In this sermon, the speaker challenges parents to evaluate how much time they are spending with their children and to consider the influence of their child's school teacher. The speaker emphasizes the importance of teaching children wisdom, not just knowledge. They also discuss the role of the father as the spiritual leader in the family and how their vision determines the family's values. The speaker highlights the need for fathers to take responsibility and lead their families according to God's principles, as the state of the family impacts society as a whole.

We welcome you to the revival ministry of On Eagle's Wings. This ministry is for the purpose of encouraging us to pray and prepare for revival. Our radio teacher is Pastor Don Corville, who met God in revival in 1985 and is now spending time helping pastors and churches to learn the powerful message of the crucified life. The moving of God's spirit to the northwest part of Nebraska went for seven months in the first stage and has continued to grow since that time. If you would like to make contact with Pastor Corville, you can write to On Eagle's Wings, Box 1100, Webb City, Missouri, 64870. And now here is our teacher, Pastor Don Corville. Well, I welcome you again to On Eagle's Wings. Today is Father's Day, a special day again in our lives as we think about our fathers. I have a little thing in a book that I've received on some training, and it's entitled, A Man's Home is His Castle. I'd like to just read you a little bit of this. To get us set for what God has for us today, you know, we're talking about revival. And I shared with a pastor the other day on the phone up in another state who's experiencing revival in his church, in his area, and I told him that unless the father's lives were deeply affected, where they would be the spiritual leaders in their home, that things would go back soon to the way they were before. A man's home is his castle. Well, this well-known phrase, a man's home is his castle, isn't just an empty cliche, because you see, God designed the home to be a place of protection for each member in the family. It's a place where you should be able to come back to and rest. Out into the world you go in the morning, and it's a hard world, and the battles are tough, and you need a place to come back to retreat to to rest. And so it's to be a place of training and preparation and provision for our needs. It's to give care to the members and hospitality to visitors. The home has the potential to generate resources, and skilled warriors are trained there and able to go out, our children to go out into spiritual warfare and to advance for the kingdom of God. The home is to be a castle. And since the home was designed by God for all of these purposes, it shouldn't be any wonder to you or I that the object of Satan is to destroy the home, and he has calculated how to do it. He is systematically setting about to destroy our homes, and he seems to be making a very effective assault in our generation. You know, if you want to really see God work in your life, you need to cleanse your home. You have things in there that hinder the Holy Spirit from working. You have things in there that maybe is inviting demons to come in, meaning people do not know that the beat of rock music invites demons to come in. If that's in your home, you have a continual invitation for invasion. And I'd like to get back to some of the basics of fathers and what they're to do from scriptures. You know, first the home was robbed of its basic functions. And then after a home has been robbed of its basic functions, ill-trained sons and daughters can be lured into the enemy's territory. They can be lured to where they can be easily defeated. Wives and mothers have been coerced out of the home with the promise of vocational fulfillment and financial security. And there has been a deadly, devastating, high price paid by many mothers by getting out of their protective area. Probably the greatest tragedy of all is that the modern father, this article went on to say, has been convinced that he should open up the doors of his castle to any godless influence which desires to come in, plunder his home, and take captive his wife and children. But I'd like to have a word of encouragement for you today, and that's this, that God is doing something new in our land. He is working and drawing out men that want to be godly fathers, men who are claiming the power of God and learning the principles of his word in order to raise up the foundations of many godly generations. And I'm just excited about what God's been doing in my own life and in my family life. You know, we hear that verse in Malachi 4, 6, And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. Well, I believe this was a reference to John the Baptist coming into the world. And the reason I believe that is because when the angel came to John's father, Zacharias, in Luke 1, 13, the angel said to him, Fear not, Zacharias, for thy prayer is heard, and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. And thou shalt have great joy and gladness, and many shall rejoice at his birth. For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. And he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb. And many of the children of Israel shall return to the Lord their God. Now listen to verse 17. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. I believe that God is preparing a special people for this day. And that special people is those that are turning to God's ways of doing things in their lives. We've been so infiltrated and influenced by the ways of the world that we are almost totally devastated. Our society is crumbling. Our great nation is falling because our families are falling apart. And the Father is the head of the family. And the Father has relinquished his authority in the home. My children and I, my wife, we were going over this passage this morning. And we went back to Deuteronomy to just look at some of the basic principles from God's word in relation to the Father. And I thought, well, today, let's just share with you what God is teaching us about a father's responsibility. I know that some of you fathers are really desperate to see God do a work in your family. Now, in Deuteronomy chapter 4 and verse 6, God said, Keep therefore and do them. He's talking about the principles, the laws. For this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations which shall hear all these statutes and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. They were not to just be given facts, knowledge, because knowledge just puffs up, but they were to be given wisdom. And then the understanding came. And this was the thing that made them stand out. That word, teach. Look at verse 9. Only take heed to thyself and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life. But teach them thy sons and thy sons' sons. That means that you're to be very careful to skillfully make known the word of God to them. That word, teach, is used also in Deuteronomy 6 and verse 5. And there it means to point, to pierce, to prick. And you're to teach them. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart. In verse 7, thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by the way and when thou liest down and when thou risest up. In other words, God intends the children to be taught at home and in the home. We are sending our children off. And I'm going to share something with you a little bit on the responsibility of education from a pastor that was over in Kansas City. He shared a message on this area of who's responsible for the education of our children. Now, don't turn me off. Listen, we all know that we've got problems. Our educational system has problems. I hear that on the news all the time. I know the educational people say that everything is great. But yet we get another side saying we've got problems. I hear on the news all the time how they're not achieving. I heard one news report just a couple weeks ago. He was saying in four years our children have not advanced any in the general learning. Well, these things are bothering us, and it should. If we're not, what's wrong? Well, I'd say the problem is we've taken the Word of God out of our educational system. It started off with the Word of God being the center, and they learned. If they learned to read, they learned to read from the Bible. Well, when we take God out of the center of our life, we get into trouble. Something else from this I want you to understand, and that's this. If we're not careful, we'll lose our children by letting them have examples and patterns to follow that God never intended them to have. In Exodus 23-2, God said, Then thou shall not follow a multitude to do evil. When our kids were in the public school systems, we were losing them. Even though I was pastoring a church, they were just overwhelmed by all the influence. Now, they were still good kids, but we could see that there was this struggle, this tendency to want to go with the crowd. And this is what Deuteronomy 12-30 says, And that thou inquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? Even so will I do likewise. I've shared this with you before. One of the things that just got us really riled up was the educational system teaching our children witchcraft. And when we go in and we confront them with it, well, there's no problem with teaching witchcraft. Well, what about if we teach the Word of God? Well, then we've got a real problem. And they were learning how to practice witchcraft. And so we were forced to take them out and just teach them ourselves. There was no Christian school in our area. And I'm not sure that's the answer even today. Not according to God's Word. And I'll share a little bit with you in a minute on this from another man that has a lot of experience in the area of education and even in the area of Christian schools, too. The responsibility simply is the father's. He is responsible for seeing what his children are taught. You know, Malachi 4, 6, it says, And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children. Let me just ask you, where is the father's heart today? Is it on his children or on himself? You look at how much time. The statistics say that fathers spend very little time with their children. Well, why is that? And that's because the father's heart is on himself and on his interests. And the children are just sort of another side issue. Now, maybe you're getting riled up at me. Well, that's okay. You can't hurt me right here. But let me just challenge you to look at your life and evaluate how much time do you really spend with your children. Is a school teacher spending more time teaching your child than yourself? Well, if that's the case, then let me challenge you to carefully examine the things that your school teacher is teaching your child and see if you agree with everything, see if you agree with the lifestyle of that teacher, because you can't separate knowledge from example. That child is going to pattern himself after the ones he or she is around. That's the law of life. We just do that. Are we teaching our children wisdom or are we teaching them just knowledge? Now, let me share something else with you, if you're still there. And that's this article by Doug Kudleck. He shared this. He was in Roland Hills, Wichita, Kansas, which isn't too far away from this broadcast. But he had a very interesting article in a magazine entitled The Biblical Evangelist, a little newspaper. And he comes right out and he says, The duty of training children is ever and always the responsibility of the parents. Remember to Abraham God said, For I have chosen him so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him. Let me just throw out this one thing on how we are hurting ourselves in this land. One of the things that God has directed the Father to do is to be productive in producing children. He is to have children. Blessed is the man that has his quiver full of them. But many fathers have fallen for the humanistic lie that we only are supposed to have two children. And so we have things done to our bodies so that we can't procreate and have more children. Well, one day, and I believe it's coming soon, we're going to have a land full of lonely people. And their children are scattered around the country. One's on this side of the world and another one's over here. And they sit in nursing homes alone, lonely, reaping the fruit of their own labor. That's just one way that we are falling for the lie of Satan. The Bible says that the Father is responsible for the education of his children. We need to educate them that we're not supposed to kill ourselves off, one way or the other. Here's something else. In the letters of Orestes, there's an account of the translation of the Law of Moses into the Greek at Alexandria. And it's largely fiction, but there's a lot of truth in this thing that comes out. And there's a question asked in this letter, and it says, What is the grossest form of neglect? And he replied, If a man does not care for his children and devote every effort to their education. The reply was from the Hebrew. He gave his answer from Scripture, that the man was not to neglect caring for his children. Now, two centuries later, Josephus, the great Jewish historian, spoke of the seriousness which the Jews attended to the proper education of their children. And after he discussed some of the various trades and occupations of the Jews, Josephus said, Our principal care of all is this, to educate our children well. And we think it to be the most necessary business of our whole life to observe the laws that have been given us and to keep those rules of piety that have been delivered down to us. Did you catch that? That the central thing was the Word of God. Now, more important than the particular trades and occupations among the Jews was the training of their children. And it wasn't an accident that immediately joined to the mention of the training of their children is the recounting of the solemn and sacred duty of knowing and obeying the commandments of God. The first priority in education for the father is to teach his children to know the God of Scripture and to know the Scriptures of that God. And that's what Deuteronomy 6, 6 and 7 plainly commands. And it's not necessary to prove that these sentiments of Orestes or Josephus or the ancient Jews in general were entirely in harmony with the commands of the Bible. We don't have to prove anything. All we have to do is believe what the Word of God says. I believe that each parent needs to come to the serious realization that they are responsible and accountable to God for what their children learn. We are responsible as parents. And I will answer to God for what my children have learned. It's my duty to secure for them not only an academically excellent education but also a spiritually filled one. One that teaches them wisdom. And out of the wisdom comes the academics. A parent may shirk his duty. It's real easy because we've got things that we'd like to do. And I'll tell you, it's hard. It's hard. I'd like to get out of it sometimes. But God has showed me that I just can't pretend that this responsibility, somebody else would take care of it, school teachers or whatever. It's got to be done. And I think it needs to clearly and plainly be stated that there's a world of difference between delegating the actual in-school training of children to others, and this is the usual practice, and freeing oneself from the ultimate responsibility for this training. There's a big difference between doing it yourself and delegating it. Now, this is what Doug went on to say in his article. And he said, If children are taught evolution, situation ethics, and sexual promiscuity, and all this stuff, of course, is in the humanistic system, all of this stuff that's foul and wicked and these schools that teach this stuff, the parents, we can't excuse ourselves if we put our children in there. They're going to learn it, and they are learning it. And the parents cannot, we can't get away from our accountability. Fathers are accountable. Well, something else. Children are not wards of the state, or of the church for that matter. Children were given to the parents. And now, some states say that. I read in one magazine that one state said, if you had a marriage license in that state, and I read it, it's right there in black and white, that then the children properly, according to law, belong to the state. Now, that ought to do two things to you. It ought to make you mad, and it ought to scare you, because that's in the law of that state. Well, I don't believe that my children are wards of the state. They were given to me by God, and as a father, I am responsible to teach them. If children are a heritage entrusted to us by the Lord, and God will demand, as trustees give an account of their states, how they handle it, He will demand from us to give an account of how we've handled this responsibility. You know, I was out in Philadelphia some years ago when I was traveling around. I can't remember what year it was. I think it was about 87. And I went and saw Franklin's place, Benjamin Franklin, and all the history there, went through the museum and everything. And there's an interesting story about him. Franklin was a deist. He didn't believe in the deity of Christ, even though he was a great man and accomplished a lot, and was a powerful man. But yet, when he was young, he was allowed to read anything that came along, and he filled his mind from some free thinkers, such as Shaftesbury and Collins, and these two primarily influenced him and overthrew his mind and the Bible instruction that he'd got as a young man to where his heart was turned away from the faith. And he had a friend, George Whitfield, that even would come and visit with him, and he would print up Whitfield's sermons, and Whitfield repeatedly urged him to receive Christ, and yet Franklin himself said, he, Whitfield, used indeed sometimes to pray for my conversion, but never had the satisfaction of believing his prayers were heard. And in short, Franklin perished eternally in his skepticism and doubt, generated in a large measure by the reading of his youth. What a difference it would have made if his father and mother had taken a greater interest in what Franklin received. You know, in our land, our children are being fed continually philosophies of the New Age movement. If your children watch the Saturday morning cartoons, they are being indoctrinated to be New Agers. Now, if that shocks you, and also to be Satanists, you ought to just sit down and watch it. I wouldn't even encourage you to sit down and watch it. Just don't let them watch it anymore. It's bad, but they're learning that. Your children are a product of what goes into their mind. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Listen to their speech. Do they have wisdom, or is there foulness? Is there rebellion in their heart? Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. My friends, we are in serious times, and God is raising up a generation now that will step forward and step out and repent and turn back. And I'm for revival, and I'm sharing with you this morning the heart of revival is that the fathers get right with God and get back and take and shoulder their responsibility with their children. Now, this isn't a mushy Father's Day message. This is a tomato-throwing message where you probably are getting angry. Either you're going to get angry, or you're going to rejoice and repent and realize that this is right. We need to take charge. We've lost control of too many areas, but if we've lost control of our children, we've lost our future. I'm praying for revival in our land and awakening. But if we don't see the hearts of the fathers, as the angel said, and he shall go before him in the spirit and power of the Elias to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. If the hearts of the fathers are not turned to the children, then the children's hearts will not be turned back to the fathers. The father's heart must be turned first. Father, is God free to cleanse you and to bring you to a breaking point? And then the scripture went on to say, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just. We have basically a lifestyle of disobedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. As many profession Christians, we need to be turning back to the one who we profess to love. Now, let me share something with you of a practical nature. There's a seminar that's put out that will help you. Fathers, you say, how can I get help? Pastors, how can I turn my fathers, the fathers in my congregation, back to God? Well, there's a seminar put out called Basic Life Principles that's shared around this country that's teaching fathers how to do this. I just attended the one in Springfield here just a few weeks ago, and I was greatly encouraged by the things that were added to it. It was just a real good teaching time. You know, if you'd like to, you could call the owner of this station to get information on where one of these seminars would be. His number is 781-2031, and I'm sure that they'd be glad to give you information on where you could get to one of these seminars, Basic Life Principle. Maybe I can just take a few moments before we close up and share with you some of the things that I've learned from the second stage of this program, the advanced, about five basic aspects of a dynamic home. Did you know that the home is to be a worship center? Why is it so important for a father to be the spiritual leader in the family? Do you know why? Well, here's why. It's because the father's vision will largely determine who or what the family will serve. Now, you look at the scriptures, and that was true. If the fathers in Israel followed Baal, then the sons did, too, unless they had one that had a heart for God and that wouldn't go along, and then every now and then God would raise up one, and then there'd be a revival in the land, and they'd turn back to the Lord. But if they followed God, then things went well with them. Now, what are the first attitudes that a father must teach his children? From scriptures, we learn that they are to teach respect and attention. One of the things that's characteristic in the schools today is disrespect and non-attention. You ask the teachers. There's so little respect. The teacher will say something, and the kid will just stare at them like, who are you to tell me what to do? Well, we're away from the Word of God, and so we lose this. How can a family identify its present priorities? Well, the family schedule reveals actual priorities. A priority is putting something in the schedule and making it whole. An activity is a number one priority when nothing but a major emergency can displace it. Now, the foundation of a dynamic home must be the scriptures, and the wise father and the wise mother will begin their day by spending time in them. And one of the things that we've learned is to have wisdom searches with our children. Well, fathers, make your home a worship center, not just an entertainment center. You've got your entertainment center. Where's your worship center? And then the home is to be a learning center, a place where the children learn and are educated from the Word of God. It is to be a hospitality center where guests are brought in and entertained, and they enjoy the hospitality that they receive in your home. And then the home is to be a health center. Maybe our diets might need to be changed and to be more healthy. And then the home is to be a craft center where you can turn your home into a place of industry. Well, our time's about gone today, and I hope I didn't get you too mad sharing some of these things with you, but I'm getting desperate for us to see God work in our area. And I know that unless God works in the Father's heart and the home is reached, we really won't have revival in our churches. We won't have revival in our land. Let me encourage you to pray for revival. Let me encourage you to pray to see God work in your family, in your church, and in our land. Well, until next time, I trust that God will richly bless you, my friend.