In this sermon, the speaker discusses the influence of humanism in society and how it has taken control of various aspects of our lives. He highlights the dominance of humanistic philosophy in education, media, and the home, with a lack of representation for conservative and Christian perspectives. The speaker emphasizes the importance of preparing for eternity and encourages the audience to receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. He also mentions the transformational power of God and how it can change lives, citing examples of individuals who were once deceived but are now actively fighting for the truth.

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.