For if the trumpet makes an uncertain sound, who will prepare for battle? I Corinthians 14:8
It has become increasingly obvious that our planet is involved in spiritual warfare. Many believe that things are drawing to a climax where the good are getting better and the bad are getting worse. Armageddon is in sight. In recent decades, science has given us the ability to destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons, two of which were used by Americans against Japan to end the Second World War. We were the first to have this technology, but now many nations have nuclear weapons of mass destruction.
Biological warfare has been developed with equal menacing capabilities as we saw in the recent Covid pandemic. And now artificial intelligence is threatening both promise and apocalypse.
Within this scenario, what is the Church to do? The most significant event in world history is arguably the life, death, and proclaimed resurrection of the Man of Galilee. He was a Jewish prophet, some say Messiah, who lived only thirty-three years and acquired no wealth. He preached for three years and was condemned to death for claiming to be God. His self-proclaimed prophecy that He would rise from the dead was witnessed by hundreds in Israel who went on to found the largest religion in the world based on the writings contained in the Bible. So profound was His influence that history is divided between years before and after His birth.
This Bible has an interesting story to tell. It begins with God creating the heavens and the earth and humankind, male and female. Apparently, before the earth was created God created billions of spiritual beings called angels, one of which rebelled against God and was exiled with a third of the angels to planet Earth. The angel, Lucifer, tempted the first humans to disobey God, and they, Adam and Eve, were cast out of the Garden of Eden. The rest of the Bible is the story about what lengths God went to reconcile the broken relationship with humankind.
The New Testament begins with four different accounts of the life of Christ, the miracles He did, and His claim to be “the only begotten Son of God…” who by believing in Him one could regain eternal life. Jesus often taught in parables. One famous parable is about the prodigal son who claimed his inheritance and nearly destroyed himself in dissolute living. Coming to his senses, he decides to return to his father and beg forgiveness. Hoping to be accepted as a servant, the prodigal sees his father running toward him and with joy accepts him with open arms. In a similar scene, Jesus ends His days on earth with His arms nailed to a cross and asking God, His Father, to forgive them, “for they know not what they do.”
The Bible ends with the scene of Jesus returning from heaven, judging the living and the dead, and creating a new heaven and earth filled with joy and purified of sin and sinners.
That in a nutshell is the story that created the world’s largest religion and resulted in the Bible becoming the best-selling book of all time and a strong incentive toward near universal literacy.
So if you were the Devil, what would you do to defeat this beautiful plan of God? If you asked me, I would say I would try to keep everyone illiterate so they couldn’t read the Bible. That worked for over a thousand years until people started to translate the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into local languages and the printing press made them cheap enough that an average person could get a copy and learn to read.
Plan two of the Devil would be to distract people with wine, women, and song, so to speak, or money and power, and lie to, kill and destroy anyone so distracted. Jesus said: You must choose between God and money. The Devil would also argue God’s non-existence based on all the evil in the world, ironically most of which was of the Devil’s own doing.
A recent and particularly effective scheme to keep prodigals from finding their way back to God is to break down the family. First, if I were the Devil, I would create massive income inequality that forced parents to nearly work themselves to death and have no time to teach their children well. Most families in the U. S. live nervously paycheck to paycheck. Then I would send most of the children, currently 80%, to compulsory public schools where it was not allowed to mention the Bible. Then I would try to addict the children to drugs and distract them with so called entertainment or narcissistic materialism. Does this seem to describe our current culture? Is the Devil winning the spiritual warfare against our children.
Let’s look back to the 1700’s. Europeans came to America to escape a corrupt church that required attendance or jail. As colonies, they rebelled against taxation and control and founded an independent Republic where “all men are created equal and were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Their Bill of Rights insured freedom of expression, and that Congress would make “no law respecting and establishment of religion nor preventing the free exercise thereof.” The founders agreed that this form of government would fail unless the people maintained a strong moral character based on principles found in the Bible and ordered thousands of copies to be printed and distributed by the government.
Fast forward to today and we see massive compulsory public education where the Bible is not allowed and morals run amok with disrespect of teachers, disruptive drugs and dress, and school shootings. And I ask, “where is the church in all this?”
We have seen a laudable growth in Christian schools and home education where parents are stepping up to secure a good and godly education for their children if, and this is a big if, the parents have the intellectual and financial means to take their children out of public schools.
But what of the 80% of our next generation upon whom our Republic depends for its survival? What is the church doing about them? Practically nothing. A few timid attempts to allow the Bible and prayer in schools turned back by a few atheist parents who suited the school districts resulting in court cases and expenses that schools have decided to avoid by avoiding any discussion of religion.
It is argued that if you allow the Bible into the curriculum, you will have to allow every religion to be taught and that is impractical. The rationale for allowing the Bible to be taught is because of its overwhelming influence on Western culture from history, to literature, to art and music, politics and religion. The same cannot be said for the other religions. For a person to be well educated they need to have at least a basic understanding of the books of the Bible and sadly that is not the case today. A growing percent of high school graduates are functionally illiterate, can barely read, and know little to nothing about the Bible, the book that has had more influence on the world than any other piece of literature.
The case for teaching about the Bible in the public schools is clear. And it is time for the church to say so and do something about it.
What specifically should they do? Insist that their local school districts provide a Bible curriculum that meets the guidelines set by the courts; if that curriculum has a secular purpose and neither promotes nor denigrates any particular world view, it is perfectly legal. Our organization, Enlighten Education Co-op has produced such a curriculum and placed it in the public domain and is available to download from our website site at no cost. It is available for anyone to use. Please do so for the sake of our nation and its children.
For more information contact: William Bronson, 239 940 6080, willbronson7@gmail.com, www.EnlightenEducationCo-op.org