The audio is available on TrinityCovenantChurch.net Website:
Trinity Covenant Church Sermons
The following are some of Lance's notes from which he referred to as he spoke. These are not updated since Lance's sermon.
90% of professing Christians send their children to public school.
Between 70-88% of Christian students leave the faith their freshman year in college.
And they have nothing to do with spiritual things after their freshman year.
From K- 12 children spend 14,000 seat hours in school.
Voddie Baucham says it this way. “The answer is this, if we continue to send our children to Caesar we need to stop being surprised when they come home as Romans.”
Education is inherently religious.
Scripture standard Psalm 1, Deut 6.
The New Testament version of Prov. 22:6: Luke 6:40
Luke 6:40 a student is not above his teacher, but everyone after has been fully trained will be like his teacher. Whoever is educating our children is decipeling our children. They will be like their teacher.
Proverbs 22:6
Deut 6
Romans 12:2
II Corinthians 10:5
Colossians 2:8
I Timothy 6:18
Noah Webster was shaped by a more biblical worldview. Here is how he defined education in Webster’s 1828 dictionary:
1 enlightens the understanding
2 corrects the temper
3 forms the manners and habits of youth
4 Fits them for usefulness in their future stations.
To give children a good education in manners, arts, and science, is important; to give them the religious education is an indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians and neglect his duties.
2000 edition of Webster’s defines education this way:
1 give instruction
2 develop mentally
3 provide with information
What is the difference? The 2000 edition leaves God out.
There is a popular curriculum in schools “Character Counts.” But how can we teach character, apart from the God of character?
Old Deluder law – America’s Providential History
If In 1647 the legislature of Massachusetts enacted a law with the following preamble: “It being one chief purpose of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures.”
First president of Princeton, Jonathan Dickinson said: “Cursed be all learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ.” Every president of Princeton was a clergyman until 1902.
Proverbs 1:7 The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
Were people literate in the colonies before government schools?
Thomas Jefferson said “Most Americans… can read, write and cipher. Not more than four and a thousand are unable to write legibly and even- neatly;”
In the 1830’s, Alexis de-Tocqueville said education is everywhere in the hands of the Protestant clergy.
In 1835, apart from New England there was complete educational liberty and therefore no compulsory attendance laws anywhere. Parents educated their children as they wished, at home with tutors, at private academies, or church schools. This does not mean the children were neglected. Some states paid the tuition of poor children, enabling them to attend the private schools of their choice.
So why did we need government school system modeled after the Prussian format rooted in Secular Humanism.
So why do these men jump into Public Education?
“education is the motor force of revolution.”
Hitler said: "When an opponent says, ‘I will not come as to your side I calmly say your child belongs to us already what are you..."
Charles Potter, signer of the humanist manifesto: said "education is thus the most powerful ally of humanism and every public school, is a school of humanism . What can theistic Sunday school program for an hour once a week meeting with a week do to stem the tide of a five day program of humanistic teaching.
Paul Blanchard, a signer of the Humanist Manifesto: “our schools may not teach Johnny to read properly, but the fact that Johnny is in school until he was 16 [now that’s 18] lean to toward the elimination of religious superstition.”
Joe Barnett
“Public education is the parochial of education and scientific humanism.”
These three are signers of the humanist manifesto and architects of the public school system.
So why was there a need for public schools?
There was a church denomination who purged the trinity from their hymnals. They were “Unitarians” because they believe in universal redemption – every one goes to heaven.
They believed in perfection by knowledge.
In Boston, Massachusetts the Unitarians did not have control of education. If they had education, they knew they could mould the mind of the child.
The battle began at Harvard College in 1707 when the first liberal president was elected. And that became the battle between Calvinists and religious liberals control of Harvard. Harvard Divinity school was started in 1636 by Reverend John Harvard training ministers.
In 1735 The First Great awakening swept through the colonies. Many thousands came to Christ. It was 50 years before the ungodly apostasy showed up. Under the Ministry of Harvard educated Unitarian James Freeman the Congregational pastor of King's Chapel in Boston he purged the Anglican liturgy of all references to the Trinity, making it the first Unitarian Church in America.
The takeover of Harvard in 1805 would impact the entire nation.
Rushdooney said when people reject the Trinity it's just a matter of time and they reject God. William Ellery Channing was probably one of the most important intellectual and dangerous man of his time, he was probably the most influential in the Unitarian takeover of Massachusetts and public education.
What drove these visionaries?
1) They desired to destroy the Christian foundations of the nation.
2) The humanistic believe of salvation through education.
Historian Clarence Carson wrote, “The most zealous of the reformers were determined to use the power of the state by way of the schools to break the hold of religious tradition and the inherent culture and to change society through the child's training.”
We'll look at some of the leaders of this movement:
Robert Owen (father modern socialism) denounced all religion as the chief cause of human misery he said in 1830: “it will be discovered that religion of the world is the sole cause of all of the disunion, hatred, uncharitableness, and crime, which pervade the population of the earth…”
Owen founded the first communistic experiment in the New World. Communism started in this country… this was 1825 when Karl Marx was a seven-year-old school child living in Germany. In modern socialistic experiment in New Harmony Indiana, when the experiment failed the question was asked why did it fail a glaring answer came back because the people had been educated with the biblical worldview can be said after the experiment.
The “salvation” of the world (which in the Robert Owens mind meant embracing of socialism) depended upon the eradication of biblical education. In order for socialism to take hold in this country, the populace had to be re-educated.
“To the Owenites in 1828 was clear that national public education was the essential first step on the road to socialism and that this would require a sustained effort of propaganda and political activism over a long period of time.
Horace Mann, like his cohorts, was also reared as a Calvinist but rejected it when he was 12 years old. To Mann inequality was man's greatest enemy. If ever a man was to be truly equal there must be equality of education and character. This made public schools, with a common curriculum and absolute necessity:
“the common school is the greatest discovery ever made by man: we repeat it, the common school is the greatest discovery ever made by man… Let the common school be expanded to its capabilities, led the work with the efficiency of which it is susceptible, and nine-tenths of the crimes in the penal code will become obsolete; the long catalogue of human ills would be abridged; men would walk more safely by day; every pillow would be more inviolable by night; property, life; and character held by the stronger tenure; all rational hopes respecting the future brightened.”
Horace Mann believed the State to be the “true parent” of the child. Society and in its collective capacity is a real not a nominal sponsor and god-father for all the children.” Thus, it was the state which had the primary responsibility of providing education. -- R.J Rushdoony
Robert Dale Owen. Followed in his father's Judgment that Calvinism and especially the belief in the total depravity of human nature, was the enemy to "progress." He wrote in 1832 that the doctrine of man's depravity was a “degrading slander that has stolen from man his self-respect!"
“I would as little prejudice a child against any religion as in its favor; I would not speak to it on the subject. It should learn first what it could see and understand; its judgment should be carefully matured, and its reasoning powers sedulously cultivated. And if at age, when it opens its eyes on the creeds that now distract the world, it found one among the number that bore the impress of reason and truth, it is not I who would complain of conversion.”
I object against infant schools, as now conducted, because they are under the control of the clergy, who enlists the sympathies and superstitions of the amiable young women aid them in the obstructing on the unsuspected and immature minds of infancy creeds and doctrines which I believe mischievous at any age, but more as a particularly unsuited to one who is but just opening census to perceive the material world around him…"
The New Harmony failure had convinced Owen the education had to precede any sort of property redistribution, for only men educated in advance to be socialists could make socialism work.
Lesson learned form New Harmony, was that rational education had to precede the institution of socialism. Robert Owen preached that the children had to be separated from their parents as early as possible so that there characters could molded by their educators. In 1829, Robert Dale
and Francis Wright were busy trying to convince Americans to accept the "true religion" but under the name of popular education which was the first step to be taken toward socialist society. The working man's party was to spearhead the plan. They criticized the schools because they were not the ones running the schools.
Francis Wright advocated forced government schooling as early as two years old should be separated their parents and put into boarding schools, What about, parental rights? she was not cutting them off. Parents, she said, could visit the children and suitable hours, but, in no case, he will interfere with or interrupt the rules of the institution.'' She said, “Fix your eyes upon the great object of salvation and the regeneration of human kind, by means of rational education and protection of human...''
Public education must be the regenerator and we redeemer of this present age. This face was then orthodoxy or use modern reformers. The others involved were no less candid about their humanism. Francis Wright feminist, public-school advocate said,
"National, rational education is to be free for all at the expense of all; conducted under the guardianship of the state, at the expense of the state and for the honor, and happiness, the virtue the salvation of the state... Fix your eyes upon the great object-- the salvation and regeneration of humankind, by means of rational education and protection of youth..." "From whom all blessings flow, to whom all glory belongs."
The Owenites later formed a secret society to work toward attaining their goals. Orestes Bronson (who was a leader in this society) later wrote about it: What they would do is infiltrate other organizations and push their own ideas of public education in those meetings. "The great object was to get rid of Christianity, and convert our churches into halls of science. The plan was not to make open attacks on religion, although we might belabor the clergy and bringing them into contempt or we could but to establish a system of state, we said national schools, from which all religion was to be excluded, in which nothing was to be taught but such knowledge as is verifiable by the senses and to which all parents were to be compelled by law to send their children." These things resulted by or strange coalition of socialists, Unitarians, evangelical Christians all supported a government school system for their own reasons.
Reducing Education to the supremacy of the lowest common dominator.
The Protestants objected to government schools being used for the purpose of inculcating doctrines of the Catholic Church, Romanists objected to the use of the Protestant version of the Bible and to the inculcation of the particular doctrines of the Protestant churches. The Jews protest against the schools being used to inculcate Christianity in any form, and the atheist and agnostics protest against any age teaching that implies the existence and moral
AA Hodge
“I am as sure as I am of Christ reign that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of anti-social nihilistic ethics, individual, social and political, which the sin-rent world has ever seen.”
“In the Soviet union people without education are not considered people.” “They are just like horsepower.” The “link between life and school demanded by Khrushchev means that education serve the aims of the Soviet state.”
- By 1850 it was a foregone conclusion that this country would have a system of government supported schools. Schools were not to be centers of learning but engines of change and "reform." Schools were no longer extensions of parental authority but a powerful instrument of State control of the population. The reformers sought to deny parents any authority over the education of their children. The schoolmaster was King.
- Children increasingly came to be viewed as "wards of the State" and it was the State's responsibility (as the "Great a Parent") to provide education for them. Horace Mann stated, "Society, is its collective capacity [the State,] is a real, not a nominal sponsor and god-father for all its children." Schooling thus became the prerogative of State and schools became the agents of the State. As Rushdoony notes, "If the schools were agencies of the state, they must inevitably serve the purpose of state rather than God, man, the family, or any institution.”
The last thing
Steve Wilkins writes: The public schools would become the chief instrument in implementing the revolution the enemies of Christianity desired. Schools became the new temples of the new religion of Man. The teachers were new priests. Man, or more precisely, "humanity" as incorporated in that state, became the new God and has remains so to this day.
Some Christians stood against state schooling:
Cornelius Van Til said:
“Non Christian education, puts the child in a vacuum, and the result is that child dies. Christian education is alone really nurturers personality, because it alone gives the child air and food, modern educational philosophy gruesomely insults our God and Christ how then can anything positively Christian or theistic upon a foundation which is the negation of Christianity and theism no teaching of any sort is possible except in Christian schools.”
Charles Hodge said, "This process is to be religious and not only religious, but Christian, and as Christianity is the only religion and God and Christ, the only true God – and the only possible means of profitable education is the nurture and admonition of the Lord."
American education had a messianic vision.
Man will either worship and serve the creator or worship and serve the creature. We were born with a need for a messiah. So when men create schools without God, the schools have a god like purpose.
Descendants of Christians adopted education as “the savior of mankind.”
Robert Owen, one of the fathers of public ed wrote:
My moral principles are based on the rock of demonstration, not on the shifting sands of theology.”
“ if this country is to be redeemed…”
American Education was founders had a misguided postmillennial hope.
Many of the founders of public education were the children of Calvinist New England Christians. They had the optimism of their fathers, but without the faith in Christ.
President Woodrow Wilson was a Presbyterian elder. He led the drive for the League of Nations, a precursor to the United Nations. Wilson had a vision for world peace, but through the power of government, not through Jesus Christ.
William Channing “if we can but turn the energy of this people into the right channel, what a new heaven and new earth can be realized among us.”
This is biblical language used for humanist education, giving education the place of God.
This is a warning for us. We need to pray for our descendents, that they will take not only our optimism for the future and not forget Christ as the true foundation.
Application: We see Reformation in our day: Education has become the new Tower of Babel, that how you get to Heaven Climbing through the structure of education. Public education has become the Regenerator, Redeemer and Judge. Robert Owens believed that people still today believe that. We as Christians believe in education because, there is a God of truth who has spoken and we are to uphold that truth, and pass it on to our children, but we do not believe that there's power in any kind of education, or salvation, in any kind of education, there is salvation in the fear of God.
Homeschool movement is one hopeful sign, breaking up of a virtual monopoly of statist education.
We see God’s Spirit working anywhere Christian are actively discipling, practicing hospitality.
It’s vital that home-schooled young men and women have an active vision to serve their families and lead. Without vision, homeschoolers will assimilate into a selfish culture. And miss the excitement of being part of the spread of God’s kingdom.
As we press crown rights of Jesus Christ into every area of life, showing hospitality, care for the widow and orphan, showing Christ’s love to the world.
Psalm 112
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