100 Bible Verses That Helped Shape America

📜 Complete Transcript

We're glad you're here, we're glad you're here. Fellowship is sweeter, knowing you're near. So good to see you, we hope that it's clear, everyone loves you, we're glad you're here. Reading from Psalm 33, verse 12.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people He chose for His inheritance. Psalm 33, verse 12. O magnify the Lord with me, let us exalt His name together.

It's Wednesday, July 1st, 2026. Happy July, and welcome to today's edition of Mark & Friends. As we prepare to celebrate Independence Day this weekend, it's a wonderful time to pause and thank God for His many blessings upon our nation.

Throughout Scripture, we're reminded that every generation has the privilege and the responsibility of remembering God's faithfulness and passing those stories on to those who follow. A few days ago, I had the privilege of recording a phone conversation with pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Robert J. Morgan. We talked about his outstanding new book, 100 Bible Verses That Made America, and I think you'll find today's conversation both encouraging and thought-provoking.

If you'd like to purchase a copy of the book, simply visit robertjmorgan.com. That's robertjmorgan.com. Before we join in on that conversation, you'll find today's audio program, a complete transcript, a printable version, Scripture references, a program summary, key takeaways, and additional resources to help you continue exploring today's topic. You can find those at greatnewsradio.org and wluj.org after clicking on the Mark & Friends tab. Let's now join that conversation.

One of the questions many people are asking as America approaches its 250th birthday is this. What made America what it is? Was it political ideas, military victories, economic opportunity, or was there something deeper? My guest today believes there was. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Robert Morgan, says that throughout America's history, God's Word has repeatedly shaped pivotal moments, influenced leaders, and provided direction during times of crisis and uncertainty.

Robert joins us today to talk about his fascinating book, 100 Bible Verses That Made America. Robert, welcome to Mark & Friends. Thank you, Mark.

I'm so happy to be with you today. I was sharing with you briefly off-air before we prayed up this program, how many books have you written? Because I've read a number of them, Then Sings My Soul, like book one, two, and others. Because of a radio station, I get a lot of your new releases, but how many books are you up to? I don't know, Mark.

It's impossible to say. Books come out in so many different forms and ancillary products, and they'll take a book and convert it into two or three other resources, and I just totally lose track. But the books you're referring to are Then Sings My Soul, book one, book two, and book three, that tell the story behind the great hymns and classic songs of our faith.

And I love the hymns. I like the music, too. But we can't get away from the depth of the great hymns.

And my newest book on that subject is called The Origin of Hymns, and it came out in connection with the movie I Can Only Imagine 2 a few months ago. Well, this book that's just recently being released, 100 Bible Verses That Made America, what first inspired you to research and write this? Well, I've always enjoyed history, and American history in particular. So I was actually driving to a meeting with my editor to discuss my next book, and I had about three ideas I'd been working on for some time, but none of the three of them were really exciting me.

And on the way there, this idea flashed into my mind, and I knew some of the stories from American history that related to Christians and to the Bible and to answered prayer and to providence, but I thought there must be a lot more. So we did a deep dive into American history from colonial times all the way up to the present, and we found story after story after story of moments and of men and women and of circumstances when the Bible made a determining difference. And I came to realize that every other group wants their contributions recognized in American history, but nobody has more contributions than those who hold to the Judeo-Christian scriptures and those who come at it from a biblical worldview.

Every one of these stories is about three pages long. They're stories that you'll not read in other history books. You'll not see in Broadway musicals or movies about the history of our nation.

These are true stories of the way God and the Bible made a difference and shaped our country. Well, before I get too far into this interview, in case you're just tuning in, on the phone with me is Pastor Robert J. Morgan, and I introduced you as an author, Bible teacher. Is there anything else you want our listeners to know about you or your life calling? Well, I live in Nashville, Tennessee.

I was a pastor at a church here for 42 years. I stepped away from that because of my wife's illness, and then she went to heaven. And now I serve as associate pastor of World Outreach Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and I go about my weekly Bible study podcast, the Robert J. Morgan podcast, and writing books like 100 Bible Verses That Made America.

Mark, my philosophy is that our careers may shift and change some as time goes by, but we never retire from waking up every morning and saying, Lord, what do you want me to do today? So I just want to stay busy for the kingdom. And I think the city bird of Nashville is the crane. I think you have more building going on, and cranes are all over the place.

It sure changed a lot since I moved here in 1980. People are moving in droves, and Tennessee is a wonderful state to be in. We still have a very strong emphasis in our state, as we do in a lot of America, on that Judeo-Christian foundation, which originally established these United States of America.

You know, Mark, the Pilgrims came in 1620, a year after Jamestown, which was a disaster, but the Pilgrims came, and they opened the Puritan migration because the Puritans are being driven out of England. Many of these Cambridge-educated lawyers, business owners and educators and pastors and theologians, they came by the tens of thousands to New England, and they are the ones who established the moral and biblical foundation for our country. It wasn't in 1619 in Jamestown.

It was in 1620 at Plymouth Rock, and 100 years later through that area and all across America came the Great Awakening, and the Great Awakening united the 13 colonies and paved the way for the signing of the Declaration of Independence. So our nation has depended on the Judeo-Christian worldview espoused in the Bible for its greatness, and we need to retain that high view of Scripture if we're going to retain the greatness that we have as a nation. Yeah, I know through your time of research, it validated the importance of the Judeo-Christian mindset and how God was working through many of our presidents and the founders, especially George Washington's use of the Bible at his inauguration.

Why was that significant? Well, it was very significant because George Washington could very well have placed his hand on the Declaration of Independence or on the new Constitution, but he didn't choose to do that because he knew that the real authority for the establishing and maintaining this nation was deeper than our founding documents. It went all the way back to the Bible. So he called for a Bible.

He placed his hand on it when he took the oath of office there in lower Manhattan. You can go and you can see on Wall Street where he stood. The original house is gone now, but they have a monument to him there.

And as soon as he finished taking the oath of office, he bent over with his lips and he kissed the Bible. And he was a man of tremendous faith. Now, since the 1930s, secular historians have been telling us that he was a deist, that he wasn't genuinely a Christian.

But that is an absolute deception by secularism. He was an Anglican. He was a low church Anglican who said the creeds and who deeply believed in Jesus Christ, who he called the blessed founder of our sacred religion.

And he was a very devout follower of Christ and observant in the Anglican Church. And the notion that he was a deist is a new invention. These founding fathers, they were not all Christians, but they all knew the Bible and had a great deal of respect for it and quoted it more than they quoted any other piece of literature, either sacred or secular.

Well, listening friends, in case you're just tuning in, I'm talking with author, pastor Robert J. Morgan about his new book, 100 Bible Verses That Made America. It's a fascinating read. You're going to be blessed.

You're going to be encouraged. You're going to be enlightened. You're going to be able to share some stories that maybe you never even knew the roots of why that decision was made or how that verse was instrumental in someone's life.

And of the hundred verses in this book, which story tends to surprise audiences the most? Well, maybe one of the most important verses is in John chapter 3, you must be born again, because that was the key verse for the ministry of George Whitefield, the British evangelist, who more than any other single person brought about or was the human instrument for the movement of the Holy Spirit that we call the Great Awakening in the American colonies. And the Great Awakening, coupled with the preaching of the gospel from Puritan pulpits, was what galvanized the nation and gave the unity to the 13 colonies that moved them towards the signing of the Declaration of Independence and rebelling against England, who was placing not only financial and political restrictions, but spiritual restrictions on the colonies. So most historians will tell you that if there had not been the Great Awakening, the spiritual revival that swept through the colonies and caused people to be born again, there would not have been the unity and the strength of soul in our American fabric to have brought about the Declaration of Independence.

So that was just an extremely important verse. Another verse in John chapter 3, John 3, 16, I was very surprised when I found a letter. I found it while I was writing this book.

It would have been discovered in the closet in a cardboard box after Nancy Reagan had died in her Bel Air, California home. And in it, Ronald Reagan wrote an evangelistic letter to his father-in-law, who was an atheist and who was dying of cancer, quoting the gospel to him, telling about Jesus, and just urging him to place his faith in Jesus Christ. It was as evangelistic a letter as Billy Graham or as you and I might have written, and even more so.

So this wonderful third chapter of John goes all the way from the days of colonial America to the time of Ronald Reagan, and that's why John 3, 16 is so prominent in our society and so loved. It had a lot to do with making America great. In your book, 100 Bible Verses That Made America, was there a particular chapter that was like your personal favorite or something that you thought through and mulled over in your mind often? I was really taken by my study of Abraham Lincoln.

He is the most studied figure and the most written-about figure in American history. I didn't realize that as a young man, Lincoln was an atheist who hated the Bible and who even wrote a book that he thought would destroy the Scriptures. He wrote a book attacking the truthfulness of the Bible.

A friend of his threw it in the fire and said, if you publish this book, you'll never be elected to office. But after Lincoln's father-in-law died, Lincoln was cleaning out Mary's father's estate and found the book of Christian Evidences, a book of apologetics. And he began reading it, and he moved towards Christianity, and by the time he was president, he was reading the Bible constantly and quoting it constantly and quoting it not just in his speeches but in his daily conversations.

And the last words that he spoke in Ford Theater, according to Mary Todd, was, when this war is over, he leaned over and he said to her, when this war is over, referring to the Civil War, let's not go back home to Springfield. Let's first go and travel to Palestine. I want to go to Jerusalem where the Savior walked.

And just as he said those words, the bullet entered into his body by John Wilkes Booth. But Lincoln's journey from atheism to Christianity, to me it was maybe one of the most amazing things that I came across in my research. And you're talking or speaking into the land of Lincoln here.

We're very proud of our Springfield, Illinois, where we have the Lincoln Museum and one of our radio towers is on the path that Abraham Lincoln took from like Danville towards central Illinois, called Lincoln Road. But let me fast forward a little bit. How did Scripture encourage soldiers and chaplains and families during D-Day and World War II? Well, one of the most remarkable things about D-Day is FDR's prayer when he announced D-Day.

I've got stories in my book from all of the major battles in American history and how the Bible made a difference in the lives of our nation or of generals or of soldiers or sailors or airmen or of chaplains, the four chaplains, one of the most famous stories in American military history. But when Roosevelt announced D-Day, he did it with a prayer. His whole speech is a prayer.

And by the way, I've been to Springfield when I was writing this book. I did a deep dive into Springfield. I don't blame you for being proud of it.

I also went to Hyde Park, New York to the Franklin Roosevelt Library and to the home. And Roosevelt's original speech is there. You can see it under glass.

And he called the nation to prayer. It's very moving. You can listen to it still on audio tape.

But he said, My fellow Americans, he said, Last night when I spoke to you, I knew at that moment that our troops were storming the beaches of Normandy and of France. And will you join with me in prayer? And then he said the words, Almighty God. And the rest of his speech was a prayer.

And it's one of the most moving. I can hardly listen to it without weeping. And he gets to the end of it, and he says, Thy will be done.

And I've been told, well, I mean, it's in the history records that people all across America were kneeling by their radios joining Franklin Roosevelt in prayer for the troops that were beginning the liberation of Europe near the end of World War II. And it is said to be the most widespread corporate prayer in American history. An entire nation stopped what they were doing to pray with the commander-in-chief.

And I tell that story, I can hardly believe that a moment like that occurred in American history, and I just wish that it would occur again. Hmm. So do you think, in your opinion, are Americans becoming less biblically literate than previous generations? Yes.

You know, when I was growing up, and I guess when you were, most of us, I think, knew the 23rd Psalm or John 3, 16, or even, if you want to say, the Pledge of Allegiance or the Lord's Prayer. Now, very few children are memorizing those essential passages. But I will say also, Mark, that I work with young adults at World Outreach Church, and I've got a group that meet in my house, and I've got grandchildren that are young adults, and I'm on college campuses speaking from time to time.

And there is a generation coming up right now of young adults who are as passionate and excited about the Lord Jesus as I ever was during the Jesus Revolution. Hmm. So right now, I'm very encouraged by the fervor of Christian young adults and the sense of revival breaking out on college campuses and elsewhere in America.

But by and large, we need to get back to a deeper walk with the Lord in our churches and certainly in our national life. Well, what Bible verse do you think that America maybe needs to hear today? Well, the verse that Dwight Eisenhower used, he asked Billy Graham, he said, he said, Billy, not only do we want to bring about some political changes, but America needs a spiritual revolution. We need the churches.

And the people of our nation to become God-fearing again. What Bible verse can I quote? And Billy gave him that famous verse, 2 Chronicles 7, 14. If my people who are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

And when Eisenhower took the oath of office, his hand was resting on a Bible that was open to that Bible verse. Pastor Robert, realizing, and you and I briefly talked about this off air, because of our 21 frequencies and some of the frequencies being between rock and roll stations, we have a wide range of people tuning in, some looking for rock and roll and then as they scan their dial, here's some biblical teaching or a Bible lesson or a devotional thought or inspirational music. But I would ask that you pray for the totality of the listeners, those that maybe haven't come to a relationship with Jesus, to the senior saint.

And so if you could close our time in prayer, that would be great. And listening friend, this book that's recently been published and is out called 100 Bible Verses That Made America, I strongly encourage you to buy multiple copies, give to a neighbor, a friend, your pastor, maybe as a small group, go through it together. It's written by Robert J. Morgan and I think you're just going to love it.

But please close our time in prayer. I'll be glad to. Our Almighty God, you have been the governor and the president plenipotentiary and the lord and master of all of human history.

And our nation could not have arisen without your help. And we thank you for the biblical worldview of many of those founders who established this nation on Judeo-Christian principles. Father, we pray that that would flourish, that you would bring about a great awakening in our own time, a revival, because so many people are hungry, they are longing for something deeper than they have.

I pray, Lord, for anyone who is listening who needs a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. I pray for those who may need encouragement. I pray for those who are actively involved in their community and state and national policies and politics.

I pray, Lord, for every one of us, that you would meet our needs, direct our attention towards you, give us the desires of our heart, and bless each of us today and bless the United States of America. It is our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen and amen. Oh, thank you, pastor, author, speaker, faithful follower of Jesus, Robert J. Morgan, for joining me for today's edition of Mark & Friends. I appreciate your heart for the Lord and how you're allowing Him to work in and through you, for praying up our radio listeners, for caring about this country and helping us understand the importance of knowing our history, our Judeo-Christian history.

And so thank you for joining me and carving out time and being available with your busy schedule. It was my pleasure. Thank you, Mark, and the Lord bless you galore.

I'm so happy to be doing it. And thank you, Mark, for letting me be a part of what you're doing there. Sure.

Amen and amen. Thank you. Have a great day.

All right. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

As mentioned at the beginning of today's program, this was a conversation I recorded a few days ago with pastor and author Robert J. Morgan about his outstanding book 100 Bible Verses That Made America. If you'd like to purchase a copy for yourself or perhaps several copies to share with family members, friends, or your small group, simply visit robertjmorgan.com. That's robertjmorgan.com. And if you missed any portion of today's broadcast, would like to listen again or share it with someone else, stop by greatnewsradio.org or wluj.org and click on the Mark & Friends tab. There you'll find today's audio program, a complete transcript, a printable version, scripture references, a program summary, key takeaways, and additional resources designed to help you continue exploring today's topic.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for being a part of our radio listening family. This is Mark Burns with the Ministry of Great News Media.

God bless you and have a great day and night.