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America Today
GV4B© Berean Memorial Church of Irving, Texas, Inc. (1982)
Since the time of Cain it has been no secret that mankind has been under Satan's leadership, and under that leadership has been trying to function
by human reason apart from God. There is one thing that man by nature does not like. He does not like his society to be organized by what God
thinks. From the days of Cain, man has been attempting to organize society on the basis of what man thinks and what man's judgments would
recommend and justify. The current American scene is one of rage against our economic and social sufferings. We are trying to correct things
again without any guidance from the Word of God. People are mad; people are indignant; and, people are wondering why.
We are the client nation
of God at this particular point in history. God throughout history has always had a nation which was the source of divine viewpoint
to the rest of the world. Undoubtedly that is the role that we play today. We are struggling to find the foundations that have been the basis of
our past glories and the foundations of our past prosperity. The political process, of course, is the last hope that Americans have because the
process still works. We have access to it. We can make a difference. We can make a change. In most countries of the world that is no longer possible.
But the political process divorced from the Bible is leading the nation into totalitarian controls. As things get out of hand, people begin to
insist that somebody take charge. All dictatorships have arisen historically when society has not had the guidelines to keep it stable and the
guidelines which are compatible to the principles enunciated in the Word of God. When things begin to degenerate, at a certain point, people call
upon a strong man to take charge.
Now we know that's going to happen. The simple reading of the Bible in its final book tells us that that is exactly what's going to happen, that
society is going to come once more to the place where things get so bad that they call for a strong man, and they welcome him. That will be the
condition upon which the antichrist will be warmly received by all the world when he demonstrates that he can get things straightened out.
So freedom is threatened to the degree today in our country that few realize. The Christian community does not realize that it is facing a severe
hour of persecution. The forces of secular humanism are mad. They realize that they're under threat, that they are being exposed, and that
resistance is rising by the Christian community which can be a powerful force. So it behooves us to realize that the decisions we make have to be
decisions that bring us back in line with the Word of God or nothing has been changed.
The 1960s
It has been during the past few years that the dramatic changes have taken place. It began with college students in the early 1960s. About that
time, we were well enough past World War II and all the exhilaration of that victory. We were well into the post-war prosperity and boom era
where things were getting better and better all the time. Young people were sent off to college, and in the 60s they sensed that this nation,
their parents, and their elders were functioning on a memory that no longer existed in reality in their experience. They were functioning on
concepts of Christianity and values of Christianity but their parents weren't living by those values. Their parents were holding to those values.
Their parents really didn't believe in those values. Their parents were not really compatible to what had been the historic Christian attitudes
of this nation toward the needy; toward other people; toward the reason for one's life; toward the things in which one invests his life; or, toward
the things that one pursues in life.
They realized that, as the phrase has been coined, that we were in a post-Christian era. The Judeo-Christian
frame of reference of our American institutions was gone. The Judeo-Christian base upon which our constitution had been formed was gone. All we
had was a memory and we kept functioning that memory. Students lacked, consequently, a sense of contact with reality. They were asking, "What's it
for? What's it all about?" And that was the time that they coined the phrase "a plastic culture." They said to their parents, "You have a plastic
culture. It's a fake thing. It's something that you put together, a piece of plastic that looks like something made out of solid steel, but it's
nothing. It's just pretend. It's plastic."
The students would go home from the universities and the colleges, and they were wondering why they were doing what they were doing. When they
asked questions, they got superficial answers. When they were in high school, the parents would tell their kids, "Study hard so that you can be
qualified to go to college." Their kids would ask, "Why do I want to go to college?" They parents would reply, "So that you can get an education,
and be able to earn more money." The kids said, "Well why?" Parents responded, "So that you and your children can enjoy a good life, a better life
than we had. And then you can send your children to college."
Well that did not satisfy the students who were coming up in the 60s. To them there was something lacking. They sensed that in their parents the
goals were personal peace--don't disturb me; don't upset me; and, don't rock the boat for me--and personal prosperity. Those were the two things
they saw their parents were pursuing--their personal peace and their personal prosperity. They were the main values. The problem for these students,
as for their parents, was a lack of spiritual dimension with God which gave meaning to their human endeavors. Whether of ambitions of finances, or
of careers, or of education, or of human relationships, without a spiritual dimension there was no meaning to any of that. The motivation for
going to school for personal excellence to the glory of God, and for the capacity that one would then have to serve Him was not the pursuit that
their parents held up to them.
So the problem was that American culture had become totally secularized and humanized, and had made a god out of man himself. They treated man,
consequently, as a materialistic animal. This is what the kids learned from their parents and their parents' values, and the kids began to act
like animals, consequently. The churches that did exist were largely controlled by liberal theology and they were, in effect, not really Christian
at all in their influence. They had nothing to offer youth but the same delusion of secular humanism. So wherever the college people turned, whether
to their homes or to their religious life, they came up with the zero of secular humanism.
By the 60s, there was little memory of Christian values to function upon. The final result for the college student was the belief that there were
no values; that there was no absolute truth; and that there was nothing really worthwhile in life. However, because of the image of God in them,
they knew that that was wrong. There had to be some values. There had to be some meaning to life beyond what their parents were saying. So, the
students started looking around. "What can I believe in? There's nothing real. There's nothing absolute. It's all plastic." The non-liberal churches,
of course, had very little themselves to offer because they had lost their biblical call to teach Bible doctrine. So, they were little better than
the liberal churches which had nothing to say to the students. Liberal churches, which in themselves were not even Christian at all, and the
non-liberal churches, those who at least were in the Bible camp, were not doing what they should be doing with the Bible.
Now that hasn't changed much. Bible churches and Bible doctrine churches are totally different breeds. The Bible doctrine churches are very rare.
Consequently, the Bible churches themselves were muddling around in a country club kind of operation, and a hail-fellow-well-met good fellowship
type of thing, and they were plastic too. So, the students had no place to turn.
The Drug Culture
Well, the college student rebellion began in the 60s against this plastic culture and its ugly devotion as they saw materialism. So, they decided
to turn to drugs as the solution. Since reason was taking the students nowhere, they sought what was called a final experience--one which could be
produced on-call. When you wanted it, you could produce it. We call that "the now generation." That's where that term originated. We're talking
about a philosophic point of view. The drug culture began as a philosophic point of view. It did not begin as an indulgent expression. It began as
a religious expression as an attempt to find the realities which were now lost in the post-Christian era. The reason was questioned for a human
being exerting himself, going to school, earning money, and doing all these other things. What was the purpose finally down the line? Nothing more
than that which a hog was to experience when he's finally slaughtered, or was there something more because we are human beings?
So it began as a philosophy and the idea came that the use of drugs would expand the consciousness and would bring one in touch with a reality that
must be out there that the student was reaching for. Since reason was taking them nowhere, they decided the final experience on call could be
through the drug scene. So it was a philosophical expression, an ideology, which promised them contact with reality. The idea was this: If everyone
was turned on by drugs, everybody would be loving and caring and there would be no war and cruelty. That's where the expression originated, "Make
love, not war." The idea was for everybody to get high on drugs. Everybody would get spaced out, and then nobody was going to go around trying to
be ugly or unkind or mean to anybody else. Everybody's going to be in touch with goodness and kindness.
Well, the drug culture began on this very optimistic ideological concept. They thought that they really had the answer to what was lost with the
abandonment of Biblical Christianity. They thought they really had the answer to what their parents once had but which their parents eventually
lost because the parents' churches (the students didn't understand this but the parents lost it) because the churches that the parents attended
had lost the sense of their calling as instructors in doctrine. Other things were substituted as important in the church ministry so-called
program than instructing people in the great doctrines of the Word of God. They had lost their reformation orientation.
Woodstock
Well there came a high point in the hope for reaching real values through the drug scene. It came in 1969 with a concert at a place called
Woodstock, a rock concert attended by thousands. That was the high water mark of reaching reality through the drug routine. The concert was
motivated in itself by the desire to express community and to express togetherness. They got the idea, "Why don't we all get together and have a
real bash-out togetherness event with a rock concert, and where the drugs will flow. And that's what they did. The real horizontal relationship
which God has supplied in Christianity, and which can only be supplied that way, were sought at Woodstock. It was a noble motivation. It was a
seeking indeed of something that God says we should have and which he has provided. However, the Woodstock event, the high watermark, was soon
followed by two events that brought the death blow to the drug culture as the route for finding reality.
After Woodstock came a Rolling Stones concert at Altamont, California. The Rolling Stones decided to keep order in the area when thousands of
rock concert fans would be on-site. They had learned something from Woodstock. They had hired the motorcycle gang known as the Hells Angels, for
a certain number of barrels of beer, to police the grounds and to keep order during the festival. What happened was that the Hells Angels rioted,
and they killed a number of people. The shock reverberated through the student culture. The ugliness and the evil of the drug culture was vividly
seen. People were shocked. The students recoiled with horror from what had happened under the context of that Rolling Stones concert on the drug
basis.
However, in the back of their minds they thought this is California--the land of sunshine, flowers, fruits, and nuts. It's an aberration. It just
happened. It isn't inherent in what we're seeking. Shortly thereafter there was another concert in the English Channel on the Isle of Wight. It was
another rock concert attended by 450,000 people, and it confirmed the hideous nature of the drug culture. The Isle of Wight concert was the final
nail in the coffin of hopes of finding reality through drugs. The hideousness of what took place was beyond description, and the students recoiled
with even greater horror. They realized they had no community, they had no togetherness, and they had no real sense of values.
After the two major rock festivals, the use of drugs continued. In fact it increased. But it was no longer being used as a means to find genuine
values. Its philosophical purpose had now been lost. It was used simply for the indulgence of the use. It no longer had the noble purpose for
which it was originally intended. The optimistic ideology of the drug culture had died. The Beatles themselves had followed the pattern of the
youth in this post-Christian culture in this way. They began with rock music. They then moved into increasingly suggestive lyrics associated with
rock music. Then they entered the use of drugs for the seeking of reality. They were disappointed by the hippie culture and the drug scene, so
they turned to psychedelic sounds and psychedelic experiences. Then they discovered the Eastern mysticism scene, and they found themselves a guru
and they went to India. You get the same experiences with Eastern mysticism, as you know, as you do with drugs. So they pursued that and finally
came around back to nothing where they abandoned it all including the mysticism. And there was no answer.
So John Lennon, on the very day that he
was assassinated, spoke to a group and talked about, "We must seek to do better. We made a change in the 60s and we can change things. We thank God,
or whatever it is out there, that we have been able to go as far as we have and have survived." Little did he know that in probably less than
three hours' time, he would find out indeed to his great horror and sorrow what was out there--a God who was holy and a God who would hold him
accountable. But he never found the reality he was looking for, and that once was characteristic of the Christian public.
Herbert Marcuse
From the drug scene, youth sought a new route for real values. This was by turning to political activism of the New Left. This was led by a
California professor, Herbert Marcuse, who was a Marxist professor. He became the darling of the youth movement. They abandoned the hope for
finding reality through drugs. They said the way we will get horizontal relationships, togetherness, happiness, and blessing is through
political activism on the left. The New Left movement sprang up with the free speech movement at the University of California in Berkeley,
California. Of course, the free speech movement meant free speech to use four letter words in public, to use them profusely, and not to be
restricted in that expression on the campus. Well the New Left soon became a totalitarian movement which destroyed the very concept of community
that they were seeking.
Herbert Marcuse himself was a promoter of promiscuous sex because Herbert Marcuse was a Marxist. He was a communist. He
understood the principle that indulgence, unrestricted promiscuous sexual indulgence, is the surest way to destroy creative capacity and
motivation for being productive that there is. Lenin himself struck upon this early on in the communist movement. This has been constantly
promoted and so Marcuse as an agent of communism stressed this to the students because this made them helpless and enabled them to be manipulated.
The New Left
Well, the result of the New Left thinking was that they concluded under Marcuse's guidance that there had to be an elite group of intellectuals
to run society. Everyone else had to shut up and be silent. That was at the heart of the totalitarian concept of the New Left. There is an elite
group who, if put in charge, know what's good for people. This group of leaders must be freed from restrictions of things like constitutions and
traditions and other things so that they may exercise their judgment, their superior intellectual capacities, to make the laws and make the rules
and force people to do what's good for them.
The Weathermen
Well, the students in 1968, under the inspiration of the New Left activism program, took over the buildings at Columbia University. They held the
president captive in his office and told him that they were going to tell him the rules to make and how to do things to please them at the
university. They were going to correct the plastic culture of the university officials. Out of the New Left movement came the Weathermen faction
that you've heard about. The Weathermen faction became the epitome of ugliness and cruelty in human relationships. The death blow to this direction
of seeking reality came in 1970 at the University of Wisconsin when the Weathermen blew up the mathematics building and killed several people in
the process. Suddenly the students who had been playing revolution, playing pretend revolution, thinking that they didn't have to go through the
violence that is associated with revolution, found themselves in a revolution that indeed was an ugly scene. They found what it was to be part of
terror and destruction. They finally saw what they were involved in with New Left political activism. The movement had immediately declined into
reality. With the bombing of that mathematics building at the University of Wisconsin, the hope to find reality through leftist political activism
died.
Hedonism
So, the drug optimism and the New Left political activism failed to find the meanings and the real values of life which had been left behind in
Christianity. So a few years later, the great student movement found itself nowhere. Gradually they drifted back, of all things, to the same
principles and the same lifestyle as their parents that they had started out rebelling against. The culture returned to the materialistic values of
its parents. But it added two new dimensions that its parents did not have. It added the dimension of the use of drugs, and it added the dimension
of sexual promiscuity. The word hedonism described the new direction of the youth culture. Hedonism means to do everything that feels good.
Indulge everything that is sensually desirable. That became the goal of life of the new culture.
The two cardinal values of their parents were now
sought by the youth. Youth wanted personal peace just as their parents did. However, they wanted personal peace in order to practice their lifestyle
of drugs and promiscuous sex. They also wanted enough money just as their parents did. But they wanted the money to be able to buy their grass, to
furnish their pad, and to provide their food. So, they have come full circle. The only difference is that the youth culture ended up a few degrees
lower than their parents' culture because they added some elements of additional depravity. The days of the passionate cries for freedom and for
real values in life are now gone. The colleges and universities are again silent.
Eastern Mysticism
What they did turn to as a final desperation which also led them to nowhere was the pursuit of reality through Eastern mysticism with which I
trust you are now well acquainted. Eastern mysticism gave them a way to deny reason and gave them a way to produce psychedelic effects without
drugs. Eastern mystical experiences however easily moved into the occult and into relationships with demons. Without the Bible, there can be no
truth to lead one to genuine values into eternal blessings. Jesus Christ has been accepted by the youth culture as one of the great superstar
gurus who can confirm their goals of peace and affluence. The youth have become just as poor and ugly as their square parents in their country
club churches.
So now, that's where we are today. That is exactly where we are today. That is the mentality of the average secular college student. That is the
mentality of the average American youth. That is also the mentality of the older generation. The whole concept of the Word of God and Christianity
have gone out the window, and they have nothing on which to base their lives. That is the desperate condition in which we are. Where are we even
going to find men to elect that have an orientation back to our Christian era? Where are we going to find the people who have the good sense to
look on them and to put them in office and elect them? The situation is extremely desperate.
Humanism
There are some words that you should be acquainted with that are words of deception. One is humanitarianism. The word humanitarianism means being
kind and helpful to people; treating people humanly; and, being humane. There's a second word: the humanities. The word humanities refers to the
study of such things as human beings create. This includes such things as literature, art, and music. These are the products of human creativity.
Then there is the word humanism. This is the one we must distinguish from the other two. The word humanism means placing men at the center of all
things and making man the measure of all things. Humanism means man beginning from himself with no knowledge except what he himself can discern, and
no standards outside of himself. Humanism means that man, in effect, becomes the god that exists.
Secular Humanism
Now it is possible for a person to be a Christian humanist. He is a believer who is interested in the products of people's creativities. He's
interested in the humanities. He's interested in being humanitarian. However, you cannot be a Christian and be involved in humanism, and especially
when you add the word "secular" to it. Secular refers to what is temporal rather than spiritual. It is to the exclusion of all belief in the
personal God, a non-theistic system. Secular humanism is where we are today. The result of the youth revolution, the result of the counterculture,
has been a solid establishment of secular humanism.
We as Christians are not against humanitarianism. We as Christians are not against the
humanities. We appreciate the fact that man reflects the creativeness of God. We appreciate the fact that we are to be kindly disposed to human
beings. We are, however, as Christians not interested in producing human good, but we are interested in producing Holy Spirit led divine
humanitarianism. But we are opposed to humanism where man is god, and we are opposed to secular humanism which suggests that there is no God and
there is nothing real beyond what man himself is. The word secular means it's all temporal. When you die, you're a dog, you get buried, and that's
the end of you. Now secular humanism is a religious system without God, but it does have a set of beliefs and it has a definite goal for mankind.
There's a great deal of indignation and rage now in certain circles, including political, for calling secular humanism a religion, but it is a
religion. It has a sense of values, it has a sense of beliefs, and it has a sense of practice. Secular humanism, for example, does not believe that
there is a personal supernatural sovereign holy God over man. That's a belief. That's a religious principle. Secular humanists do not believe in
eternal salvation, and they do not believe in eternal damnation. Secular humanism believes the theory of evolution as the answer to the origins of
life. Secular humanism believes in the right to practice sexual preference. You may have any kind of sex--homosexuality, lesbianism, or sex with
animals (bestiality). You may have preference, and they are all equally good and all equally acceptable. Secular humanism believes that everyone,
regardless of age or condition, has the right to determine his own values and his own goals as they affect his life.
So we come to the field of education. We tell students that the thing that they should do is to seek to study the things that are good for them in
their life. So we have this little jerk who is six years old in the first grade, and we want to ask him what he wants to learn for his lifestyle
and his life plans. Secular humanism believes in the right of suicide. Secular humanism believes in the right of abortion. It believes that an
unborn child can be clipped off just as you clip off a piece of your fingernail, and it's no different. Secular humanists believe in euthanasia. The
people who are too old to have a certain quality of life should be put out of their misery. The humanists do not believe in any absolute standard
of morality.
Secular humanism believes in maximum individual autonomy to do one's own thing. Secular humanists believe in a world government.
Secular humanists believe in socialism. They do not believe in the authority of the Bible over man. They believe in the supremacy of human reason
to meet human needs. They believe in the inevitability of progress, that man is going upward. They believe in science as the guide to human progress.
They believe in the self-sufficiency of man to guide his destiny. Man can solve man's problems. They believe in the inherent goodness of man, that
man is not evil by birth. They believe that man controls his own destiny entirely, and that there is no supernatural God who is out there. They
believe that man's need is simply to relate properly to other people and all will be well.
Now all of these concepts come out of the Humanist Manifesto 1 and 2. These things are stated in just so many words. It is a religious system, and
it has definite religious beliefs. Now this is the frame of reference that people have come to. When students ask, "Why should I be going to
school and studying? Why should I be doing this?" It's all because you are going to exalt yourself, because you are going to improve yourself. For
many years one of the primary points I would make in dealing with people who wanted to enroll their children in Berean Academy was to describe to
them the distinction of our school. I would say to them that we promote excellence in learning, but the reason for it is that it is to the glory
of God and that you may fulfill God's plan for your life. We do not promote excellence of learning as in the public school so that you can get a
good job and earn a lot of money. That makes an enormous difference of motivation to the child. Parents have been able to understand that out of
their Christian background. They have sensed that that is a proper motivation. But all of that is gone. None of that exists anymore.
Building a Culture
In Philippians 3:15, the Apostle Paul makes an important statement: "Let us therefore as many as be perfect (mature) be thus minded, and if in
anything he be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you." What the apostle Paul is saying here is that we as Christians are to have
a mind which is willing to be open to the Word of God, to God's divine viewpoint truth. Paul is saying here that, "Some of you Christians may not
have progressed far enough spiritually to understand my attitudes and my teachings," because Paul has just called legalism "garbage." He has called
legalists "dogs." He has called legalists "mutilators" of the physical body, these of the circumcision. Paul says, "I realize that I'm talking in
language that some people may recoil in horror from hearing me talk like that, but that's simply because you have not progressed enough spiritually
to be able to understand what is taking place, and what God's point of view is concerning the legalists. But I call upon you to be open to the
truth. If you are not open to the Word of God, there will be no hope for you. If you'll just be open to the truth, in time God shall reveal these
things to you. You will be informed."
Then in verse 16 he says, "Nevertheless (in spite of the differences that we may have on some of the things that he has taught), to that that we
have already attained, let us walk by the same rule. Let us mind the same thing." The Apostle Paul was saying that to the degree that we have
progressed spiritually, let us move together." Let us keep in line with divine viewpoint things. Divine viewpoint (marching like a group of
soldiers behind Jesus Christ) is what is going to carry us into a world that has genuine values. "Nevertheless, as that which we have already
attained let us walk by that same rule (let us mind the same thing), let us hold the things that we have already attained spiritually." That's
what the United States has not done. That's what American society has not done. Where we had come spiritually we have retrogressed. We have
fallen into reversionism. We have turned our backs upon it. We have ignored it. What we learn determines the nature of our personal and our
national culture. It determines our civilization. God commanded mankind in the cultural mandate of Genesis 1:26-28 to build a civilization, to
build a culture.
Well, the fall into sin did not repeal this divine commandment to build the culture. It just made it harder to do. The Bible records the progress
in building early civilizations. After the flood, the mandate to build civilizations was again repeated. We are told to build a culture, and to
build a culture upon divine viewpoint principles. So whatever your vocation is, you are contributing to building a culture, and your frame of
reference is the kind of culture that you're going to be building. The purpose of building a civilization was to produce blessings. Yet, throughout
history we see a stream of civilizations which brought misery and unhappiness to mankind. Why? Look at the communist countries today. They have
built a culture, they have built a civilization, and they have built the worst kind of misery that human beings have ever experienced. The key
factor in building a civilization of blessing is the divine viewpoint wisdom of Scripture which is necessary to guide the thinking of people and to
give a divine viewpoint frame of reference.
America Today
That's what we're talking about here. That's what we have lost. If there's any hope for the country, it
is that we function once more on divine viewpoint frame reference. It is the handful of people such as yourselves who have an orientation to the
Word of God who know where you're coming from who can make the change. Only God as creator knows the mechanics of the human spirit, the soul, and
the body, and of natural creation. Without the wisdom of God's viewpoint in building a culture, there can be no stability, and there can be no way
of preserving freedom. The Protestant Reformation restored to us the divine viewpoint wisdom of Scripture, and a thousand years of the Dark Ages
was brought to an end. Today where Bible doctrine is rejected, mankind is destroying its freedom because it is not building a divine civilization.
So Paul gave top priority in life for standing by the knowledge of the Word of God you have, but to be open to God's viewpoint as you find it
revealed in Scripture. Israel is the example of what happens to a country that listens to God and builds a culture on the principles of the Word
of God, on the principles such as our Constitution was founded. In the book of 1 Kings, we read about the high point, the golden age of the people
of Israel under Solomon, when the most intense application of divine viewpoint principles was experienced by the nation. This is the example, the
tremendous example of where our nation comes when it says, "Yes, God knows what He's talking about. I am treated as a fool by my culture for
believing that the Bible is the source of information; that there are accurate things that we may know; that there is real truth that we can grasp;
and, that there are standards that we can live up to. Israel's national culture stemmed from the wisdom which God had written in his revelation, and
His presence was with the nation.
Notice Deuteronomy 4:6-7. Moses writes, "Keep therefore and do them for this is your wisdom." Do them, that is the Word of God, His commandments.
"Do them for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations who shall hear all these statutes and say, 'Surely this great
nation is a wise and understanding people.' For what nation is there so great, who has God as near unto them as the Lord our God is in all things
that we call upon him for?" Isn't it pathetic that at one time those two verses were equally applicable to the United States? Read them again.
They were equally applicable to the United States. People were looking at us and wondering and marveling that there was ever such a land of
freedom; of opportunity; of prosperity; of blessings; of peace; and of stability. They said, "How could it be? The world has never seen such a
nation." It was because we were structured upon the thinking of God.
Now they hold us as scrum. Now they hold us in contempt. Now they have nothing but disdain for us. Worst of all, they no longer fearfully respect
us, and rightly so. Gentile nations through history have tried to build cultures with the thinking of wise men and their human viewpoint, but
they inevitably fell into decay. They did not have the frame of reference for developing a fully rounded culture. Western civilization was the
product and the influence of Israel upon the gentiles. Don't fall for that baloney that what we have come to in our country was what we inherited
from the ancient Greeks and Romans. What we have come to in our country in western civilization and culture was what we inherited from Israel, and
from the influence of the Word of God.
It is true that suddenly in the 6th century B.C., logical thinking burst upon the ancient world in the
minds of the Greek culture. It was a wonderful wonderful different thing. It was in the 6th Century B.C. that suddenly people began thinking
logically. Up to that time it was all superstition. It was all kinds of hocus-pocus mentality to explain things. Now the Greeks began to say,
"There's got to be some reason for us to be able to explain these things that are taking place." At the same time, in the 6th century B.C., the
Old Testament revelation was almost completed, and the divine influence of Israel was hitting the Phoenician gentile nations along the
Mediterranean coast. That divine viewpoint, which declared God's control over natural forces, led to the influence from Phoenicia upon Greek
thinking and upon the realization that God is in charge, and He has natural forces, and we may understand these and logically think about this.
The result was the blossoming of Western civilization fulfilling God's prediction to Japheth, in Genesis 9:27, that the Japhetic descendants
would rule the world. They would dominate. Western civilization, of which we are part, was the blessing of the Japhetic prophecy. However, the
Scriptures also made clear that the Japheth nations would prosper only as long as they dwelt in the tents of Shem--as long as they dwelt in the
tents of the descendants of Shem, the Israelite nation, but not when they decided to live in their own human viewpoint tents.
That's where we
are nationally today. We need to remember that our prosperity and our blessing and our foremost in the world as God's client nation
is part of our Japhetic prophetic blessing, but that it is operational only as we continue under the principles of the descendants of Shem and
the revelation of Scripture which came from the Shemite line. When we abandoned the tents of Shem, we then abandon all of our glory; all of our
heritage; all of our promise; and, all of our prosperity. It is divine viewpoint people that God prospers in every way--materially; spiritually;
socially; in your family; and, in every other way. It is the divine viewpoint people who live in the tents of Shem and who function on those
principles that God blesses. That's true of us personally. It's true of us nationally.
Be sure that you view yourself with the importance that
you hold in this particular point in human history. You are an enormously important people because the United States is the last bastion of
preserving freedom. When it goes, it goes all over the world. While there is yet opportunity for us to preserve it, who knows but what we have
learned our lesson through the youth culture descent, degeneration, and hopelessness? Perhaps we have learned our lesson as Nineveh of old did,
and we will listen to the cries of our Jonahs today, and we will turn back to God and God will say, "You've got another century or two of
prosperity, of spiritual blessing, and of opportunity to propagate the Word of God." It is within our grasp to be that kind of preserving salt.
Dr. John E. Danish, 1982
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