We conducted another baptism at our house one night when the river was really high, which brings water up close to our house, along with the snakes, alligators, and other dangerous debris. My boys went out with flashlights and shotguns to clear our path; they were always on sentinel duty when we baptized someone at night. In fact, during a baptism one very dark night, I accidentally stepped off the normal path and led us into an alligator or turtle bed, and we both disappeared into the water. I like to think that baptism was a twofer!
A lot of the people we’ve converted over the years have become our very close friends and some of them were even married in our front yard. We’ve probably conducted a dozen weddings at our house, with Alan officiating most of them. Paul Lewis was Willie’s best friend growing up. Paul received a full scholarship to play basketball at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. He even played against Shaquille O’Neal one time and seemed to have a very bright future. But in 1995, Paul was arrested for transporting drugs in Texas and was sentenced to fourteen years in federal prison. He ended up serving twelve and a half years, which was a hard lesson to learn, and Willie was at the prison to pick him up the day he was released.
Willie gave Paul a job at Duck Commander, where he met his future wife, Crystle, a former Texas police officer. They both rededicated their lives to Jesus Christ and were married in our front yard. Paul is African-American; Crystle’s mother is Hispanic and her father is black. So the wedding crowd consisted of African-Americans and Hispanics but mostly white, bearded rednecks. About the time the wedding proceedings were starting, a friend of mine was putting his boat into the river at our boat dock. My friend later told me he realized then that there must be a God, because every other time he had seen so many ethnicities together, there was usually fighting involved! But there, under the towering pines and oaks next to Cypress Creek in our front yard, he saw a lot of people from different backgrounds who seemed to genuinely love each other and were enjoying being around each other. It was a perfect picture of what Christ’s body should look like on Earth. My family and I are proud to create scenes like that one as a witness to what we believe.
Whenever I think of all the people we’ve baptized over the years, I always recall a conversation Jep had with one of his buddies in the backseat of our car when he was really young. Jep’s friend Harvey asked him what it meant to be a Christian.
“Well, when you get to be about thirteen or fourteen years old, my daddy will sit you down and study the Bible with you,” Jep told him. “He’ll make sure you know what he’s talking about. And then he’ll tell you that Jesus is going to be your Lord and when that happens, you can’t act bad anymore. My daddy will ask you if you want Jesus to be your Lord. If you say yes, we’re all going down to the river. We’ll be so excited that we’ll be skipping down there. My daddy will put you under the water, but he won’t drown you. He’ll bring you back up and everybody will be clapping and smiling. That’s what he’ll do.”
Nowadays, you don’t see many families—the husband, wife, and children—that are so evangelistic. I think it’s pretty rare in today’s world. The thing that pleases me most about my sons is that no one ever told them to do it. They just decided to be that way. Maybe it was handed down when they heard me telling Bible stories and saw me baptizing people in the river. I didn’t have Jesus in my life until I was twenty-eight. But during the last thirty-eight years of my life, I’ve been telling everyone I meet about him. It was a big change for me. I was converting people to Christianity even before I started making duck calls. Then came the business, the blessing, and the fame, but I’ve stayed the same throughout. Everywhere my sons and I go, we’re telling people the good news about Jesus, blowing duck calls, and making people happy, happy, happy—then down the road we go.
“My daddy will put you under the water, but he won’t drown you.”
FOUNDING FATHERS
Rule No. 14 for Living Happy, Happy, Happy
Read the Bible (We Can Still Save This Once-Great Country—It’s Not Too Late)
After I became a Christian, one of the first changes I made in my life was to take a more active interest in politics and how our government works. I’d never voted until I was twenty-nine, but I decided I ought to do so in order to help put godly men and women in positions of authority—instead of a bunch of heathens—since God works through people.
After studying several political parties to find out what they believe and stand for, I decided my political ideology was more in line with the Republicans. I definitely was no Democrat—that’s for sure—but I don’t really consider myself one or the other. I’m more of a Christocrat, someone who honors our founding fathers and pays them homage for being godly men at a time when wickedness was all over the world. Our founding fathers started this country and built it on God and His Word, and this country sure would be a better place to live and raise our children if we still followed their ideals and beliefs.
I’m worried about the United States of America, there’s no question about it. There’s wickedness all over our country. America is a country without morals and principles, and it’s a far cry from the great nation our founding fathers created in 1776. Great men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, who signed the Declaration of Independence and whom you see on our money today, agreed that God and the Bible would be their moral compasses for constructing the greatest nation on Earth. But now we’ve taken the Bible out of schools, we’ve taken the Ten Commandments out of courtrooms, and stores like Walmart aren’t even allowed to publicize Christmas anymore! What kind of country are we living in nowadays?
It really seems pretty simple to me. We’re in the year A.D. 2013 We’ve been counting time by Jesus for more than two thousand years. He must have done something right! In his Thanksgiving Proclamation in New York on October 3, 1789, Washington, the very first president of the United States, said, “Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and experience.” I’m with George Washington. It was Jefferson, our third president, who said, “All men are created equal.” Man didn’t crawl out of the ocean like some of these evolutionists would like us to believe; Jefferson believed men were created equal. He also said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Those are God-given rights, folks. I’m with Thomas Jefferson.
Sure, our founding fathers weren’t perfect, and they made mistakes along the way. They allowed slavery to take place in our country for close to a hundred years and didn’t allow women to vote in the beginning, but we as a people atoned for our mistakes and corrected them. The difference between our founding fathers and the cats that are ruining our country today is that men like Washington and Jefferson created the greatest country on Earth and these modern-day politicians didn’t!
In a letter to several governors of the first states, Washington wrote, “I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection.” There it is; is that the last time you heard one of our politicians offer a meaningful prayer to God Almighty? The only thing today’s politicians want to talk about is separation of church and state, but our founding fathers wholly embraced their Creator.
Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, could speak ten languages and was studying French, Latin, and Greek when he was nine. When John F. Kennedy, our thirty-fifth president, brought together the Nobel Prize winners at the White House in 1962, he told them, “Ladies and gentlemen, I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” That’s how much respect and admiration JFK had for Jefferson. And why wouldn’t he? J
efferson authorized the Louisiana Purchase from the French and it turned out to be a pretty good deal!
Jefferson was a smart cat, and his fears about America’s future are sadly coming to fruition. Jefferson once famously said, “To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association—the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” Jefferson warned us that socialism would ruin the American democracy, and look what’s happening in our country now. Today, our government is saying the democracy will thrive if you take from those who are willing to work and give to those who aren’t. I have to pay more taxes so that everything can be free for those people who don’t want to work? It’s nonsense. Our government is doing exactly what Jefferson warned us against. So the question is, who is right? I think Jefferson was on the right side.
Jefferson also said, “It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one half the wars of the world.” What is our national debt now? More than $16 trillion, and it’s climbing every minute with no debt ceiling in sight. We made a grave mistake and didn’t pay our debts as a country as we moved forward. Once you don’t pay, you dig a never-ending hole like the one we have now. Look at the financial disaster we’re leaving our future generations. Our children and grandchildren are going to be saddled with debt up to their eyeballs! My reading of history has convinced me that most bad government comes from too much government. Ronald Reagan, our fortieth president, once famously said, “As government expands, liberty contracts.” Right again!
You know what Jefferson had to say about the health care programs our government is trying to force down our throats? He said, “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.” We shouldn’t have to pay for stuff we hate, and I don’t want to pay for a health care program that endorses legalized abortions. No one has the right to make us pay if we don’t want it. Now, the government is saying we have to pay for programs like health care, whether we like it or not. It’s sinful and tyrannical, according to Jefferson.
Jefferson also warned us to make sure we maintain our right to bear arms. He said, “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” Jefferson was telling us, “Boys, make sure you keep your guns.” In a democracy, the strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny.
Jefferson was one of our first presidents, so you’d think the first thing he’d want to do is confiscate everyone’s guns. But he actually said the opposite and believed that if things ever went south, the people were going to need their guns. That’s pretty serious talk, but that’s what Jefferson said. Washington agreed with him and basically said firearms are America’s liberty teeth. In his first message to Congress on the State of the Union on January 8, 1790, Washington said, “A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined.” Do you see their point? It’s by the people, for the people, Jack!
John Adams, our second president, said, “Statesmen . . . may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.” Adams told us that if we don’t have God in our lives and aren’t morally righteous, we’re going to lose it all. That’s where we are now, and I fear that’s what’s fixing to happen.
Now we can’t figure out what’s wrong with America’s youth. Our children are plagued by violence, alcohol, drug abuse, teenage pregnancies out of wedlock, and high dropout rates. Well, Noah Webster, who is considered the father of American education, basically believed that the Bible was America’s basic textbook in all fields. In his History of the United States, Webster wrote, “The most perfect maxims and examples of regulating your social conduct and domestic economy, as well as the best rules of morality and religion, are to be found in the Bible.” Webster must have been a pretty intelligent guy, because I’m still using a Webster’s Dictionary! But we’re not even allowed to start the school day with a prayer or have a Bible in a classroom. Webster believed you had to vet everything through the Bible. We got away from it and now we’re paying the price. We should have listened to Webster.
Webster must have been a pretty intelligent guy, because I’m still using a ‘Webster’s Dictionary!’
What are we going to do with our youth? How are we going to reduce crime? How are we going to prevent our children from having babies? What are we going to do? The only solution our government can come up with nowadays is to pour more money into our problems and research solutions. Webster said what we need to do is put the Bible back where it ought to be. I’m right there with him!
Without the Bible as a blueprint for living our lives, I’m not surprised to see our country struggling so mightily. Romans 1:28–32 says:
Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents, they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
The apostle Paul was writing about the Roman Empire, but he might as well have been talking about present-day America. We fought Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s, and then we continued to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq for more than a decade to weed out terrorists. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, we lost nearly seven thousand brave soldiers during those wars. But there’s a bigger war going on in America. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over sixteen thousand people were murdered in the United States in 2010. While a good chunk of our firepower was in the Middle East trying to get a handle on terrorism, we were losing an even bigger war right here in the good ol’ USA. Sadly, our children are the ones doing a lot of the killing.
I’m extremely worried about our country’s youth. Remember the scene from Duck Dynasty when I joined my grandson on a date with his girlfriend in my boat? I told him, “Son, no hands below the neck.” What was I trying to tell him? My greatest fear is for one of my grandchildren to come up and tell me they have herpes. Don’t you think it a little ironic that what follows sexual immorality is herpes, chlamydia, AIDS, syphilis, and gonorrhea? How could something as much fun as sex all of the sudden bring these horrible diseases upon us? Doctors have been researching these diseases for centuries, but they can’t cure most of them. They can’t get rid of most of them. What do you call that? You call that the consequences of disobeying the Almighty.
Look, you’re married to a woman and she doesn’t have AIDS, chlamydia, syphilis, gonorrhea, or any of the rest of them. Here’s the good news: you don’t have it and she doesn’t have it. Guess who is never going to get it if you keep your sex right there? The only way it can be transmitted to you or your spouse is if you go out and disobey what the Almighty says. When it’s one woman and one man, you won’t catch this stuff. But if you disobey God, His wrath will be poured out upon you. It’s not a coincidence that horrible diseases follow immoral conduct—it’s the consequences that follow when you break God’s laws.
During the 1960s, I was involved in a lot of the sins I’m talking about. Remember, before I was converted when I was twenty-eight, I was running with the depraved crowd. I’ve been there and done that. I’m sorry to say it, but my generation gave itself over to sinful desires and sexual impuritie
s. Thankfully, it’s not too late to save our next generation.
What in the world ever happened to the United States of America, folks? Our country is so different from the nation that was founded more than two hundred years ago. I’m absolutely convinced that the reason America went so far and so fast is that our founders were God-fearing men. It was godly from the start. Our founding fathers fled the wickedness of Europe and came to America to build a nation built on principles, morals, and their beliefs in Jesus Christ. They drew upon their faith and biblical ideals to actually construct the framing documents of our great country.
The irony of it all is that we’re right back to what they ran from 237 years ago. We’re right back to old King George. Our forefathers’ greatest fear was that the very thing they revolted against would come full circle and we’d be right back to where they started. When Webster was asked what the greatest thing that ever passed through his mind was, he said it was his accountability to God. I agree with him wholeheartedly. I’m not going askew from the principles on which the United States was built; I’m right there with our founding fathers. I’m a patriot and a Christian, and I’m moving forth with what they started. But now it’s gotten to where I’m some kind of nut or Bible beater.
I say, so be it. I’ll still go across the country spreading God’s Word, like I’ve done since I was twenty-eight. I may be only one man reading Scripture and quotes, carrying his Bible, and blowing duck calls to crowds, but, hey, it has to start somewhere. It’s what makes me happy, happy, happy.
Happy, Happy, Happy: My Life and Legacy as the Duck Commander Page 15
