CHILDREN BURIED UNDER 2,000 BOOKS

 In an extensive survey by the Barna Group endeavoring to learn "Why are so many young people falling away from the faith," they found that less than one half of 1% of Christians between the ages of 18 and 23 have the worldview presented by the Bible. The Barna Group defined the biblical worldview as:

• absolute moral truth exists
• the Bible is completely inerrant
• Satan is a real being, not symbolic
• a person cannot earn his way into the kingdom of God though good works
• Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth
• God is the supreme Creator of the heavens and the earth and reigns over the whole universe today

Fuller Seminary conducted its own study about the same problem and found that "the most important factor in whether young people leave the church or remain steadfast in their faith is whether they have a safe haven to express their doubts and concerns regarding their faith before leaving home. Such a refuge is found in two places: their home and their church's ministry to the youth."

The Fuller study also learned that most church youth programs "tend to focus on providing entertainment and pizza rather than building up young people in their faith." This leads to the youth's being poorly equipped "to face the challenges they will encounter upon leaving home." Their conclusion was, "If one is never grounded in the faith to begin with, it's almost a certainty he will abandon it."

One church youth minister began his ministry by asking the kids to fill out a survey, asking, "What do you want to do, that is, what would be your favorite things to do at our meetings," and that's what they did.

Two studies found that nearly 75 percent of Christian young people fall away from the faith and leave the church after high school. The question of the moment is "Why?" But another important question is, "What?" That question concerns what did their lives consist of prior to their decision to make shipwreck of the faith? That question also involves whether or not their homes and their churches taught them the Bible.

Let's do a comparison:

 Statistics show that children today spend an average of 30 hours per week in school where they are taught ideas that are hostile to biblical truths, e.g., evolution, the acceptance of homosexuality, etc. Then they come home to another 30 hours per week spent in front of a television set bombarded by commercials and sitcoms, playing video games, or connecting on social media. If they live to be 78 years old, they'll spend 11,762 days (41% of their lives) staring at a screen. 

Throw that against the time spent in classrooms of their churches: 45 minutes a week. Not even an hour. Their exposure to worldly influences versus Bible training is overwhelming. They’re also not being taught to intelligently examine the views of skeptics who will constantly challenge their faith. They are not prepared to enter the college classroom where a majority of college professors view Christians with hostility and take every opportunity to belittle them and their faith.

In addition all those overwhelming statistics, parents of students in the San Diego United School District received an e-mail from the district superintendent in April 2021, and, as per the message, "The nonprofit Gender Nation would be donating 2,000 age-appropriate LGBTQ  books to the elementary schools in the system." 

The question arises, "What if we wanted to donate 2,000 books supporting the Christian worldview to the San Diego United School District's elementary schools or 2,000 New Testaments?" 

They enter the groves of academe` with a baby knowledge of the Bible and are thus unarmed for the fiery darts that will come their way. In this regard, the influence of godly parents is essential. "One particular study found that when both parents were faithful and active in the church, 93 percent of their children remained faithful. When just one parent was faithful, 73 percent of their children remained faithful. When neither parent was particularly active in church, only 53 percent of their children stayed faithful. In those instances where neither parent was active at all and only attended church now and then, the percentage dropped to a mere 6 percent."
 

We might blame the secularization of our society or the increased biblical illiteracy of the world in general for the defection. But if the world is biblically illiterate, the church hasn't been doing its duty as stated in I Peter 2:9., since the church is to be “declar[ing] the praises of Him who called [us] out of darkness into his wonderful light.". 

One author has proposed the following: "Instead of entertaining youth with skits, bands, and movies, we need to teach them Scripture with logic, truth, and a Christian worldview." 

Frank Turek, a Christian author and lecturer on apologetics, went on to say, "What we win them with we win them to. If we win them with entertainment and [then a] low commitment [of discipleship], we win them to entertainment and low commitment." 

Charles Spurgeon was way ahead of his time when he implored the church to start "feeding the sheep rather than amusing the goats” (“The Seeker Church: Is Anyone Making Disciples?” CrossExamined. Web. Oct. 5, 2015).

WHO'S THE QUARTERBACK OF THE DALLAS COWBOYS?

 

I attended yet another girl's softball game, this time made up of 7-8th grade girls since our daughter's older daughter is one of the pitchers on the team. As we watched the game progress, we were watching objective, in-living-color-proof of the profound difference between male and female played out in a softball game on a field of dreams. 

Anyone watching could see all kinds of differences in a middle school girls' game of softball and a middle school boys' game. Let's count the ways.

The mechanics of the play are fundamentally different. We spent an hour and fifteen minutes watching the girls catch (or try to catch) the ball and throw it to first base or any base. According to a university study, we were seeing that fundamental difference between a female's throw and a male's throw: "The overhand throwing gap [between boys and girls], beginning at 4 years of age, is three times the difference of any other motor task, and it just gets bigger across age. 

 

"By 18, there’s hardly any overlap in the distribution: Nearly every boy by age 15 throws better than the best girl.” Studies of overhand ball throwing across different cultures have found that pre-pubescent girls throw 51 to 69 percent of the distance that boys do, at 51 to 78 percent of the velocity. As they get older, the differences increase; one U.S. study found that girls age 14 to 18 threw only 39 percent as far as boys (an average of about 75 feet vs. about 192 feet)." 

 

That's what I would call scientific proof. "You throw like a girl," isn't a myth. It's simple: girls throw like girls throw. Boys throw like boys throw. There's a huge difference.

 

In the other skill set of the sport-- hitting and running, there's a vast difference between middle school boys and girls. Every aspect of the play is different, i. e.,  The mechanics are different. Also, the speed and force of the game (for lack of a better word) are different; the force with which they run, swing the bat, and throw.

There is also a vast, miles-wide difference in the psychological aggression factor between the boys and the girls. 

 

Yet, here's what's happening: a whole generation of adults, college-graduated adults, pretend that anything a male can do, a female can do as good or better. (Someone recently said those exact words.)

Has anyone yet, after all these years since 1960, seen a woman play quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys or any college team? Has anyone seen a female taken in the NFL draft? The answer to that question is that the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys was, always has been, and is a man.

Is this important to have "intelligent" adults pretending there's no difference between the mail and the female and afraid to say there is. (Of course there are somethings at which the female is created to excel, nurturing is one, for example. All of this goes back to creation and the roles for which each were created. (It's becoming forbidden to make that observation as well.)

Are the observations about that softball game important? Very. As one writer observed: "Some seem to think [that this] is a minor issue, just another political battle. It is neither. It is THE issue of our time, the fight of our lives. The outcome of this battle will determine whether, moving forward, we intend to confront the world as it actually is or only as some wish it to be; whether we will embrace reality or be forced not merely to acknowledge but to knowingly participate in other people’s psychoses. If we go down that road, we are lost. Once we accept the notion that nothing is objectively true, not even the most basic biological fact, there is no going back to a world governed by reason and logic." 

The Bible has the last word, "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools."

CRYING IN THE CHAPEL

 There's a concept formulated in 1967 called "the long march through the institutions." What this long march involves concerns how subversive groups "can gain control of the organs of culture — churches, education, newspapers, magazines, the electronic media, literature, music the visual arts, and so on. By winning cultural domination, the subversive group can achieve control of the deepest wellsprings of human thought and imagination. 

"One need not control all information itself if one can gain control over the minds that assimilate that information. Under such conditions, opposition would disappear since men are no longer capable of grasping the arguments of their opponents."

And this brings us to a simple plaque and the simple statement inscribed thereon. You can find this plaque on the chapel wall of a well-respected and admired Christian university named Wheaton College, the school associated with Billy Graham, the Southern Baptist Convention, and, most important of all, the five missionaries who became martyrs at the spear points of the Auca Indians. The Aucas were a tribe with whom the missionaries had been the first in history to make contact with them other than the Spanish conquistadors and, more recently, sporadically with a few Shell Oil explorers, some of whom they also attacked.

The missionaries had been cultivating the Aucas by giving them gifts until they, on  Jan. 8, 1956, massacred the unarmed and unsuspecting men. That slaughter made headlines all over the United States in newspapers and magazines, both secular and Christian.

The most well-known of the five murdered missionaries is Jim Eliot, a member of the Wheaton Class of '49, the class, that, in 1957, gave their alma mater a plaque dedicated to the five martyred missionaries. 

On the plaque, displayed in Edman Chapel, are these words: “For generations, all strangers were killed by these savage Indians. After many days of patient preparation and devout prayer, the missionaries made the first friendly contact known to history with the Aucas.”

If you were to look for that plaque today in Wheaton's chapel, there's no way you could see it and read its famous words. The long march through the institutions in America is almost complete as evidenced by the fact that some students and some faculty have deemed the plaque offensive, as the school's President Ryken claimed, ["The word 'savage'] is regarded as pejorative and has been used to dehumanize and mistreat indigenous peoples around the world.” 

As a result, the school’s senior administrative cabinet will appoint a committee to review the plaque’s wording and make a rephrasing recommendation by May 1, then restore the plaque to its place in the chapel.

 
"Ryken and other members of Wheaton leadership have received about a dozen comments about the plaque this school year from students and members of the campus community," said Joseph Moore, Wheaton’s director of marketing communications. He said "The president released the statement because the plaque has been temporarily removed, and leadership wanted the campus community to know about its review, rewording, and return.” (From "Christianity Today")

If you were to head for the dictionary to learn the meaning of "savage" as an adjective, you would read, "fierce, ferocious, or cruel; untamed." That sounds like a fitting description of the Aucas who set upon and stabbed to death five unsuspecting men, all unarmed and unable to defend themselves. By what definition was this not savage behavior?

So what we have here is not only the devaluation of language but also the question, "What is the esteemed committee going to put in the place of 'savage'?"

This is yet another example of the poison of multiculturalism whose main tenet is that one culture is not to assume a judgmental position over another. "On the contrary," says the multiculturalist, "all cultures must be accepted, even both the Greek and Roman which practiced child abandonment, physically removing a child from the nurturing home of the parents, and leaving them to die outside."

 Multiculturalism won't allow us to adjudge this practice as evil.

But common sense (which isn't so common any more) would tell us that not all beliefs and practices are good an noble. Were the Nazis just a different culture that should be respected? No one would argue that Nazism is a moral philosophy and worldview, thus not all values and beliefs should be respected.  And what about the practice of foot binding in China? That practice is unfathomable in our Western culture. It is explicitly immoral. (Skylar Hillman)

"For centuries, young girls in China were subjected to an extremely painful and debilitating procedure called foot binding. Their feet were bound tightly with cloth strips, with the toes bent down under the sole of the foot, and the foot tied front-to-back so that the grew into an exaggerated high curve. The "ideal" adult female foot would be only three to four inches in length according to that culture. These tiny, deformed feet were known as 'lotus feet.'" (Kallie Szczepanski)

Any sane person would call this practice child abuse. 

Thus, may we conclude that the long march through the institutions is now inside the walls of Christian institutions? As the long march through our institutions, continues there should be crying in the chapel.

THE LAST BREAKFAST

 It's unfortunate that many consider John 21 to be anti-climactic. That's the chapter in which we have the record of the resurrected Christ on the shore of the Sea of Galilee ready to serve the last recoreded breakfast to His students. It is in connection with this breakfast that we and the future fishers of men will learn very down to earth truths for the Grace Dispensation which will begin at Pentecost. 

The disciples are a football field away as they've fished all night and are embarrassed to find, that in spite of the fact that they're professionals, their catch for all that work totals a goose egg. Peter had earlier led this expedition onto the familiar Sea of Galilee because he's one of those types that just can't sit still; he just HAS to be doing something, anything. And what he knew best or at least thought he knew best was to successfully engage in the piscatorial arts. 

As the narrative goes, the exhausted fishermen see a Stranger on the shore and hear Him, perhaps a potential customer, shouting to ask a question which expects a negative answer. As the dawn breaks, the Stranger on the shoreline asks, "Boys (a Greek term of affection), you don't have any fish do you?" 

This Stranger knows everything about their all-night frustration. They answer, "No." This must have been a exercise in Humiliation 101 for these experienced men to admit their shortcomings. It's then that the Stranger tells them, "Throw your nets on the right side of the boat." Right side, left side, what difference would that make? What's odd about all this is, here's this Person they have yet to recognize telling them what to do and promising them that if they'll do it, they'll catch the fish. 

Little do they know that the command is coming from the resurrected Christ who will perform His last recorded miracle that dawning day by demonstrating His "ruling over the fish of the sea." (Does that phrase sound familiar? It should; see Genesis 1:28.) 

They do, and what they catch stretched their nets to the breaking point, yet not breaking from the weight of all the large, 153 catch of fish, a large school by anyone's definition. At this point, the important thing is that before these men recognize the Stranger, they did what He said and enjoyed success. 

That's the principle the Stranger taught them that morning. "Just obey My word, and in God's sight, you'll be successful." We might paraphrase the text this way: "Just take My Word seriously, and in God's sight, you'll be successful." 

Isn't that the need of the hour for us as followers of Christ? We live in a day when many churches are not discipleship centers, but entertainment centers. The need is to take the Bible seriously, Christ's commands seriously. The need is to take the cross seriously. As we are gradually finding out, the taking up of one's cross everyday is becoming a very hard thing to do in a culture that's thrown the truth to the ground.

“[I]t grieves me when I see worship services characterized more by props, performances, and pep rally atmospheres than by any sense of divine sacredness; and hallowedness giving way to shallowness.

"This is not about worship styles. The issue is not traditional versus contemporary versus blended worship. It’s not about organ versus a worship band. That discussion misses the point completely. This is about the heart and focus and intent of worship.

"The message of the church—the message the world needs to hear from us—is not, ‘Come and have a good time,’ ‘Come and be entertained,’ or ‘Come and find your best life now.’ The message of the church is the message of the cross.” (Betsy St. Aman)

It's getting darker out there. The Christian who's fed cotton candy every Sunday is woefully unprepared to engage it. 

 

EASTER RAMPAGE IN NORTH TEXAS

 The University of North Texas is in Denton with an enrollment of 32,192. If you're an in-state student, your parents will pony up $8,295 per year for your matriculation. That amount of money will allow you to be part of a student body in which, as we now know, there's an infection of hatred for Christianity. This infection was diagnosed in March of this year. The symptoms of the disease became apparent the week before Easter.

There's this student organization on campus called The University of North Texas Young Conservatives. The group that came up with an idea which combined a bit of fun with Easter. They decided to make it known that they had hidden 250 Easter eggs on campus each of which contained "a message of positivity and hope during the week that concludes with Easter Sunday." The message of positivity and hope within each egg was a quotation of various Bible verses. 

"School was in session with students on campus for the week leading up to that particular Sunday, and with the stress of COVID, the Young Conservatives wanted to spread a little joy," said the chapter’s president. "“Half [of the Bible verses] were passages about Easter and Christ, and the other half were uplifting verses that weren’t really related to Easter, but we thought would be nice to find,” she said.

They put out a campus-wide announcement to the effect that, "Last night we put out 250 Easter eggs filled with Bible verses. Hope y’all have some fun finding them!" They weren't making a political statement in any way. It was an Easter egg hunt kids of all ages have enjoyed for generation after generation, after all, who, in their right mind, doesn't enjoy an Easter egg hunt? 

 The group was excited as they developed the idea and picked verses together. They thought that everyone can appreciate it, because you don’t have to be Christian to read a Bible verse and appreciate it.

Instead of positivity and joy, the president and the members of the Young Conservatives came under a direct attack and were vilified by an online mob consisting of a Facebook group that includes about 9,000 students, parents, and alumni. Parents? The attack began with the parents who said it was inappropriate to conduct the effort since not everyone on campus is a Christian, and the students should have just filled the eggs with candy if they wanted to do something nice. But is Easter in any way connected with Milky Ways or M & Ms? When students joined in the criticism, the attack soared to the blitzkrieg level.

 They attacked, taunted, and vilified the president and her club; a fellow student told the president of the organization to kill herself. Students did hunt the eggs, but only so they could stomp on them or throw them away. They were trying to see who could throw the most eggs away and who would stomp on the most, like it was a contest. 

Let's analyze this rampage: These events are disturbing on many levels. One level is what they describe outright, unmitigated hatred on the campus for the Young Conservatives to the point that many groups and individuals have petitioned the administration to remove them from the campus. The hatred is so deep that the mob at one time secured the services of a self-proclaimed witch to put a hex on the president. This hatred reminds us of Christ's statement to His disciples, "If they have hated Me, they will hate you."

Another level is that of violence in the destruction of the pro-life literature of the Young Conservative and the egg-stomping, a violence which could escalate if the administration does nothing more than say, "We'll look into it," as they said about the egg-rage.

The president stated another layer when she said, "It’s considered normal for these people to hex me and hex my friends, nobody bats an eyes to it.” This is normal at UNT? Normal when a female student is publicly threatened and publicly harassed for distributing Bible verses? The organization wasn't forcing people to take them or read them.

Then, it's most disconcerting that parents went on the attack, stating that everybody must be a Christian in order to make Bible verses available on campus. This shows that the older generation has been miseducated, just as the present one is being miseducated. The problem is more widespread than the we might think. Aren't parents supposed to the the voice of reason?

To continue, this illustrates that we Christians are unprepared by the Easter outrage on that campus. We seem to always be at least a step behind and are therefore surprised at such and we must be continually be playing catch-up. 

And finally, at its deepest level it illustrates Genesis 3:15, the seed of the serpent [Satan] continues to rage against the Seed of the woman [Christ]. This is the spiritual level. 

And it is on this level where you and I come in with the gospel and an intelligent and thorough discipleship ministry to young believers in and before they get to our college, high school, and elementary school indoctrination centers. 

Do you know of a college student or two or three with whom you can have a discipleship ministry, by letter or in person? A high school student you can prepare to be the next Daniel? 

The president of the Young Conservatives at UNT said she will never back down to the mob. Someone has built some "Daniel" into her backbone. We rise up and call that person or persons "blessed."