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Enslavement to the Sin Nature in our Society
RO77-02© Berean Memorial Church of Irving, Texas, Inc. (1977)
We're looking at the fifth segment of "Abandoning Yourself to Evil."
The Tower of Babel
The world today continues in the tradition of Nimrod of old, who sought to build a kingdom of man in opposition to the kingdom of God. Nimrod was
the man who began the Babylonian culture, the Tower of Babel, to undermine the plan of God for national entities of society in various segments of
the earth as man spread out. The one-world internationalism and the economic socialism of the Tower of Babel are pursued just as vigorously today
as they were in the day of Nimrod.
That's what the Tower of Babel was all about. It was internationalism against God's nationalism, and it was an attempt to pursue economic socialism,
a one-world order against God's concept of a world which was divided, which the devil could not control. Man's ambition to have a kingdom of man in
opposition to the kingdom of God, based upon the concept that we looked at in the last session: that there is no supernatural God; and, that we
operate in a closed system of natural laws on which there can be no supernatural effect, and thus there could have been no such thing as a flood or
any other miracles performed, and so on.
Everything that Nimrod was doing was based on the premise that there is no personal Creator God, and thus no supernatural power being exercised in
the universe. This is based on the premise that there is no final and authoritative revelation from God, and thus that that there is no inerrant
Bible to guide human thinking. And not only is there not an inerrant Bible, but there is not a Bible which is so written that we can read it and
interpret it literally, and that we can read it and analyze it for what it says, and accept it as God capable of delivering to us His thinking.
Modern Science
Modern science expresses the same two ancient fallacies: that there is no God with supernatural power; and, that there is no authoritative
revelation as a guideline for man's thinking. Modern science expresses these fallacies with the concept of natural laws functioning in a closed
system; that is, that there is no Creator God.
Evolution
Evolution is the explanation for the origin of life. Only matter exists functioning on natural laws uninterrupted by any supernatural influences.
There is no such thing as the human soul. There is no such thing as the human spirit.
Humanism
Modern science also expresses this with the concept that there is no revelation. This is expressed in the concept of humanism; that is,
unregenerate man, by his own reason, seeking to meet human needs. This is why it is a truism. It is not just a smart-alec remark – that
whenever a human government attempts to solve a social problem, they create two problems worse than the one they sought to solve. That is inherent
in unregenerate man's mentality in attempting to deal with things that he cannot deal with – governments attempting to interject themselves
in areas that governments were never designed by God to deal with.
So, here you have it. Modern science says that there is no Creator God, so there's no supernatural force. There is no revelation, so there are no
guidelines for man's thinking. Well, with this frame of reference, modern man has produced the human viewpoint concepts upon which he functions,
but which are detached from reality. This is not the way God made us as human beings in a society to work.
Well, the effects of evolutionary humanism are clearly evident in American society today. These results demonstrate unregenerate man's enslavement
to the sin nature, and that is our jumping off point for our discussion. We are trying to relate to you Paul's summary statement in Romans 6:18,
where he says, "Being then made free from the sin nature, you became the slaves of righteousness." And we're trying to relate that statement to
how it works in our society to show you how modern man is a slave of the sin nature, and how it is you, who will regenerate believers, oriented
to the divine view point of doctrine, who can see what the problems are in our society today; who can see what the solutions are; and, who can see
where the problems lie, who have a perspective and a contact with reality. Believers have been emancipated from the old sin nature. That is what
Paul is saying. They've been enslaved to divine viewpoint concepts which reflect reality.
However, we Christians are far outnumbered and biblical divine viewpoint is rejected in our society today as outdated thinking. Now, that concept
is held by the vast, vast majority of Americans. They look upon divine viewpoint, biblical concepts as very, very old fashioned, outdated thinking.
To the average American today, man, is the measure and the center of all things – not God and His revelation.
This is confusing because we still have a lot of mouths who talk about God, and who talk about morality, and talk about the Bible. But they're
talking about a memory. They're not talking about a reality that any longer exists in American society. You must, as believers, recognize that
American society is pagan Rome and pagan Greece all over again. You are in paganism, and paganism becomes vicious. Paganism becomes very
destructive of Christian viewpoints. That's why you and I are increasingly going to come under harassment and attack of our society, because more
and more, it is generally accepted that man is the center, and God does not exist. And whatever talk there is about moral concepts and about
righteousness, it's just an old memory – a habit of talking, but it has no reality in practice.
Enslavement to the Sin Nature
So, let's take a look again at the expressions of enslavement of American society to the sin nature. I'm afraid that our nation is well down the
road toward national destruction, and reversal from that course is very unlikely. All you have to do, for example, to see that reversal is unlikely
is to take a look at the people who are put in national leadership. Our nation has suffered again and again from economic consequences that Congress
has imposed upon this. But do the people say, "We will not send you back to Congress because you have an economic philosophy that is destroying us?"
No, they'll turn right around and put those same people right back into Congress.
It is just beyond American society to be able now to say, "This man is a problem to us in what he is doing to us economically because of his beliefs.
Therefore, we will not put him in authority. We will put someone in authority who will reverse this."
Senator Ted Kennedy
Take this fawning adoration toward Senator Kennedy. Senator Kennedy, who has got the gall, in spite of the moral character he has demonstrated on
more than one occasion, to run for the highest office of the land. And we look at the presidency as the moral guideline for the nation. What is
happening? Is the nation appalled? Are people looking at one another and saying, "You must be crazy, Mr. Kennedy, to even think that you could
suggest something like that?" Not at all. They are rushing to his support from all directions. They are rushing to place him into this position of
honor and respect– a man with his character, and worse than that, a man with his political views; with his economic views; with his views
toward society; and, with his views toward all the things that have been the very things that have hurt us as a nation. And Americans are foaming at
the mouth, and just itching to put this man into public office to do the same thing more to us.
I think there's a streak of masochism in American society that's enjoying being punished. There are some people that get a great emotional and
sensual experience out of having their backs flayed with a leather whip. And I think that someplace in the American psyche today, there is that
desire to be punished and to suffer. This is particularly evident in the fact that the unthinkable of a few years ago has now become the
acceptable, as relative humanism has corrupted the nation's biblical values and the moral fiber, and has reduced American man and American woman
to an animal.
What are the evidences of this enslavement to the sin nature? Well, look at the fact that today men and women can live together apart from marriage
without social ostracism. It is no longer a problem. There was a time that if you lived together as unmarried people, the people in your
neighborhood had nothing to do with you. You were socially ostracized. Now it is looked at as a light matter, and people are perfectly accepted.
Cohabitation
I read an article in the October 19th, 1979 issue of a publication called "The Evangelical Newsletter," which is a summary of evangelical writings
and contributions of various kinds. It included an article entitled "Cohabitation Increases in the United States: A Look at the Consequences: "Paul
R. Newcomb discusses an increasingly popular lifestyle in cohabitation in America, an assessment of consequences, "Journal of Marriage and the
Family, August, summarizing data that have been gathered through many studies. He refers to the reports that demonstrate a spectacular eightfold
increase during the 1960s in the number of household heads who were reported as living apart from relatives while sharing their living quarters with
an unrelated person of the opposite sex. The number of persons cohabiting has nearly doubled between 1970 and 1977, reaching almost two million
persons. It is likely to continue to increase into the foreseeable future in view of the increasingly favorable attitudes expressed toward this one
stigmatized behavior."
That's an example of a man enslaved to the old sin nature because he cut himself loose from the concept that there was a God out there Who was
there and Who has spoken to us.
Sex Outside of Marriage
Another example is sex outside of marriage, which is now the accepted norm. It is promoted constantly at movies, and promoted constantly in
television. It's accepted as just the norm. It is never referred to as being something objectionable. It's just like, "I'm going down to the
grocery store to buy a pound of coffee," and that's the extent of any significance to it.
So, here we have man's enslavement to the sin nature demonstrated by the fact that it's actually accepted. Sex outside of marriage is no longer
viewed as a horrendous crime against humanity and a crime against God. We'll get into that in a little more detail later.
Homosexuality
Another evidence is that homosexuals are tolerated and protected as normal people rather than as perverts which are to be neutralized. Here we have,
just a few years ago, when psychiatry and psychology would label a homosexual as a perversion. They've changed the word to a "deviant," and it is
dignified. I called your attention in the last session to the fact that a homosexual is suing the church for the fact that they will not permit him
to continue as the organist now that they have discovered his sexual lifestyle. And the courts will actually hear a case like that, instead of
looking at him and saying, "There is such a thing as separation of church and state. We can't even enter this case. We have no grounds legally to
investigate this matter."
Abortion
Unborn babies can be murdered by abortion as a supposed right of a woman's privacy. We go down the highways here, on Loop 12, and you've got these
big signs: "Abortion is a right of a woman's privacy." Where did we ever get an idea like that relative to human life – that it was a right
of privacy. At what point does murder become a right of somebody's privacy to exercise it because it serves on personal direction or some personal
points. Man's enslavement to the old sin nature has caused him to go insane morally, spiritually, sociologically, and every way imaginable. The mind
of the unregenerate man is insanity – nothing else.
Infanticide
Another evidence is infanticide. Infanticide is the killing of babies who have already been born. This is practiced on babies in our country
constantly. Do you know that? Many times, an abortion misfires, and a baby is born alive, particularly if it's gone far enough, up to the fifth
month, and abortion is attempted. The baby is born alive, and the Supreme Court has ruled that a doctor does not have to give that child the same
kind of life-sustaining care that it does to a child which was born, which was not intended to be aborted. So, babies by abortion are born alive.
They're wrapped in a cloth, and they're set aside on the table, and they're simply left to lie there until they just die. Or some doctors have
actually been choking them to death until one got caught doing that, and was convicted for manslaughter. That is infanticide.
You say, "That doesn't take place in the United States. That's something that pagan Roman / Greece did. Because man is a slave to the sin nature,
he has no problem killing an aborted child who survived the abortion.
The Open Classroom
Our slavery is evidenced in the fact that our public school education seeks to bring about social changes in the direction of socialism rather
than teaching skills and information to our children. They want to change the value system of our children. So, we have the open classroom, which
has been designed specifically, under the direction of the National Education Association, in order to enhance the concept of social community
relationships and a one-world outlook. And parents all over this city have permitted the school board of this city to spend millions upon millions
of dollars building beautiful new schools with wide open classrooms so that the concepts of socialism can be promoted.
Where is the American citizen? Like a dumb sheep in this city, he permits the school board to get away with it. There is no one with the capacity
to rise up with divine viewpoint, and say, "Wait a minute. I know exactly what you're doing. This is contrary to our heritage, and it is contrary
to my biblical convictions, and I'll not have it. The only way out for these people in this city is Berean Christian Academy, and the Catholic
school, and a few here and there, that hold on to traditional education, and for the purposes of education in teaching skills and in relating human
learning to God's divine viewpoint frame of reference.
Corporal Punishment
Another evidence is the increasing threat to parents of legal consequences for applying corporal punishment to their children. Homes can now be
invaded by bureaucrats because you spank your children. Sweden has already made a national law against it. Our country is now moving toward the
same direction on both local and federal levels – to outlaw the spanking of children in this country, and to make it a criminal act.
Male Leadership in Marriage and Family
Another evidence is women who have rejected God's order of male leadership and authority in marriage and in families. The result is desertion.
The result is divorce. The result is a tearing apart of the home because you cannot have a family except on God's basis. And we have so many men
– poor, human-viewpoint men who are nothing but the dumb dog tale of a marriage, who follow a woman who can rise up in indignation over
something that's being done to this woman, when in fact he is simply operating as a tail of this feminist mentality that his wife happens to have
where she has rejected his authority, and he succumbed to it, and he's willing to go along with it. That's sick. That's a sick society where the
authority of men in the home and in the family is undermined by the female.
Women as Church Elders
We have the enslavement to the sin nature indicated by the fact that churches teach what most people believe as truth, even though it is in
direct conflict with the Word of God. One segment of the Presbyterian Church in conflict with the Word of God ordered the churches in its
denomination to ordain women to the position of elder. Now, an elder is a spiritual leader within a local congregation. There is one elder per
a congregation – that happens to be the pastor-teacher. In the Presbyterian Church, they use the term "elder" to broaden out to men who
assist the pastor in his ministry, and they are called "elders" as well. But their duty is an extension of the pastor's duty of a spiritual nature.
In "The Evangelical Newsletter", October 19, 1979, there is another article entitled "Armed Guards Bar Pastor from Closed Presbyterian Church:" "The
Denver presbytery of the United Presbyterian Church has ejected an evangelical pastor and his entire session (that is, his entire board|) for
refusing to obey the denomination's new constitutional provision requiring the ordination of women elders. To assure control of the self-Presbyterian
Church property, presbytery deployed armed guards who refuse admittance to the Reverend Dale D. Schlafer, minister, and associate, the Reverend John
White. Virtually the entire congregation of over 600 has joined their pastor to worship at the South Evangelical Presbyterian Fellowship in the
Denver Christian schools."
Now, that is enslavement, folks, to the old sin nature. Here a local congregation says, "No, we cannot share our hierarchy's point of view that
we may now violate the Word of God, which says that a woman within the context of official church leadership must be silent, and that men only are
to be in the position of spiritual leadership. The Bible is very clear about that. There is no debate upon that. There is only the question as to
whether the Bible is updated enough to fit our modern times. And when you have cut yourself loose from God out there Who has authority to speak to,
then you can change what the Bible says. And here this Presbyterian group has done exactly that. Churches are teaching what people want to believe.
The World Council of Churches
How about the World Council of Churches? If there's anything that's a loathsome scab and a cancer upon the Christian community, it is the liberal
World Council of Churches. Here's what they're up to again. This is from the same evangelical newsletter article entitled "The World Council of
Churches Makes New Guerrilla Grant: Australian Presbyterians Quit:" The World Council of Churches has been undeterred by the controversy arising from
its grants to African guerrilla movements. This time, a grant of 35,000 to help the Patriotic Front with expenses at Zimbabwe-Rhodesia peace talks in
London may seem more meritorious, but the Presbyterian Church of Australia has voted to withdraw from the World Council of Churches and Australian
Council of Churches to boot. After last year's World Council of Churches' $85,000 dollars grant to the guerrillas, two other churches suspended
membership in protest – the Presbyterian Church of Ireland and the Salvation Army. The Australian Presbyterians form a continuing body which
elected not to join the Union of Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists in 1977."
So, here's the World Council of churches giving money to terrorists. It did it last year, and even from the World Council of Churches
(liberal-oriented churches), there was such an outcry and an uproar that you'd think that they never would have the gall to do it again, but
they've done it again – helping terrorists under the guise of what? Achieving human freedom.
If you were listening to the television news last night, you heard about a professor at my old university, Baylor University, down at Waco, who has
written a book. The Southern Baptist Convention is in an uproar over this book, for in this book about the Bible, this man has reflected what is
coming out of Southern Baptist seminaries increasingly – that the Bible contains myths. The story of Adam and Eve is a myth. The story of the
fall is a myth. The story of Noah and the ark and of the saving animals is a myth that has a spiritual meaning. Liberalism has invaded a basic
conservative, biblically oriented denomination of the past.
It was interesting to me that the Southern Baptists have risen up and demanded that the man recant on the book, and that he reject what he has
written, or else that he resign from the faculty of the university. We'll see what happens. But I couldn't help noticing that, when the news
commentator referred to the person that was being quoted officially to express this viewpoint, she referred to him as an ultra-conservative. Now
if you believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and it really means what it says, you're not just a conservative. That's dirty enough. You're
even dirtier than that. You're an ultra-conservative. It wasn't for to say, "Conservative so-and-so, speaking for the denomination, has said this."
She had to say, "Ultra-conservative so-and-so, because the word "ultra" is terrible. If you put "ultra" onto anything, it's bad. Anything ultra is
bad. Isn't it interesting that they couldn't just quote this man as a conservative? He's an ultra-conservative.
Churches have gone crazy. Where are we going to find what God thinks? We are few and feeble folk.
Then we have these fools who will not support and back the few ministries here and there that say, "We're still going to stand for the Word of God,
and we're still going to inform you, and we're still going to open up the opportunity for you to walk into heaven rich in the eternal rewards."
Instead they sit and they listen to people who write books like this, and they're impressed with their so-called scholarship.
Pornography
Man's enslavement of the sin nature is also evidenced by the rise and use of children in pornographic productions; children in pornographic
magazines; and, children in pornographic movies. The expression of that we're currently viewing again in the little girl who has been abducted,
and whose parents are desperately waiting to find out if here we have another girl (another child) who's going to come home dead if they ever find
her at all. And don't kid yourself that this attitude of toleration toward pornography, and the use of children in pornography, is not behind that
sort of debasement of the human life of a child, and of the humanity of a child, to treat a child in that way.
I realize that here, for example, is a point that's very difficult for you and me to just back off and to tear our minds free of our divine
viewpoint, and of the fact that we are slaves of righteousness, and to try to put ourselves back to the position where we are slaves of the sin
nature, so that we can even grasp that anybody with any kind of rationality would do a thing like this. Yet it is constantly cropping up. The
pornographic market now advertises children pornography in a wide degree. You should read some of the things that come out under advertising.
You should read some of the testimonials of men who are writing to each other, sharing their child pornography films, or child pornography printings
and pictures, and expressing the pleasures that they are receiving as they exchange their materials.
Capital Punishment
Our enslavement to the old sin nature is evident by the fact that cold blooded, willful, premeditated murderers are able to escape the death penalty.
Communist/socialist born organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, which is another scab and cancer upon the American legal system and
upon American society, just cannot do enough to preserve a man from receiving what God says he deserves for willful, premeditated murder-one. Now,
who does the American Civil Liberties Union think it is to stand up against a God who has declared that when you take a life in this fashion, and
you are convicted under proper, constituted authority, that you are to pay for your life with what you have done? It's because we're sick as slaves
of the sin nature that we struggle to outmaneuver what God has said.
Wars which we never Intend to Win
This is evidence also in the lives that are sacrificed in wars which we never intend to win, and against aggression that we never intend to stop.
What a humiliating experience we went through in Korea, and the worst one in Vietnam – a nation who could have squelched the communists like
a fat bug, and we were not permitted to do so, because our government is controlled by socialist/communist, diseased mentalities under the
enslavement of the sin nature.
Now we are in a condition of such weakness that the Soviet Union has no fear of us at all. What do we hear? We hear these liberal minds going
around saying, "Well, don't give me that stuff. The United States is the greatest nation on the face of the earth. We're strong. We're powerful.
If we want to do something, we'll do it." That's because you're only ignorant of the statistics. That's only because, like most Americans, if
that's what you think, you're listening to the controlled establishment press, and you do not have sources of information that bypass those
sources and give you the perspective of things as they really are. We are sacrificing lives. And just think of the men that you and I have known
who were sacrificed in that Vietnam War. And now the communists have it all.
Public Nudity
The enslavement of our society to the sin nature is evidenced by the public display of nudity. We have beaches which are set apart in certain parts
of our country so that people can have nude swimming. We have stage dramas upon which acts of nudity are performed, and acts of immorality are
simulated. In our public, our country permits it.
Euthanasia
We have this insanity of incitement to the signature evident by euthanasia. Euthanasia is mercy-killing. A mercy-killing is a euphemism. It's a
nice sounding word for a very, very gross concept. Euthanasia is killing of people who are old; who are deformed; and, who are mentally deficient,
and this killing is done as a humanitarian act. Of course, we watched all this (those of us are a little older) in Nazi Germany during the war. We
watched Germany go from one step to the next for humanitarian reasons, to the killing of the old; the infirmed; the mentally retarded; and, the
children who are deformed, on a very systematic basis. And, interestingly enough, this was called "death with dignity." That's a euphemism –
"death with dignity," in order to get rid of some who's life somebody in authority decides is no longer worth living. It is removing what they
consider an unbearable life.
Wouldn't you like somebody to come to you and decide that your life is now unbearable, and that therefore you should be put out of your misery like
a dog? And one of the reasons that is put forth for euthanasia is economic reasons. I've actually read articles where the writers have argued how
it's more economic, and preserves the nation's resources, to simply go through the cost of putting somebody to death rather than taking care of them.
Now, some of you are going to go home, and you're going to start exercising, and getting on a good diet, and all kinds of things, because you don't
want to get old and find that you're in that position where somebody says, "You have an unbearable life. We're going to terminate you."
This is not to say there's not a very great difference between this and somebody who is in a terribly terminal case of illness, and death is
inevitably before that person, and the individual (or those responsible for him) decide to pull the technological machines (the life-sustaining
machines) off this person, and to permit the individuals to meet the normal consequences of life under the hand of God. That is one thing. The
word "euthanasia" is sometimes applied to that – of not sustaining a person under artificial means. There is something very, very
objectionable to deciding that you no longer are worthy of living. That's what we're talking about. That is called "death with dignity" that
somebody else has imposed upon you. Euthanasia, as it is used today, means that – mercy-killing at the decision of somebody else's mercy,
not upon somebody meeting the normal consequences of a physical debilitation under the hand of God.
Ethics
We also have the evidence of our sin nature captivity by how the Bible is ignored on matters of ethics – in the matter of basing conduct upon
what everybody is doing now. It's what everybody does now that decides what is acceptable.
Noah's Day
I want to remind you that in the time of Noah, the Bible describes the fact that every thought of man's mind was evil, and violence filled the
earth. I have no hesitancy in saying to you that everything that we've talked about today existed in those days. The society of Noah's day was
just as enslaved to the sin nature, and it was doing all of these things then. It was completely ignoring what the Bible says, and was dependent
upon what people were doing. So, everything that people were doing in Noah's day was accepted as normally permitted conduct. And that's the argument
that we have today. The immoralities that are justified today is because everyone is doing it.
Solo Dating in High School
A young person loves to attack you with some idea by saying, "The Bible doesn't say that." And some of you parents say, "Hey, you're just a high
school kid. You don't pair off with one boy and one girl. That's sick. You're not prepared to cope with that. That's an adult game. Therefore,
you don't go out on solo dates. Your relationships are in a group. They love to say, "Oh, the Bible doesn't say that. Where does the Bible say that
you can't have solo dates when you're in 10th grade? What is that?" The defense is: "Everybody's doing it." The defense is, "This is what the other
kids do, and what their parents permit them to do, so this is what I can do. Don't kid yourself. The Bible not only says certain things in specifics,
but the Bible has implications of the principles that it lays out as well.
Our enslavement is evidence in the free enterprise system being castigated as a system which is robbing the poor and is serving the rich. How many
pathetic college students do we have who do not understand the American economic free enterprise system? How many Americans are there who do not
understand the economic system by which inflation is produced? 10% (if there are that many of you) understand why you are suffering from
increasingly higher prices. And 10% of you (if there are that many of you) know what to do about it; to outmaneuver the government; and, to
frustrate it in its efforts to rob you. A free enterprise system and capitalism are being treated as despicable economic concepts. Again, this is
even though the Bible says that this is the way for maximum prosperity for more people, so that those who are productive benefit by their efforts,
and thus they are encouraged to do more and better.
Politicians
We've already referred to the fact of the evidence of politicians who are being elected in spite of what they stand for. If you were listening to
the news, you heard that Chicago's lady mayor has now come out and endorsed Senator Kennedy for the Democratic nomination for president. What's her
reason? She said, "Well, I told Kennedy that I would support him as long as I thought he was electable. When he cannot be elected, I could not
support him." What is she saying? "I don't care what kind of moral fiber Kennedy has demonstrated. I don't care that he got thrown out of Harvard
for cheating. I don't care that he left a girl in an overturned car under water for eight hours while he worked out how he could escape the
consequences of that act. And if she was living for a while in a pocket of air, she used it up in that time so that she died, while he maneuvered
with his cronies. I don't care if he did all that. I only care if he can be elected. I don't care what he stands for. I don't care what he'll do to
this nation economically. I only care if he can be elected.
Well, Jane Byrne, mayor of Chicago, certainly knows the American mentality. She knows that we've got a mentality in this country that is a slave of
the sin nature. And she knows that the people of this country will not recoil with horror by placing a man like that in the honored position of the
presidency of the United States. They will rush to put him in, and his party will rush to put him forward. For what reason? Because he can get
elected. Isn't that honorable? It's not for the good of the country. It's not the moral impact upon this nation for which we're so desperate, for
having certain leadership. He can get elected, and that's all that counts. You can multiply this many, many times over in one way or another
yourself, I'm sure.
Child Abuse
One of the great examples, however, is this one that's on everybody's mind more and more in the form of child abuse. Child abuse is an expression
of slavery to the old sin nature. Child abuse refers to physical assault on a child. It refers to physical neglect of a child – not feeding
him, and not giving him warmth and care. It also refers to emotional abuse of a child. To begin with, when we talk about child abuse, the first
thing we should say is that it really does exist. It is a really increasing, serious problem in American society today. It is a very legitimate
concern. It is not just because we have better statistical reporting. It's the fact that it is increasing. It's increasing to a very great degree.
The question is: what has caused the increase? Why is it worse today? Child abuse is the product of the dehumanization of people by the modern
frame of reference of humanism: man detached from God; and, man detached from the authority of Scripture. Child abuse is increased as man has
become more detached from that frame of reference in the universe.
Abortion
On January 22nd, 1973, the Supreme Court of the United States ignored all the laws of the states of this country; ignored all of the actions and
the expressions of Congress; ignored all the heritage of this nation; and, declared that a woman had a right to abort an unborn child. Since that
day, a different attitude toward children has gradually permeated the American mind, demonstrating again its enslavement to the sin nature. The
murder of unborn children reduces the value toward a child who has been born. When you have a debased view of an unborn child, you transfer that
debased view very easily to the child who has been born. The advocates of abortion at the time were ecstatic with the decision of the Supreme
Court. They were pushing in this direction, but they had no idea (they were not prepared for) how far the Supreme Court went. The Supreme Court
just went so far that they couldn't believe that these men had gone that far out in their cause.
And the things we were told at the time, you may remember, is that child abuse in this country would have a dramatic decrease. Why? Well, because
people now would not have to give birth to children they didn't want, and thus be inclined to abuse these children because they became an irritant
to them, because they didn't want them in the first place. Well, the truth of the matter is that it has dramatically risen. That has been what has
happened. Why has it dramatically risen?
Well, I suspect that the reason for there is in the back of everybody's thinking now (and certainly of the unregenerate mind) that if you could
legally kill a child before its birth, why not drive a screwdriver into his eye, as the mother did recently, who was in the news, when he irritates
you now that he is born. At least you can rough him up a little bit in some way, because you could have killed him before he was born. Why hesitate
to beat him up in a violent way after he's born?
What we're up against is that the very people whose philosophy of humanism has created the child abuse problems are now in a position of trying to
make plans to solve it, and they're trying to make plans to solve it on the same basic views of humanism – the non-Christian view of man.
Lester Roloff
All of you are acquainted with the evangelist Lester Roloff in South Texas, and his fight with the Texas Department of Welfare. Mr. Roloff, has,
for years, been resolving the problems of juvenile delinquency, because Mr. Roloff said that man has cut himself loose from the anchor point of
God, and from the anchor point of Scripture which tells us how man works. So, he takes kids in and puts them in a very isolated situation. They
literally lock the doors. They can't get out. And these kids come in, and they are drug addicts; violent kids; and, kids of all kinds that nobody
else wants, and that the welfare department people have already had their crack at, very often.
Parents, in desperation, bring them to Roloff, and Roloff says, "I have to put you back to change your thinking. There is a God out here. He is a
supernatural God. He has given us information about ourselves. And when we function on his information, life falls together. Now I want you to get
back to that." And he just preaches away at them, and teaches the Bible, and puts them on a healthy diet, and tremendous things happen.
I heard Ed Bush, when he was down there interviewing the kids, one kid after another, and Bush would go around just at random: "I want you, you,
you. How about you? Come." The general testimony was, "When I came here, I was a slob like you wouldn't believe. And I was rebellious and I hated
this place. But after a while, God got to me. The information got through, and I saw what was wrong with me." What happened? This child has
abandoned 20th-century American thinking that modern science has brought upon us, and anchored himself back to the God who was there, and to his
testimony. And revolutionary changes have been brought about.
The Texas Department of Welfare of Human Resources comes along and says, "You can't do that, Lester. You've got to come under our licensing. You
must have our approved psychiatrist. You can't just fill these kids with Bible information. You must have psychiatric treatment for them." And
Lester said, "Hang it on your nose." And he did the wonderful thing of closing down his school when the state of Texas nailed him to the wall, and
said, "That's it – no more." The federal government went against him: "You're going to have to subscribe to licensing." Always remember that
licensing implies control.
Well, just to show you what old Lester is up to again these days, so that you'll think that he has not succumbed to entirely – the same
"Evangelical Newsletter" gives us this update on what he's doing: "Roloff Reopens Youth Homes in Church-State Showdown Bid:" "Evangelist's Lester
Roloff, the fiery, independent Baptist, who was forced to close his home for troubled young people, has his guns loaded for another showdown with
the state of Texas. Using a new legal strategy, Roloff has transferred the multi-million-dollar holdings of his nonprofit evangelistic ministry to
the control of the People's Baptist Church of Corpus Christi, of which Roloff serves as pastor. The plan was devised by the Christian Law
Association of Ohio, and was used successfully in overturning an Ohio licensing law in 1976. Roloff is counting on this strategy, hoping to prove
that the Texas child care law violates the constitutional doctrine of church-state separation. Roloff has already reopened his Rebecca Home for
Girls."
There's another item of prayer for you: to remember Mr. Roloff, and that he beats the pants off the Department of Human Resources and the
Department of Welfare of the state of Texas. The very people who have created the problem are the people who are calling the plays. They are trying
to solve it again with the same incompetence that created the problem – these human problems of child abuse in the first place.
Well, there are a few more things we ought to say about child abuse, and a few more things I'd like to read to you, so that you'll know what's
coming up. I have a letter here from a fellow named Jimmy Carter, and I'm going to read it to you next time just to brief you on what he's up to
in this particular department, so that you'll know what's going on. So, don't miss the next exciting and interesting session.
Dr. John E. Danish, 1977
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