My message is one that has characterized my
whole thinking pattern for the last 15 years.
I can't say that it captivated me entirely
then.
It's one that continues to grow, and someday
I would like to write a book entitled
The Battle for the Mind, for that's the
subject that I would communicate to you tonight.
It happened really a number of years ago
when all of us were worshiping at the
shrine of intellectualism.
That is, we thought that the ultimate goal
of man should be to get as much
education as possible.
That sounds very lofty and well-being and
certainly as well-intentioned.
We have spent billions and billions of dollars
in America preparing places where young people could
go and become educated.
As a pastor, one of my prayers, and
the pulpit committee of the church I serve,
also had this prayer that God would use
us to raise up young people.
And I watched young people come to the
altar or to that place in their heart
where it becomes an altar and they bow
before Jesus Christ and say, Lord, I give
my entire life to you for whatsoever you
see fit.
And we would counsel them to go to
a Christian college.
Many of them, unfortunately, could not go.
Their parents wouldn't help or they didn't have
enough faith to believe God would provide the
means, and so they went to secular schools.
And as a pastor, I watched many of
these young people gradually change.
As a matter of fact, the degree of
their change increased with the degrees they received
from secular institutions.
As a matter of fact, I had the
mistaken idea that if they just had enough
biblical orientation, that would preserve them.
And so we would try to give them
substitute teaching or preliminary teaching in the Word
of God and then send them off to
these mental think factories where the humanists would
get hold of them and into the intellectual
quicksand they would fall.
And by the time they came back after
nine months or certainly by two years, they
were talking a little different language.
They were critical of the church, its goals,
its objectives, its presupposition that the Bible is
the Word of God and that the Bible
has the key to the answer to the
problems that man has.
In any case, I had a rather startling
experience some years ago as a minister from
somewhere in the state of Utah would spend
his holidays in San Diego.
Pastored a Baptist church there, and we would
share ideas about the coming of Christ.
And he used to listen to me preach
out in the gymnasium at Scott West in
our evening services and enjoyed the charts that
I used to have made and so on.
And he would borrow many of my concepts.
I put him on the mailing list.
We sent him all of our printed material.
And he was an avid Bible student.
Then one summer he said, you know, I
just feel that God wants me to go
back to school and get a counseling degree.
And so I'm going to go back to
college and become a psychologist.
Well, he now has his Ph.D. degree
in psychology and is no longer interested in
the things of the evangelistic ministry of the
church.
He is still a Christian, but just within
the last few months has come out in
a national article in a magazine condemning me
for some of the concepts that I have
for helping people.
Now, he didn't use my name.
He learned to be much more polite than
that.
He just ridiculed ten steps for overcoming depression.
And each of his reasons for opposing these
ten steps to help people in the miseries
of depression are humanistically oriented.
As a matter of fact, after reacquainting with
him one time, he and his wife were
in San Diego and we had lunch together.
He said, I understand you have a national
family ministry.
How would it be if you schedule me
to speak sometime?
And I said, why don't you send me
some cassette recordings of the kind of family
messages you deliver?
And so I listened to him for three
hours and it only took 15 minutes to
realize I could not use this former man
of God and man of the Word.
Because now every time he opens his mouth,
he sounds like Adler or Jung or Freud
or even Skinner.
Now, he doesn't go quite as far as
Skinner, but to go anywhere with Skinner is
too far.
And you'll find that this is not a
rare experience.
As a matter of fact, it is more
infrequent that an individual is able to go
to a secular place for an education and
come away philosophically unscathed.
Because as Dr. Henry Brandt says, when you
get a PhD degree, you become the disciple
of an intellectual in order to get that
degree.
Pursuant to the attainment then, you adopt many
of the philosophies of that your leader.
It's no wonder then that many of these
new disciples coming out are imitating the philosophical
concepts that they learn on the college or
graduate school campus.
I would like to point out that here
at Christian Heritage College and at Christian High
School, Scott Memorial Baptist Church, and whatever other
entities the Lord leads us into, we are
committed to one basic principle, and that is
that the Bible is the infallible Word of
God.
All thought should be measured in the light
of the Word of God.
All human ideas and creativity should be judged
for accuracy by the Word of God.
Because the devil is a deceiver, and as
a roaring lion he goeth about seeking whom
he may devour.
Because the Bible uses such picturesque language, many
think of the devil going around in a
lion suit or in a red suit with
a long tail and a pitchfork in hand,
and as such he would deceive no one.
They forget that the Bible is also very
common in its references to Satan going about
as a minister of light.
And what better garb, not only as a
minister, but as a dignified, dedicated educator.
If the educator is educated to humanistic philosophy,
independent of God, as I'll show you in
a moment, he can be very harmful.
The greater his area of influence, his position
of prestige, the greater can be his detrimental
influence on young people's lives.
I'm sure you're aware of this concept.
This is a brain.
Dr. Duane Gish of our institute tells me
that the brain is made up of 10
billion brain cells.
Each brain cell has 10,000 connectors that
connects it with one each of 10,000
other brain cells.
That means that all of us have 120
trillion brain cell connections.
Now that boggles the mind.
However, it shouldn't, and if they're right connections,
you'll be able to receive everything I'm going
to say in a few moments.
Assuming that all your connectors are functioning properly,
turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 1,
where I believe God used the most intellectual
and best-trained man in the days of
the New Testament, committed to his will, and
the man most uniquely filled with his spirit,
to communicate what I call a concept of
education.
The apostle Paul was addressing a culture much
like our own.
The city of Corinth was a mercantile center.
It was a libertine center.
It was a center of much learning, always
learning, never coming to the knowledge of the
truth.
And in the quest for learning, many of
these individuals received Jesus Christ and were not
using their spiritual resources.
And so Paul challenged them with this concept.
In verse 17, he said, For Christ sent
me not to baptize, but to preach the
gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the
cross of Christ should be made of no
effect.
For the preaching of the cross is to
them that perish foolishness, but unto us who
are saved it is the power of God.
I believe this 18th verse is one of
my favorite verses in all of the scripture.
The gospel of Jesus Christ, though foolishness to
the world and its wisdom, and by the
way the wisdom of the world is causing
it to perish, it says, but to us
that believe it's the power of God.
Now the preaching of the cross is a
concept.
It is a philosophy.
It is a way of life that God
communicated in his word to mankind.
And as such, it is the power of
God.
Many of you are here tonight because of
the power of God, the effect of the
philosophy of God in the cross presented clearly,
you responded, and thus the power in your
life to make you a new creature has
come from that ideology.
Now in verse 19, he says, For it
is written, I will destroy the wisdom of
the wise and will bring to nothing the
understanding of the prudent.
Notice there is a form of wisdom called
the wisdom of the wise.
God is going to destroy it.
However, today it is mighty powerful for its
day of destruction has not come.
In verse 20, where is the wise?
Now this is God addressing the wise.
Where is the scribe?
Where is the disputer of this age?
Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of
this world?
Now that word foolish, by the way, is
futile.
The wisdom of this world is abject futility.
The wisdom of this world is bringing the
carnage, corruption, and not only mental, but physical
slavery of four-fifths of this world today.
It takes many forms, paganism, Judaism, intellectualism, heathenism,
and of course, humanism as we know it
in our country.
Verse 21, For after that, in the wisdom
of God, the world by wisdom knew not
God.
Now I want you to notice a very
profound concept here.
God says in his word that man by
man's wisdom will never know God.
I don't care who the philosopher is, he
can think and think and think until he
turns green and he will never come to
the knowledge of God.
I remember when I was a boy in
English class, Detroit, Michigan, we had a very
dedicated teacher that did much for me, but
I can always remember her mental picture of
the thinker.
We had her class about two in the
afternoon when we were all, you know, our
brain was functioning in molasses and we were
tired, and she would try to awaken us
and say, young people, you're not thinking.
Picture yourself like the thinker down in front
of the Detroit library.
And I will recall on Woodward Avenue, the
Detroit library thinker was out there, cast in
bronze, what else could he do but sit
there and strain his rippling muscles as he
was thinking, thinking, thinking.
And I am reminded now that many such
philosophers, maybe not as endowed mentally, but brilliantly
endowed, have thought and thought and thought about
God, and like Descartes, they project their mind
out into the universe and contemplate infinity or
God, and then finally come to the conclusion
they can't think him up, therefore he does
not exist.
There's only one problem with that, and that
is, God says, that isn't the way you
learn about God.
You can think forever, and you'll never come
to the knowledge of God.
Man, by wisdom, knew not God.
Instead, he has to learn about God by
revelation.
I mention that so that when you hear
a brilliant intellectual who astounds you with his
gifts of God, his brilliant mind, he may
have an IQ of 175 and keep everyone
in a state of mental anticipation over any
creative thought that he might have.
But just because he's brilliant does not suggest
he is ever going to come to the
knowledge of God, because God is learned externally,
not internally.
It pleased God instead, verse 21, by the
foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.
Preaching is not just what you're used to
preaching on the street or preaching in the
church.
Preaching is communicating the wisdom of God.
Let's understand, good preaching is going to communicate
thought from one head to another.
Now, fortunately, we Christians are not limited to
man's creativity that we might communicate meaningful thoughts
to other heads.
We have the revelation of God.
If we learn the wisdom of God as
it's revealed in this book, then we can
confidently communicate that wisdom using our creativity to
present it more clearly and communicate it better
in our age, but always based on the
factual teaching and wisdom that comes from the
Word of God.
Now, in verse 22, it says, For the
Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek
after wisdom.
But we preach Christ crucified unto the Jews
a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness.
Isn't that so true today?
The preaching of the cross is a stumbling
block to the Jew and to the Gentile
intellectual, it's foolishness.
They look at us as weird individuals.
Only a Neanderthal thinker would believe that old
-fashioned 2,000-year-old message, or so
they would say.
But in verse 24, But unto them who
are called, that's you and me by faith,
both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of
God, and the wisdom of God.
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than
men, and the weakness of God is stronger
than men.
Yes, there are in this passage of scripture
clearly delineated two separate lines of wisdom.
One is called the wisdom of God, or
the preaching of the cross.
They are used interchangeably.
Another is called the wisdom of man, man's
wisdom, God's wisdom.
And I would like to emphasize these two
concepts are 180 degrees in opposition to one
another.
Never expect the wisdom of man to parallel
the wisdom of God.
And at the outset, I would like to
say something I'll come back to, and that
is one of the biggest dilemmas in Christian
education today is Christians over here committed to
the wisdom of God who have been oriented
and educated in the wisdom of man and
tried to bring into a Christian situation many
of the thoughts and concepts of the wisdom
of man.
Let's understand the wisdom of man is usually
contrary to the will of God.
I can almost say always contrary to the
will of God.
Why?
God said, my ways are not your ways
and your ways not my ways.
The natural man understandeth not the things of
the word of God, neither can he know
them.
We don't have time in a short session
to give you the varying degrees of all
the wisdom of man.
I'm going to concentrate on the one that
we're competing with in the battle for the
mind here in our country.
The one that has taken over philosophically all
of the media in the Western world.
I call it atheistic humanism.
I'd like to show you where it came
from and just a few of the tenets
of this line of reasoning.
Atheistic humanism is the philosophy or the foundation
of this philosophy.
Now, since it's my lecture, I can define
atheism and humanism any way I like.
This is my definition.
Atheism, the concept there is no God.
Humanism, the concept that man, human man, can
solve the problems of man independent of God.
All men are aware that man needs help,
but man who starts out with an atheistic
philosophy has that ego-oriented idea that if
you're intellectual enough and you have a good
enough education, then you can somehow contribute to
solving the problems of man independent of God.
And I can predict by the authority of
God's Word that will never happen.
As a matter of fact, in my very
short lifetime, I have watched man in his
philosophical wisdom and his computerization and accumulation and
fingertip knowledge compound the problems of man, not
improve them.
Just in my lifetime, you can imagine what
it's been in the history of the world.
Now, atheistic humanist philosophy is not new.
It is almost as old as man.
There has been a rebellion in the heart
of man that makes it difficult for him
to acknowledge allegiance toward God.
And we don't have time to go back
into the Greek era that is so profound
in its influence on American thought.
Such men as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and a
host of others before the time of Christ
had systematized a humanistic philosophy that somehow has
inroads in the modern form of education taught
on the average secular campus.
Now, as I said, I don't have time
to include all of their philosophies, but I
noticed something when I was traveling through Europe
about three and a half years ago, and
that is that the most prestigious and influential
creatures in past cultures have been writers.
And you'll find the average library filled with
the writings of atheistic humanists.
That's why it's so difficult for a Christian
to find something good and wholesome.
One humanist calls upon another for authority and
another and another, and they build one upon
another.
As I say, I don't have time in
this visual to place them all or space,
and so I lump them all together before
the time of the French skeptics in one
book, which I label the Luciferian Writings.
For obvious reasons, it is Lucifer who's behind
the whole form of deceit.
Now, it got its modern leap forward in
the days of Voltaire and Rousseau, voluminous writers.
I think Voltaire wrote something like 82 books
in his humanistically oriented life.
Voltaire and Rousseau, interestingly enough, attended Jesuit colleges.
They were exposed not to Christianity, but to
a conglomerate philosophy of pagan thought and some
little semblance of Christianity, and this conglomerate they
rejected out of hand as being unacceptable.
And they went out to become anti-Christian,
though in all probability neither had ever been
exposed to the wisdom of God and a
clear presentation of Jesus Christ in truth.
Voltaire was so anti-Christian that, as you
recall, he made the statement that it took
12 men to establish Christianity.
He would prove to the world that it
only takes one man to destroy it.
One hundred years later, the Geneva Bible Society
used the house in which he made that
statement to store Bibles for distribution throughout France
and Switzerland.
But Rousseau was also a brilliant thinker.
These two atheistic humanists established what is today
known and has been for 400 years French
skepticism, that skeptical view of any form that
is not humanistic.
And, of course, I would like to point
out something at the outset.
Your moral principles are the result of your
philosophical orientation or your moral principles are the
result of your theological orientation.
We are moral-minded people.
Why?
Because we're goody goodies?
Because we don't have evil impulses?
Certainly not.
Because our theological orientation commands us to be
virtuous, modest, pure, etc.
Now, these individual humanists do what a humanist
would do.
And I would call your attention to the
fact that Rousseau, who is probably the most
influential philosopher in formulating the conduct of the
American student on San Diego State University campus
and every other campus throughout the United States,
was an absolute moral degenerate.
I can't think of a man proving his
degeneracy any worse than 400 years ago, refusing
to marry his mistress with whom he lived
for at least 16 years in the Paris,
France, and she bore him five illegitimate children,
all of whom he abandoned in the Paris
foundling home.
Now, do you get a little suspicious as
to why there is so much amorality taught
by the modern disciples of Voltaire and Rousseau?
They're just doing what their philosophical fathers taught
them.
And after French skepticism, we have a sweeping
movement into rationalism that swept through Europe, primarily
Germany.
Germany became the headwaters of intellectualism.
Germans have keen minds, very adept at learning,
and they bought that philosophical concept of rationalism,
and it was their form of improving on
skepticism.
And today you will find that all of
the schools of Europe are inculcated with the
philosophies of such individuals.
And again, I don't have space to include
them all.
Gibbon, Weishaupt, father of Illuminism, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Hegel,
Huxley, and many, many others.
Now, this philosophical writing communicated decade after decade
all through Europe, produced many ideas, one of
which was uniformitarianism.
And as Dr. Morris points out, this was
one of the touchstones upon which Darwin so
-called planted his theory of evolution.
And as Dr. Morris points out, evolution is
not new.
It dates back to Babylonish mysticism.
But he took that religious form, and by
the idea of uniformitarianism, that all things progress
in a measured pattern and always have.
That's why the scientists today can measure a
slight variation in a measured period of time,
and then they multiply it backwards and come
to the conclusion that the earth is billions
of years old or millions of years old.
And I'm sure Dr. Morris will communicate many
thoughts in this future lectures.
But it is interesting to know that the
theory of evolution came right out of this.
This modern form came out of this humanistic
philosophy, and it is based on the false
concept that there is no God and man
can solve his problems.
The areas that I am more interested in
are governmental and personal.
And again, I'm pressed for time, so I
won't say a great deal about the ideologies
of governmental forms, only to point out that
every communist, every socialist, and every liberal is
an evolutionist.
And these ideologies for governing people are based
on the false idea that man is a
biological accident and was formed independent of a
sovereign God.
But in the area that I think influences
our behavior, and the one that I have
a great interest in, is the behavioral concepts.
For example, Sigmund Freud, who probably has been
more influential in the last 100 years than
any other one living man.
Now that's my opinion, and I know there
are many people who have influenced society, but
Sigmund Freud has probably influenced more people for
corruption, damned more souls, and compounded more minds
and hearts, and deceived people with faulty theories
of behavior than any other individual.
And from Freudianism, and I might point out
that Freudianism has produced concepts like behaviorism that
in turn has produced a generation of rebels,
which we have in this formerly Christian-oriented
nation.
Freudianism produced psychology and psychiatry, which takes a
medical doctor out of the scientific and practical
field and puts him into the impractical field,
and almost ties his hands behind his back.
And then we have the philosophy of existentialism.
Most of you young college graduates are familiar
with the theory of existentialism, and so I
won't go into a great deal about it,
only to point out its ultimate end, which
is hopelessness and despair.
You will never find a happy existentialist.
They are doomsday philosophers.
And when you find a young person like
the lad I talked to on a rock
some five years ago, had been a straight
-A student all through high school, got a
free ride scholarship to Stanford University, his mother
called and said, my son has copped out
of the university, he's sitting out on a
rock at La Jolla strumming a guitar.
Would you go talk to him?
So I went out to see this kid,
and I asked him, why are you doing
this?
And he looked at me and shrugged his
shoulders and said, the bomb.
Isn't that brilliant?
The bomb's going to get us.
Why should I worry?
Why should I go through the rat race?
The bomb's going to get us.
Where did he get that?
He didn't get it from his mom and
dad.
He didn't get that from the Sunday school
teacher or the pastor of his church.
You know where he got that?
From the PhD humanistic philosophers at Stanford University.
You think I'm exaggerating?
May I tell you another story?
Vice president of a bank, transferred from one
bank to another, started coming to our church
the year my oldest son graduated from Christian
High.
He was new in the church and invited
me down for lunch.
I went down to meet him, and rather
than ask him too many questions, I had
found out that his son was a straight
A science student.
I said to him rather coyly, and I
thought this was a very clever way to
couch the question, I said to him, Bob,
what Christian college are you going to send
your son to?
And his answer, wasn't that a good question?
His answer was very informative.
He said, oh, I'm not going to send
my son to a Christian college.
You know, he is scientifically oriented, and Christian
schools are notoriously unscientific.
I'm going to send him, get this, to
the University of California at Santa Barbara.
I kind of blurted out, you mean the
place where the students just burned down the
bank?
And he said, yes, he has a scholarship
there, and it's a great honor for my
son to have a scholarship.
Let me tell you something about scholarships.
You think they are done for humanitarian purposes.
They are done for humanistic purposes.
There is a vast difference between humanitarianism, a
desire to help other human beings, and humanism.
Humanism wants to humanize the ideas and ideals
of youth, and they sweep across the high
school campuses and find the brilliant minds and
then send them to the hotbeds of humanism,
so they in turn can create additional hotbeds
of humanism on the campuses of the future.
And may I suggest that within five months,
that boy's mother was in my office, weeping
out her heart.
His roommate had called, and they made a
hurried trip to Santa Barbara, where they rescued
their son who is in the hospital, an
overdose of drugs.
When he finally came to himself, this conscientious
Sunday school raised boy, professing Christian, said through
his tears, Mom, I have wasted five months
of my life.
This school is not interested in education.
They are only interested in indoctrination.
I would have learned far more if I
had stayed home and gone to the San
Diego Public Library and studied on my own
every day.
Why?
Because the humanists know that we live in
a battle for the mind, and if you
control the mind, you'll control the body.
Existentialism advocates amorality.
Where did that lad and thousands like him
get the idea of free love, divorce, situation
ethics, drugs, abortion on demand, all the rest?
Where did they get such ideas?
It certainly isn't from the Christian community.
It isn't from the farmer and the plumber
and the carpenter who sacrifices to send his
son to such schools.
I remember in a meeting I was in
just three weeks ago, I met a charming
black lady that had done a valiant job
raising her children to serve, to get an
education.
She was not vitally spiritually oriented, and I
admired the personal sacrifices she had made to
give her children a college education.
And then when she told me where they
went to college, I inwardly groaned as I
realized that dear mother's heart will one day
be broken in all probability, as the mental
perverts of that campus twist and bend and
warp that innocent young mind sent to school
with all good intentions and dedicated sacrifices.
You say, well, that's extreme.
No, my friend, that happens all over America
every year by the thousands.
The wisdom of man is based on humanism.
Now let me expose you to the wisdom
of God.
It starts out on the presupposition that the
Bible is truth.
The Bible is infallible truth.
It is the revelation of God, and it
teaches things.
Now remember I said 180 degrees in opposition
to humanism.
It teaches, first of all, creation.
If you understand anything in the Bible, you
ought to understand the first words.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and
the earth.
If you understand that verse, you're mentally prepared
to accept the concepts of the Bible and
God's wisdom.
If you negate that verse, you're going to
be followed up in every other conclusion you
come to throughout the Bible.
Creationism as clearly taught, and I'm sure Dr.
Morris will make it much more relevant than
I could.
Now based on the fact that God has
created man, not by evolution, but by direct
act, then we can accept the fact that
God has given to man Christian principles to
live by.
The Bible is filled with these principles, and
notice how they depart from man's humanistic orientation.
For example, Freud taught, and many of his
disciples teach, that man is born neutral, and
that environment creates your behavior.
If you're in the right environment as a
child growing up at certain stages, then you
will turn out right.
That's why the social welfare planners of our
culture are everlastingly trying to change the environment
of people, thinking that they will naturally change
them.
But experimentation in the last 15 years proves,
if you take a ghetto thinker out of
the ghetto and put him in an ideal
environment, pretty soon he has a ghetto.
He has turned his ideal environment into a
ghetto.
What a man needs is a change of
heart and a change of mental thinking pattern,
and that's much more readily done when you
have a change of heart first.
Christian principles that teach individual responsibility.
Why is it we have a crime epidemic
today?
Because we have humanistically oriented, bleeding hearts, running
around saying, oh these poor criminals, there he
goes, he shoots another one, he kills another
person, and these poor criminals ought to be
rehabilitated.
And we are downgrading and berating ourselves because
we can't seem to create the right kind
of penal institutions that rehabilitate criminals.
And may I suggest the Bible does not
deal so casually with criminals.
For example, the God standard for civil government
was an eye for an eye, a tooth
for a tooth.
That's going to solve a fellow that takes
the rights of other people.
By the way, I gave this lecture recently
and a fellow who obviously was from another
culture and he told me where it was,
somewhere in southern Africa, and I don't recall
what it was, but it was a very
obscure country, and he said they have an
interesting custom there.
He said the first time a man steals,
they cut off his little finger.
The second time he steals, they cut off
his next finger.
And the third time, the next one and
the next one and the next one.
And he said, isn't it interesting that that
country has the lowest crime rate in all
of the world?
Now I bleed for little fingers too, but
I also bleed for the victims of the
rapist and the criminal who imposes his rights
and selfishness on another victim.
May I suggest God did not teach such
leniency with the violation of individual responsibility.
You read the average counseling manuals and you'll
find that it is a diatribe on irresponsibility.
Only in recent years have we had a
recognition that man ought to accept responsibility for
his own behavior.
Well, there's nothing new about that discovery.
Solomon said that 3,500 years ago.
Jesus said it 2,000 years ago, and
Paul said it 1,900 years ago.
You see, the Bible has clearly delineated such
things as you that steal.
Steal no more.
He didn't say, if you get in a
better house, quit stealing.
He said, if you used to steal, stop
stealing.
And the Bible teaches integrity.
As a matter of fact, the Bible teaches
that the best way to have a clear
conscience is to be honest.
No counselor has to counsel people over guilt
conscience that don't violate the principles of God.
I've never had to counsel people that fell
guilty because they never stole.
I've had to counsel people who fell guilty
because they did steal or cheat or lie
or violate the standards of integrity.
Accountability.
It is wholesome for a man to recognize
that his tale of years can be lived
approximately 70 years, and then one day he
has to give an account to Almighty God.
Now, the practicality of this kind of living
is going to be morality.
Virtue, modesty, marriage, the home, honor, honesty, and
a host of other things.
Here they are side by side.
I hope you can see them.
The wisdom of man and God's wisdom contrasted.
They are side by side.
Now, in the wisdom of man, you can
get all kinds of education, from kindergarten through
PhD degree and graduate school.
And there is a vast difference between these,
not only philosophically and behaviorally, but as it
relates to Jesus Christ.
Verse 18 says, the preaching of the cross
is foolishness to them that perish.
Now, just because a person has a PhD
degree, and I'd like to emphasize, we are
not against PhD degrees.
In fact, we like to attract them.
And in this room, we have many who
have earned their PhD through hard toil.
And in their case, it was particularly difficult
because at the same time, they had to
keep spiritual sanity by studying the Word of
God to avoid humanistic inroads on their thinking
process.
And we admire that.
But may I suggest, it is very unwise
to worship at the shrine of a humanistic
degree, whatever it be, if it assumes that
the cross is foolishness.
Now, as a pastor, particularly in a city
like this, where we have seven colleges and
universities, I've had the joy of seeing men
with a PhD degree come to Jesus Christ.
And it's so interesting to find them opening
their eyes and opening their minds as if
a whole new world discovery has been made.
The Bible offers the answers to the problems
men face, but man who rejects Jesus Christ
will not accept the Bible.
And in this philosophical jungle in which we
live, atheistic humanism has a stranglehold on our
culture.
It's like an octopus.
It has reached out and conquered the school,
as I'll show you in a moment.
It has reached out, and by control of
the three news media and the three TV
networks and many radio stations, it controls the
home.
More people watch television than any other educational
media today, and you do not find one
conservative-oriented newscaster, one Christian-oriented representative, that
is controlling the philosophy that is promulgated on
the airwaves and networks today.
It has given over to humanism.
I'm sure all of you have watched as
ridicule after ridicule has been heaped by such
individuals against the Christian position.
And the church is a stranglehold they're trying
to gain.
Fortunately, the Spirit of God in this age
we are told is to be called an
age of renewal, when so many people from
the existential futility of despair have called upon
the Lord Jesus Christ, has created a phenomenon
and an upsurge of people responding to the
truth of God, and the power demonstrated in
their lives is infectious in gathering others.
I look over the audience, and I see
some of you who say, once I was
blind, but now I see Jesus Christ has
transformed your life.
Like the psychologist that I spoke with in
Kansas City after a seminar, a young man,
thirty-three years of age, was a psychologist
in a state institution there in Kansas City,
a government institution.
And he said to me, you know, I
was saved last year in this church, and
I came to this seminar because I was
tired of the concepts for helping people that
I've been using because they really don't work.
And he said, I listened to you talk
from the Bible for nine hours, and I've
made two conclusions.
And I'm quoting, he said, number one, almost
everything I have learned is wrong.
And two, I'm confused.
Would you explain to me why Christian parents
will subsidize the mental destruction of their children
by sending them to a secular institution for
an education?
I walked away from that young man and
thought, how could a young fellow, one year
old, see what I can't get some Christian
parents who've been around for fifty years to
understand?
You are doing your children no favors by
sending them to a secular school where a
brilliant, experienced scholar can take their young, impressionable
minds and twist them to an atheistic, humanist
position.
I give this lecture, by the way, before
ministers all over the country.
Probably each year in the last four years
I've shared this with at least two thousand
ministers.
And almost every time I get the same
criticism.
Some minister will say when I have question
session, now, Brother Lahaye, don't you think that
we ought to send our young people on
the secular campus to be missionaries?
And I always ask the same question.
What do you require for missionaries in your
church?
Well, we require college education, we require seminary,
we require a couple of years experience, deputation,
then they go to the field and work
with other missionaries to learn the language to
communicate to people who can't even read and
write.
And yet you want to take a fourteen,
fifteen, sixteen-year-old lad and send him
into a high school where he does mental
combat with a biology professor with a master's
degree and ten or fifteen years experience, corrupting
the minds of other classes before him.
My friend, that's like sending David out to
meet Goliath without his slingshot or his stones.
No, what we need is to recognize that
Christian education is a Christian responsibility.
Let me show you how faulty is the
humanistic philosophy.
There are many ways I could show this,
but let me quickly give you a picture
of it.
Man's wisdom is deficient in the area of
life's major questions.
Any of you young people that have been
on the campus recently will tell you that
these are basically the five questions that are
asked most commonly on the secular campus.
Number one, who am I?
The big bugaboo on the campus today is
identity crisis.
Who am I?
Where did I come from?
Why am I here?
Where am I going?
And how can I get there?
And it is interesting, isn't it?
They are surrounded by educators of the highest
order, they have computerized knowledge, they have phenomenal
libraries available to them, and yet they don't
have the answers to these questions.
You know why?
They're looking in the wrong place.
I'd like to give you the answers that
all of you are well aware of.
Number one, who am I?
I'm a child of God.
John 1 12 makes that abundantly clear.
Where did I come from?
God created me.
The Bible tells that many times.
Third, why am I here?
To glorify God.
And young people, may I point out, if
you don't understand the answer to that question,
you're not ready to face life.
Why are you here?
You're here to glorify God.
You say, but I want to be happy.
My dear friend, the best way to be
happy and fulfilled in life is to glorify
God.
Fourth, where am I going?
To eternity.
And by way of eternity you go through
judgment.
And how can I prepare for that eternity?
By receiving Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior,
by personal invitation.
That almost seems too simple to us, doesn't
it?
Yes, that's exactly what the humanistic philosopher will
say to us.
Simplistic, simplistic personification of wisdom.
There's just one defense.
It's the power of God.
It works.
It transforms us from humanistic blindness and chaos
to the instruction and power of God.
And of course, it changes lives.
In this church and in this college, in
the high school, we have all kinds of
illustrations of people who were mental shipwrecks, deceived,
and today, and being deceived, and today they
are on the front lines in the battle
for the mind.
I would like to point out that there
has been a phenomenal takeover in our country,
in our culture.
And I'd just like to picture it for
you very briefly.
I'm sure many of you have studied these
areas and know them better than I.
But if you recall, America is great not
because of our great land surface, for we're
not the largest country in the world, not
because of our population, certainly not because of
our unique ethnic background.
What good grief, this melting pot.
What are we?
We're a mixture.
And it's not because of any native genius
of our race or anything of that nature.
The thing that has made America great, we
Christians say, is the Christian principles upon which
this nation was founded.
That's true, but what was the vehicle for
the communication of these Christian principles?
The school system.
America is the first nation in history, and
a large nation, that made it mandatory that
all of its children get an education.
At the time we were passing laws requiring
children to get an education, only the intelligentsia,
the royalty, and the rich in Europe could
give their children an education.
But here in America, and by the way,
I learned this summer, it wasn't so much
in Virginia, they were continuing the same basic
educational philosophies of Europe, but it was because
of the pilgrims who were driven by a
desire that their children learn to read and
write, and particularly read the Word of God.
The Bible had just been translated in 1611,
and they wanted their children to know the
message of God from his own word.
Consequently, we have this penchant for education.
It started out with a requirement for third
grade education, then fifth grade, and so on,
up until finally it's the twelfth grade.
And we have a booming economy because so
many people are trained in the skills, and
they're given an education.
You say, well, I thought you were against
education.
Well, back up, and let me point out
that education in the early days was controlled
by Christian-oriented people.
As a matter of fact, the first teachers
in the early colonial days were predominantly ministers.
The ministers had the education, and the farmers
would say, a pastor in a small community,
why should you be out plowing corn or
plowing the field and growing corn when we
can do your plowing for you and you
can teach our children?
And so they would take that one-room
church building on Sundays and convert it to
a one-room school building on Monday through
Friday, and the preacher would teach the children.
Now, what do you think the man of
God was going to teach the children in
those one-room school buildings?
Look, look, look, Jane, Jane, Jane, jump, jump,
jump.
Not hardly.
He would teach them such concepts as, in
the beginning, God created the heavens and the
earth.
Even the atheist in the community had to
have his child indoctrinated in the principles of
God if the minister was going to do
it.
And I remind you that it was the
ministers and the churches that had this penchant
for higher education.
I have read that for the first 100
years in American history, all colleges founded in
America were founded by Christian institutions, churches, religious
sects, or denominations.
Consequently, they were Christian-oriented in their philosophy
as evidenced by the moral tone in the
early days of our country.
And this went on until they decided to
get master's degreed teachers.
For many years, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale were
the headwaters of education, and all three schools
were founded for the purpose of training ministers
and missionaries, and only incidentally became the headwaters
of education.
But 80 years after John Harvard founded Harvard
University in 1636, it was taken over by
the Unitarians.
And I believe history would record that Harvard
University is probably the most prestigious, influential university
in America, when you cover the whole gamut
of our history, because it became the headwaters
of master's degreed teachers who went out and
took over the teaching positions until about 1875,
when again they recognized that all we had
primarily in America were master's degreed educators, and
what we needed to do was send some
of the brilliant young educators over to Europe
to get their Ph.D. degrees.
And they went to the Sorbonne, and to
Berlin University, and a host of other intellectual,
German-rationalistic, and French-skeptic cesspools, and they
brought back to America their Ph.D. degrees
and their humanistic orientation.
Along came Horace Mann, who insisted we have
a separation of church and state in the
educational area, and then John Dewey, who I
personally believe was a forerunner of communism, and
he provided progressive education for America, progressive education
that has literally become regressive education.
We often ridicule the fact that today's educators
are now trying to make it mandatory that
a child have at least a sixth-grade
reading level before he gets a twelfth-grade
diploma, but that isn't the biggest robbery.
The biggest robbery is that he is required
to corrupt his mind pursuant to getting even
a high school education.
Here in San Diego, for example, one of
our young people was carrying a New Testament,
a large New Testament, not quite this big,
along with other of his books.
He was accosted in the hall by a
faculty member who said, young man, is that
a Bible?
And he said, yes, sir.
He said, didn't you know that it's illegal
for you to bring that Bible on this
campus?
And the lad said, no, sir, I didn't
know that.
By the way, it isn't, but that's the
way some humanists would be unfair in their
reasoning.
And in that same school, they required at
that time the reading of The Last Temptation
of Christ in their eleventh-grade literature class.
I tried to read that book just to
see what the enemy was doing, and I'll
be very honest with you.
I thought I had a philosophical cast-iron
stomach, but I could not stomach that book,
and it isn't even written well.
They're not interested in teaching literature.
They're interested in propagandizing a humanistic amoral philosophy.
May I remind you that the amorality of
this present world system is not producing happy,
well-adjusted human beings.
Who are the happy members of our society?
The people that live a so-called amoral
life.
They sow their seeds to the wind and
reap a whirlwind.
No, the happy people in our culture are
the people that are faithful, honest, obedient to
the laws of man and of God.
You see, the standards of God produce the
happy way of life, and it produces that
which man cannot live without, hope.
I think Dr. Francis Schaefer from L'Abris,
Switzerland, has contributed greatly to the philosophical understanding
of education in the last 100 years.
Dr. Schaefer points out in several of his
books that Europe went through what he calls
the line of despair in 1880.
In America, we didn't go across the line
of despair until 1930.
Fifty years we were able to avoid the
line of despair.
Why?
Because of the greater biblical orientation and content
of the citizenry's mind.
Where did they get it?
Basically out of the school system.
But today, the school system has been taken
over for the propagation of atheistic humanism.
And I would like to point out to
you, the only way we are going to
combat this evil force in the battle for
the mind is to train people oriented to
the wisdom of God.
However, there is one danger, and with this
I will conclude.
All across America, we have Christian schools, many
of which I would never send my children.
Oh, they're nice places.
They're clean, they're not near as corrupt as
some of the secular institutions.
However, most of the faculty members are nice
Christian oriented people who went to school in
secular institutions, went to church regularly, and they
come on the campus and do the work
of humanism.
Oh, they don't use profanity, and they eliminate
the immoralities and all the others.
But without realizing it, they bring from the
philosophical halls of ivy the concepts of humanism.
And I hope in these next few weeks
you will be inspired to recognize that we
should test the spirits.
We would not say that all knowledge is
wrong, but we would say that all knowledge
that comes from a humanist needs to be
tested.
Don't buy it just because it is accepted
by the academic community.
Instead, test it by the word of God.
There is only one antidote to the philosophy
of man, the wisdom of man, and that's
the wisdom of God.
We are committed here to dedicated scholarship that
starts with the wisdom of God and tests
all other concepts in the light of the
wisdom of God.
Many of you are engaged in education, and
many of you have fought your battle for
sanity in the face of your education.
I believe we have a unique thing going
here.
It's not, and we trust never will be,
what Bill Gothard has said many Christian schools
are guilty of, that is, providing a secular
education in a Christian environment.
Christian Heritage College and Christian High School and
all of our ministries are dedicated unalterably to
a Christian environment, but that's incidental to the
basic foundation of our whole orientation, the wisdom
of God as it is clearly outlined in
his word.
Let's bow together, shall we, for prayer.
Heavenly Father, we thank thee for the word
of God that's instant in season and out
of season, that is inspired of God and
is profitable for instruction and correction, that we
might be thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
When we think of the fact that right
now on our campus we have 1,200
young people that come day after day to
get an education, we thank you for the
library of truth, the Holy Bible.
We thank thee for the instructor and comforter,
the Holy Spirit, and we thank thee that
they both glorify Jesus Christ, who is the
mediator between God and man.
We pray that we may not only be
a station of salvation of souls, but that
we might be a preparing house for leaders
of the future, that we might see the
educational system in our country that is on
the verge of collapse replaced by a worthwhile
educational process that communicates to the whole man,
not just the mind and emotion, but also
to the spirit of man, that we might
see our nation reclaimed and become a powerful
force for God.
We thank you for these dedicated individuals.
We have here tonight many educators, many partners
of educators, many staff and support personnel, many
church folks, many students.
We thank you for each one.
And as we know our heart, we want
to be active in the battle for the
mind.
Use us in our respective fields to the
glory and praise of Jesus Christ.
And we ask that this school and its
entities and ministries might be preserved faithful to
thee until Jesus comes.
In his name we pray.
Amen.