Welcome to the intersection of faith in the culture. It's wall builders where we take on the hot topics of the day from a biblical historical and constitutional perspective.

Today we're in the middle of a three day program. David Barton speaking at the pro family legislators conference just a few weeks ago.

And so we're going to jump right into that. I'm Rick Green, by the way, America's Constitution coach and a former Texas legislator.

Normally here with David and Tim Barton, David, of course, America's premier historian and our founder at wall boulders and Tim Barton national speaker and pastor and president of wall boulders.

But today we're going to head out to the legislators conference and listen to David's presentation yesterday. We got the first part. We'll jump right back in where we left off.

Here's David Barton at the pro family legislators conference.

Who today would tell somebody that you're not ready to become a Christian? Somebody came and said, I want to become a Christian easy. Let's do it. Here's a prayer. You pray back then. They said no. Now why would they have said no to him back then? Why was he rejected?

I want to become a Christian and say no because it goes back to what Jesus said and Luke 14. And he says, you have to count the cost before you become my disciple.

Do I you don't understand what's going to be required of you as a Christian and until you understand the price you're going to have to pay as a Christian, you need to study a little more.

And so what happened was Jesus said, you can't be my disciple. If you don't count the cost, he says who goes out and attacks the city without knowing the size of the enemy.

Who goes out and builds a tower without knowing how much is going to cost you never starting to a project without knowing what's going to cost you.

And you just you don't need to get started as a Christian without knowing the cost you're going to have to pay for that because you might decide it's too high price and you might walk away.

And so Jesus laid it out really simple to his disciples. And this is the way the church used to practice it.

So in case of Dwight, he didn't say the center's prayer, which is pretty much where a whole lot of the evangelical church has gone today.

You want to receive Jesus. Here's a prayer you can say followed this pray with me. Pray this prayer out loud.

And so we've done the center's prayer. Now I'll point out if you go back through American history, you take the great revivalist of the 1700s.

You take the great revivalist of the 1800s. You take even what happened all the way back with great leaders across the world from Paul on none of them use the center's prayer.

That was not part of what any of them did to get people brought to Christ. So there was no center's prayer and use at all. This is not what they did.

What they did was here's what it cost to be a disciple. You wouldn't be the disciple. Here's what's going to cost you.

There was a price to pay. And so they they did exactly what Jesus said they were making disciples of everyone not making converts of everyone.

Now the difference is the center's prayer. Where did it come to use historically?

There's centers prayers introduced by Billy Sunday in the 1920s. And it was a way to count people at the meetings. He just didn't know there's crowds were so massive.

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