At age 90, Pat Boone is still living vibrantly for Jesus Christ. Boone was a longtime friend of Billy Graham, singing at Crusades in the 1980s, and his late wife was a prayer partner with Ruth Bell Graham. The legendary singer, actor and author has recently acted in three movies, and he’s written and recorded a new song, Where Did America Go?
Q: What kind of response have you had to the song?
A: Two weeks after release, we’re at 7 million likes and views. It’s meant to be a song like Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind, which I think shaped a lot of America’s thinking back in the 1960s. It woke a lot of people up, and I feel this song is doing that very same thing. We have an acoustic guitar and a harmonica, because I want people to think of Blowin’ in the Wind when they hear this song, because the purpose is the very same.
Q: You wrote the song as a wake-up call to America.
A: To wake us up to how we’re sliding and how we’re letting the most important things that created America slip away.
Wake up, because the devil is very cunning. And the Bible says the heart is deceptive. When we follow our hearts and our inclinations and not God’s will, Satan can easily lead us astray.
Going back to the beginning, in Genesis, when the devil appeared first to the woman, he said, “Oh, look at that fruit. Isn’t it beautiful? It’s delicious, too. And besides, if you eat it, it will make you as wise as God.” Well, she fell for it.
Then both she and Adam ate, and suddenly they realized they were naked, and that hadn’t mattered before. And when God came in the late afternoon to have His daily visit with them, they were hiding.
We are so easily deceived, and we can fall out of favor with God. Abortion is a major part of the election coming up. And the Democratic candidate is letting us know that she’s planning to make it available in every state in the union. And she sounds so highly motivated, as if that’s a great thing.
All I can say is that God created life, and He’s highly displeased with those who want to disrupt His creation.
Q: One of the verses in your song says:
Can America still rise again?
Find our way back to where we were then?
Yes, that old family Bible
Still holds our survival.
It spells out the way we can win.
Yes. It spells out the way we can win.
A: Barna and Gallup and the pollsters have told us recently that less than 50% of Americans go to any place of worship now. They don’t read the Bible. They don’t know that, if they pray, anybody is listening. And so, we are spiritually and Biblically ignorant, illiterate. We can’t say anymore that we’re a nation under God, because less than half of us are seeking God at all.
Q: Then comes the chorus:
O God of Sweet Liberty
Help us and heal us again
If we fall on our knees
Will You still hear our pleas?
Take us back to where we were then.
Take us back to where we were then.
Repentance and prayer are critical, aren’t they?
A: And recommitment. Oh, man, I can cry when I say that word. We’re just not committed to God as a country. And because of that, He cannot be as committed to us. I read through the Bible every year, and I’ve just gotten into Ezra now, in the Old Testament. And of course, Ezra had been sent into Babylonian captivity. Israel had so rejected God that He just sent them into captivity. But after 70 years, He was willing to bring them back. And He’s willing to bring us back, but we have to seek Him. And we have to be willing to be obedient and want to know what His will is, as we can’t obey it unless we know what it is.
Q: America has obviously lost its way. How do people find their way back to the Lord?
A: After 9/11, there was suddenly an explosion of flags on street corners everywhere, and people were going back to church. The churches were filled, and the nation, in a wholesale way, came back to the Lord. And then we flourished again. And, unless we do that—and I’m hoping it won’t take another 9/11 or maybe a bunch of them, because the terrorists that created that first 9/11 have come across a non-existent border—then God will allow terrible things to happen, which will again tend to bring us to our knees, if that’s what it takes.
And if we don’t get on our knees then, as the people of Israel too often did not, then we will suffer the same fate. As the Bible says, and as Lincoln quoted, a nation divided against itself cannot stand. ©2024 BGEA
Interviewed by Jim Dailey, executive editor.