{"id":19171,"date":"2016-07-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-31T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sugar-land-bible-church.local\/sermon\/the-bible-and-voting-part-5\/"},"modified":"2016-07-31T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-07-31T05:00:00","slug":"the-bible-and-voting-part-5","status":"publish","type":"sermon","link":"https:\/\/slbc.org\/es\/sermon\/the-bible-and-voting-part-5\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bible and Voting – Part 5"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","book":[65],"series_event":[466],"sermon_service_type":[472],"speaker":[6],"class_list":["post-19171","sermon","type-sermon","status-publish","hentry","book-proverbs","series_event-the-bible-and-voting-2016","sermon_service_type-main-service","speaker-dr-andy-woods","no-post-thumbnail"],"acf":{"sermon_title":"The Bible and Voting - Part 5","sermon_date":"20160731","sermon_month":"7","sermon_year":"2016","sermon_notes":3786,"sermon_slides":3789,"sermon_mp3":3791,"sermon_id":"731161340596","series_or_event":466,"service_type":[472],"speaker":6,"books_of_the_bible":65,"chapter_and_verse":"14:34","sermon_transcript":"Andy Woods\n\nSUGAR LAND BIBLE CHURCH\n\nJuly 31, 2016 The Bible and Voting, Part 5\n\nIf you could take your Bibles and open them to the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verses 6-7.\u00a0 Speaking of July we started a series on Independence Day weekend on a subject that I guess is on everybody\u2019s mind--politics and voting, although this is not going to be a political analysis like what you get on television.\u00a0 This is really designed as a topical study, it\u2019s designed not to influence you one way or the other on a particular candidate in a partisan sense but more in a biblical sense; and it\u2019s really something I\u2019ve wanted to do for a long time and this year I said well, I\u2019m just going to do it.\n\nWhat does the Bible actually teach about the subject of voting?\u00a0 Does the Bible hold forth a set of eternal and immutable principles that Christians should look for when they exercise their rights and participate at the polling place.\u00a0 And my answer to that is yes!\u00a0 There\u2019s a lot of principles in the Bible that really aren\u2019t that important, maybe, to the pundits but they are extremely important to God.\u00a0 And these are the principles I wanted to bring before you.\u00a0 We have looked at some, what I would call economic issues; these are the matters that the Bible speaks on expressly.\u00a0 From there we transitioned and we began to talk about what are called social issues, cultural issues if you will, things that the Bible comments directly on.\u00a0 We\u2019ve seen the mind of God on legal protection for the unborn, legal protection for the elderly, holding up heterosexual monogamy as the marital standard for any health society.\n\nLast week we went into difficult terrain and I tried to show you what the mind of\u00a0 God is on a very volatile issue of our time\u2014the institution of capital punishment. \u00a0We even took a look last week at the subject nobody wants to talk about, the subject of pornography; we briefly dealt with that.\u00a0 And as\u00a0 you can see from this list we have three more social issues to cover and if time permits I\u2019d like to cover those with you this morning.\n\nSo this takes us to number 6; these are all essentially phrased as questions that we can ask of anybody in any election what their view is on these things.\u00a0 So this takes us to number 6.\u00a0 Does the candidate respect parental authority over children?\u00a0 Let me phrase that a different way: I want to know when I vote for someone if they understand to who do children belong?\u00a0 Do children actually belong to their parents or are they the authority and the ownership and the jurisdiction over a school, a school board, or a school district?\u00a0 You might be sitting here saying to yourself, well, this is a no-brainer, we all know that children belong to parents.\u00a0\u00a0 But that very simple principle of parental authority, to my mind, is one of the most aggressive principles in God\u2019s Word that\u2019s being challenged today.\n\nFor example, let me give you this quote.\u00a0 This is from Melissa Harris Perry, she\u2019s a former MSNBC contributor and she\u2019s also a political science professor, and this is what she said not too long ago, which really caused a lot of eyebrows to be raised.\u00a0 She says: \u201cWe have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we've always had kind of a private notion of children. Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven\u2019t had a very collective notion of these are our children.\u00a0 So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.<\/u>\u201d [Melissa Harris Perry, MSNBC host www.youtube.com\/watch?v=N3qtpdSQox0]\n\nAnd when you look at this statement, and there are many others I could produce.\u00a0 I started to research this through the assistance of an organization called The Homeschool Legal Defense Advocacy Fund and they produce scholar after scholar after scholar from various journal articles arguing that these children really don\u2019t belong to parents; they belong to the collective society as a whole.\u00a0 So we\u2019re living in this time period where even the nuclear family and the authority structure of the family unit is under attack and assault and is being challenged.\n\nHow, then, if kids don\u2019t belong to their parents how is the other side going to wrest control of children?\u00a0 What is the strategy?\u00a0 Well, the strategy is a strategy that\u2019s been in play for a long time, it\u2019s called (quote) \u201ceducation,\u201d (close quote).\u00a0 Abraham Lincoln, I think summarized it the best and he said this, this is a quote typically attributed to Abraham Lincoln.\u00a0 He said, \u201cThe philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.\u201d \u00a0[Cited in Mark A. Beliles and Stephen K. McDowell, America's Providential History<\/em> (Charlottesville, VA: Providence, 1989), 95.]\n\nIn other words, if you want to alter the direction of the society you need to start to influence what is taught in the schoolhouse because what is taught in the schoolhouse can actually be used as a tool of propaganda to sever a generation from their parents.\u00a0 Now this idea of emphasis on education is something that we, as Biblicists, used to understand.\u00a0\u00a0 We used to understand this very clearly.\u00a0 In fact, this is a citation from what is called the Old Satan Deluder Law.\u00a0 This was the origin of public schools in America and this is what it says, \u201cIt\u201d and this was originally created in the 1600\u2019s, I think it was around 1611, this is how public schools in America started:\u00a0 \u201cIt being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan<\/u>, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures<\/u>, as in former time\u2026It is therefore ordered\u2026that after the Lord hath increased the settlement\u2026they shall\u2026appoint one within their town, to teach all such children to read\u2026they shall set up a grammar school to instruct youths\u2026\u201d \u00a0\u00a0[Church of the Holy Trinity v. U.S<\/em>., 143 U.S. 457, 467 (1892)]\n\nWhat was the beginning of public schools in the United States of America?\u00a0 Public schools in the United States of America, going back to the very beginning, those early colonists, was to teach the Bible.\u00a0 Now you\u2019ll notice it makes a reference there to ignorance of the Scripture \u201cin former time.\u201d\u00a0 What \u201cformer time\u201d is it talking about?\u00a0 You have to begin to think about this historically.\u00a0 Those that came to this country to establish it, those that came to this country to set it up were the children, if you will, of the Protestant Reformation.\n\nWhat was the Protestant Reformation all about?\u00a0 It was a return to the Bible, because you see, prior to the Protestant Reformation, because of illiteracy and other factors, the only people that really had access to the Bible were the clergy.\u00a0 And what happened is the clergy, and this is what upset Martin Luther so much, we sang a song this morning by the great church reformer, Martin Luther, what upset him so much (in addition to unbiblical behavior of the clergy) was the sale of indulgences, which was the idea that you could spring Uncle Harry, or whoever, from purgatory if you paid the right price.\u00a0 And this is what was\u00a0 used to manipulate and deceive the people, making the church of Jesus Christ at that time into a money-making operation.\u00a0 There was a little phrase that went something like this: \u00a0\u201cWhen the coin in the coffer rings the soul from purgatory springs.\u201d\n\nIn other words, they could manipulate the people because the people really had no access to or a knowledge of the Bible.\u00a0 And what the Protestant Reformation was all about was returning to a knowledge of the Scripture.\u00a0 That\u2019s why there was such an emphasis in the Reformation on teaching people to read. \u00a0And so when the children of that Reformation came to these shores they did not want to replicate the nightmare, which by the way they called The Dark Ages, which existed prior to the Protestant Reformation, so they set\u00a0 up (and it\u2019s expressed here in this Old Satan Deluder Law) the very thing we need to do is we need to teach children how to read so they can read the Bible.\u00a0 We need to teach them grammar because the Bible was written in human language, so we do not replicate the Dark Ages, because Satan\u2019s chief objective is to keep people ignorant of the Scripture.\u00a0 That\u2019s the reference there to \u201cthe former time.\u201d\u00a0 And this was the origin of public schools in the United States.\n\nThere\u2019s another reason the founders of this country wanted the Bible to be first and foremost in the thinking of the youth.\u00a0 They wanted to create a society that was free.\u00a0 And that\u2019s one of the things that stands out when you study the United States Constitution; it only spans, including the Bill of Rights, about eleven pages.\u00a0 It\u2019s very different than laws that are passed today that sometimes stack three thousand pages.\u00a0\u00a0 And the United States government at the federal level, congressional level, is only authorized to do twenty things; public education and health care and other things, prescription benefits, social security, they\u2019re not even on the list.\u00a0 These are things that the government has gotten into over time.\u00a0 And so they wanted to create a society with limited government that was free.\n\nThe problem is if\u00a0 you create a free society with limited government power how do you control the masses?\u00a0 People have to be controlled by something, don\u2019t they?\u00a0 And if they won\u2019t be controlled by the state they have to learn to control themselves.\u00a0 And that\u2019s why there was such an emphasis on the Ten Commandments and the Bible in early Colonial America.\u00a0 That was the tool that all of our forebearers understood was the instrument by which people could govern themselves and if they could govern themselves they wouldn\u2019t have to be controlled by some overarching government bureaucracy or apparatus.\u00a0\u00a0 This comes out very clearly in their writings.\n\nHere\u2019s a quote from Robert Charles Winthrop who was our Speaker of the House of Representa\u00adtives from 1847-1849; it captures so well this idea.\u00a0 He says, \u201cAll societies of men must be governed in some way or other. The less they may have of stringent State Government, the more they must have of individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the Word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible, or by the bayonet.\u201d\u00a0 Somebody\u2019s got to control people and if we\u2019re not going to have a police state, a surveillance society, if we\u2019re going to have a free society something has to be in place whereby people can control themselves; it\u2019s either the Bible or the bayonet.\u00a0 He goes on and he says, \u201cIt may do for other countries and other governments to talk about the State supporting religion. Here, under our own free institutions, it is Religion which must support the State.\u201d\u00a0 [Robert Winthrop, Addresses and Speeches on Various Occasions<\/em> (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1852), 172. Speech to the Massachusetts Bible Society (1849-05-28).]\n\nJohn Adams, the second President of the United States of America summed this up very, very nicely.\u00a0 He said, \u201cWe have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.\u201d\n\n[Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, 11 October 1798, in Revolutionary Services and Civil life of General William Hull (New York, 1848), pp 265-6. There are some differences in the version that appeared in The Works of John Adams<\/em> (Boston, 1854), vol. 9. pp. 228-29.]\n\nThis great experiment that we call liberty and freedom is only going to work in a culture that is Bible focused.\u00a0 And going back to the Old Satan Deluder Law the first act of public schools is to teach the Scripture to you.\u00a0 It\u2019s amazing how we\u2019ve lost sight of this history.\n\nThomas Jefferson, probably the least religious of our Founding Fathers, he made some strange statements about the Trinity later in his life; he\u2019s generally considered the least religious of our Founding Fathers, actually made a study, and very few people know this, he made an in-depth study of the great philosophers of the world, philosophers that most of us never really read.\u00a0 And he compared those philosophers to Jesus Christ and Thomas Jefferson said here\u2019s what makes Jesus different than all of those other philosophers: \u00a0\u201cJesus\u201d Jefferson said, \u201c\u2018\u2026pushed His scrutinies into the heart of man; erected His tribunals in the region of His thoughts, and purified the waters at the fountain head.\u201d\u00a0 [Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies<\/em>, 3:509, \u201cSyllabus of an Estimate of the Merits of the Doctrines of Jesus Compare with Those of Others,\u201d letter to Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803.]\n\nJefferson said I\u2019ve studied all of these great philosophers and let me tell you why Jesus IS the highest and the best philosopher in my estimation.\u00a0 He put His principles into people\u2019s hearts.\u00a0 And no doubt Jefferson, when he made that statement was referring to the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus makes the statement that if you are angry unjustifiably with your brother you are a murderer already.\u00a0 Matthew 5:21-22.\u00a0 [Matthew 5:21-22, \u201cYou have heard that the ancients were told, \u2018YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT MURDER\u2019 and \u2018Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.\u2019 [22] But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, \u2018You good-for-nothing,\u2019 shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, \u2018You fool,\u2019 shall be guilty enough to go<\/em> into the fiery hell.\u201d]\n\nIf you are in lust after somebody that you are not married to, sexually you are already in an adulterer.\u00a0 And Jefferson said of all of the philosophers of the world I\u2019ve never seen anything like this man, Jesus Christ.\u00a0 And so the Founding Fathers saw the Christian truth or biblical truth as the tool by which people would govern themselves, and if they could govern themselves and not steal, and rip each other off, and maim each other, and murder each other, and rape each other, then there was no purpose for a giant, giant government, a surveillant society to control people from cradle to grave.\u00a0 This is the origin of America and I hear these voices today saying let\u2019s kick the Bible out of the schoolhouse, let\u2019s kick God out of the schoolhouse, and nothing is more 180 degrees backwards from the way that this republic was set up.\n\nSo how has this been working for us, this movement away from the Bible?\u00a0 As we\u2019ve moved away from the Bible on basic morality the state has to grow larger and larger and larger and larger to control the masses.\u00a0 For example, think how many times you are on camera every single day.\u00a0 Think of almost everywhere I look, in an intersection today there\u2019s a camera monitoring my behavior.\u00a0 I walk in a bank to make a basic financial transaction, a deposit, withdrawal, whatever, I\u2019m being watched by a camera.\u00a0 Where I work the security system is in place, I\u2019m being watched by a camera.\n\nIn fact, according to one article that I read the average person in the United Kingdom (and keep in mind this is an older article, 2004) the average person in the United Kingdom is on camera 300 times a day.\u00a0 Is that not a bit excessive?\n\nBut you see, this is the consequences of moving away from the Bible and a basic philosophy of self-government.\u00a0 I have used this quote before by David Barton, he says:\u00a0 \u201cWe all know ignorance of the law is no excuse. If you violate a law, you suffer the penalty for it... If you take the U.S. code as it exists right now, today, if you read 700 pages a week of the U.S. code,\u201d I want to be a good citizen, right, I want to read the laws of the Land, I\u2019ll read the U.S. code, how long would that take me to read it? \u201c\u2026 national calculations are that you can finish the U.S. code in only 25,000 years,\u201d\u00a0 if you read about 700 pages a week.\u00a0 [Erica Ricz, \u201cDavid Barton Explains How You Could Be Committing Three Felonies a Day,\u201d online: http:\/\/www.theblaze.com\/stories\/2014\/11\/04\/david-barton-explains-how-you-could-be-committing-three-felonies-a-day\/<\/a>, November 4, 2014, accessed 15 December 2014.\u201d]\n\nWhat has happened in our society is the explosion of the State in terms of its growth.\u00a0 The State has to get larger and larger and larger to monitor the behavior of its citizenry.\u00a0 And the answer to that is why do we do it?\u00a0 Because we have nothing left to govern ourselves anymore; we\u2019ve kicked the Bible, we\u2019ve kicked God, we\u2019ve kicked Christianity almost out of every institution.\u00a0 The Founding Fathers well understood that if you remove Christianity you remove the force of self-restraint thereby necessitating the gargantuan growth of government that we see.\n\nSo we, as Christians and conservatives, at one time, understood the importance of teaching the youth the Scripture.\u00a0 We did not want a repeat of the Dark Ages of the Protestant Reformation and we want to live in freedom because after all, a self-governing society is a free society.\n\nBut let me tell you something; the other side of the equation understands this as well.\u00a0 They understand what can be conducted and how a society can begin to shift through the process of education.\u00a0 I\u2019ve mentioned before the ten goals of the Communist Manifesto published in 1848.\u00a0 I\u2019ve made reference to number 1, The abolition of private property.\u00a0 I\u2019ve made reference to number 3, The abolition of inheritance rights which destroys the nuclear family.\u00a0 Look at number 10 there, what do they want to do? \u00a0Free Education for All Children in Public Schools. Combination of Education with Industrial Production.\u00a0 They understand what Abraham Lincoln said, that\u00a0 \u201cThe philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.\u201d\n\nAnd this is a strategy that the other side has been using from time immemorial to remove children from the authority of their parents.\u00a0 Let\u2019s get these children to think differently than their parents and if we can get them to think differently than their parents we can control the direction of a society.\n\nWoodrow Wilson, who was probably one of our most progressive Presidents ever, the father of The League of Nations, somebody that was very racist at his core, said this, and he was actually the President, at one time, of an Ivy League Institution.\u00a0 Notice what he says: \u201cI have often said that the use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible.\u201d\u00a0 [Woodrow Wilson, \u201cThe Power of Christian Young Men,\u201d in Selected Addresses and Papers of Woodrow Wilson<\/em>(New York: Boni and Liverlight, 1918), 49]\u00a0 In other words, education itself will become the tool by which we can steal the children away from the value system of their parents.\n\nAnd so what is now the public religion of America.\u00a0 It\u2019s not Christianity; it\u2019s what\u2019s called humanism.\u00a0 Humanism is something you can read about in a book called Humanism 2000<\/em>, there was a Humanist Manifesto<\/em> published early on in 1933, it was published again in 1973.\u00a0 I would encourage you to find those documents, they are easily accessible online, and to read them.\u00a0 It\u2019s been kind of updated a little bit in a document called Humanism 2000<\/em>; it reads almost like a doctrinal statement of a church.\n\nThis is what we believe, these are our doctrines, and so here they are:\u00a0 Number 1, The non-existence or irrelevancy of God.\u00a0 God, if He exists, the humanists say, is irrelevant.\u00a0 If God is not the center of all things when who becomes the center of all things.\u00a0 Man now becomes the center of all things.\u00a0 That\u2019s why this is called \u201cHumanism.\u201d\u00a0 Of course these folks believe in the reality of evolution, \u201cfrom the goo to the zoo to you\u201d is a scientific fact.\u00a0 They believe therefore that man is a naked ape or an evolved animal rather than a special creature made in the image of the Creator.\u00a0 They do not believe in absolute morals or values; they believe, for example, that values are situational or need to be clarified depending upon what the circumstances may be.\u00a0\u00a0 So a universal principle like don\u2019t steal, don\u2019t murder, is not something that is binding on everyone, it pertains to the situation.\u00a0 This is called values clarification.\u00a0 So they believe in the absence of any absolute morals and values.\n\nThey have complete confidence in the scientific method to solve the world\u2019s problems, even though evolution itself is not a scientifically proven fact.\u00a0 For something to be scientific it has to be observable, testable and repeatable.\u00a0 Since evolution allegedly happens over billions of years no one has ever seen one species turn into another.\u00a0\u00a0 They believe that the goal of humanity is a one-world government, globalism is the answer to all of our problems.\n\nNow what are these?\u00a0 These are faith propositions.\u00a0 These are doctrines that are being taught over and over and over again to the youth of America.\u00a0 You see, a lot of people look at education today as if it\u2019s morally neutral.\u00a0 Let me tell you something; nothing is neutral.\u00a0 Neutrality is a myth; if you vacate biblical truth it\u2019s got to be replaced by something else and this actually is what is happening.\n\nAnd the humanist, a long time ago, telegraphed what they were going to do.\u00a0 They said we\u2019re going to take over the school system and we\u2019re going to use the school system to ban your religion and teach our religion. \u00a0Now here\u2019s a quote from Charles Francis Potter, it\u2019s entitled Humanism, A New Religion.<\/em>\u00a0 And notice the publication date, 1930.\u00a0 This is what he says, a very open statement in his book.\u00a0 He says, \u201cEducation is thus a most powerful ally of Humanism, and every public school is a school of Humanism. What can the theistic Sunday-schools, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?\u201d [Charles Francis Potter, Humanism: A New Religion<\/em> (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930), 128]\n\nAnd we look around at our conservative Bible churches and we see a lot of gray hair; we often wonder why the youth are not attracted more to our message.\u00a0 And the answer is these people got to the youth before we did.\u00a0 The humanists told us what they were going to do and they went out and they did it.\u00a0 In fact, I was looking at one particular study and in that particular study it indicated this, it\u2019s from a book called Who Controls Your Child<\/em>, and it says this: \u201cDuring twelve years of schooling a children spends more than 11,000 hours in the classroom.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s not even including extra-curricular activities, and it\u2019s almost as if the school system itself has become, to a degree a replacement of the church.\n\nHere\u2019s another quote from a humanist, John Dunphy, this was made in 1983 and he writes\u2026 \u00a0and it\u2019s interesting to me that you get into the literature how open these people are about their true intentions.\u00a0 He says: \u201cI am convinced that the battle for humankind\u2019s future must be waged and won\u201d where? At the ballot box?\u00a0 No!\u00a0 Through protests?\u00a0 No!\u00a0 He says it \u201cmust be waged and won in the public school classrooms by teachers who correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call the Divinity in every human being.\u201d\u00a0 Look at this last line.\u00a0 \u201cThese teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers.\u201d\u00a0 [John Dunphy, \u201cA Religion for the New Age,\u201d The Humanist<\/em>\u00a0 (January\/February 1983): 26]\n\nHe\u2019s indicating here that we\u2019re going to turn schools into churches and instead of having a rabid fundamentalist, like Dr. Andy Woods for example, in front of us teaching the Word of God we\u2019re going to have rabid fundamentalists teaching a new kind of religion, the religion of humanism.\n\nThis is a citation from Charles M. Pierce, a Harvard psychiatrist.\u00a0 He made this statement in 1973 to a think-tank, a public presentation.\u00a0 And notice what he says to this educational group.\u00a0 He says:\n\n\u201cEvery child in America entering school at the age of five<\/u> is mentally ill\u201d now you\u2019ll notice that I underlined \u201cage of five\u201d because what you constantly hear from politicians, we need the kids earlier and earlier and earlier.\u00a0 And the motive always masquerades as we need to prepare them for life, prepare them for education.\n\nMay I just say\u00a0 to you that there\u2019s something far more pernicious taking place; it is the alteration of a worldview; it\u2019s the way to change one generation\u2019s values so that it\u2019s different than their parents, what Woodrow Wilson said.\u00a0 \u201cEvery child in America entering school at the age of five<\/u> is mentally ill\u201d why? \u201cbecause he comes to school with certain allegiances\u201d <\/u>\u00a0to what? Number one, \u201cto our founding fathers<\/u>,\u201d number 2, \u201ctoward our elected officials,\u201d number 3, \u201ctoward his parents<\/u>,\u201d number 4, \u201ctoward a belief in a supernatural being,\u201d \u00a0number 4, \u201cand toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity<\/u>. It\u2019s up to you as teachers\u201d speaking to a public educational group as a psychiatrist, \u201cIt\u2019s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well by creating\u201d what? \u201cthe international child of the future<\/u>.\u201d\u00a0 [Chester M. Pierce, Harvard psychiatrist, speaking as an expert in public education at the 1973 International Education Seminar.]\n\nI\u2019m not saying that everybody, and I have relatives in public education, everybody in public education somehow has some kind of evil motive.\u00a0 What I\u2019m saying is the system itself has been intoxicated with a philosophy and people could be very faithful in their role in public education but they are under a system which I would argue is anti-God.\u00a0 Why are these children mentally ill?\u00a0 Well, first of all, they love America; they love our Founding Fathers, they love their parents and they love Jesus.\u00a0 So what we have to do is we have to take their values, which were obviously instilled in them by mom and dad and we have to, over the course of 11,000 hours of the classroom begin to alter these values.\n\nYou remember the good old Pledge of Allegiance.\u00a0 By the way, I\u2019m the product of public schools, I saw a lot of things in public education I didn\u2019t like but let me just say to something to you, I graduated from high school in 1985, looking at some of the things that are happening now in public education shows me what a world of difference it is than it was even back in 1985.\u00a0 I remember waking up or coming to class every day saying the Pledge of Allegiance.\u00a0 You remember the Pledge of Allegiance. \u201c I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.\u201d\u00a0 That was just a given.\u00a0 Do you want to see the new Pledge of Allegiance.\u00a0 This was reported by Kerby Anderson, coming out of some of the school districts in Boulder, Colorado, 2007.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the new rendition; you ready:\n\n\u201cI pledge allegiance to the flag and my constitutional rights with which it comes.\u201d\u00a0 Wait a minute, hold the phone, I thought our rights came from God.\u00a0 You\u2019ll notice how God Himself has been removed from the new pledge of allegiance.\u00a0 Our rights come from a document, our rights come from the earth of something of that nature.\u00a0 And once you remove God from the equation of your rights your right could exist one day and the next day it could disappear.\u00a0 That\u2019s why this is such a subtle alteration in the way a new generation thinks.\u00a0 \u201cI pledge allegiance to the flag and my constitutional rights with which it comes. \u00a0And to the diversity, in which our nation stands, one nation, part of one planet<\/u>, with liberty, freedom, choice and justice for all.\u201d\u00a0 [Globalist Pledge of Allegiance in U.S. School, Boulder High School<\/strong>, October 2007, Kerby Anderson<\/em>]\n\nNotice this \u201cone planet\u201d business.\u00a0 Remember this quote from Pierce, \u201cThe goal of public education is not to create an American who loves America\u2019s Founding Fathers, loves the United States Constitution, who is steeped in documents that our Founding Fathers wrote,\u201d like the Federalist Papers or the anti-Federalist Papers, all that is so far gone.\u00a0 We want to create an international child, a global child of the future.\u00a0 We want to create children that know a lot more about other nations of the earth than their own distinct Judeo-Christian heritage coming from America because after all, at the end of the day the humanist manifesto clearly states that the goal is not nationalism but globalism.\u201d\n\nWhat an environment we find ourselves in.\u00a0 Everybody today is upset about Common Core, O.B.E. Outcome-Based Education.\u00a0 Let me tell you something, Common core, Outcome-Based Education, Goals 2000, all of these are natural and logical emanations from humanism.\u00a0 The humanist\u2019s told us back in 1930 what they were going to do and they\u2019ve gone in and done it.\u00a0 The problem isn\u2019t Common Core, the problem is an overarching philosophy that gives rise to new educational philosophies like Common Core.\u00a0 This is something right out of paganism.\n\nNotice, I had you turn to the book of Deuteronomy, hold your place there but go over to Daniel 1 for just a minute.\u00a0 Daniel 1:3-7, I want you to see what Nebuchadnezzar did.\u00a0 Nebuchadnezzar, of course, being that King of Babylon who came to power and took the children of Israel, the youths of Judah, into captivity and immediately when he took those teenagers into captivity, Daniel being one, Daniel\u2019s three friends being among the others, he began to reprogram their minds.\n\nIt says in Daniel 1, verses 3-7, \u201cThen the king ordered Ashpenaz, the chief of his officials, to bring in some of the sons of Israel, including some of the royal family and of the nobles, [4] youths in whom was no defect, who were good-looking, showing intelligence in every branch of<\/em> wisdom, endowed with understanding and discerning knowledge, and who had ability for serving in the king\u2019s court; and he ordered him<\/em> to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans,\u201d right there at the end of verse 4.\u00a0 Nebuchadnezzar said we\u2019ve just taken Judah as a vassal state and what I want to do is I want to find the best and the brightest\u00a0 youths, not the adults, the youths, and I want to reprogram the way they think.\u00a0 And I\u2019m going to put them under an extensive program of indoctrination, in this case it lasted three years, because I\u2019m going to use the best and the brightest to talk the rest of the population into coming along peaceably.\n\nAnd what you have to begin to understand is Nebuchadnezzar was nobody\u2019s fool.\u00a0 Nebuchadnezzar did not come and immediately subjugate the population of Judah as he came from Babylon but he came, the Bible tells us, in three waves.\u00a0 He came first in 605, that\u2019s when Daniel was taken into captivity.\u00a0 He came, second, in 597, that\u2019s when the prophet, Ezekiel, was taken into captivity.\u00a0 And then finally he came in for the final hit job against the Solomonic temple and destroyed the city and the sanctuary in 586.\n\nBut prior to the destruction of the temple Nebuchadnezzar first, all the way back in 605, went for the kids.\u00a0 He went for the youth because he knew that if he could get the youth on his side and reprogram their values they could be used as propaganda tools to talk the rest of the population into settling peaceably in Babylon and submitting to the authority of the state.\u00a0 Daniel 1:5, \u201cThe king appointed for them a daily ration from the king\u2019s choice food and from the wine which he drank, and appointed<\/em> that they should be educated\u201d you might want to just underline that word \u201ceducated\u201d and write the word \u201cpropagandized\u201d instead, \u201cthey should be educated for three years,\u201d so a three year indoctrination course, \u201cat the end of which they were to enter the king\u2019s personal service.\u201d\n\nVerse 6, \u201cNow among them from the sons of Judah were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.\u201d\u00a0 You say this is weird, I thought those guys were named Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego.\u201d\u00a0 You\u2019ll notice that the Bible does not give them the name Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, those are pagan names.\u00a0 Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah were their Jewish names.\u00a0 Now I have studied under a lot of Hebrew scholars and some of the very best of them, like Edwin Yamauchi<\/em> and others, will tell you linguistically that each Jewish name brings out a different feature of God.\n\nIn other words, these three Hebrew youths and Daniel came out of families in Judaism that honored Yahweh, and they named their children appropriately.\u00a0 Verse 7 says, \u201cThen the commander of the officials assigned\u201d watch this, \u201cnew<\/em> names to them; and to Daniel he assigned the name<\/em> Belteshazzar, to Hananiah Shadrach, to Mishael Meshach and to Azariah Abed-nego.\u201d\u00a0 Edwin Yamauchi and these other scholars will tell you that each name that was altered was designed to bring out a different element or attribute of Babylonian paganism\u2014polytheism.\n\nSo you\u2019ll notice what Nebuchadnezzar did; he went after their minds and then he actually re-named them so they would have no remembrance or no vestige or no connection to their heritage.\u00a0 And let me tell you something else; in the Bible when you name something that\u2019s a sign of authority.\u00a0 God, all the way through early Genesis, is naming the things that He had created because He had authority over what He had created and that\u2019s the whole significance of animals being brought to Adam, (Genesis 2:18 and following) animals being brought to Adam so that Adam could name the animals.\u00a0 God was saying Adam, I have authority over the animals, now I\u2019m putting you in authority over the animals.\n\nSo Nebuchadnezzar comes along with this renaming and Nebuchadnezzar says I\u2019m the boss now; I\u2019m an authority over these youths.\u00a0 The rest of the book of Daniel, though, says you\u2019re not the authority; there is a God in heaven that rules, whose principles transcend your pagan belief system.\u00a0 What I\u2019m simply trying to describe is a strategy or a philosophy that the youth of America are currently under, the philosophy of alteration through education, the philosophy of altering values, this is not the first time Satan has ever tried something of this magnitude; it\u2019s the strategy that dates all the way back to the book of Daniel, perhaps even earlier.\n\nAnd what I want to communicate and get across in this message is this: that is NOT the design of God, that is NOT the plan of God.\u00a0 That is not something that God ever abdicated to another source.\u00a0 The Bible is clear from Genesis through Revelation that parents, not institutions, not even churches, have authority over children. \u00a0You say well where are you getting this from?\u00a0 That\u2019s why I originally had you open to Deuteronomy 6:6-7, this is what God said to Moses just before the nation of Israel was ready to enter Canaan in the days of Joshua.\u00a0 Now notice he doesn\u2019t say here I want you to take all your kids and I want you to enroll them in Canaanite schools to learn the ways of the Canaanites.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t say that.\n\nWhat He says is this: after you eradicate the Canaanites here\u2019s what I want you to do, this is called the Hebrew Shema<\/em>, which is a Hebrew word that means listen. \u201cHear O Israel, the Lord your God is one.\u00a0 [Deuteronomy 6:4]\u00a0 \u00a0When it says \u201cHear\u201d that\u2019s Shema<\/em>, in other words, listen up folks, this is important.\u00a0 \u201cThese words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.\u201d\u00a0 What \u201cwords\u201d?\u00a0 The Word of God.\u00a0 [7] \u201cYou shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.\u201d\u00a0 The assignment of transferring spiritual knowledge from one generation to the next is the responsibility of parents.\u00a0 It\u2019s so clear, \u201cYou\u201d that\u2019s the parents, \u201cshall teach them diligently to your sons\u201d and daughters; there\u2019s nothing here about a secondary source teaching them, the parents are to teach.\n\nNotice as\u00a0 you go about a book or so to the right, notice Joshua 4 and notice, if you will, verses 19-23, same strategy, same generation.\u00a0 Joshua 4:19-23 says, \u201cNow the people came up from the Jordan on the tenth of the first month and camped at Gilgal on the eastern edge of Jericho. [20] Those twelve stones which they had taken from the Jordan, Joshua set up at Gilgal. [21] He said to the sons of Israel,\u201d now watch this, not if, but \u201c\u2018When your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, \u2018What are these stones?\u2019 [22] then you shall inform your children, saying, \u2018Israel crossed this Jordan on dry ground.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Verse 23, \u201cFor the LORD your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you had crossed, just as the LORD your God had done to the Red Sea, which He dried up before us until we had crossed; [24] that all the peoples\u201d notice verse 24, \u201call the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the LORD is mighty, so that you may fear the LORD your God forever.\u201d\n\nGod says here\u2019s what I want you to do now that you\u2019ve crossed the Jericho miraculously: I want you to take twelve stones and I want you to set them up as a monument because the day is going to come when these little kids, that weren\u2019t here to see My hand or maybe even children that weren\u2019t even born yet, are going to ask who?\u00a0 Their Sunday School teacher?\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t say that!\u00a0 They\u2019re going to ask their fathers, hey dad, what are these stones doing here?\u00a0 And now is your teaching moment, father; you are to explain to them how the hand of the Lord dried up the Jordan and then if you want to get into history a little bit you are to explain to them how forty years before that the Lord brought the nation of Israel miraculously out of Egyptian bondage and captivity, passing through the Red Sea.\n\nHow in the world was a child ever supposed to know what God had done with the Jordan, with the battle at Jericho, and with the crossing of the Red Sea.\u00a0 It was supposed to be transferred from parent to child.\u00a0 That\u2019s how it\u2019s supposed to work.\u00a0 Sadly we learn from Judges 1 and 2 that there arose a generation that did not know God or what God had done for Israel. \u00a0\u00a0The ball got dropped.\u00a0 The channel of communication got shut down.\u00a0 Dads got too busy with other things, working, watching the Super Bowl, important things like that, materialism, keeping up with the Jones\u2019 and the knowledge wasn\u2019t being transferred.\u00a0 And a whole generation wandered away from God because of parental neglect.\n\nProverbs 22:6, notice that, Solomon says\u2026 about 400 years later, \u201cTrain up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not depart from it.\u201d\u00a0 You say well, these are all interesting Old Testament passages, does the New Testament teach this?\u00a0 I\u2019m glad you asked.\u00a0 Notice the book of Ephesians, chapter 6 and verse 4, it\u2019s a divine principle from Genesis to Revelation.\u00a0 \u201cFathers, do not provoke your children to anger,\u201d in other words, pile things on top of them that are unreasonable, \u201cbut bring them up in the discipline and the\u201d what? instruction, \u201cinstruction of the Lord.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s New Testament.\n\nAll the way through the Bible you see a channel of spiritual knowledge is to take place as the husband takes his role in God as the discipler of his family.\u00a0 And if a man in a Christian home will not do this God is holding that man responsible.\u00a0 That\u2019s what the Bible teaches.\n\nNow I, as a father, can loan, if I want to, my child to a school district, to a school system, if God leads me that way I might say to myself well, I don\u2019t know a lot about algebra or trig or geometry, maybe someone can teach that better than I can so I will loan that child to a school system but biblically the Bible states you may loan them to a school system but you NEVER relinquish authority and control over those children.\n\nAnd yet what you have happening here is Satan is at work using this ancient system of education outside of biblical priorities, outside of biblical parameters to re-program children.\u00a0 So when I am getting ready to vote for someone or not vote for someone I want to know something clearly.\u00a0 I don\u2019t care if they\u2019re running for President or dog catcher; I want to understand, do you grasp the fact that my child belongs to me?\u00a0 Do you grasp the fact that any tentacles\u00a0 you put into the mind of my child through video games or propaganda or education I\u2019m responsible to God for? Do you get that?\u00a0 Do you understand that?\u00a0 Because if I go and cast a vote for you and you don\u2019t understand that basic thing I am voting against a basic principle of God.\n\nAnd I have my ear to the ground, Mr. or Mrs. Candidate, are you going to empower parents or are you going to go the way of some of these individuals I quoted earlier, where you\u2019re usurping parental authority, you\u2019re filling my son\u2019s or daughter\u2019s mind with concepts or ideas that are antithetical to my value system.\u00a0 Do you think that\u2019s\u00a0 your right to do that?\u00a0 Because if you think it\u2019s your right you\u2019re not getting my vote.\u00a0 I\u2019m going with God and what He says.\n\nAre candidates empowering parents?\u00a0 Yes or no?\u00a0 Simple question.\u00a0 There are simple ways they can do this.\u00a0 If my son or daughter is being subjected to material in a classroom that I find objectionable are you going to allow me to opt my child out of that?\u00a0 Or how about this one\u2014who does the money follow?\u00a0 Should my child follow the tax money wherever it goes? I think that\u2019s an outdated and antiquated philosophy; I think it should be the other way around.\u00a0 I think I ought to be able to pick where I want to send my child to school, public, private, parochial, religious, and I think the money ought to follow the child, not the child following the money.\u00a0 And see, there are basic core and fundamental questions we could ask concerning the value system of particular candidates, whether we embrace them and their message or not.\n\nAnd it\u2019s so frustrating to see our political scene being turned into a food fight and something out of a reality TV show that nobody ever gets around to asking and answering these basic fundamental questions.\u00a0 These are the questions I have.\n\nBeyond that I want to know, are you going to harass home schooling, because if I choose to educate my daughter or my son in my home am I going to be put under governmental suspicion because of that decision.\u00a0 You say well gee, Andy, you\u2019re really stepping out on a limb here; I mean, this is Texas after all, this is the United States of America, certainly you understand you have the right to educate your children in your home.\u00a0 Let me tell you something; there is a global war taking place as I speak on home schooling.\n\nLet me cite to you an article, this article was written by Thaddeus\u00a0 Baklinski, the title of it is A German Judge Bars a Homeschooling Family From Leaving the Country. <\/em>It\u2019s dated November 2013.\u00a0 Notice what it says?\u00a0 \u201cA German judge who ordered the forced removal of the children of a homeschooling family in August has blocked the parents' request to let the family emigrate to another European country where homeschooling is legal, according to<\/a> the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). On August 29th<\/sup>, a team of 20 social workers, police officers, and special agents stormed the Wunderlich\u201d if I\u2019m pronouncing that German word right, \u201cthe Wunderlich family\u2019s residence near Darmstadt, Germany and forcibly removed all four of the family\u2019s children, ages 7\u201314.\u00a0 The stated reason for this action was that the parents, Dirk and Petra Wunderlich, continued to homeschool their children in defiance of a German ban on home schooling.\u00a0 The German high court is on record ordering suppression\u201d watch this, \u201cof \u00a0\u2018parallel societies,\u2019 mentioning homeschoolers specifically.\u201d\n\nNotice this vocabulary, \u201cparallel society.\u201d\u00a0 Here is what the New World Order Globalist folks are trying to prevent; we don\u2019t want a kingdom within a kingdom.\u00a0 We don\u2019t want children holding to a certain set of immutable values and characteristics which are not embraced by the State.\u00a0 And so they have this little word that they use to describe such activity as a \u201cparallel society.\u201d\n\nLet me tell you something. When we educate at home, which is the decision\u00a0 the Lord, we believe, led, my wife and myself to do, we are not interested in teaching a bunch of values clarification, neo-Marxist, paganism wrapped up in a green package.\u00a0 We\u2019re interested, not in teaching social justice, we\u2019re interested in teaching the Word of God.\u00a0 We\u2019re interested in teaching my daughter how to read, how to write, how to do arithmetic, and all of the other stuff related to social justice and social engineering and values clarification, all these things we just are not going to include.\u00a0 And that\u2019s the decision we make.\n\nSo Mr. and Mrs. Candidate, I have a question for you; do you honor that?\u00a0 Do you respect that?\u00a0 Because you might be able to give a great speech but let me tell you something; if you can\u2019t answer this core question you are outside of the domain and the jurisdiction of God; you do not understand the first thing about biblical priorities and biblical concepts.\u00a0 I don\u2019t care what party you\u2019re a part of, I\u2019m just not going to vote for you.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to go find someone that thinks the way God thinks.\u00a0 A fundamental question folks; parental authority over children.\n\nWell what about theses others, public expressions of Christianity, oh my gosh, look at number 8, right to keep and bear arms\u2026is that in the Bible?\u00a0 Good grief.\u00a0 Well, that will probably take me two sermons to get through those so I\u2019m going to go ahead and close in prayer.\u00a0 But I\u2019m just trying to educate the body of Christ, Sugar Land Bible Church, that God has priorities.\u00a0 Ideas matter!\u00a0 And when we vote in any election are we really embracing biblical priorities.\n\nOf course it\u2019s possible someone could be here today that may not know Christ personally.\u00a0 Our strong exhortation here at Sugar Land Bible Church is simply to believe the gospel so that you can have the gift of eternal life.\u00a0 Jesus, through His death, burial, resurrection and ascension bridged the gap between God and man.\u00a0 He\u2019s done all the hard work and what we do is we trust and rely upon what He has done, rather than rely upon ourselves.\u00a0 And the moment that happens we are given the gift of eternal life. \u00a0The whole package is as simple as the Gospel of John, chapter 5 and verse 24 where Jesus articulated so beautifully the gospel.\u00a0 \u201cTruly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.\u201d\n\nIf the Spirit of God is placing you under conviction, if there\u2019s some sort of tugging taking place in your heart, you\u2019re not clear about where you would spend eternity, go ahead and receive, right there where you\u2019re seated, the free gift of eternal life.\u00a0 You receive that by believing or trusting what Jesus Christ has done.\u00a0 If it\u2019s something you have done or something you\u2019re now doing then on the authority of the Word of God you have just altered your eternal destiny.\u00a0 If it\u2019s something you need more information on I\u2019m available after the service to talk.\u00a0 Shall we pray.\n\nFather, we are grateful today for a different set of messages than perhaps what we\u2019re\u00a0 used to. We\u2019re thankful, Father, that the Word of God is not silent on things taking place in the culture.\u00a0 I do pray, Father, that You would allow the full counsel of the Word of God to be taught here in such a way that we would be informed, not just about how to get to heaven, as important as that is, but civic life and involvement.\u00a0 Bring, Father, a refreshment and a rekindling to our souls as we go through some of this material that may seem to some as controversial, but remind us of Your value system and the things that You have set in place long ago.\u00a0 We ask that\u00a0 You will do this great work in our minds and our hearts.\u00a0 We lift these things up in Jesus name.\u00a0 And God\u2019s people said\u2026.","series_sermon_number":""},"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t