Education, the end of the United States. Education, the end of the United States. This is a follow-up to the sermon that we preached on Sunday, Why Mama Obama? My text will be first in Hosea, chapter 8. Meditate upon these scriptures as we read them. Israel had cast off the thing that is good. The enemy shall pursue him." You know, when you cast off that which is good, when you have the truth, when you have that which God has given you and blessed you with, and you cast it off, well, you're going to get destruction, are you not? They have set up kings, but notice what it says, but not by me. Interesting. They have made princes, and I knew it not. Of their silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be Cut off. And look at Daniel chapter 2, verse 42. And as the toes of the feet were part of iron and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly broken. Lord, we do pray that You'll help us understand Thy Scriptures, apply them, be doers of the Word, God. Refresh us and teach us. In the name of Jesus, Amen. I want you to look at Daniel 2 again, as it says, the toes of the feet were part of iron and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly broken. This speaks of the final New World Order kingdom that will come to this earth before the Lord returns to set up His own kingdom upon this earth. And what I want you to see is that The kingdom shall be partly strong and partly broken. Now, just because it's strong doesn't mean it's good. We're not talking about moral qualities here. We're talking about the simple power of the kingdom. Now, we know, at least at one point, the Antichrist is going to cause all the world, with the beast of the earth, to worship him. So there's a time when He does have a worldwide domination, but we see here that the kingdom's not going to endure, that's for sure. And the Lord will certainly put an end to the Antichrist and the whole kingdom of man and all its glorification. But what's interesting here, and I want you to notice, It says this final Roman Antichrist system that conquers the world is said to be partly strong and partly broken. The iron, the strength, has been defined in a previous verse. Look at verse 40. The fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron, for as much as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things. So you get an idea of what the iron is or what it does. It's the strength that subdues and breaks. It's again described in the seventh chapter of Daniel, where it says, Then I would know the truth of the fourth beast, which was diverse from all the others, exceeding dreadful, whose teeth were of what? Iron, and his nails of brass, which devour, break in pieces, and stamp the residue with his feet. Thus he said, The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces. So we see this iron that conquers and subdues, This contrast between the iron and the clay, because notice up here it says that part of iron and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly broken, this contrast between the iron and clay has often been interpreted as totalitarianism mixed with democracy. And, for example, Gaebelein in his Daniel Commentary says the metals represent monarchies, but the clay stands for democratic rule. Ironside, speaking of an attempted union between imperialism and democracy. Schofield notes, as the iron of the Roman imperium mixed with the clay of the popular will, thickle and easily molded. Likewise, Isaac Macy Haldeman, Baptist of New York. In Christ's Christianity in the Bible of 1922 says, by type, figure, and direct prophecy, it announces that the last form of government among the nations just previous to the coming of our Lord Jesus will be democracy, the rule of the people. Everywhere the evidence is manifest that the prophecy of Daniel announcing the rise of the clay, Daniel's symbol of the people, and the warning of Isaiah that the nations should rush like the rushing of many waters and make a noise like the noise of the seas are being fulfilled. The Bible foretold the rising again of Romanism into the place of power and authority, as we see it today in the United States. He could already see that in 1922. How much more should we be able to see it now? But people are still blind. It's amazing the blindness that is upon people, where it holds the balance of political power and is fast becoming a social triumph. Who would have dared to say that Rome would come back, ascend into the place of authority, sit upon the throne of the world's respect and receive its honors? But some form of democracy, Haldeman and these early fundamental premillennial interpreters, they saw to at least be involved in the final kingdom of the Antichrist. For example, again, Larkin in the Book of Daniel in 1929 says, here we see imperialism mixed with democracy. In short, the character of government passes from an absolute autocracy, which was Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon, And then you notice the next kingdom is inferior to that we're talking about in strength. The Persians, he had a type of absolute power, but he was more bound by law than he was his word. In other words, if he's already stated something, he couldn't change it according to his will. And you see this decrease of power. But nevertheless, in short, the character of government passes from absolute autocracy to a democratic monarchy. Those are his words of how he views the last Antichrist system. And what do they mean by this when they say democracy? I believe Larkin sums it up when he says, the masses, swayed by politicians and demagogues, who think only of their own selfish interests control the government. So really, who's in control? As we said Sunday, whoever controls the propaganda is really in control, but you think you're in control. The masses think they're in control, but they're really being swayed by the demagogues and those that are controlling the propaganda. And we have some hint that this is what's going to happen when the Antichrist comes. Because he says in the Bible, it says that he'll have a mouth speaking great things, remember? And it speaks so much about peace, peace in the Antichrist. He's going to be the ultimate, the fulfillment of years, centuries of satanic propaganda will all be summed up in this person. And that's one reason he'll be adored and worshipped. The Matthews will choose him because he will have swayed them to give him this ultimate power. You see in 2 Timothy 4, the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine. And as we said on the Lord's Day, they're not going to endure sound doctrine concerning church or family, and certainly not civil doctrine. But after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears. We're talking pastors, we're talking counselors, we're talking politicians. Back in chapter 3, it says, "...this know also in the last days perilous times shall come, for men shall be lovers of their own selves." They're not going to think about their neighbor. And notice, this is amazing. The first thing it lists, and I think this is important, when it describes the outgrowth, the manifestation of self-love, is covetousness. Men shall be lovers of their own selves. And before you get that long list of sins, which are all expressions of self-love, the first thing it says is covetous. It will be perilous in your country, in the world, because the majority of people will be covetous. They will be inflamed. They call television the covetous box, because the whole thing is designed to make you covet something you do not have. And the politicians, the pastors, they will prey upon the covetous nature of the people, for they are also covetous, and they will use their covetousness to their own end. Evil men and seducers, there they are, shall wax worse and worse. He already told us they'll creep into houses and lead astray silly women. Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. And we need to think about that. This is so serious that the Bible says, drunkards, fornicators, adulterers, covetous with such a one do not eat. Now, covetousness is a sin of the heart, but it has manifestation. How do you know somebody's covetous? Well, if they accept money, or want money, or do something for money that's against God's Word. And If you're not going to live by faith, you're going to live by mammon. If mammon's going to be your God, you're going to make decisions based upon the covetous nature. Remember John the Baptist said, be content with your wages. And when you're covetous, and I'm not saying you don't have a decision, you can pray, but did God ever say sin to get more money? See, that's the difference. Pray for more money. Get motivated to bring forth more money. If you do it in the right way, in the right spirit, resigning yourself to God's will, you've already been better. You've already given me more than I deserve. And make sure that you balance that humility and resignation to God's will, and I will never sin. What you need to say is, I will never sin to increase my wages. I will never compromise to increase my wages. I will never put God's will secondary to my own will. And the Bible says you're to separate, actually, from covetous people because it spreads. In light of these prophecies and warnings from the Bible, I want you to notice the following warning from a British historian in 1857 concerning our country. It's quite amazing. You might have heard these words before, but they are timely. in relation to our situation today in America. This is from the Southern Literary Messenger, March 24, 1860. The letter belongs to an occasional correspondence of some year standing between Lord Macaulay and Henry S. Randall of New York, who is the author of The Life of Jefferson. So, Randall was doing a biography of the life of Jefferson and Macaulay, wrote him a letter, May 23, 1857. Macaulay is a British historian, and in his letter to Randall about the life of Jefferson, Macaulay says this, What happened lately in France is an example. In 1848, a pure democracy was established there. During a short time, there was a national bankruptcy. A maximum of prices, a ruinous load of taxation laid on the rich for the purpose of supporting the poor in idleness. Such a system would, in 20 years, have made France poor and barbarous. Happily, the danger was averted, and now there is a despotism, a silent tribute, an enslaved press. Liberty is gone. So he's saying that democracy in France almost led to absolute chaos and a barbarian system, but yet it finally dwindled into absolute despotism. I have not the smallest doubt that if we had a purely democratic government here, the effect would be the same. Either the poor would plunder the rich and civilization would perish, or order and property would be saved by a strong military government and liberty would perish. So it says you have two choices. Either everybody just decides to take everybody else's money using the government as their means, which we quoted on Sunday, or else the government grows strong and liberty perishes. You may think that your country, talking about America, enjoys an exemption from these evils. I will frankly own to you that I am of a very different opinion. The time will come when New England will be as thickly peopled as Old England. He said, what's saving you right now is there's so much property that the government's given away and people can be consoled by this lure of property and they can go out to the West and they can conquer and everybody's getting lands and for a while. But he said, pretty soon you're going to have so much population gathered in your cities that people are going to start looking at other people's wealth and they're going to become dissatisfied. As he says here, hundreds of thousands of artisans will assuredly be sometimes out of work. Distress everywhere makes the laborer mutinous and discontented and inclines him to listen with eagerness to who? Agitators who will tell him that it is a monstrous iniquity that one man should have a million while another cannot get a full meal Through such and they'll follow all these little Conspiracy things and all of these but the whole thing will be I'm discontented and you have money and I don't and I want it Through such seasons, the United States will have to pass in the course of the next century, if not of this. How will you pass through them? I heartily wish you a good deliverance. But my reason and my wishes are at war, and I cannot help foreboding the worst. It is quite plain that your government will never be able to restrain a distressed and discontented majority. For with you the majority is the government, and has the rich, who are always a minority, absolutely at its mercy. The day will come when, in the state of New York, a multitude of people, none of whom has had more than half a breakfast or expects to have more than half a dinner, will choose a legislature. Is it possible to doubt what sort of legislature will be chosen? On one side is a statesman preaching patience, respect for vested rights, strict observance of public faith. On the other is a demigod ranting about the tyranny of capitalists and usurers and asking why anybody should be permitted to drink champagne to ride in a carriage while thousands of honest folks are in one of necessaries. Which of the two candidates is likely to be preferred by a working man who hears his children cry for more bread? I seriously apprehend that you will, in some such season of adversity as I have described, do things which will prevent prosperity from returning. That you will act like people would in a year of scarcity, devour all the seed corn, and thus make the next year a year not of scarcity, but of absolute famine. There will be, I fear, spoilation. The spoilation will increase the distress. The distress will produce fresh spoilation. There is nothing to stay you. As I said before, when a society is entered on this downward progress, either civilization or liberty must perish. Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the 20th century as the Roman Empire was in the 5th. With this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman Empire came from without, and that your huns and vandals will have been engendered within your country by your own institutions." So that's quite a prophetic outlook upon his view of what our republic would lead to. Our founding fathers did attempt to protect the country from the ravages of a democracy by setting up what they called a republic. McAuley, however, argues that even with elected representative leaders, the people, led by agitators, will simply choose legislatures who will have no respect for the rights of property and that true statesmen preaching patience, respect for vested rights, strict observance of public faith will be scorned and shunned. In other words, he's saying really the Republic will offer some momentary barrier But really, they're just going to elect leaders that will end up giving them what they want. What I ask is, is it possible that a majority of our founding fathers were so ignorant of human nature and history that they did not foresee this coming spoilage of their system of government? No, they also foresaw it. This is why they warned. that the morality of the people would determine how long their country could survive its Republican form of government. This is important for you as a Christian today to realize this. It's not as much to sit around and debate what type of government should we have. I think the Republican form of government is a wonderful in this day of sin and wickedness, but however, it's going to fail. As Macaulay said, it must fail as long as people are immoral and selfish. They stress the link between true liberty and morality. Our founding fathers warned that when morality waned, the system of government could not endure the evils of selfishness, etc. Notice what John Adams, the signer of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights and our second president, notice what he said. We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly, wholly inadequate to the government of any other. That's quite amazing. The people that framed the Constitution said, this is only going to work for moral people who can control themselves. Well, that's, that's amazing, isn't it? That means when we're living in a day where people are saying, let it all hang out, party, just go crazy, and be covetous, and let's just sin, and cast off the morality of our forefathers, you're basically destroying your nation. You don't have a country that can withstand that type of generation. They didn't design it. They never intended that it could. Even when the Lord comes, He rules with a rod of iron. He'll get rid of it by simply raising up the rod of iron, and he's perfect. So really, the absolute monarchy that he will establish, since he's perfect, it'll be a holy monarchy. James Madison says, to suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical idea, an imaginary idea. George Washington, of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. I mean, if you remove those pillars, according to Washington, you don't have a country. So when you see this rock and roll generation, when you see Hollywood and all its gore, when you see everybody worshiping the sports celebrities and living for pleasures, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, sit back and realize this destroys your country. It was never designed to endure that type of And everybody's living as if there's no tomorrow. Noah Webster says, I'm persuaded that no civil government of a Republican form can exist and be durable in which the principles of Christianity have not a controlling influence. So what we would say in that day and age to Macaulay, we would say, you're right. But our founding fathers never set it up to endure. It's selfishness and these types of things. So Macaulay would say, well, what are you going to do? How are you going to ensure that people don't grow selfish? Because prosperity leads to selfishness and pride and that type of thing. What are you going to do? Noah Webster in 1832 again says, God commands you to choose for rulers just men who will rule in the fear of God. So it's a sin to elect selfish men that'll give you what you want, isn't it? It's a sin for you to say, this person, if I scream loud, they will give me what I want and will take from that person and give me a benefit where I can go get a handout from the government. That's wickedness. That's wicked. You say, but we can do it. It works. Well, just because you use, if you go to somebody's house and steal their lawnmower, that's wicked. If you use the politicians to, by law, steal it, it's still wickedness. The preservation, says Webster, of a Republican government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty. If the citizens neglect, listen to what he said, your country's not going to survive if you don't elect godly leaders. They all understood this. If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted. Laws will be made not for the public good, so much as for selfish or local purposes. If a Republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the divine commands and elect bad men to make and administer the law. Quotes like these could be multiplied. Many of you have read them before. And there are dozens more of our founding fathers that said, do you think we're ignorant? Do you think we're stupid? Of course we set up a form of government that can fall and be corrupted. We told you it's going to fall if you do not have constant vigilance. Now, this is the problem today. People are having constant vigilance to preserve liberty for the sake of liberty. In other words, when I read many of these good men It's as if they're saying liberty preserves liberty. Just don't pass any bad laws. Just don't pass anything that infringes upon our liberty and everything will just be wonderful. No, liberty doesn't preserve liberty alone. Our founding fathers never said that it did. They said morality and religion preserve liberty. And you better make sure what religion you get. Because if you get a Roman Catholic dark age religion, if you get people that don't believe in liberty like our Baptist forefathers that were able to divide between the tables of the law and the sense of what God would want legislated and what man should not legislate. You have to understand these things. Now, if you were back then and you were an outside observer and you were listening to the founding fathers and you had heard that they'd set up this form of government and everyone was excited about it called the Republic, and you started seeing some of the fruit of their system, I believe you would say, now hold on fellas, I have a question. How are you going to ensure that this form of government is preserved? And today, you will even hear people speak about our cities are in chaos. And everyone gets together and it seems that everyone comes to the table and agrees, we need more education. If we could educate the ghettos, if we could educate these cities, if we could educate the gangs, everything will be okay. In fact, education has been celebrated as the great savior of the republic. But here's the distinction that I want you to make right now. Education must be properly defined. Today, it usually means more taxes and more money to support public schools. And what they say is, everything's falling apart. Look what's happening in our classrooms. Look what's happening in our cities. We need more education. And now the teachers are going crazy. Many of them are going crazy. And the news is so despicable that you can't even quote it. And these are, and you think, how could this be? They're like 26 years old. Look when they were born. Think about that. If you're 25 years old, think of when you were born, what type of world. And now when you think of these, and I'm not saying all these school teachers are that way, but you need to understand what a 25, 26 year old, how confused she must be. The world, the television, the internet that she grew up with. It's insane. And this is the chaos of our world today. And everybody says if you want to fix it, let's give more money to big government agencies that we can pump more money into public schools and more money will bring more education. And well, haven't you been trying that for decades? Haven't we been trying this over and over? In fact, what I say is the whole system was a wicked deception and scam from the very beginning. And I've quoted Charles Potter. I've quoted men that were involved in the National Education Association. I quoted how he says, all you did was set up a humanist church in America, and one generation will basically turn all of America into one big giant humanist church. And he laughed. He said, you Christians think... This is 1930. He said, you Christians think evolution is the only thing we're teaching in public schools. We're giving them a five-day-a-week indoctrination into humanism. And these were Antichrist men. These were men with a communist value system. And they had an agenda to use education to destroy. We call it destruction. They call it beautiful. I call it destruction, see. Now, with this, you're looking at a perspective. You're able to see what's happened. You're able to see what has occurred in America. But let's go back and imagine that you were James Abram Garfield, the 20th President of the United States who was assassinated in 1881. He was assassinated by a fellow, by the way, that was a member of John Humphrey Noyes' church. John Humphrey Noyes was the first preterist that said Jesus has already come, the kingdom has already been set up back in, all the prophecies have been fulfilled, and we're now in the kingdom of heaven. And then he looked down at the verse and said we're now in the kingdom of heaven, well there's no marriage! So he set up this giant commune where everybody traded wives and that type of thing. So that's John Humphrey Noyes. Out of his community came a man that was just crazy. He was crazy. And there might be other conspiracies, other things that we don't know, but the story is that he assassinated Garfield because he wanted an appointment from Garfield. Whatever the case, he was crazy right down to his death. He was dancing up on the platform before they hung him. He was just a raving madman. But Garfield also stood for a lot of principle things by which people would want to assassinate him. But listen to what he says. I propose then, as the theme for this hour, the future of the Republic. There is much in the history of dead empires that sadden and discourage our hope for the permanence of any human institution. Our success has been so great hitherto we have passed safely through so many perils, which at the time seemed almost fatal, that we may assume that the Republic will continue to live and prosper unless it shall be assailed by dangers which outnumber and outweigh the elements of its strength. It is idle to boast of what we are and what we are to be unless at the same time we compare our strength with the magnitude of our dangers. In the first place, our great dangers are not from without. We're protected from foreign complications by the wise policy introduced by Washington and now become traditional, the policy of non-interference. Nothing but reckless and gratuitous folly on our part can lead us into serious peril from abroad. So, he said, we don't really have any other problems because we're non-interventionists, you know, for the most part, and that's our policy, so we don't got to worry about that. Well, that disappeared a long time ago. At the risk of offending our American pride, I shall quote a few paragraphs from what is probably the most formidable indictment ever penned against the democratic principle. It was written by the late Lord Macaulay, a profound student of society and government. And he goes on to quote a portion of what I already read to you. Millions of Americans have read and admired his histories and essays, but only a few thousands have read his brief but remarkable letter of 1857 in which he discusses the future of our government. But we are so confident of our position that we seldom care to debate it. Well, that's a danger, isn't it? If you don't look at what could happen and what we already see is happening, then you're not going to be ready to withstand it. Now listen to what he said, certainly this letter contains food for serious thought and it would be idle to deny that the writer has pointed out what may become serious dangers in our future. However, says Garfield, in depicting the dangers of universal suffrage, Macaulay leaves wholly out of the account the great counterbalancing force of universal education. So what is he putting his hope in to counterbalance this warning? Education. We have happily escaped the dogma of the divine right of kings. Let us not fall into the equally pernicious error that the multitude is divine because it is a multitude. Remember our Bible says, though hand join in hand, they shall not go unpunished. Follow not a multitude to do evil. Amen. The words of our great publicist, the late Dr. Lieber, whose faith in Republican liberty was undoubted, should never be forgotten. He said, quote, woe to the country in which political hypocrisy first calls the people almighty, then teaches that the voice of the people is divine, then pretends to take a mere clamor for the true voice of the people, and lastly gets up the desired clamor. And those are amazing words from Dr. Lieber, because what he's saying is, the people, the people. And then you have some screaming homosexuals that only represent a few people in America. And then we say, but this is the voice of the people when it's not the voice of the people. And then finally you realize that all of this is being orchestrated and controlled and they are causing the clamor so they can then use it to their own ends. So our forefathers understood the nature of propaganda and warned against what would happen to our nation. But listen to what Garfield ends with. He says, our faith in the democratic principle rests upon the belief that intelligent men will see that their highest political good is in liberty. Now, if we stop there, we would have much in the liberty movement today. Our highest political good is in liberty. But they never taught that. Our founding fathers never taught that. Let's finish it. Our highest political good is in liberty regulated by just and equal laws. Not ungodly laws, not unbiblical laws, not laws that God would never ordain for civil institutions or civil society. However, if you don't have just godly law, you have a mess. But listen to what he says, we confront the dangers of suffrage by the blessings of, again, what does he say? Universal education. As popular suffrage is the broadest base, so when coupled with intelligence and virtue, it becomes the strongest, the most enduring base on which to build the superstructure of government. We need to explain some things here. By universal suffrage at the time, Garfield meant adult men of all classes and stations of life, whether property owners or not, being permitted to vote. Now this has been quite a... It became women and everyone. That's what they meant by suffrage. But at the time, throughout history, universal suffrage meant should all classes be able to vote, whether they're property owners or not? And if the poor are able to vote, won't they just end up electing officials that'll steal your property? And that had been the argument. And so you had this debate among the founding fathers, who should be allowed to vote? And then when you get the idea of slaves being released, praise God, all men have a right to live in the country that are born here and that type of thing and become citizens. But what he ended up having to deal with was this argument, how are we going to deal with a whole America filled with people from all classes voting? Won't they just end up voting or being used by people that are manipulating them? And this was the argument. And it was a good argument. To combat the argument, what did Garfield say? What did he say? Universal education will fix it. Okay, this was the same argument. for immigration. We've got thousands coming over into this country that don't share our Republican values. They don't share much that we believe in. What are we going to do? We'll have to what? Educate them. So, the thought was simply this. What Garfield meant by universal education, he doesn't say. Yet he does mention the need for virtue and does not fall into the common idea that mere literacy will save the republic. Now that's interesting, isn't it? When you come back up there, look what he says. He says, so when coupled with intelligence and what? Virtue, it becomes the strongest, the most enduring base. So Macaulay telling you your democracy is going to end because the unhappy people that are going without are simply going to elect politicians that will give them what they want. Garfield says, well, we've considered that, and it's a good warning, and we need to take it into account, but we believe education will fix it. And by education, he seems to not just be limited. Let's teach him how to read and write. See, that's a lot of times. That's what you hear in modern times. If you teach them how to read and write and do algebra, it'll be great. Well, if they're a thief in heart, now they're an even wiser, keener thief, you see. And the idea is if you just teach them some book learning, then all the gangsters will end up nice. Is that necessarily the truth? So we have a situation in America where people from outside said, your republic is going to just destroy itself. And then you have others arguing, well, we never said that our government would survive without morality. And then when you put it all together, they said, well, how are you going to ensure morality? They said education. Let's go back to Lyman Beecher from 1848. who wrote The Necessity of Education. Actually, it's before 1848. He says, we must educate or we must perish from our own prosperity. Okay? What will become of the West if her prosperity rushes up to such a majesty of power while those great institutions linger which are necessary to form the mind and the conscience and the heart? The great experiment is now making in the West whether the perpetuity of our Republican institutions can be reconciled with universal suffrage. Without the education of the head and heart of the nation, they cannot be. I perceive a spirit of impatient rising and distrust in respect to the perpetuity of our Republic. And I am sure that these fears are well founded and I'm glad that they exist. No punishments of heaven are so severe as those of mercy's abuse. No spasms are like the spasms of expiring liberty. That's what you're entering to right now, the spasms of expiring liberty. And there's people screaming because they want their liberty to remain, but they are so ignorant of how we got here. They are so ignorant of what even liberty should be. And ultimately, they're ignorant of everything our founding fathers put in place to preserve that liberty. May God hide me from the day when the dying agonies of my country shall begin. All right, I want to ask you some questions now. What did Beecher mean by education saving the Republic? What do you think? What did Beecher mean by education saving the Republic? Tell me. Anybody take a shot at it? All right, so you think he included religious education as part of it? Head and heart. Okay, so we see that just like Garfield, when these men said education, they never intended that you set up a system that just teaches them how to read and write, and that everything's going to be great in America. But that's how insane we are today. There's actually people that think, just teach them how to do some math, and they're not even teaching them that. Teach them how to read and write and spell and speak in complete sentences, and everything will be great in America. Where do you find that? In the founding fathers. Mike? Okay, stop right there. Many humanistic atheists said, we're just teaching them reading and writing. It's okay, you can trust us. Then they started writing books about, now wait a second, Abraham Maslow and some of these others. We can't just, we have to teach them values. But it was humanist values and not Christian values. So you're exactly right. But obviously they didn't mean humanist values, these founding fathers, but go ahead. Yes. Sure. Okay, well let me ask you a second question then. How do we reconcile the fact that totalitarian governments also advocate education to preserve their status quo? Didn't the Nazis believe in education? Didn't Manly P. Hall, the great sorcerer, called the greatest Luciferic sorcerer of all time? Didn't he say we're going to have to use what the Nazis used? We've got to begin with propaganda. We've got to begin with education if we're going to accomplish anything. All communists believe in education. So, you can't just say education's the answer, can you? You can't just say, let's put more money in our schools and that'll fix everything. What are your schools? What are they teaching? And tell me how what they're teaching in those schools are going to help people grow up to be godly and preserve the liberties of our country. Alright, number three. What were the mistakes many of our forefathers made about education and what prompted these mistakes? Now you've got to get this out of past studies. I'm just giving you a random question here. What were many of the mistakes that our forefathers made about education and what prompted it? Orlando? This is for immoral people. And I guess they didn't think that in the future it's going to be totally immoral. So long as the education will follow that too. Okay. Anybody else? What were some mistakes our founding fathers made about education? Well, I think looking back over it, a lot of those men were Masons, most likely even going back to like George Washington. So though they talked about morality, I don't think that it would be the same. They're not talking about Christianity. So I think I would say their mistakes would be in not properly defining it as coming from the Bible. Yeah, and many of them did, but we'll see. Hold that. Any other mistakes? Mike? You will find I collect anti-Catholic literature, and I have a lot of old-time, 19th century, early 20th century, anti-Catholic, and it's pro-liberty, telling you how to preserve the Republic, and it's amazing, because they say in these books, we must have public schools. And Rome hates our public schools. and we must join together behind the public school system in America and of course they went out of the frying pan right into the fire because they created a giant humanistic as Charles Potter, many of them said, you dismantled the state church only to set it up again in public education, but you gave it to us, the humanists. The humanists used to be called Unitarians. And this is how it all worked. They said, now hold on, you got immigrants coming over here. What are you going to do as they flood? Hey, listen to what the Pope just said. The Pope just said he wants to destroy your liberties. He hates the First Amendment and he's going to use immigration. They're telling you, Samuel F. Morse, all of these folks were writing a warning. that they're coming over here in floods and droves and they're going to change how America votes. So here you are as an early Christian or a statesman and you're saying, we've got to stop this. How are we going to stop it and ensure that we have, we don't believe in slavery, we want to basically release the slaves, we believe everybody ought to be able to vote, what are we going to do to these masses? Immigrants. Educate them. Well, how can we ensure they're going to be educated? Set up a public system of education. Well, without the Bible, there is no education. They pretty much all agreed on that. Well, then we have to teach them generic things. We're not going to teach them whether you sprinkle, or whether baptism is immersion, you know, we'll just keep it generic. And for a while, everybody agreed. And it was the Unitarians that were in control of that. The Unitarians took off their mask, and they were called secular humanists. And they had now control of your children. And it's so bad that 100 years of watching it happen, that in two... 1930, the humanists could mock and laugh and said, you Christians are so gullible, we have your children. Yet Christians still have not awakened. The Southern Baptists couldn't even pass a resolution saying that we disapprove of public education. That's pretty bad, isn't it? How many Christians do you know today that believe in public education? Quite a few, right? Homeschooling is mocked. So, one of the mistakes our forefathers made was to set up an education system, taking it out of the hands of the church, taking it out of the hands of the parent, and giving it to, taking it out of the hands of private institutions, and they say, well, if we don't have public education supported by your tax money, Then how can we ensure everybody's going to be educated? Well, get out here and hit the streets and advertise your church, advertise your school, do whatever you can, give them free education in your church, do whatever. But the whole point is, if you put all the power in the government to educate, what's going to happen here sooner or later? You're going to lose control of it. And before you know it, it was out of the hands, and now it's in this national organization, the feds, and you see what's happened now. Benjamin Rush, who died in 1813, was one of the leaders in the American Revolution. Is this boring to you? He was one of the leaders in the American Revolution and was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He had much to say about the nature of the education needed to preserve the Republic. While he did not foresee the dangers of public education that would arise, he did attempt to keep it linked to the Bible. When many public schools stopped using the Bible as a textbook, Rush proposed that the government require it, as well as furnish Bibles to every family at public expense." Now, the Baptists began to debate What Bible should we use? Which version of the Bible? And the Catholics stood back and said, well, we don't want that King James Bible being taught to our kids. And so you had this big debate. So they should have never got in the ring to begin with, with this whole debate. The whole argument was wrong. In 1786, Benjamin Rush produced his plan of education for the country titled, thoughts upon the mode of education proper in a republic." Well, this is good. I'm glad our forefathers were thinking about this. They believe that education is going to preserve it. Well, I'd like to know what type of education they thought would preserve our republic. In this paper, we can find the foundations of all that's wrong today and much that is right or should be. For example, Rush argues, our schools of learning by producing one general and uniform system of education will render the mass of the people more homogenous and thereby fit them more easily for uniform and peaceable government." So, he says, if we get them all in one public education center we'll be able to preserve our republic and everybody will pretty much believe the same thing. Yeah, but what if they're believing sodomy and fornication and communism and the UN is great and he goes on to say I proceed in the next place to inquire what mode of education we shall adopt so as to secure the state all the advantages that are to be derived from the proper instruction of youth and here I beg leave to remark that the only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in what religion Well, these people say, well, your forefathers believed in public schooling. Well, hold on a second. But they believed, even if they made the mistake to embrace public education, they said the whole foundation of it ought to be what? Religious. Without this, there can be no virtue. So did they believe this whole secular humanistic system today that you see today? No, they did not. Mason or not, some of them were not so far gone in their deception to embrace what we see today. Without this, there can be no virtue. Without virtue, there can be no liberty. And liberty is the object in life of all Republican governments. Wow. I had rather see the opinions of Confucius or Muhammad inculcated upon our youth than see them grow up wholly devoid of a system of religious principles. But the religion I mean to recommend in this place is the religion of Jesus Christ. Do we leave our youth to acquire systems of geography, philosophy, or politics till they arrive at an age in which they are capable of judging for themselves? We do not. So, in other words, a lot of people make an argument. They say, well, you ought to let them choose their selves. They say, well, you don't let them choose 2 plus 2 is 3. I mean, you teach them it's 4. Why don't you teach them other things as well? Okay, here's my question. Based upon what you've already read, what do you see wrong with Rush's proposals? So you're setting up a system that the devil is just glad the system's in place. He'll change it later, but he just likes the system there. Brother? You kind of brushed on it already, but the core issue of this is a matter of authority. If he's favorable towards the Christian religion, where does he see that civil government has ever given the authority to educate the people? So in that effect, it is unlawful from a biblical sense. And then where does he believe constitutionally that civil government has authority to require public education and educate the people? It's just outside of their realm. Awesome, brother. Good statement. What, if anything, do you see right in what he's saying? aside from the model of public education that he's hinting toward. What do you see right in what he says? For the mic? Yeah, and he's right, isn't he? See, this idea that you can separate the whole... that you can teach students history without involving religion, that's ridiculous. Can you teach politics without revolving? You can't even teach the history of this country because you're going to have a bias. Can you teach philosophy without involving religion? That's insane. You can't teach science. You can't teach anything, hardly. Even mathematics, the fact 2 plus 2 is 4 is true, you just now moved into a metaphysical world. Do you understand that? That's what I'm trying to show people, that the whole idea of self-evident truth, you're not in the realm of materialism anymore. So he's right about religion being the foundation, and oh, we've gone far from that today, haven't we? Oh no, they're back to saying religion is the foundation. It's just Wicca, and Mother Earth worship, and humanism, and that type of thing. In deciding these questions, let us allow Rush some further explanation of what he means. He goes on to say, "...in order more effectually to secure to our youth the advantages of a religious education, it is necessary to impose upon them the doctrines and disciplines of a particular church." Okay. Man is naturally an ungovernable animal, and observations on particular societies and countries will teach us that when we add the restraints of ecclesiastical to those of domestic and civil government, we produce in him the highest degree of order and virtue. That fashionable liberality which refuses to associate with any one sect of Christians is seldom useful to itself or to society. And that's about the only Christianity we have left today. One that says, I don't believe anything. I don't have any, you know, what do you believe about baptism? I don't know. I'm non-denominational. What do you believe about the gospel? Is it by works or is it through faith? I don't know. This whole emerging church idea, and I know a lot of so-called non-denominational are not that ridiculous and absurd, but this is where the whole idea is leading. That I can't believe anything. I can't have a set of principles that I believe. And everybody's tried it. It's been a great system, a great experiment. We're just going to call ourselves Christians. And then you end up with a whole movement called Christians, you know, the Disciples of Christ. We'll just call ourselves Disciples. And that's what they became, the Disciples of Christ. Look them up in the phone book. Some said, well, we're not going to do that. We'll just call ourselves Brethren. And then they ended up being Plymouth Brethren, Close Brethren, United Brethren. There's all kinds of ideas. And the point is, is you've got to stand for something, right? You've got to believe something. And let's not be ashamed of what we believe. And we ought to say, I believe these things, but I'm not going to divide over these things here. But over these things here, I will divide. And there's nothing wrong with that. But listen to what he says. Far be it from me to recommend the doctrines or modes of worship of any one denomination of Christians. I only recommend to the persons entrusted with the education of youth to inculcate upon them a strict conformity to that mode of worship which is most agreeable to their consciences or the inclination of their parents. Under this head, I must be excused in not agreeing with those modern writers who have opposed the use of the Bible as a school book. The first impressions upon the mind are the most durable." So, now he's almost saying, I don't want education to be taken out of a particular church or even away from parents. So I'm not at this point even sure what he meant by a uniform system of education because now he's back to saying, that he wants each church and each parent and each, but he's basically, he agrees with us in this sense, that teach them whatever your conscience says to teach them, and here's what I believe you ought to be teaching them, and I'm going to teach and preach and exhort you to teach them these things. But whatever your conscience is, if you're Mennonite, if you're this, teach your children the principles that you stand for, and that seems to be what he's arguing at this point. I do not mean to exclude books of history, poetry, or even fables from our schools. They may and should be read frequently by our young people. But if the Bible is made to give way to them altogether, I foresee that it will be read in a short time only in churches, and in a few years will probably be found only in the office of magistrates." Well, I have a word to tell him, if he were here today, that it's not going to be in the realm of the magistrates either. They're going to get rid of the Ten Commandments and all the other things. But his point is simply this, if you don't begin teaching the Bible to young people, they're going to grow up godless. Again, many people will quote Benjamin Rush as the father of the public school system and that type of thing. But if you were in college, you probably would not hear any of this that we're reading right now. They would probably give you what they wanted you to hear, and that is we ought to have public education. But according to Rush, he's saying, you need the Bible, and the Bible needs to be the foundation of all education. And you could teach history and poetry and all of that, but you better have the Bible as the foundation. So in that, I think we would agree with him. Then he says, to assist in rendering religious, moral, and political instruction more effectual upon the minds of our youth, it will be necessary to subject their bodies to physical discipline. To obviate the inconveniences of their studious and sedentary mode of life, they should live upon a temperate diet. They should avoid tasting spirituous liquors. They should also be accustomed occasionally to work with their hands in the intervals of study and in the busy seasons of the year in the country. Moderate sleep, silence, occasional solitude and cleanliness should be implicated upon them." So far, he's saying, hey, don't let them sit there and grow fat and soft. Keep them working. Get him out in the country and et cetera, et cetera. These are good principles. Then he says, I cannot help bearing a testimony in this place against the custom which prevails in some parts of America, but which is daily falling into disuse in Europe of crowding boys together under one roof for the purpose of education. The practice is the gloomy remains of monkish ignorance, and is as unfavorable to their improvements of mind and useful learning as monasteries are to the spirit of religion. I grant this mode of secluding boys from the intercourse of private families has a tendency to make them scholars, but our business is to make them men, citizens, and Christians. The vices of young people generally learn from each other." You know what I learned from all of this? Rush, Benjamin Rush, would look at what's going on today and would lose his mind. He would say, this is abominable, and I never intended to set up this abomination. So don't quote me as the forefather of your godless, sick, vile, sodomite trash that you call education. I'm speaking for him, but I think that's what he would say. Then he goes on to say, the first 12 years of life are barely sufficient to instruct a boy in reading, writing, and arithmetic. With these, he may be taught those modern languages which are necessary for him to speak. But then he also wrote, let us try the effect of banishing the Latin and Greek languages from our country. They consume the flower of human life. So his argument is, what in the world are you doing? Your boy's got to learn skills. He has to learn how to add. He has to learn how to think. He has to learn how to read. He has to learn the Bible. And all of this, he can't be a sissy and has to get out here and learn how to work. And you're going to teach him Greek and Latin? Well, you ought to see what they do when you go off to seminary. Instead of learning what you should be learning about the Bible, you're spending all this time trying to learn a dead language. So what I apply to seminary, you know, I'm glad that you can read Greek, but God's already given me the Bible in English. And what I found is most people that profess to speak Greek don't even understand English vocabulary. They spend all this time talking about words and trying to go to a dead language. And the only information you get from a dead language is from the linguistic dictionaries and people that have sat back and given you what words mean. And my point is you ought to spend more time studying English and the English language if you want to understand the Bible. And it would do young people, especially young people that want to be in the ministry, it would do them much good to master the Bible. You'll never master it, but to spend your life in that book, then trying to get into all these dead languages. Amen? But this is interesting. The father, so-called a public education, says, why are you teaching these kids Greek and Latin? He felt that Greek and Latin opened up bad literature and are as ruinous as alcohol and slavery. Isn't that interesting? He said, you're going to ruin the morals of these people worse than alcohol, or just as bad as alcohol, to give them all that trash. Because what are you going to read? You know, well, I can read Greek, and I can now read the Greek fables. Well, it's a whole bunch of idolatrous trash, wasn't it? Was it morally pure, the writings of Homer? Is it morally pure? By 1791, Rush wanted the classics banned. from education. That's interesting. He didn't even want a classic education. He said, why are you teaching them all that trash? Do you understand the irony of everything I'm showing you today? Do you understand the irony of it? That the so-called father of public education says that you're gonna raise a whole bunch of homosexuals doing what you're doing and you need to stay away from the classics and Let me just give you a quote from him. It's high time to cease from idolizing the idolatry of Greece and Rome. Spending time and studying Greek and Roman fictions is only laboring to be more ignorant. To spend four or five years learning two dead languages is to turn our backs upon a gold mine. Well, I think we would agree with much that Rush has advocated. But oftentimes the mistakes of good men are preserved for posterity, while their common sense or wisdom is what? Forgotten. The U.S. would go on to establish public education, which would end up being a church of humanism, as we see Potter's humanism, a new religion, as he was bragging and boasting America had done. It would be devoid of the Bible. It would teach sodomy, fornication, and all that is against Jesus Christ. All right, let's sum up where we're at. Let's just sum up and review. The Bible speaks of a system of government which our forefathers believed would be partly strong, partly broken. Filled with imperialism, but also filled with democracy. A democracy that was manipulated by propaganda. The Bible warns in the last days people will be covetous and evil men and seducers will prey upon them. Macaulay in 1860 said your country can't survive. I'm afraid agitators will simply stir up the poor and you will be plundered from within, ravaged from within by Huns and Vandals who will have been engendered within your own country. Our founding fathers said, well, we never said our system of government could endure without morality. And then our founding fathers, if you ask them how you think it's going to be preserved, they would say by education. But what they often meant by education is not what they mean by education when you're listening to a Democrat spew it in the debate or public forum today. And to find out what they meant by education, we basically discovered they included moral education as the very foundation of it all. The Bible is the foundation of it all. The question was, what's going to be the best way of teaching everyone the Bible? And that's where our forefathers made a tragic, serious mistake. They said, we'll set up a mandatory system of education called public schooling funded by the tax dollars. And it ended up simply being a giant church. It wasn't neutral. For a while, it taught them principles that everybody would agree. But that's how the devil always comes in and gets his foot in the door. He's going to start slow and then slowly but surely take it further and further away. Before long, they'd say, hey, separation of church and stay. We can't have children praying in school. We can't spank them in school. Let's just put them on drugs and let them sit there and study Wicca or color or have group therapy. Well, there you go. And my response to that is simply this. If you go back and read the forefathers, they never, whatever mistakes they made, and they made some big ones, they never endorsed the abomination today called public education. And to sit here and debate about how to fix America and not be, you say, well people, I was on AM radio one time, it was in the morning about six o'clock, and there was this fella, 570 or something, I can't remember, and he was basically saying, all these bad things about education, public schools in America and Mike Bolton or something, I can't remember what his name is. So I called him up and I started quoting some of these things and some of what the humanists said we did in America. I said, so I have the answer for all you people. Begin dismantling public education in America. And they about went crazy. They said, why, we can't do that. It's too far gone. And I'm like, Hey, all the better reason to roll up your sleeves and begin. You've got to start somewhere. If everybody began to cry against it, because then the question is going to be, well, what do you replace it with? Hey, we never had a literacy problem in America until you set up public education. You didn't have a literacy problem. People understood. They could read and write. So how did they do it? Self-taught homeschool private institutions. Why can't you go back to that? All right, brethren, any questions or comments upon our study tonight?