crushing Strongholds.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: This is a podcast where we turn pain into power, trauma into triumph.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: And how do we do that?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: We do that by exposing the lies of the enemy and by sharing people's testimonies of how they have overcome obstacles of their own.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: Today I'm super, super stoked.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm excited.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: Not only that, I'm honored and just thrilled that I get to have an amazing gentleman come on today.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_02: And um one I've been patiently waiting to be able to host.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: And finally he agreed to say yes.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so today we have a U.S.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: congressman from Georgia.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: How exciting! I've never been to Georgia, I'm gonna have to check that out.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: A veteran of the United States Air Force and the son of World War II veteran who holds a deep dedication to God and country.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: And amen to that.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: And this gentleman also is a best-selling author and inspirational speaker.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I just cannot wait until we dive into this conversation.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to introduce you to um Barry Laudermelk, our U.S.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Congressman.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you for joining me today, Barry, um Mr.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: Congressman.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I'm so glad that you're here.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: So why don't you come in and tell us about yourself and um let's start this conversation.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'm excited.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you for having me, and please call me Barry.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm not one for titles, you know.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, God God put us in the positions where we are, and uh that's I believe he's put me to where I am and calling me to different areas as well.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: But uh it's a pleasure to be on.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Look, I've uh I come from very humble beginnings.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um as you said, my dad was a World War II veteran, but I grew up in low-income housing.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in Georgia, I was a latchkey kid.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people today don't even know what that term is, but I had both my parents had to work, and therefore uh I would walk to and from school and they I would have my house key tied to a string around your neck.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's what a latchkey kid was.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: So you could get into your house because neither one of my parents would get home till later in the evening.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I I can see now going back into my past how God put things in my life to prepare me for where he wanted me to go and what he wanted me to be.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh when you look at, if you were to go back in my life at any point uh in my childhood, whether it was in my earliest years or my high school years, there's not a single person that knew me that would ever expected that I would be in the U.S.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Congress, much less leading one of the most uh important investigations, congressional investigations in history.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: That just wasn't me.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was the guy who barely graduated high school.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, um back in, I think it was 2020, um, I was flying on Air Force One with the president, and we landed in Atlanta.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And when I stepped off of Air Force One, I was literally about a mile and a half from the high school I graduated.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember looking out in that direction.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't see the high school, but I looked in the direction.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: I knew exactly where it was.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And at that moment, I remembered walking across the stage because I barely graduated.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was a jock, not an academic, right?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I remember the principal handing me the diploma and saying, Good luck, Barry.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna need it.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is this is what I grew up.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: I had no ambition.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh my, you know, I just was gonna go into construction like my dad and do what I needed to do to get by, raise a family.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: But God had other plans.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: And my life ended up being a series of trials, tribulations.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there were victories, there were, there were high points, but there was definitely low points, probably more low low points than most people would go through in their lifetime.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Any one of those would be more than most would go through in a lifetime.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: But as I as I experienced all of these tragies, I mean, many of them were uh potentially uh I would have lost my life.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, most in many cases they were definitely life-threatening.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um but they were there were a series that built upon each other to to help me to grow, to learn perseverance, to learn to lean into these issues, and mostly to overcome fear.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I mean, uh here I am in member of the United States Congress, supposedly, according to me, one of the more prominent members in Congress.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I've kind of hit a pinnacle, as many are saying, because I'm retiring from Congress at the end of this year.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: People are like, well, why?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, because God's calling me to the next phase of my life.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and um I've got a personal testimony that uh when I share to people say, okay, I see this.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't the end, it's just the beginning, this the end of this phase of what God's called me to do.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's exciting.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: So one chapter is coming to a close and you're getting ready to start doing.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love that.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: I know that you have a you have a uh phrase that you use often.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: As I mentioned um before recorded recording that, um, I've watched a couple of your um podcasts, um, like with uh Mr.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: Rory Paquette, my my mentor, and I have to mention him because he's so great.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: But um I always try to bring him into my podcast episodes.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: But you have a phrase that you use and it's um focusing on the cause and not the circumstance.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: I absolutely love that.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was diving into that that quote because I it's it's been said and talked about in different ways, you know, spoken of in different ways.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so I actually looked up that quote specifically because I was like, I want to know exactly where the quote came from, right?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: And it said, oh, it just showed up like one day.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, no, it did not.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody came up with this, but um, now they're saying it's just a more modern way of refocusing on um your your not your circumstance, but how you're gonna get through your circumstance.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: So can you divulge a little bit into that um quote?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: Because I know that you like it and I know you resonate with it and you stand by it.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it and that's been one of the driving factors of my life.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's something my dad taught me.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as a World War II veteran, he was a medic.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: He landed at D-Day, uh, fought through Europe, uh, was involved in the Battle of the Bulge and on into Germany.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: As a medic, he saw the worst of humanity, right?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he didn't talk about his own experiences very much.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: He he would talk about the war quite often, but he would often tell me these incredible stories of other people, not just in World War II, but through history.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that gave me a love for history and an element of our history that has been forgotten.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: But that particular phrase that I use, focus on your cause, not your circumstance, really comes from two stories in American history.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: One was uh uh George Washington at Valley Forge.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: He totally was focused on what is our mission here?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: What is it that we, our cause that we're fighting for, which was freedom, um, because his circumstances were overwhelming.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: That was, by any intents and purpose, the end of our war for independence at Valley Forge.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the more modern aspect of that happened during World War II, during the Battle of the Bulge.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I write about this in my book, And Then They Prayed, because this is really uh epitomizes that focus, focus, focus on your cause, on your mission, on your goal.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Consider your circumstances because that's what you've got to overcome, but don't focus on them.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened was uh in mid-December 1944, uh, we'll put in historic perspective, we had landed in June, uh, the the Allies did, landed in June on D-Day in Normandy, fought through France, pushed German, the Nazis, uh, pushed them all the way back into Germany across what was called the Siegfried Line.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were waiting to go in because uh the weather was terrible.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we had pushed them back behind the Siegriff line.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um there were in the Ardennes forest, there was just incredible snowfall and blizzards in France.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was, as General Patton called, immoderate rains, and he had a tank corps, so they really couldn't move in the heavy mud.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: So everything was stalled.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we were just waiting for the weather to change to move on into Germany, bring an end to the war.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: However, Hitler had another plan.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: He was using the weather as his last ditch effort by assembling all the forces he had left just across the line in the woods, secretly assembling them, and at one point, which happened around December the 16th, he would launch an attack, a surprise attack.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that ended up being the Battle of the Bulge.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it was decimating our forces.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we had artillery up against uh just green troops with rifles and panzer tanks that were just overrunning our troops.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, General Eisenhower, after a German had been captured, General Eisenhower learned that their objectives were two towns, St.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Vith and Baston.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: So he ordered the two airborne divisions, he ordered the 82nd Airborne to go to St.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Vith, he ordered the 101st Airborne to go to Baston with the orders of hold the town at all costs, because both of those towns had bridges that could hold the weight of a panzer tank.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why the Nazis were focusing on those two villages.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: General Anthony McAuliffe got the 101st Airborne into Baston, literally just a few hours before it was surrounded.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Immediately they started bombarding the town.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: The 101st Airborne was not equipped for this.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: They had been in Holland refitting and resting from some other very critical battles they had been in.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: So they didn't have winter clothing, they didn't have adequate food supply, they didn't have uh you know weapons other than their rifles, basically.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: But they were told to hold this town at all costs.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: So they ended up being surrounded with an overwhelming force of tanks and artillery, and here are these guys at 101st Airborne with rifles trying to defend this entire town.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: So after a couple days of continuous bombardment, um, the Nazis uh ceased firing, and a couple of sergeants and a couple of officers approach the American line holding a white flag of truce.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're carrying a letter, and it's a letter of basically a surrender ultimatum.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: They give that to uh the the one of the guards who takes it to the command post, who then takes it to General McAuliffe.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it's his his uh chief of staff brings it in, and he walks in the office, General McAuliffe's sitting at the desk in the hotel that was their headquarters in this besieged town of Baston, where they're totally surrounded.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because of the snowfall, they can't get supplies in, the Army Air Corps is grounded.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you have a lost cause, this is it.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's there's no way out.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: The the commander or the the chief of staff walks in, he says, Excuse me, General, um, we have uh surrender ultimatum from the Germans.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: He said without hesitation, General McCaulliff looks at him and says, Well, tell the gender tell the Germans we'll accept their surrender.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the chief of staff is perplexed.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, How how could he consider this?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: So he says, No, sir.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're demanding we surrender.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And his response was, We surrender, nuts.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: So some in the room thought maybe the general was just trying to make light of the situation, telling saying, hey, tell them we'll accept their surrender.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the chief of staff wrote in his journals, he said, as he thought about it, because the response, everything that General McAuliffe, everything about him was sincere when he said, tell them we'll accept their surrender.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then he he remembered General McAuliffe's orders were hold the town at all cost.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: So surrender was not in his vocabulary.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's no way you could be asking me to surrender because my cause is to hold this town, and I can't do it if I surrender.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so ultimately uh the town survived, and it was because of uh a unique situation with General George Patton, who had ordered his chaplain to write a prayer card to distribute to every member of the Third Army, who was in France at the time, this was two weeks earlier, praying for good weather for battle.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, right after the town was surrounded, um, General Patton was given orders to go relieve Baston.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and ironically, those prayer cards were delivered to every soldier as they were en route to Bastogne.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so all these soldiers get these cards with a prayer for prayer for good weather for battle.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And as they're making their way to Bastogne, the sky's clear, the Army Air Corps comes in and they drive the Germans back into Germany.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: If it hadn't have been for General McAuliffe focusing on that cause, which was holding the town, he would have ultimately surrendered.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we do know historically, most of those who had surrendered uh to the Germans were many were executed.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they were murdered.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is one of those stories from history that my dad taught me that's like if if General McCaulff had just looked at the circumstances, he's totally surrounded with superior firepower, with um with well-equipped uh troops.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh common sense is you can't withstand that.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, then you need to you need to focus on saving your men.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: But his orders were to hold the town at all costs.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Another aspect of that was uh how defiant he was with that order.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: So when the uh the he he said we're not gonna surrender, all of his staff says, Well, we got to respond to their ultimatum.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're trying to come up with, you know, how should he respond?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the officers in the room says, I think you should just put what you said a few minutes ago, nuts.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so he just wrote nuts on the surrender ultimatum.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: They get take it back to the the uh German captain who reads it.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: He's confused because he doesn't understand what that means.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: So he asks the the general's chief of staff, he says, Is this in the affirmative or the negative?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the chief of staff says, it is defiantly negative.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, the German soldier says, your arrogance, your American arrogance will cost the lives of many civilians and Americans this day.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, the chief of staff's response was, if you try to take this town, we'll kill every German that crosses this line.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: So not only was the General McAuliffe keeping his eyes on his cause so firmly standing on his cause, became it was infectious when when the troops who were manning the front sees how defiant he was to the Germans, saying, Not only are you not going to take the town, you're not even gonna cross over this line.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was just it changed the whole spirit of the troops there.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, even though their conditions or circumstances hadn't changed, but the character, the the morale changed, and that was the same thing we saw at Valley Forge.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's that's an awesome story.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: I I can only just imagine the confused look on their face, honestly.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: When I think about that, that's really insane.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: I think when we think about our circumstances, we sometimes um we don't we we lose sight of what we're actually trying to gain gain from something.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: And um, but when we do focus on that cause, our circumstances don't even just you know, they they can be a distraction, but they're not, you know, the focal point.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: But I I know that with with a lot of the stories that you have, you you've been working on the investigation and and and the government corruption.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm kind of curious about how how I'm sure this is not that has not been an easy task for you to dive into.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: I can just imagine um all of the the weight and heaviness is that has been on you over that that period of time.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: Do you do you mind talking about that?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: Are you able to talk about that?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can I can talk.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's still active investigation going on.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: We had some some things break loose even last night, even though people are saying, are you still doing this investigation?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um yes, but I'm not this isn't a an investigation to be run in the media.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a real investigation, right?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not doing it just to get attention.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: I've had enough attention over time that uh I just want to get to the truth and uh and make sure that we root out this corruption corruption.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I became a focus point of government corruption and retribution for trying to expose the truth a few years ago.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it was absolutely of all the things that I've been through in my life, it was like everything culminated to this point.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I've got another book coming out probably around the first of the year where we talk about, and it's really about overcoming strongholds, it's about uh persevering uh and how God uses times of trials and tribulation to prepare you.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's is they're like little boot camps getting you ready.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was when my son went in the army, I was in the Air Force, but my son uh went in the army, he was going airborne, and he was all excited.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: But the day he goes to boot camp, that's when he really starts getting concerned.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Look, Michael, it's gonna be tough.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: You got to take it uh moment by moment.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: I shared with him, keep your eye on your cause, not your circumstances.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Don't focus on how tired you are when they've kept you up for 48 hours straight.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're doing a 12-mile march.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: You focus on those next 10 steps.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next 10 steps, right?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Get your eyes off your circumstances.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so, um, but I also told him, I said, this training is hard because it's preparing you in case you have to do something even harder, which is real combat.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what I've experienced in my life, is is it these things that I've experienced have prepared me for something else, for something else.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: And they all came together back in uh to early 2021 when I was falsely accused of treason against the United States as a matter of political retribution.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um and there was absolutely nothing to it.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um by then I had learned uh through several other things that had happened in my life, which we can uh talk about, is to lean into these things.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Don't run and hide, don't bury your head under the sand.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: But when something comes your way, you need to lean into it, you need to fight back, especially if it's if it's a false accusation.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Many had told me that they had also faced these accusations, and they're just like, hey, if you just go quiet, go hide, um, it'll eventually go away.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: But the what they're accusing me of, I mean, it's it's such a serious accusation.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: The penalty is that you could be executed for, right?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm looking at, I don't think I'm gonna be executed, but I could lose my freedom, my liberty.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I could be facing criminal charges of something that was totally made up.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: But more than that, it's this legacy family legacy.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want my grandchildren growing up thinking that I had been a traitor to the country and it was totally manufactured.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: They said I had given reconnaissance tours of the Capitol because we had a church family come up with some guests uh the day before the riots on January 6th was what it was about.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: But nobody knew that was happening, and they were just an innocent little family, but it became a convenience story.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: You never took them in the Capitol, they just came to my office and I took them to lunch in the public cafeteria there and uh they went to a gift shop.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: That was about it.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: But because I've been had been holding the government's feet to the fire because of things they were reporting that I knew was false, that I knew was wrong, that that um and I when the media would ask me, I would call them out on it.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: They took this and basically is we're going to show you that you don't stand up against us.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the way that they accused me was they wrote me a letter asking me to come testify before this committee, but they sent it to the news media instead of sending it to me.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so my wife and I find out as we're on our way to the airport in Washington to fly home uh for the weekend.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it pops up on her phone as we're literally driving to the airport that I'm being accused of being involved in the attacks on the Capitol on January 6th.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, by the time I get to the airport, it's on every television camera in the airport.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: My oldest son had been in Washington, D.C., but he had taken an earlier flight that day.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: He called me as he's the landing in Atlanta.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Dad, you need to be careful because your picture is on the back of every seat.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Every news outlet except for Fox News was covering this.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was the number one news story in the nation.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Even international news was carrying this.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And by the that week's end, I had received over 200 credible death threats.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: I had to, my wife and I had to be escorted by police to and from the airport.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: I had uh sheriff's deputies sitting in my driveway uh 24 hours a day.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: My kids have been threatened, my grandchildren had been threatened.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this was this was real.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was affecting our entire family.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was by far the most the the most difficult time in my life.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: And prior to this, I had faced an assassination attempt, I'd been shot at, run over, and a train wreck, I've been through a whole lot of things.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: But then I realized all of that.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Was preparing me for this moment.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so I realized I cannot be afraid.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: I can't focus on the circumstances.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean the circumstances overwhelming.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: How am I going to do this?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Is a very powerful government committee coming after me.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the news media is on their side.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: How am I going to fight back to this?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I knew the one weapon I had that they did not have is the truth because there was nothing to their accusation.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: So therefore they didn't have evidence.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: They could not produce evidence.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I challenged them, and the media covered this.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: I said, look, if they've got evidence, they need to come out and show it.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because I know they don't, because it never happened.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: I never anticipated they would do what they did.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we went about two weeks quiet.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, okay, we won this.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then they came out and they had manufactured evidence.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: They had taken surveillance video and edited it.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it was the most unbelievable thing.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, the news media ate it up, and then the death threats start all over again.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we go through this for months and months and months that I'm anytime you Google my name, it would just come up with this story.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, we cannot let this lie.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so finally there was a change in leadership in the House, and Speaker Kevin McCarthy came to me.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this was about a year later, and he said, I'm gonna set up a committee to investigate that other committee, investigate what really happened that day.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because, hey, there was there was bad things that happen, right?
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of violence that happened.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not, but we cannot we have to fix the problem or it'll happen again.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so we needed to get to the truth of what really happened.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so he said, I want you to lead this committee.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna put you in charge of this brand new committee we're putting together.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Are you crazy?
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know what everybody's gonna do.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna say, Oh, this is a guy who's falsely accused, or he was accused, and he's just gonna try to vindicate himself.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Barry, you know what they did to you and how they did it.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you're the best fit to go figure out what else they did wrong and how that they manipulated people.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so we obviously we had uncovered a lot of corruption within the government through my investigation.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: But as I I sat back and I was looking at it recently, and I write about this in the book, and I'm thinking about all the things that had happened from early this major transition in my life started happening in 1993, right after I left the Air Force.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: But there were several things even before that that God started helping me to overcome the one thing that would hold me back, which was fear.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so several things were going through, and I started going back and looking at it.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, I would have never uncovered this level of government corruption if I had not been put in charge of this committee.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: I would have never been put in charge of this committee if I had not fought back against these false accusations.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: I would have never been accused.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if I'd never fought back if I hadn't been accused, I would not have been able to handle the accusation if I hadn't been shot at, run over, um, in train wrecks, in assassination attempts from being in Congress.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: I would have never had been in Congress if God hadn't worked with me on a uh backcountry hike with my dad in 1993 where he got injured and it turned into 48 hours survival.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so I started looking at at that point, God had started changing my life and everything was falling into place to take me to this point.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I believe this point is taking me somewhere else.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if I had if I had given up and given in at any point, which is what from when I graduated high school until sometime uh midway through my time in the Air Force, I was risk averse.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it I would run from any type of trial or tribulation.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: I would look for the easy way out.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's human nature.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: But God had to put me into a series of ever increasingly more difficult situations.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I would be prepared uh for ultimately what he wanted me to do.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, that's insane.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: I I know that that we, you know, when we face those kind of um situations, it's it's a fight or flight reaction sometimes, the knee-jerk reaction, I think, sometimes.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: But one thing that you were saying that um really um is inspiring to me as I as I've been learning who you are and and diving in and doing some of my own research on you, um, I love your foundation one is God.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: But I also know just from what I've learned so far from you that that you back that with your foundation and truth.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I think God honors that.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: I think God is the reason.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, well, obviously we know God is the reason, but that you're able to uh persevere in these situations.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: Because I I I mean I'd have been I would have just tucked and ran.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna lie.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: I'd have just been I'd have been in the bush or wherever, hiding out, but and just kind of watched and see how it pans out.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: But um, I think when they're trying to silence you, um you you had an um ability to recognize what was happening and you know, God gives God gives you the eyes to see sometimes.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I think, like you said, that's um that was really important.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: And um as him being the overseer, I mean he's he's obviously leading you in a in a direction because he he knows you're standing on that that foundation that he laid before you.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_02: And kind of like your book, and I want to talk about that too a little bit, it's like talk about our founding fathers and how they laid the grounds before us.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I I do I think that you know, and we have forgotten.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so when I was when I was doing your the research on you, I've already ordered your book, by the way.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_02: I can't I have not read it, I cannot read wait to read it.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_02: I just just everything I've been researching on it has is just really piqued my interest.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: I can't wait to read it.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so um, I was thinking about what you were saying is about you know how we we've kind of like taken our eyes off from you know who who walked the lines before us and laid out those foundations like like you know Christ did.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I so I can't wait to read the book, but share with us um and our listeners, um, you have some great stories.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want you to tell all because I, you know, we want to save some for the readers.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what what or who was the person that influenced you the most in the stories that you told?
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: Because you have some great um stories of testimony of history, but who inspired you the most?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'd have to say, well, my dad was my greatest inspiration because he introduced me to these stories.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh I we homeschooled our children, and so as I was homeschooling them, I remembered all these stories of providence in our history, but it was really hard to find any information.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's it's not taught, I was never taught these in schools.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was taught to go back and read you know things that George Washington or Benjamin Franklin or some of other founders or American heroes said or wrote, and they quite often referenced acts of divine providence uh uh regularly.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the University of Houston did uh uh some research, I think it was in 1984, they conducted research into what was the greatest influence on our founders.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so they went back and they pulled their writings, their speeches, everything they had on the founders to find out what was the single most inspiration or uh where did they get their inspiration from?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: What were the influences on them?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: And as they came out, they their study said uh over 85% of all of their writings were inspired directly or indirectly from the scriptures.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Over and so I'm like, okay, now this is the University of Houston looking at it, right?
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I started realizing, well, starting around the 1920s, most of the faith element of our story of America was taken out of the textbooks.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: We started shifting away from a moral-centric uh culture into a more economic culture.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so we started seeing this shift in our textbooks.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: So people were growing up, hearing about uh Benjamin Franklin standing up at the Constitutional Convention and as it's about to fall apart and saying, hey, the reason we're falling apart is we haven't prayed.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um but he's saying we were all in this very room during our second continental congress and during the war for independence, and we all saw these many acts of divine providence in our favor.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's just talking about it like it was everyone knew about it.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then Washington, one of his first acts as president, was to pass a resolution calling for a national day of uh Thanksgiving and prayer for all of the acts of divine providence that happened throughout our history.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you even look at the document that we just celebrated 250 years of the Declaration of Independence, the last line of the declaration says, and in support of this declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, everybody's talking about these miracles of God, but we're not teaching our children about them.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so my that was one of the things my dad inspired me to go and not just uh learn of them, but research them.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was the big inspiration for doing the book.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: But out of the book, uh, you're gonna see it covers not just the founding of America, which there's a lot of uh books out there about uh Providence and America's founding, but God's providence didn't end there.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we have stories from uh obviously the Revolutionary War, the founding fathers through uh Civil War, World War II, even up in the Apollo space missions.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: But each one of them is just so unique and it brings a different perspective or a different element of American culture.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the one aspect that is important because so many people are like, well, we don't need to focus on the past, we need to focus on the future.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: But the book of Ecclesiastes tells us that there's nothing is going to happen in the future that hasn't already happened in the past.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: It says, what will happen will happen has already happened.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing new under the sun.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: So if we as a country, as a nation, because I get asked this all the time, hey, we just celebrated 250 years, which is significant, it's very significant, because the the average length of a constitutional republic like ours is seven to twelve years.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: When you think about that, that's about how long they last.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: Ours is unique.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: We've gone 250.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: Can we go another 250?
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: Can we go another 10?
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Can we go another five?
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: We can if we go back and look at what sustained us in the first 250 and repeat that.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a uh reliance on providence through prayer.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: At the uh at the debates for the Declaration of Independence during the Second Continental Congress.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh John Dickinson, who is a delegate from Pennsylvania, who is a realist.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he was a patriot, he believed in independence, but he also was a realist, and he had studied what happened to every other uh society that had rebelled against England.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they basically ceased to exist, right?
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: England was the most powerful military force in the history of the world at that time.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was it was crazy to think that we're gonna take them on in the field of battle and win our independence.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this guy, he was a realist.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: So he gave a speech which is now known as the Doomsday of America speech.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: But John Adams had given a speech of uh in liberty now and liberty forever.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so Benjamin Rush, another delegate, as John Dickinson is giving his Doomsday of America speech, he leans over to John Adams.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Can do you believe we can actually succeed in our quest for liberty?
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: And he said without hesitation, John Adams responded, said, Yes, if we pray and we ask God to forgive us of our sins.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: Adams was quoting 2 Chronicles 7.14, which we you know, we cite all the time every 4th of July.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: But he knew to look back to go forward.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really what this book is about, is and it's written in dramatic form.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, look, people respond to stories, right?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it it's much easier to write a book if I just go back and say, well, here's what George Washington said at Valley Forge, and here's what he did.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: But if you really want people to remember it or even read it, they need to be involved in it.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to write a book that put you at Valley Forge with George Washington, and you're watching him, and you're you're you're feeling what they're feeling there.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you write a book like that, I can't just research George Washington.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: I have to research everyone that was around him.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: What are they saying about him?
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: What are they saying about the conditions?
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's that's what took it took 10 years of research uh to put this book of 14 stories together.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, it's it's it's been phenomenal is the response that we're getting.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I just did a big book signing in uh in Washington, D.C.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: over the last couple weekends.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: And uh one of the ladies came up and she she said she it was a two-day conference.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: She bought the book on the first day, and apparently that evening went and read it.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: She came back and she said, I'm kind of mad at you.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Wow, she said, You made me cry.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: She said that it was so inspirational, it made me cry.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Well, that's kind of the response we want.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: But crying because of your seeing how God moved on these people.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: But of the influencers in there, it's hard to say because, you know, of course, there's a few stories about George Washington.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: We have stories from World War II.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: General George Patton is one of the, excuse me, he's one of the most uh uh unknown prayer warriors because everybody just thinks about his foul language and how tough of a general he was, but he was a firm believer in prayer.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh even up to our Apollo 8 space mission.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you talk about people that are brave.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: These guys are getting launched on top of a a rocket, just basically sitting on a bomb to go to the moon.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but faith was a driving factor for them.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_02: I I love that you brought the Apollo 8 up because um in your podcast that that you're with with Rory, you're talking about the guy preparing his speech.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_02: And what was he gonna say?
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_02: And what you what you said blew my mind, and I was just like, oh my gosh, um, you know, doing the f the first what did you say, six um verses of of Genesis?
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: All right, I think it was the first 12 that each uh or maybe six.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I wrote the book and I still have to go back.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: Look, I think it was the first twelve verses of of Genesis.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean seeing it from that perspective is could just I mean, I love that you're putting people's mind into thinking about the process that they're doing because I was thinking about it as you said that, like the book of Genesis, because I know the book of Genesis in the beginning, you know, and all of that.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_02: God created, and they're up there looking down at what God created, and he's quoting that scripture.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it gave me chills when I was listening to it.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: It was just it was very, you know, I I I could um just resonate with all of it because I one, I love the word of God, but I love that someone can actually describe it, especially a trip like that, and they're using the the scripture to describe what they're feeling.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Frank Borman, who is the commander of the mission, um there, I mean, there were several providential aspects of this entire thing.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was launched earlier than the planned.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: They were still you know, we're in a space race, we're trying to beat the Soviets, everything.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so they're really taking some risk.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: They had not uh prepared for certain things, but you know, these are these are uh test pilots, they're brave, they're hey, let's just let's uh let's do this thing.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um but of all the training and of everything that could go wrong, and the fact that they had already had some fatalities in the uh Apollo program because literally these guys are sitting on top of a bomb, you know, that's gonna hurl them, supersonic speeds, into an area that no man has ever gone before.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but the thing that stressed Frank Bormann out the most was what he was going to say when they orbited the moon.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: They would be the first humans in history to orbit the moon, the first to even leave the gravitational pull of the earth.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it was going to be the most watched and listened to television broadcast in the history of the world.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: And they had told him, hey, you know, you you're going to broadcast live orbiting the moon.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: So what you know, we're it NASA would not tell them what to say.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: We totally left him that up to him.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so he kept it a secret.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: No one knew what he was going to do.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: But each of them took uh scriptures in starting at Genesis 1-1, and in the beginning, God created the earth, was the first words that the entire world heard orbiting the moon on that Christmas Eve.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so um Gene Kranz, who was ended up being the hero of the Apollo 13 mission, if you ever go back and watch the movie, he's the mission control director.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, he was he was there that day in mission control, and he's he was literally in tears uh after they they broadcast that, and he called it the second greatest Christmas story ever told.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the title of that chapter of my book, was his quote.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it is just very it's so inspirational.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the chapters that the lady told me this last weekend that made her cry um to know that.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we just don't teach teach those things these days.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like yeah, I was just blown away, and I I I could just see it, um, it does bring an emotional aspect to it because um it it's just phenomenal how sometimes, like you said, we we don't talk about our history, we don't talk about w what brought us to where we are today.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, not the way that we should.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_02: Social media, yeah, talks about all kinds of stuff, but there's so much that they leave out that's so important, you know.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, when when we talk to people about, you know, what God does in our lives, that's why I like sharing testimonies because those stories resonate with people and they can understand from where another person has what they've gone through or what they've experienced.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_02: On that note, I know that the investigation part was really, really hard for you, but I I've heard a couple of your stories, but I don't know about the train wreck.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: I want to hear about the train wreck if you don't mind.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was uh let me drop back a little bit because this all happened in in a short amount of time.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um so it was uh these uh June the 17th or June the 14th, 2017 was the first of this series, which was uh when the domestic terrorist uh walked on the baseball field.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: I was playing with the congressional baseball, the Republican team for the congressional baseball game.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was our last practice.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: He walks on the field, starts shooting.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, without going into the details of that, I mean it was a very horrific moment.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: I had 22 shots fired at me because, as you mentioned earlier, you got a fight or flight response.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: God had worked on me and take me from a flight to a fight response.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I ended up running into the gunfire to help one of the wounded and ended up being in the line of fire through the entire eight-minute shooting.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: He he fired well over 100 rounds.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: FBI's uh said that they could count at least 22 that were fired at me.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, one went so close to my head I heard the bullet go by my ear.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um ironically, and in the book I'm going to be coming out with later next year, I'm gonna talk about how that hike that I mentioned with my dad that ended up being 48 hours of survival, everything that happened on that hike that I had to deal with and overcome was preparing me for something later in life.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: And as the gunmen started shooting, um, I never panicked, I never got scared.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: This piece just fell over me.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like my mind became a supercomputer.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was analyzing everything going wrong.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: I analyzed every bullet when bullets would hit the ground in front of me as I was running off the field, uh, to bullets going by my head.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my mind was just like, okay, that was a bullet.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: I need to, I need to be zigzagging.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or yeah, it was it was this phenomenon.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'd only had that happen once before, and it was when a black bear charged my dad and I on this trail after he got injured.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's the first time I'd ever experienced it.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: The only other time was during this moment of high trauma.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: But God used that bear to prepare me for this.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I had to make an instantaneous decision to run into the fire instead of running away to help somebody.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, several things that God during that 48-hour survival in the deep woods of Alaska helped me throughout these other instances.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: But after that, what was probably more traumatic than most people would ever go through in their life is uh surviving an eight-minute gun battle when you don't have a weapon and you're trying to save somebody who'd been shot in the chest.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um it was about two months later, my wife and I were driving back to DC at night uh on the interstate when somebody hit the back of our car doing 110 miles an hour and it sent it flipping over and over down the interstate.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we should have both been killed.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody said that, and especially as they're pulling us out of the car.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: They were surprised that anyone was alive.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but as we're sitting on the side of the road waiting for the ambulance to come take us to the hospital, my wife, like, she says, I believe this is for a purpose.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I and as it turns out it was for a purpose.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: But uh God miraculously, I mean, we were injured, we had to deal with those injuries, and we had to deal with the trauma and everything going along with it.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um Two weeks after that, an assassin uh shot at my wife and I in the car as we we had been at home recovering from our injuries from the the car crash.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: Fortunately, there were none life-threatening, but there were some we still deal with uh physical and emotional scars from that.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: But uh we're recovering.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: She had a fractured fractured sternum.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: I had some back and neck injuries I was healing from.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so we decided to go for a ride in the North Georgia Mountains.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: And uh uh somebody takes a shot at our car.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: So the FBI investigates it as an assassination attempt.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I end up in the hospital uh because of paranoia at this point.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, when I'm shot at on the baseball field, it was because I was a Republican and this guy came to kill Republicans.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: He had a hit list in his pocket.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is personal.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is after me personally and my wife, right?
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm literally mowing the grass wearing a pistol, wearing a handgun.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a shotgun with me when I'm working in my wood shop or working out in my gym.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: I've it it's if finally the the pain, the lack of sleep, everything came together, ended up being rushed to the hospital.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um couldn't find anything wrong with me except for it as a hypertensive emergency.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: My blood pressure was like over the charts beyond uh stroke range, but they I remember when the doctor asked my wife, have y'all been through any un undue stress lately?
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: And she just laughed.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I learned that I can't just deal with immediate fear.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: I have to deal with the long-term fear.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: I have to lean into these things, and that's where I have to trust God.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I started realizing, wait, God brought me through these other things, He'll bring me through this.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: So this all started in June, runs through October.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we go into January the next year, and people are starting to catch on.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this guy's like accident prone.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, so people quit traveling with us and stuff.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: We boarded a train that was going from Washington, D.C.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: to um the Greenbrier uh hotel in West Virginia, uh, White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia Historic Hotel.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: We were going there for the Republican conference.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: This was a special train.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: We had security all over it.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was just the members of Congress, Republican members of Congress.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: I've been talking to the Speaker of the House on the train uh just moments before the crash, but uh just sat down in my seat when all of a sudden we just quickly hear the squeal of the brakes of the train who was running 60 miles an hour.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: Then all of a sudden, it's just we come to this dead stop, hear this crash, we get slammed into the seats in front of us, and my wife's looking out the window as a garbage truck is literally flying through the air and uh with bodies coming out of it.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um it was very traumatic.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this this garbage truck was went around the gates.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't it the driver, that was his normal route, and he knew the train schedule, and he saw the guard, the the crossing guards come down.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: He assumed they would malfunction because there never was a train at that time, but this was a special train.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so he was dead in the it was a one of these huge garbage trucks.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: He was right in the middle of the track when we hit him doing 60 miles an hour, ended up killing at least one in the truck, injured several on the train.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that's one of the first times I realized wait a second, this is the least traumatic thing I've been through in the last three months.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I noticed my wife and I, of course, she is very upset because she just saw the body of a human being thrown out of the truck.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: But we were both in a position to where we could minister to others because we had been through so much more.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: And we realized they were experiencing just a fraction of what we had, but God had prepared us to be there.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so, um, and and it is one thing I've learned is there is the immediate trauma of what happens.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: Then there's it really hits you a few hours later, and then there's the residual uh PTS that can come back at any time.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh they end up bringing buses to take us the rest of the way.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: We were pretty rural area, and they brought another train engine to pull the cars that hadn't derailed uh back to the closest town, picked up with buses, and we we went on to the uh hotel and started our conference.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I'm just sitting around during the conference, I'm watching others who are not paying attention to what's going on because you can tell they're dealing with the stress of what had just happened, even if they weren't injured, the knowledge that they just had a train wreck and somebody had died, you know.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I started realizing that was one of the key points of that train wreck.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: Even it was it probably would have been a much more traumatic to my life and I had we not experienced those other things.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: And all this was in a period of just a few months.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that became one of the turning points uh in our life as that train wreck showing me, hey, uh you're able to be here for others because of what I've put you through before.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I started really researching it.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, I'm getting speaking requests, especially from faith organizations and churches.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, you've got quite a testimony here.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: Come and speak to us.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so I started really looking into the book of Romans, uh, I do think it's uh chapter five and verses three through six, where Paul tells us to take glory in our tribulation because that teaches you patience, which is perseverance.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_00: You get experience, and that and I started realizing that train wreck.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: Wait a second, God brought me through these other things much more terrific or horrific or deadly than this.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: He will bring me through this.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's experience.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I learned to persevere through the tough times.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: I've got experience of persevering other things, and that's what builds your faith is going through those.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: But there's times where God will reveal himself to you in a very spectacular way.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: And this goes back to that hike that I took with my dad.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was going to be a two to three day hike.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and this is real, I mean, it's it's rugged wilderness.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: He's 70 years old.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_00: And this is just one of his dreams to make this hike in Alaska.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I was living in Alaska at the time, he was living there, and I had just left the Air Force, was working for a defense contractor.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: I had some time.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: He had always dreamed of doing this backcountry trail, even though it was very rugged.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: We had to cross over ice fields in front of glaciers, and it was very steep.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: But at near about four hours in on the first day, we just crossed over a summit.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: We climbed almost 4,000 feet, crossed the summit, and we were walking across some ice fields on a slope when he fell and he tore all the ligaments and tendons in his knee.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he was he was in bad shape.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: But he could not descend very well.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um he was able to limp, and we just determined the best way out was to continue another 20 miles in the direction we were going.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we ended up having to cross glacial rivers.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we were charged by bears, surrounded by wolves.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was very horrific things.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_00: He had to cross over a gorge across about a three-foot-wide walkway with no rails, um, and he could barely walk.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was very terrifying.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: But after we crossed this gorge, and this was um near the end of the first day, and we're trying to find a place to camp and not seeing another individual out in this very remote area.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: And uh there's these 6,500-foot mountains surrounding us, very steep, rockies, still snow on the top.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: But we're just walking in silence, and all of a sudden we hear this tremendously loud noise.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I look, and a boulder, probably the size of a school bus, comes tumbling off the top of one of those mountains.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: And as it comes out, it's just this deafening roar.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: It dislodges basically the side of the mountain and creates this huge rock slide that transforms the entire side of the mountain.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's pulling trees down, brush.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, that that portion of the mountain looked totally different once this rock slide finished.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we just stood there in awe, watching watching this mountain transform.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: When it was over with, and it's just it's quiet, you got this plume of dust going up.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: My dad turns to me and he goes, What are the chances?
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew what he's saying is, what are the chances we would be here right now when how long has that huge boulder just been up there for hundreds or thousands of years with just eroding a little bit at a time, and we happen to be in the perfect place to see this happen.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized the next day that was God speaking to me.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I've thought of this so many times in so many other uh instances is you may be in a tough situation, and I'm helping you through, but I will move mountains for you if I need to.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_00: That scripture says if we have that that small amount of faith, we can move mountains.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: God showed me a mountain literally moving itself, transforming the side of the mountain.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so even through the worst of times, there's God speaks in in certain ways.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: And in that, I always think back of him using that mountain to tell me, look, I'm with you.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: You may not see me, you'll feel me.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and and you you may be overwhelmed with these circumstances, but keep your eye on me.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_00: The same story that you can see in Matthew chapter 14, when Peter looks and sees Jesus walking on the water, right?
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: And this is this is really where God brought this to me uh back many, many years ago, my personal testimony.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: I had been felt God was leading me in a new direction in my life.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is well before politics, um, never had any interest in politics, but I had been asked to consider running for the state house of representatives.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I knew how vicious it was when you go out into public and uh and the attacks, and the guy I would be running against was very well known as one of the most vicious campaigners.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so, but I was uh just dedicating prayer time, and God took me one day to that story.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_00: And what a lot of people miss about the story of Peter and seeing Jesus walk on the water is it was stormy.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was at night, it was dark, and it was a tremendous storm.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: So Peter looks at Jesus, and I read this story.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, Lord, I know this.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_00: I remember the the the flannel board Jesus in in Sunday school, right?
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, No, I want you to read it again and again.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I started realizing what was what was happening here.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Look, Peter's in the boat, and he's with his friends, and the boat is a place of relative safety in the middle of a storm.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_00: Peter looks at Jesus and he says, Lord, what do you have me do?
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_00: Is if that's you, call me to you.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Peter, get out of the boat and step into the storm.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_00: So Peter steps into the storm and he walks to Jesus.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_00: But as he's going, as long as he keeps his eyes on Jesus, he's walking on the water and the storm is fine.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: But as soon as he turns and he looks at the waves, the circumstances, he starts to sink.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: And immediately Jesus grabs his hand and gets his eyes back on him.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: They walk back to the boat together, then the storm calms.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's the ultimate lesson of keeping your eyes on your cause, not your circumstance.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where God called me, is like, I need you to step into the storm.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really when I got involved in politics.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's very been very stormy, especially since I've been in Congress.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but now I tell people when they say, look, you're at the pinnacle.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're at the peak.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you're a very well-respected member of Congress.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: The president personally likes you.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_00: You've, I mean, I've I've got senior members of the White House, their cell phone numbers, you know, uh you're well connected.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you leaving Congress?
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: I said, because now Jesus is walking me back to the boat.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna get in the boat.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_00: Walking on the water wasn't Peter's ministry that was preparing him for his ministry.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: His ministry began once I got back in the boat.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where I see that my life is now.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: Am I gonna face more tribulation?
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: Probably.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_00: But uh uh I believe I'm more prepared for it now.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the other aspect is when I was speaking about all these things that we were going through, and I'm speaking about, you know, uh Romans and you know what you gained through tribulation, it's tough.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you just want to reprieve.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, God, all right, uh you you've you've given me glory or joy in my tribulations, okay?
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I really, really would like to have some blessings along the way too.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_00: I need those blessings.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right after I was falsely accused of treason and the world is coming down on my shoulders, I open the Bible and my eyes go straight to the book of Matthew, where it says, Blessed are ye who all manner of evil is spoken against you falsely.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: That really wasn't a blessing I was looking for, but what he's telling me is, hey, this is just the next phase of where I'm taking you.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: You will be blessed through what you're going through.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's fantastic.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_02: I I absolutely love the story, Peter.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_02: And one thing I'll add to your story if you don't mind is that when Peter steps out on the water, and and and to have just having that much faith, knowing that Jesus is going to let you walk on the water with him is is is actually a large amount of faith if you think about it.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_02: But the waves brought the fear back that he had before he stepped out of the water.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_02: And one thing about faith and fear, you cannot operate in the two together.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's impossible.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so I love that Jesus says, ye have little faith.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_02: Why, you know, why why do you have so little faith?
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_02: And it and it was because um he says that because he allowed that little tiny bit of fear to overtake him for the moment and start to sink.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_02: And then Jesus had to bring it back up and be, you know, say, Hey, ye have little faith, you know, um gotta have a little bit more faith in that, or you're gonna start focusing back on the fear again.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_02: The fear is what's gonna take you out if you don't stay focused.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_02: But I love how he brought it back to the boat and how that's you know, that's where the whole new the new story starts for him, you know, everything's changed now.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_02: And God does take us through those moments where he changes our lives.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_02: And and and sometimes it's it's there's some longevity to it, and sometimes it's instantaneously.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_02: It happens quickly, just being at the right place and the right time.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's fantastic.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I know that I, you know, I can I can just tell by you know talking to you and getting to know you just through this this episode that um um God is going to like completely shift what he's doing in your life, and he already has, obviously, if you're if you're considering retiring from Congress and God's already got you know something on your heart, or or you wouldn't be retired and everybody's doing that.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_02: But I do have one more question before we go into closing, and that is it it's it's kind of personal, but it's about your wife and your family.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_02: How do they adjust to all of these travesties that they've witnessed or seen you go through?
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I mean, I'm sure that they, you know, you have to be pretty tightly woven for them to not be like, hey, we're pulling you away from this.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_02: We can't handle this no more.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_02: How do we keep, you know, allow you to keep going back to work when these things are happening?
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_02: How does that affect your life?
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, it's it's it's it's had an effect on everyone.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_00: I will say that, and and don't take it the wrong way, but I was fortunate that my wife actually experienced some of these with me.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was on the baseball field alone, but she's definitely experienced some of the trauma and the PTS that came from that, um, which I was in denial.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm tough.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: I ran into the the line of fire, you know, and all this.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: And fortunately I had some uh uh special operations folks that I was very close to that community, some Navy SEALs, some uh Delta Force guys who came to me and talked, said, Look, we go through this, right?
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: He said, It's gonna be worse on you because when we go into combat, we're expecting to, and we have a way of fighting back.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_00: You're on a baseball field, you're not expecting to be ambushed and shot at, and you don't have a way to fight back.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so once I realized, yeah, some of this stuff is PTS.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it I went for months of having daily flashbacks of what was going on or what happened that day.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so my family had to learn to deal with that.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: Then there was some, some just times that I've, if I ever felt I was trapped, it may be even in a discussion where I'm talking to someone and they're not accepting the truth.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's, you know, some if you ever have come to somebody come to you and ask you a question, but you're not answering it the way they wanted you to, you know, um, that I would learn to, okay, just back away, take some breaths.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so they would see that.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_00: But with my wife and the the car wreck, and the asset she was with me during the assassination attempt and the train wreck, she's also building along with me.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: And she's always had a tremendous amount of faith and a very disturb discerning spirit.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's been hard on the family, um, especially when they're all in Georgia and we're in D.C.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_00: when a lot of this is happening.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I do remember one uh at the time when we had the baseball shooting, um, I had a granddaughter.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_00: She was, I guess, around two and a half, three years old.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_00: She was talking by that time.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_00: But that morning after I got back, it was early afternoon before we got back from the field, we were motorcated back.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as I'm walking back into my office, I mean, uh, most of my ID and everything, my car keys, everything was in my uh baseball bag, which was in the dugout, which is part of a crime scene.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't even have a congressional ID to get in the building.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm walking up with blood on my uniform from the guy I was helping.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: And um that were you know, I'm I'm in the office with the talking to the staff, letting them know, hey, everything's okay.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: By then it's already in national news.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: So my wife gets our whole family together.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_00: I have two two boys and a daughter.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um my daughter and oldest son was married, had kids.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, my oldest son had had two children then.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so they all gathered together at my oldest son's house, and we had a conference call.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_00: They just needed to hear, you know, me that I'm okay.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_00: But they were asking me what happened, and I'm giving them some details.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's a pretty vivid thing, you know, very vivid details of bullets flying past my head and such.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_00: But as we were ending the call, my three-year-old granddaughter walks up and she says, A bad man tried to hurt my pop.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that really just struck me emotionally.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm realizing her at three, just hearing this, realizes that you know, is having an impact on her.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we just spent the weekend with them in Washington, D.C.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_00: this week.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I told her that story.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_00: She's 11 years old now, 12 years old.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and she said, you know, I don't remember saying that.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_00: I do remember knowing about it though.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so they have, if it hasn't been for them leaning on faith as well, um, it would have been a whole lot harder.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_00: But as my daughter recently said, like, you know, we don't worry about you, Dad, because God has proven He's going to protect you.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: But it does bring it brings stress, but I wouldn't have been able to handle all this if I didn't have such family support.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so family is so important with all this.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's amazing.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, another blessing that God has just given you a family that can need that can just valid understand all of that, you know, because it can be probably detrimental, you know, to some folks, and I could just see that.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_02: So um, I do have one more question for you.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_02: I know that you've you've written um And They Prayed.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, or And Then They Prayed, excuse me.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_02: And then um, have you written any other books?
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_02: Or is that the only book?
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_02: Or you I see that.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_02: That is the only book we have.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's the only book we have published right now.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm working on uh uh we're gonna have a large print edition.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we have the And Then They Prayed, um, which people ask me about the title quite often.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually uh inspired by General George Patton's prayer card.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_00: As he was telling his chaplain to write a prayer card, he told his chaplain, he said, there's three things that men must do to get what they want or to win in battle.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_00: He says um it's planning and working.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he explains that planning is when they they plan out, they sit down and they do battle planning and they plan out how a battle's gonna go.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_00: Working is the execution of that battle and the training for it.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_00: But he said that third element is what really determines victory defeat, and it's prayer.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_00: So planning, working, and prayer are.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: The three things that really determine our future.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_00: And as I started looking through history, I've noticed with all our key moments in American history that God intervened was that our heroes they planned, they worked, and then they prayed.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was that was the title.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_00: So we had the paperback, we have a special America 250 uh version, which is a hardcover with a little extra content and some illustrations.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um the large print edition will be coming out in a in a month or so.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we've had several requests for that, and then we're looking at sometime in October for the audiobook version coming out.
• 1:06:42
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh we have those.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm working on uh I've had several ministers.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of we've got Christian schools that are using this as a Christian curriculum.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've had several ministers base sermons off the stories in the book, so some have asked that I do something uh like a uh uh prayer journal based on this or a workbook that goes with it.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll probably be working on that.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_00: I have finished another book, and it's going to be called The Hike, and it's kind of my memoir of God taking this unassuming kid from low-income housing and through a life of trials, tribulations, and victories preparing me uh to being flying on Air Force One, uh, personal meetings in the White House with the president, meeting with foreign leaders, I mean, in a unique position as well as leading this investigation into government corruption.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's really the story of overcoming and uh overcoming strongholds.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that goes all the way back into my early life.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that will be coming out near the first of the year.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_00: We've got some other things that we're working on regarding uh American history, and uh right now we're in the early uh early throws of putting together a podcast on American history.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_00: And uh not just these stories, but uh there are so many other stories of Providence that I'm still uncovering now.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, spent this part of this week at the National Archives getting some more documents together, Library of Congress, uh, so we can not just talk about these, but I can show, you know, through a podcast, you can do more than you can just through a book.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_00: I can show you the documents, I can show you uh uh where uh when they're trying to on the Battle of Hack's hall ridge with Desmond Doss, when the uh the colonel is asking, how did Desmond's company have no injuries or casualties when the company next to him was nearly devastated?
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_00: And his lieutenant just responded, Doss prayed.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I want to have that letter that you know you can see that.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_00: So uh those are some of the projects that we're working on.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's uh not being in Congress is gonna give me a little bit more time to work on some of these.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_00: But uh I'm like I said, the next big project, probably around the first of the year, is gonna be the hike.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_02: When you're telling your story about your father, I was thinking that as I could just see that being a movie, like an adventure movie out.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the whole you know, the whole thing would be a great movie to watch.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_02: And and when you're talking about Hacksaw Ridge, I love that because he says, just one more, Lord.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I use that.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_02: I think about that.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, you know what, Lord, just one more, just help me one more time, or just you know, give me one more, that one more little bit of faith that I need, just one more.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I love that movie.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, very inspirational.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I originally published this book and before that movie came out, and this is a re-release that we did last year with more information, another chapter and such.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_00: But what's interesting is when I was on the baseball field, I was hunkered down behind a shed trying to get to one of the guys that was injured.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_00: And every time I would move out to try to get to him, the gunman would turn back and he'd start shooting back at me again.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that quote ran through my mind.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Just one more Lord.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Desmond Doss could do this, I can do this, I can stay here.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what I hope that with the book, and then they prayed, that people will find inspiration from our past.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna find something relevant to you.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite stories is happened just um about a hundred miles from here uh in Georgia.
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you can go to the spot today of that miracle where God struck the ground with lightning to provide water for these prisoners.
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that spring's still there today.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I mean, that's that's what I call you want receipts of what happened, you can go there and that spring's still flowing today.
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_00: God's blessings are not just temporal, they're permanent.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Jesus struck the rock, you know.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's what he did.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_02: I I I love that.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I listened to that.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, oh my gosh, you know, it made me think about, you know, um, when Jesus would hit the rock so that they could have water in the wilderness and how exciting, you know.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_02: Can you imagine it just witnessing that and watching that would just be amazing?
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_02: But being going back there and just seeing the water still flowing from that event, you know, just like the the top of Mount Sinai, still still charred from from the burning bush, you know, still to this day, you know, and there was like the are you serious?
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, Yeah, look it up.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's pretty cool.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_02: That that kind of history, people don't think about it.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_02: But it's still that that evidence is still there and it exists and it's exciting.
• 1:11:22
  SPEAKER_02: So that's why when I was reading about your book, I got really excited.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, oh, I gotta order this book.
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_02: I can't wait to read it now.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_02: But um, with that being said, um, just one more thing so we before we so I can let you get out of here is um with our listeners, would you mind giving them some encouragement on because you have overcome so many strongholds and um obstacles and dodging bullets and assassination attempts and all of that?
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I know a lot of people listening aren't going through probably even a fraction of any of that, but um people do go through things, people do encounter their own strongholds.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_02: What little bit of advice would you give them in closing um to help them overcome that obstacle?
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you it it I'm gonna go back to the scriptures and looking back at my life, and uh this next book we've got coming out called The Hike, it's like your life is sort of like a wilderness hike.
• 1:12:13
  SPEAKER_00: You don't see what's over that mountain, and you really don't see the obstacles you're gonna face trying to climb that mountain to get over the top.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_00: But God knows what's over there and he knows the path.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_00: He's provide He's He has a path for your life.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and He's prepared that path.
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And as the scripture tells us, it's not always easy.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that path is rugged.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_00: You sometimes He's gonna take you up the steepest part of the mountain, but there's a reason why he's taking you that way, right?
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_00: He's preparing you for something, but you don't see what it is.
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's why with this hike, the two most valuable tools I had with this wilderness hike was a compass and a map.
• 1:12:52
  SPEAKER_00: So the map would help me stay on that path.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_00: In life, the Bible is my map, right?
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_00: It you've got to have the scriptures that you've got to know and you've got to know where to look and find the inspiration because God's given us a map for our lives, and it's the Bible.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you you must have a compass to give you direction.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_00: You have to know the direction you're you're going to orient your map uh in the right direction.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Or you could be walking on the path but walking the wrong direction.
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_00: In life, prayer is that compass.
• 1:13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Prayer help, you know, you you take your map and your compass and you can go just about anywhere.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_00: It may not be easy, but it'll get you where you need to go as long as you keep your eyes on that cause and not the overwhelming circumstances you're fake you're facing.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_00: But the one thing I would say that's been the most encouraging to me through any any trial or tribulation or anything I've faced is Proverbs 3, 5, and 6.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not into your own understanding.
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_00: You'll know why God's taking you this direction, but trust Him.
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you're well founded in the scriptures, or maybe if you're a new Christian, um God will help you in understanding and learning because His ways are not the world's ways.
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um just trust in the Lord with all your heart.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Try not to, you know, don't try to make sense of it.
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's not always going to make sense to you.
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but if you feel the Lord is calling you, you follow Him, trust in Him, and give Him all the credit.
• 1:14:26
  SPEAKER_00: In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths, right?
• 1:14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so, and it's so easy for us to get off course.
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many distractions in life.
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we have we have a distraction that stays in our pocket most of the time.
• 1:14:41
  SPEAKER_00: When sometimes we just need that quiet time with God uh and not on Facebook or social media or, you know, and we use these as tools, but God speaks to us individually.
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_00: He also speaks uh to us through others as well.
• 1:14:54
  SPEAKER_00: But when you're facing a trial or tribulation, one, you need to know what God needs you wants you to do.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Is this a trial tribulation that's to teach you?
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Then He's gonna want you to lean into it and He's gonna want you to figure out how to get through it, around it, under it, or over it, right?
• 1:15:11
  SPEAKER_00: But if it's something that you are to avoid, and sometimes there are things just happen in life that we sometimes we need to move away from those things, right?
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but just because it seems like it's gonna cause trouble, it's sometimes that God is using that trouble in our life to prepare us for his purpose.
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and and that's that's my biggest takeaway from the life that God has given me is that He's He I wasn't ready for this in my younger years, but he had to prepare me for a life of purpose, not a life of ease.
• 1:15:47
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 1:15:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's really good advice.
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:15:50
  SPEAKER_02: It takes me back to Jeremiah 29, 11.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what and I thought I thought that's the quote you're actually gonna say because when you started talking about God lays a path for us where it says um God has um a plan for our future, um, you know, and for our future and hope, I mean.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so I I thought uh that's the scripture he's gonna go to.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, great scripture, great word.
• 1:16:10
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate that, and I appreciate all your time.
• 1:16:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I just have a question.
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, would you mind if I say a quick prayer over you before we go into closing?
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Would love that.
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_02: Great, thank you.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_02: Father God, Lord, we just thank you so much for you as Congressman Congressman Um Barry Laudermouth.
• 1:16:24
  SPEAKER_02: Lord, I just pray that you just keep your hands on him like you have, Lord, and just keep showing those that are watching as witnesses that um your word stands firm and and um Barry just stands on your on your foundation and on your truth, God.
• 1:16:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I just thank you.
• 1:16:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm so honored, Lord, that he's been with us today in this episode.
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_02: Lord, I just ask that this episode prays or fulfills and reaches people that need need strength and um healing and prayer.
• 1:16:49
  SPEAKER_02: And Lord, I just thank you for everything that you've provided today with this episode.
• 1:16:52
  SPEAKER_02: Lord, I just ask you just keep your hands on this family, watch over them, and keep them safe.
• 1:16:56
  SPEAKER_02: In Jesus' name I pray.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_02: Amen.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:16:59
  SPEAKER_00: And if if uh anybody wants to, you know, find out more, um, then just go to my website, BarryLoudermilk.com, um, and we'll keep everybody updated there.
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_00: And also the book website is and then they prayed.com.
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_02: And all of your information I will have in the show notes.
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_02: So when they pull up this episode or they see it, it'll be right there.
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_02: They can just click right on it.
• 1:17:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll have it all in there for them.
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_02: And again, thank you so much.
• 1:17:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's been an honor and a privilege to have you.
• 1:17:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I love your stories.
• 1:17:27
  SPEAKER_02: I love, I mean, I'm just I'm in awe.
• 1:17:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I I I bet you I probably will cry when I read your book too.
• 1:17:34
  SPEAKER_02: I'll message you and be like, okay, I cried, whatever.
• 1:17:36
  SPEAKER_02: No, but I I'm excited to read your book and learn more.
• 1:17:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I can't wait till you um publish more.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think um doing a workbook with your with that book would be great.
• 1:17:46
  SPEAKER_02: I think that'd be a good idea.
• 1:17:47
  SPEAKER_02: And also if you decide to do a podcast, don't forget to look up Rory because he's your guy.
• 1:17:51
  SPEAKER_02: He's gonna get you all started.
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_02: He's perfect at it.
• 1:17:55
  SPEAKER_02: He's really good at what he does.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_00: I love Rory.
• 1:17:57
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, wonderful, wonderful man.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_02: So again, thank you and to all of our listeners.
• 1:18:01
  SPEAKER_02: I just want to say thank you guys for tuning in.
• 1:18:03
  SPEAKER_02: Make sure you like, follow, and share us.
• 1:18:04
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, let's be supportive of one another because we just want to lift each other up.
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_02: And um, again, um, Barry, thank you so much for your time.
• 1:18:11
  SPEAKER_02: I really, really appreciate it.
• 1:18:12
  SPEAKER_02: It means a lot to me.
• 1:18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you having me on.
• 1:18:16
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.