Ignorant Intellectuals, No. 9

RV52-02

Therefore, Satan seeks to undermine the authority of the Bible. He does this by attacking the inerrancy of the Bible – that it is a book without error, and by attacking the actual statements of what the Bible says. This campaign to discredit the Bible has been so successful that most of the world today lives in immense spiritual darkness. They live in a context of downright superstitious ignorance.

Ignorant Intellectuals

At the same time, many of you been calling attention to the fact that now, once these things have been crystallized for you, you begin to discover them in the life about you. You hear people saying these things. You see that these factors are in operation. You see that this is the basis of how our society functions today. So, this is where people are coming from. And if we are going to tell them about what is ahead for them, and to change their minds over the self-destructive course they're on, we have to know where they're coming from.

So, the tribulation era is the climax – a period of divine judgment upon the consequences of these lines of thought. Only the Bible, of course, can expose the evil in these sincerely held beliefs and point mankind in the direction of truth. Mankind is rapidly coming to its own self-destruction as it listens to men who have made themselves gods, but with revelation from Satan. Even though these men are dead, their ideas live on after them. The vast overwhelming mass of humanity listens to these men.

We are observing in our country today the attempt on a national scale to step back from the abyss of national destruction. People in our country don't know why we have come to the abyss of national destruction (they need these particular studies that we've been in to understand why), but they just know that any further direction, in the way this nation is moving, will spell its doom. But the trouble is, it's like being on a slippery slope. You're sliding down, and you're trying to claw your way back up to safety.

We had a few examples of that last summer on the Berean Youth Club senior college trip camp. One of the places we went to was the Badlands. One of the Badlands is really piles of dried mud. Therefore, these large hills are very unstable for climbing, because you always have to test what you're pulling. When the rain comes, it just turns into oozing mud, and the thing is literally moving. It dries in the sun, but you have very unstable hand holds. We had one member of our party, an energetic climber, that went up and found he got so far up and couldn't go up any further. There wasn't any way to go up. It was too steep. He wanted to come down, and found he couldn't come down. Every place he touched, it was breaking. Every place he held, it was crumbling. So, there was this body hanging on the side of the cliff like a fly trying to adhere – a regular fly-man act. He couldn't go in any direction. So, finally, I was telling him, "Stay where you are." We can always rely on old Paul Danish to be the outdoor expert – to go up, and to literally talk him by the foot and say, "Put your foot here, and this one here," one-by-one. Finally, we got him down to a point of safety where we could get him down in one piece.

A little later in the summer, we were in Zion National Park. One of the things that Zion has is a Checkerboard Hill. That's what it's called. It's just a bunch of gentle rolling checkerboards. It looks like somebody has just put a pile of dough on top of another, with bulges all the way down. So, we had a team of mountain climbing experts that started up. I was there before, so I knew what was in store for them, and I said, "Don't go too far. That will fool you." When you stand and look at it, it doesn't look too bad. Boy, they were up and going, and suddenly they found they couldn't go any further because it starts going up steep. They decided to come down, and they couldn't come down. So there were these little bugs walking along the ledge back and forth, trying to find their way down. Again, we had to call our expert to go up and guide them down, foot-by-foot, and inch-by-inch, to get them back to where they were in a position of stability. One of them took the fast way down, and he just slid, and we patched him up on his chest. He came out looking like a checkerboard himself when he got down to the bottom. But it was the fast way down. The others took a little more time.

That is the kind of a situation that our nation is in. You're afraid to step. You know that you're up there high. You know that with one wrong step, you can really hurt yourself. The country is teetering on the edge of an abyss, and trying to claw its way back out. How did it get there? Because of the lines of thought that we had been discussing, and people believe this hogwash. You've got to get this straight in your mind. You've got to understand that thoroughly, or you will be a victim as well. So, the foolishness of man – let's review it.

The Foolishness of Man

1. Immanuel Kant

   There is the idea that all knowledge comes from one's own experiences through the five senses, and that spiritual things, therefore, cannot really be known. That came to us from Immanuel Kant. Immanuel Kant said, "Just pretend that there is a God. Just pretend that there is a soul. Just pretend that you have freedom of choice. We really don't have any of those things, but we pretend that they are." A thing like the resurrection of Jesus Christ can be scientifically false, but we'll pretend that it's true religiously. Up to this time in the human race, A was one thing, and anything that was non-A was something else. Suddenly, in Kant's thinking, A and non-A became the same thing. It didn't matter that they were direct opposites. It didn't matter that they were black and white – complete opposites. It didn't matter that they were pure contradictions. They were now declared to be the same. It was a whole different way of thinking. So, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, by human reason, is impossible, because people don't get resurrected from the dead. But for religious purposes, Kant says, "We'll pretend that that happened."

   So, there was no cause-and-effect reasoning. The greatest meaning in life is thus to be found in what is really rational absurdity. You just accept something that is absurd. Kant wrenched the human race from its orientation to where God was the center of the universe, and Kant made man the center of the universe, and cut off man from all divine viewpoint perspectives in order to enlighten man so that he knows what's going on. Once Kant said, "You can't know anything except what you can taste, and feel, and touch, and see, and smell," then all spiritual knowledge was cut off from the human race. This philosophy was absorbed like water into a dry sponge that's put into a pot of water. The human race went forward. There was something attractive about this satanic idea that they just grabbed up – that all that is for real is what my senses tell me, and nothing else.

2. Georg Hegel

   Then the second line of poisoned thought was the idea that there is no such thing as absolute truth. There is only evolving relative truth. This was from Georg Hegel. The Lord Jesus Christ said that God's word, which is revealed in the Bible, is truth (John 17:17). Jesus Christ said, in so many words: "Thy word is truth." George Hegel said, "No, Jesus. You're wrong. You're mistaken. There is no such thing as truth." Truth is what God's mind is creating, and nothing is final. God is always creating. What we see happening is what is evolving out of the mind of God. Any statement in the Bible is not a truth. It's only an expression of what people believed at the time – a relative truth at the time of the recording. People today can call lies the truth by Hegel's concept, because everything is evolving into truth. The result of this line of thought that he created was what was known as a line of reasoning called a dialectic. There was a thesis and an antithesis (things that oppose one another). They came down to a synthesis (a new truth). So, the result was that you can call any lie a truth, because eventually that lie is going to be transformed by this process into a truth.

   Suddenly, the human race had another whole new idea. It is not possible to talk in terms of what you should do and shouldn't do as far as God is concerned, because there is no absolute way to button down what is acceptable and not acceptable with God. God is always thinking, and God is always changing, and God is always evolving some new kind of thought, and that is being transmitted to man. Georg Hegel's poison was horrendous to the human race. Of course, you can see, as with Kant, it was directed exactly and directly against the Bible. The Bible is the thing that sticks in the devil's throat like a broken chicken bone, and that is the object of his attack.

3. Charles Darwin

   Then along came a third thinker: a man named Charles Darwin. His was the idea that everything is evolving from natural forces to a better status, including life forms. The whole concept of the organic evolution of mankind is nothing more than primitive superstition, and it is desperately challenged by men of intellect who reject God. Certainly, whatever else you can say about the concepts of evolution, you cannot say that it is science. Science is only something that you can take and demonstrate in the laboratory. So, everybody in the world knows that evolution is not science. Even those who champion it know that. But if you press them hard enough, they'll say, "I have no alternative. If I don't go for evolution, I have to say that there is a supernatural God, and, as a scientist, I cannot accept the supernatural."

   This questions the Bible's explanation of the origin of man and his world by divine spoken creation. Fables, such as evolution, therefore, are invented to explain the presence of the material universe, but God is arrogantly dismissed as, in any way, being the possible cause. Evolution is a fable. You can go back in ancient history and read the writings of the most ancient people, and you will discover that they all have fables to explain where the world came from. Some of them are really wild and way out. You look at them, and you say, "Boy, that is really crazy. Can you imagine that? This guy over here says that this is a turtle carrying the world on its back, and that's where it all came from." They have all of these wild ideas, and you just dismiss them. But are you willing to say that evolution is a medieval, primitive superstition? You should have the same revulsion toward that as you do toward all these crazy fables that you read about as to where life originated from among the gods and goddesses. Evolution is an unscientific superstition. It is just the one that's the latest in the line that most intellectuals will accept.

   For this reason, the superstition of evolution is hidden in the midst of the vast expanse of time to make it seem possible. There is, for Darwin and the evolutionists, no personal living God tolerated who is above man in science, who put the natural world together and who keeps it running. That's what it comes down to. The devil has established, in human thinking, that there is nobody above science – that science, in effect, is supreme, and that science is God. When science has spoken, then everybody else's mouth is shut.

   This is amazing even in students who go to Christian schools. You know it's tough bananas to go to a secular university or to a secular college, and keep your head screwed on straight. But it is amazing how even in Christian institutions, because of this idea of wanting to be a sophisticated intellectual, students will come out with the idea that somehow there's some rationality and some respect to be given to this superstition of evolution – that somehow, science can explain above the Bible, and that the Bible must be subject in its interpretation to what man thinks he has discovered. That, of course, was a devastating line of poison.

4. Karl Marx

   Then there was the line of economic communism as a means for prosperity and material plenty for all. That was promulgated by a man named Karl Marx. This is based on atheism, and on the concept that only the material is real, and spiritual values evolved from that. At least, Hegel said that spiritual values were real, and material things evolved from that. Karl Marx came along and said, "No, let's turn that around. We'll say that the only thing that's real is, like Kant says, what you can see with your senses. Everything is material, and out of material things comes any spiritual values. So, history for the communists is seen as the governing principle, and dialectical materialism is Hegel's concepts of one thesis against another thesis, coming into a new synthesis, and that everything is functioning on a material basis. And the communists, therefore, believe that there is only one place the world can go. As thesis and antithesis come together, and a synthesis is formed, eventually, the communists say that there is one synthesis that says: someday the human race is going to wake up and discover that the synthesis that they've come to is communism. The world today is trying to move toward socialism as a step to communism. That is the basic concept. That is the basic goal. The communists are confident that this is where history is moving.

   The final concept is that the bourgeois, the people who ... own property and who own the means of production, are going to come up against the antithesis, the proletariat, the people who do the labor. Out of this conflict is going to come the synthesis, which will be communism. So, the communists are very devoted. It's a religion to them. They cannot be communists, in the party sense, unless they are willing to sacrifice their very lives, and they are told that. They are told, "Don't ask to be a part of this group unless everything you've got goes for the promotion of communism, so you will do anything: you will lie; you will cheat; you will murder; and, you will do anything despicable in order to move mankind to the glories of a land of plenty through communism."

   Satan's dream of ruling like God in a world free from conflicts and poverty is to be brought about by communism. That's why Satan invented communism. This is his way of trying to be like God – to have a world that's going to be like the millennium world that God says that He's going to set up. The millennial world is going to be a very wonderful place. Even we, in glorified bodies, are going to thoroughly enjoy it. ... Just think about all the things that are going to be changed. Think of all the terrible things that exists in the world today, and those things are going to be changed. All the evils that exist in the world today will not be permitted in the millennium. It is going to be a fantastic world. Satan knows that. He has come up with this system to try to reproduce it and try to counterfeit it.

   Under communism, government is to be the savior of mankind as it controls and distributes wealth by any force whatsoever, including violence. Communism hates the Bible, of course, because the Bible condemns its economic voodoo, which creates stifling repression and a low standard of living. The principal methods of operation of communism are violence and deceit. They promote destruction of all the existing social order by force – anything that opposes the dictatorship of communism. A lot of people thought that the violent student reactions that we've had in recent years were absolutely senseless because they were only directed to one thing: destroy the present social order. People would say, "What are you going to put in its place? We'll put something. We'll come up with something." And you say, "Well, that's crazy. Are you going to destroy what we have without having something better to replace it?" But that is because you don't think in terms of material, dialectical concepts of communism. The only thing that needs to be done first is to destroy what exists, because the disease of free enterprise capitalism will forever undermine communism.

   The interesting quote that we had recently by President Reagan that stirred a great deal of indignation, in certain liberal quarters, was indeed a true evaluation of communism. As he was speaking in the news conference in response to a question, he said, "The only morality they (that is, the communists – the Soviets) recognize is what will further their cause." That meant that they reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime: to lie; or, to cheat. Later, he said, "They don't subscribe to our sense of morality. They don't believe in God or a religion. They don't believe in an afterlife. The only morality they recognize, therefore, is what will advance the cause of socialism." That is exactly the case.

   Terrorism

   Therefore, this is the basis of terrorism. Terrorism is an instrument of national policy in the world today. Where did terrorism come from? It comes from this communist concept that history is inevitably and irrevocably moving toward the communist goal, and, therefore, nothing can stop it. Terrorism is a legitimate tool to bring it about. You can count on the fact that terrorism is going to increase in the world. This is exactly what the Bible said. The Bible has said that we are going to go back to times that were characterized by the pre-flood days. The pre-flood civilization was characterized by violence everywhere. It was one death knell after another. It was one death experience after another. There was nothing but evil on man's mind, and violence was everywhere. That's the condition that is coming, because violence is the best way to frighten people into conformity to the power structure that wants to rule. This is the basis of terrorism in the world today.

   Few Americans realize how many terrorist schools are in the world. Few realize how many great programs are being conducted by Castro's Cuba and by the Soviet Union. These are schools of terror. These are schools where young men and women go, and they are taught how to treat human beings in such a way that they strike terror in them, so that they will be willing to obey the commands of the leaders.

   This is an old satanic principle. The inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church used that, and the attacks against believers through the centuries has used this technique of terror. It is very effective. The basis of terrorism is that communism is worth achieving. However, all one has to do is look at where communism and free enterprise capitalism began from scratch. One place we were able observe that was Germany after the war. Germany was devastated, bombed, and shattered. The contrast became so great between East Communist Germans and West capitalist Germans as the Western part prospered, and developed, and built up, and the rubble of war was quickly being removed. It was so painful in the city of Berlin, which was deep inside communist territory, that they finally built a wall to separate the East from the West, in order to keep the people in the communist part from being able to go over and visit and look around and say, "Hey, look at how they live over here. This looks pretty good to me. I don't see anything so bad about free enterprise capitalism. I think I want to live over here. I'm sick and tired of that life I've got over there. They can stuff that worker's paradise stuff. I'm going to come over here." Finally, they built the wall, and they said, "We'll kill you if you try to leave our paradise." And people are still willing to die to make the attempt.

   The determination of human good forces (and they're very strong in our country) to destroy capitalism with its private ownership, and to replace it with socialism, is being promoted, in large part in our country (believe it or not) by certain tax exempt foundations. The Ford, the Carnegie, and the Rockefeller foundations are devoted primarily and exclusively to promoting socialism in this country – to uniting us in a one-world government. There is a recent book which has been written called The Tax-Exempt Foundation by William H. McIlhany II, which is a tremendous book. It just lays it all out as to what the foundations have been doing.

   In 1913, when our country foolishly brought in (what do we know today as) the income tax, all the rich men realized that they had to do something quick to put their money where the government could not get its hands on it. So, they created these foundations. Thus, between these three big ones alone, there is something like almost $4 billion available. That is a powerful clout in any society. They have their money sheltered in these foundations. They can still decide what to do with it. They can still decide how to use it, but the government can't tax it. Most Americans don't understand how that system works.

   What happened was that the Senate finally began to be suspicious, and they began to examine what is going on in these foundations. They wanted to know, "Why do these foundations constantly support leftist causes – like the National Council of Churches supporting terrorist groups with money that people give in Sunday offerings under the guise of achieving freedom for the people of some particular area of the world. So, this examination was made. I want to read to you, in part, the review of this book In "The Review of the News," March 25th, 1981.

   The writer says, "It's all here: the imperfectly concealed one-world aim of the establishment's foundations, along with extensive evidence of their connivance in violent revolutionary causes. We learned of the steady expansion of their less dramatic operations into every area of life, and note their interchange of personnel with the top levels of government, education, church, business, labor, and communications." What he's referring to there is that members of the Council on Foreign Relations and members of the Trilateral Commission are found spotted all the way through these major foundations as the controlling voices and the determining voices.

   Continuing: "Stunning evidence brought to light by McIlhany comes from interviews he recorded in June, 1976 with Norman Dodd, who directed the Reece committee probe in 1952-53. Early in that investigation, Dodd stated on tape that he met with Dr. Joseph Johnson, Alger Hiss's replacement as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to discuss a request for information." Alger Hiss, you remember, was later convicted as a communist.

   "Dr. Johnson, who was new on the job, offered to open the recorded minutes of the meetings of the Carnegie Endowment trustees. Assuming that Johnson was simply ignorant of what might be learned from these, Dodd quickly dispatched the committee staff lawyer, Katherine Casey, to examine the records with particular attention to the years following 1910. Attorney Casey was not simply an impartial investigator, but was opposed to the investigation because she knew of no reason why the foundation should be held suspect. But Katherine Casey returned to Dodge shaken by her discoveries. In her notes on the records of a Carnegie trustees' meeting in 1911 was the item quoted below in Dodd's words: 'The trustees raised the question, and they discussed the question, and the question was specific: Is there any means known to man more effective than war, assuming you wished to alter the life of an entire people? And they discussed this, and at the end of a year, they came to the conclusion that there was no more effective means to that end known to man. So, then they raised question number two: The question was, 'How do we involve the United States in a war?'

   "The Carnegie trustees were not talking theory. Dodd continued: 'Then they raised the question: how do we control the diplomatic machinery of the United States? And the answer came out: we must control the State Department. At this point, we catch up with what we had already found out, and that was that through an agency set up by the Carnegie Endowment, every high appointment in the State Department was cleared. Finally, we were in a war." These trustees, in a meeting about 1917, had the brashness to congratulate themselves on the wisdom of their original decision, because already the impact of the war had indicated that it would alter life, and can alter life, in this country. This was the date of our entry in the war. We were involved. They even had the brashness to word and to dispatch a telegram to Mr. Wilson, cautioning him to see that the war did not end too quickly.

   "Mr. Dodd's testimony continued sketching a pattern of methodical intrigue. The war was over. Then the concern became, as expressed by the trustees, 'seeing to it that there was no reversion to life in this country as it existed prior to 1914.' They came to the conclusion that to prevent a reversion, they must control education. Then they approached the Rockefeller Foundation and said, 'Will you take on the acquisition of control of education as it involves subjects that are domestic in their significance? We'll take it on the basis of subjects that have an international significance.' It was agreed. Then together, they decided the key to it is the teaching of American history, and they must change that.

   "So, they then approached the most prominent of (what we might call) American historians at that time, with the idea of getting them to alter the manner in which they presented the subject. Even more staggering is the revelation made to chief investigator Dodd in December of 1953 by Ford Foundation President Rowan Gaither and Gaither's office. Mr. Gaither told Dodd candidly, 'Of course, you know that we at the executive level here were at one time or another active in the O.S.S., the State Department, or the European Economic Administration. During those times, and without exception, we operated under directives issued by the White House. We are continuing to be guided by just such directives. Would you like to know the substance of these directives?' And I said, 'Yes, Mr. Gaither. I'd like to know. The substance was to the effect that we should make every effort to so alter life in the United States as to make possible a comfortable merger with the Soviet Union. Norman Dodd's rejoinder, incidentally, was a classic of cool ambiguity. 'Mr. Gaither,' he replied, 'in the light of what you have just told me, the grants of the foundation become understandable.'

   "It would be unfair in this review to neglect the Rockefeller Foundation, whose directors include members of the family, as well as such prominent figures as CBS President Frank Stanton (CFR member); IBM Chairman Thomas Watson (CFR member); and, Notre Dame's Theodore Hesburgh (CFR member). McIlhany describes at length a series of interviews with Dr. John Knowles (CFR), Rockefeller Foundation president until his early death in 1979. Dr. Knowles had agreed to the interviews, but then refused to allow his responses on why his organization supports left-wing undertakings to appear in the tax-exempt foundations. This from a man who summed up his 1976 tour of Mao Zedong's paradise with the puff, 'I have seen the future, and it works."

   "Johnny Knowles was well aware that he was using precisely the words of communist Lincoln Steffens after the latter reviewed the deplorable conditions in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. This is from the same Dr. Knowles, who in his 1976 'President's Review and Annual Report' pled openly for controlled economic growth and a more equitable distribution of wealth, while stressing the need for an alternative to economic freedom. 'That alternative,' he said, 'will become increasingly expensive to us and to our fellow riders on this planet of ours. The web of interdependence is tightening. We are one world and there will be one future, for better or for worse, for us all.'

   "The book ends abruptly without a concluding chapter, summary, and exhortation. Rather, it concludes with two paragraphs voicing McIlhany's observation that his research constitutes only a small fraction of the total evidence, which he believes is necessary if we are to be able to prevent the foundations from destroying what is left of the American system. Despite this modest disclaimer, The Tax-Exempt Foundations is a major accomplishment that exposes the vital roots that feed a shocking conspiracy. With this book to guide them, congressional investigators could focus national attention on crimes of monstrous proportions."

5. George Wellhausen

   I read you that to demonstrate the problems that we face in this concept of socialism and of uniting with communism. That is exactly where the world is moving, and that is the idea behind everything that has taken place in government for many years. Then we have the poisonous idea that the Bible is not a book produced by God using men, but a book which was produced by men alone. This idea came from George Wellhausen. He said that there is no final authority in spiritual things except man himself and his religious reasonings. The Bible is merely a record of what people experienced and felt about God, so it's not binding on others. The Bible was actually, he said, a paste-up of the writings of various authors who added claims of miracles about the deity of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And all of these things were simply put together by human ingenuity.

   You and I look at that and say, "Boy, that is really crazy," but the truth of the matter is that the most intellectual men believe this. One of our young men works for a company, and he recently told me that he was sent to a public relations seminar which was teaching the employees how to deal with the general public. In the course of this seminar, the leader divided people into about eight different categories. One was a category where people just float with the scene. They move back and forth. They don't say, "This is what I believe." If you don't believe it, that's OK. They back off, and they're very flexible. He described Jesus Christ as that type of personality. He described another type of personality that he called the absolutist. The absolutist says, "This is right, and this is wrong. I take the position that this is right, and this is wrong." Our young man sat there and he said, "Boy, he really has Jesus Christ in the wrong category." So, during the break, he went up and he asked about this. He said, "Do you really think that Jesus Christ (who made such definitive statements that we read in the Bible about all kinds of issues of right and wrong) would be in this flexible category?" The man replied, "Oh, listen. The men who wrote the Bible put all those things in about Christ. That wasn't really true. He didn't really say those things. They just pretended that He said that in order to establish a case for themselves."

   Our young man said, "Immediately, I thought about George Wellhausen." He knew exactly where the poison came from. He spotted it. He smelled it the minute the man opened his mouth. He knew exactly the deceit that was being practiced upon that group of leaders in the company who were going to deal with the general public, and that Jesus Christ was being misrepresented. They were pushing the idea that the Bible is an old-fashioned book of primitive ideas, which needs to be revised by modern minds; and, that it has been a book which has been concocted of miracles and concepts of the deity of Christ which are not true, and which Jesus never claimed, and that it was just a lie perpetrated by those who wrote the Bible. George Wellhausen taught all this: There is no way to interpret the Bible from its Greek and Hebrew languages so that you can come up with real statements of divine truth.

   Some groups accept the Bible, but they also add their own revelation in order to neutralize Scripture. You have the Roman Catholic Church that does this. You have the Mormons that do this. So here's another way of doing exactly what Wellhausen did to pull the authority of the Bible away. So, Christianity, as a result of Wellhausen's ideas, degenerated into liberalism, and millions have consequently march into hell forever. You have been observing the gross paganistic practices on television with the tragic assassination attempt on the Pope. I don't know how you feel, but I sit there in a sense of grief, and of shock, as I see these people approaching God on Nimrod's Babylonian system. Here they are going through their rosaries; counting their beads; and, saying their "Hail Mary's" and their "Our Fathers." Isn't that an insult to the God that you know; to the God of grace; and, to the God who can be approached in prayer? And here: "God, we're going to appease you. We're going to throw up to you enough prayers, just like we were some pagan spinning a prayer wheel." And then they're running the Mass. Here is Nimrod's Babylonian, crude, debased way of sacrifice before their gods incorporated into Christianity. They're running all over, holding Masses in order to get God to say, "Well, OK, I'll let the Pope live."

   When you look at that, you recoil in horror of the blasphemy, and you get a little bit of sense of why God is so outraged, and why the thunder is going to break so hard in the tribulation. Men have no excuse for that kind of ignorance.

   Incidentally, we have several copies of the excellent updated little book on where all of these evils that are in Roman Catholicism came from. ... If you want to read about it, you can go through and really see where the Mass; the Dagon miter head (like you see the pope walking around there with his miter head on); the whole bit; and, the fans that accompany him when he rides through the streets on his chariot. It is just as we find on the walls of ancient archeological discoveries: Here's the high priest (the Pontifex Maximus) being carried on the shoulders of the people ..., and these two big fans by him. Boy, I tell you, it'll turn your blood cold. You'll say, "I really can't believe this." You will find this fascinating. If you've got some Catholic friends, there's a book they ought to read, if they want to really know the kind of deception they're in. It all is the result of what Wellhausen did to us in destroying the Bible as a book written under divine authority. Social improvement became the gospel after Wellhausen destroyed the Scripture gospel of salvation by grace.

6. John Dewey

   Then there's the idea of using public education to form the emotional attitudes favoring socialism based on the principles of secular humanism. Of course, we all know that John Dewey was the father of progressive education that did that. Learning the three Rs was declared to be of secondary importance. The primary goal of schools is to counter middle-class attitudes and values, meaning biblical concepts. Children were to be left in ignorance of the workings and the blessings of the American free enterprise system and of capitalism. They were to be actually trained to despise it. Those of you who received "The Christian Anti-Communist Crusade" newsletter of Dr. Schwartz from Long Beach, California, perhaps have seen this last issue. It is really impressive. I want to read to you a letter that he received from a product of American university and high school training. This is from a prestigious Ivy League academy. The student says:

   "I first asked to receive your 'Christian Anti-Communist Crusade' newsletter some months ago because I was curious about the lunatic fringe of the militant, war-mongering right. You signed your letters 'With Christian Love,' but I think that I, an agnostic, have a better understanding of this term than you do. Jesus did not tell people to kill; to spy; to oppress; or, to exploit. He told them to be just, kind, and nonviolent. Are you aware that the United States, in order to guard the freedom you cherish and the wealth you enjoy, has for years, and probably will for years, take advantage of the poor in this country and abroad? Is this justice? The oppressed of the world look for equality. This should not surprise you, since we ourselves began as revolutionaries. Yet when they look to the United States, which should support those who seek basic rights, they find that the CIA and the Department of Defense are poised for a conflict in Vietnam; in El Salvador; in Chile; in Korea; and, yes, perhaps, even in South Africa.

   "So, these people look to the USSR and find what they need: moral; economic; and, military support. When the oppressed people of Biafra tried to win their independence, they were all killed. Where was the U.S.? We remained neutral while our NATO allies gave vast amounts of military aid to the genocidal government forces. The people of Cuba are today not free by our standards, but they are happy in the prosperity, health, and literacy brought by Castro. The people of Poland have found that they like socialism, which was initially forced on them by the USSR, but they want to revise certain aspects of it. In effect, they want freedom. Where do they turn? To their own power as nonviolent protesters. They feel that Caspar Weinberger, with his extravagant remarks, is hurting their cause, not helping it.

   "So, where does this leave me? I cannot endorse the extremes of communist repression, but neither can I endorse your hawkish stance. I believe that the answer lies not in institutions, but in individuals. The CIA and the army are not going to do me any good with their bloated budgets; their abuses of power; and, their eagerness to kill. They cannot serve justice. Justice must come from within me, in my own decisions not to serve the ends of war and hatred. Thus, I will, I believe, join the great tradition of agnostic Quakers."

   I just wish that when he uses the word "agnostic," that he would quit using the Greek word, and use the Latin. I really like the Latin a lot better. It would read like this: "I will, I believe, join the great tradition of ignoramus Quakers."

   Continuing; "I will oppose the draft; the arms race intervention; and, all the other remnants of man's sad history of warfare. I will support whoever supports freedom and equality (notice that word 'equality' repeatedly here) and nonviolence through activities such as those sponsored by Amnesty International. While you urge those younger and poorer than yourself to kill and die, I will do the only thing a person really can do: refuse to contribute by my actions to injustice. Please cancel my subscription to your newsletter. It is not Christian."

   I find that this final statement uses a code word. It should throw up a red flag about deliberate self-ignorance. Every now and then, we get a letter through the mail. Usually it's from some charismatic that's gotten a hold of one of our ... tapes about the charismatic movement. When they get hold of that, they write their letters. The bottom line is, "Don't send me any more tapes." Well, they don't buy the tapes. We don't send them unless they order them. They're just like this newsletter – you don't get it unless you want it, and it's free. When they say, "Don't send me any more tapes," or, "Don't send me this newsletter," what are they saying? They're saying, "I'm ignorant; I like it; and, I don't want you to confuse me with the facts."

   Dr. Schwartz said, "I wrote him as follows: 'I read your letter with great interest, and I thank you for writing to me. You are obviously intelligent and idealistic. I ask you to use your intelligence to criticize yourself and your letter with the same honesty and perceptiveness that you would use when criticizing the letter of an opponent. Does not your letter reveal: one – prejudice; two – confusion; three – evidence that you have been duped by communist propaganda; and, four – arrogance? Consider the evidence.

   "One – prejudice: you state that you asked to receive the Crusade newsletter to satisfy your curiosity about the lunatic fringe of the militant war-mongering right. Does this not indicate that you judged the crusade prior to studying the evidence?

   "Two – confusion: you berate the United States for interference in the internal affairs of other countries, and also for failing to interfere in the civil war in Nigeria, during which Biafra sought independence. How can you have it both ways? What you are actually saying is, 'The United States should interfere if I approve, but only if I approve.'

   "Three – evidence that you've been duped by communist propaganda: you state, 'The United States, in order to guard the freedom you cherish and the wealth you enjoy, has for years, and probably will for years, take advantage of the poor in this country and abroad.' This is a repetition of the slander of the United States which is a main theme of the communist propaganda. The accusation that the United States is taking advantage of the poor abroad is one of the themes of the Leninist doctrine of imperialism. With regard to the poor within, the United States has taken extraordinary measures to improve their well-being. The percentage of the U.S. population classified as poor has diminished spectacularly during the past generation. You also state that the oppressed of the world receive what they need from the Soviet Union. Is Afghanistan an example of this?

   "Four – arrogance: by what extraordinary process do you know what the people of Cuba and Poland think and feel? You make the categorical statements that the people of Cuba are happy in the prosperity, health, and literacy brought about by Castro, and that the people of Poland have found that they like socialism. You and I do share one conviction. I agree with your statement: 'I believe that the answer lies not in institutions, but in individuals.' I pray that the grace of humility may be added to your positive qualities of intelligence, idealism, and compassion. I also ask God for this gift of humility.'"

   That's where American education of the Dewey concept has brought American youth – ashamed of their patriotism, and ignorant of why they have so much money that they can ride around so high and mighty on their mopeds and whatnot in order to champion against the free enterprise system. The minds of students are programmed for socialism under the Dewey concept, and for the welfare state. They use the open-ended discussion, and the probing of subjective feelings to find truth. Notice how this student here said that he's going to look within himself. This is shades of Kierkegaard. Therefore, the angelic warfare today centers on education of the young, and on the proclaiming of Bible doctrine truth through expository preaching. Here are the two main areas of attack. Anybody who is in the field of education is going to receive Satan's hell; and, anybody who is in the field of expository preaching (especially recording it, and making it permanent, so other people can listen to it) is under Satan's attack. You can count on it.

   So, progressive education has given us a people in our country which are uneducated in basic verbal skills; they're uncultured in the arts; they're devoid of personal honor; they're leeches on societies; and, they're slaves to the pursuit of sensual pleasure. The idea that man is an animal has been promulgated by progressive education: He does not have a soul, so he has nothing but emotions. These emotions are to be probed, and they are to be manipulated. These children are left under this system to their own ignorance.

7. Sigmund Freud

   Sigmund Freud brought us the poisonous idea that man is an animal without a soul, and that he has emotional problems because he has a sense of false guilt. This is attributed to human actions; ultimately, to libido, the drive for sexual pleasure. Everything a person does, Freud says, is because of his desire for sexual pleasure. Freud says that he is intimidated by society, so he has guilt complexes. People are not to be held responsible, therefore, for what they do in their conduct, because they're fighting against this sense of guilt which has been improperly imposed upon them. Freud's principle for removing inhibitions, and for fulfilling sexual desires for mental health has led to the attitude of permissiveness that we know today. It is being expressed in violence. The rejection of real moral guilt before God, which only regeneration can relieve, has led to psychological devastation. We have rebellious youth who are indulging their non-subjected wills. They flood big cities as runaways today. Our television screens are constantly filled with programs about runaways who are the direct results of the concepts of Freud: "Do your thing. Don't be restricted." Freud has created a desperate culture seeking relief – the relief of its guilt through drugs instead of through the Scriptures.

8. Søren Kierkegaard

   Then one more terrible man is Søren Kierkegaard. Søren Kierkegaard brought us the poisonous idea that the truth about God to be found within oneself, and not in the Bible. Truth is what happens to a person, and what he feels at the moment about the experience. This is the philosophy we know of as existentialism. The object of life is to seek experiences so as to have opportunity to find truth. The more experiences you have, the more truth you'll find. God and man have nothing in common, Kierkegaard said, so God can't say anything to man that man would understand. Therefore, there is no truth such as to be found in the Bible. Just having an experience, and how it speaks to you, is what counts. Truth? No, that's not important. It doesn't matter if you tell lies. The only thing that's important is the experience, and what it does for you. So, the result is that man is in a helpless state of misery with no hope of any meaning beyond the moment. He lives for the now. Nothing that man chooses to do makes any difference. You do as you please.

   Somebody finally got to interview John Lennon's wife, Yoko Ono, the other day. In the process of the interview, he reported that he had discussed with her how she and John were devotees of health foods, and how they took care of themselves, and they exercised. And her comment was, "You see, it was all for nothing." If there's anything that characterized John Lennon's thinking, it was existentialism. It was the concept Kierkegaard and his atheistic expression. Then the interviewer said, "Well, what are you teaching your little son about health things?" She said, "I tell him, 'Eat anything you want because it doesn't make any difference.'" And there you have Kierkegaard's existentialism cropping up with all of its poisonous concepts. It does make a difference. The Bible says what you do makes a big difference, and the consequences will be forever.

   However, this Kierkegaard existential blasphemy has caught hold even in Bible churches. So, preachers back off and say, "Oh, no, you shouldn't tell people that they're going to have rewards. You shouldn't tell people that, out in heaven, some of you are going to be a lot happier than the rest of you, and that some of you are going to get out in heaven and you're going to wring your hands like that man in hell who'd lost his soul. But you're going to be sent there wringing your hands because of the rewards you lost. No, don't say that. It doesn't matter what you do now. Everybody is going to come out the same." And that's a lie that Satan has interjected, even among Christians, to keep believers from getting on the stick and using their spiritual gifts and functioning for the Lord. It leaves a man to fend for himself in a world in which there is no God, nor heaven nor hell. There is only a now, and the only thing that counts is to have an experience. What it's like doesn't matter? Just do it now.

   Therefore, the only rationalism for believing in spiritual realities, Kierkegaard said, is an irrational leap of faith against reason. You just pretend that there is something true, and that there is something out there. The idea that prosperity is created for a person, and that he will have a personal experience of joy and prosperity, by something that comes from within himself, is completely and devastatingly false.

9. John Keynes

   There is one more man, and one that we cannot just sluff over carelessly, because this is the man that is causing you the misery that you experience every week when you go to the grocery store; and, when you go to get your paycheck. Every day of your life that you deal with economic matters, this is the man whose poison is creating you the misery that is preparing the world for one of its key features of the tribulation. The tribulation will be a world that is totally economically controlled. It will be a world that is completely computerized. It will be a world that will be completely under the thumb of one man economically. It will be a world where your means of sustaining your physical life will be cut off with just the push of a button. It is all because of a concept interjected into the human race by this man. We shall look at him next time.

   It is necessary for us to tie this all together with one powerful impact so that you have it all before you (all these lines of thought) because this is what you're fighting. So, those of you who are college students, keep your eyes and ears open when you read your textbooks, because one of the things that John Dewey did through the foundations was to put a put a stranglehold on the throat of book publishers, and force them to be producing the ideas of the socialism and the secular humanism that John Dewey decided was the way that people will find happiness, and this was the way that education should change the world. These concepts are all around you, and you should be aware of them.

   When people talk to you that you're trying to lead to the Lord, keep your ears open, because under everything they say is some of this poison. When you spot it, go to it and say, "Here's what the Bible has to say about that. You're wrong in that point. You're wrong in thinking that, and that is a devastating error, and here's where it came from." The most terrible thing that Satan has to face are soldiers in the angelic conflict who know what on earth is going on, and who know what they're talking about. That is characteristic of the tradition of the American military, right down to the most obscure buck private. Information is passed down. It is characteristic in the American military to pass the word along.

   Those of you who watched the program on the Russian military last week, were perhaps impressed by the fact, as was the interviewer, that the Russians don't allow their ordinary soldiers to even know how to read a compass, because they don't want them to know where the countries are from wherever they happen to be, that could offer them freedom. And the interviewer said, "But we even teach our privates how to read a compass so that everybody knows how to handle a compass in the course of being in the field under a combat situation." They replied that, "No, only our officers are permitted to know that."

   Ignorance is what the devil counts on, and all of his systems know that. You must be the informed people. You must think these things through, so that when you're out in the field in combat, these things are at your disposal, and your training will have taken its effect.

   Dr. John E. Danish, 1977

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