Our passion is training Christian parents, teachers, & grandparents to educate future generations for Christ by following God's plan to perpetuate their faith through Kingdom Education.
Showing posts with label christian education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christian education. Show all posts
The Puritans began arriving in the Massachusetts Bay Colony around 1630, and within six short years they had established the first college in America known as Harvard College. Its purpose was to train ministers and missionaries and other leaders who knew God and Jesus Christ His Son. This original mission statement reveals that they really understood what true Christian education was. Today, more than ever, America needs Christian schools, colleges, and universities built on the same foundation, which is Jesus Christ who is the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning. Tragically, Harvard College was taken over by liberal Unitarians in 1805.
More than any other type of college, the church in America today needs several excellent Christ-centered, Biblically-based, Principle Approach TEACHERS' COLLEGES to train up a new generation of Christian teachers who have a Christian philosophy of education, a sound Biblical worldview, Biblical methods of teaching and learning, and a solid Biblical worldview curriculum. We can no longer afford to have our Christian teachers trained by secular humanists and Marxists in the state universities, and we can no longer tolerate having our Christian teachers being trained in "Christian" colleges and universities that have been saturated with humanism and are nearly indistinguishable from the education departments of the state universities. Instead of being 90% alike in their educational philosophy and teaching methodology, true Christ-centered teachers' colleges will be and must be 100% different in all aspects. God Almighty, El-Shaddai, hear my cry and give us teachers' colleges worthy of Your name, worthy of Christian children, faithful to Your Word and to the Truth, uncompromising, bold, creative, and founded on the only foundation worthy of true Christian education - the LORD Jesus Christ.
Could it be any clearer than this? Here we have two American educational "fathers" with diametrically opposing worldviews. Noah Webster represents the Biblical and Christian worldview, based on the truth and authority of God's holy Word, the Bible. On the other hand, John Dewey represents the anti-Christian atheistic humanist worldview, based on humanism, a rejection of God, and paganism.
From these two "fathers," America has developed two very different educational systems. Our original Christian colonial-era education is known as the Christian classical educational system or what is called "the Principle Approach" to education. This system was founded by the early Christian pioneers such as the Pilgrims and Puritans of Massachusetts. Noah Webster helped catapult it and advance it with his 1828 Dictionary and his many publications of Biblically-based curricula. This system continues today to some degree through Christian home schools, through Biblical worldview Christian schools, and most completely through Principle Approach® Christian worldview schools.
The other system is the public school system of state education. It is built on the foundation of John Dewey and his anti-Christian philosophy of humanism, atheism, naturalism, evolution, and moral relevance. It is this system which is destroying our children spiritually, morally, and intellectually. It is this "Dewey" system that is destroying our entire culture and it's spiritual and moral foundations. It is this system that Christian parents need to reject and separate from, and in its place, these parents can draw on America's Christian heritage and provide their children with a godly Christian education through home schooling or Christian worldview schools or Principle Approach schools.
This quote is by Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld, one of the most respected Christian educators in the nation.
God has given him the prophetic insight and understanding to see that public education and the income tax are at the heart of the agenda of the Left to transform America into a socialist, ungodly, controlled society in the image of socialist Europe.
If Americans truly want to be a free people who are self-governed and who enjoy the liberty and inalienable rights given to us by our Creator - then we must get rid of these two institutions which are designed to keep America in bondage and transform her into a godless, secular, non-Christian socialist society.
I encourage you to do your own research on this truth. Study the totalitarian governments of the 20th century, and you will find government-controlled "free" public education as one of the main supporting pillars that created a dumbed-down, submissive, morally corrupt citizenry who were enslaved by a totalitarian state that had all the power. Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, and communism under every title has been built on these two fundamental pillars.
In this perverted and adulterous generation, what a novel idea to establish education for Christian children and youth on the Holy Word of God. During the Reformation, Christians all over Europe established institutions of higher learning founded on God's Word. In fact, the Christian leaders of the English Colonies in America in the 17th century established schools, colleges, and seminaries all founded upon the Word of God. From 1636, when Harvard College was founded, right up through 1805, almost all education in America was founded upon and occupied with the Scriptures.
In fact, here is Harvard University's original mission statement:
"Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well the end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning."
This is amazing to me! Harvard's educational philosophy and purpose was so clear and Biblically sound at its founding. Tragically, in 1805 the liberal Unitarians completely took over Harvard University and kicked out all of the Bible-believing professors and administrators. As the above quote by Martin Luther states so clearly, Harvard University became corrupt because it rejected the authority of the Word of God and was no longer occupied with it or founded upon it. Harvard had the right original vision and purpose in education, and it held to its course for nearly 170 years, but slowly the lies and deceptions of the enemy crept in. What Jesus called, "the leaven of the Scribes and Pharisees," spread from a few to the many, until the majority took complete control and kicked God and His Word out of the university.
Today we need new Christian institutions that are founded upon the authority of Jesus Christ and God's Holy Word. We need new Christian universities, Christian colleges, Bible colleges, Christian private schools, and Christian home schools. We must establish them on the only foundation that can be laid: Jesus Christ and obedience to His commandments, for this is truly the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." (Proverb 9:10) This is our foundational Scripture from Part 1.
In his book, The Fear of the Lord, John Bevere states: “Holy fear is the key to God’s sure foundation, unlocking the treasures of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge.” This truth comes right out of Isaiah 33:6, “And HE shall be the sure foundation [stability] of your times, a wealth of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is his treasure.”
Consequently, if we desire to live securely in these troubled times and teach our children and students how to do this, we must seek the Lord and ask Him to etch in our hearts and in their hearts - the holy fear of the Lord. We can only expect to receive this impartation and discernment that fears God if we are earnestly seeking God’s face (Jeremiah 29:11-14; 32:40) and spending time with Him in His Word. Then the Holy Spirit can reveal to us the fear of the Lord, for it truly is one of the manifestations of the Spirit of God (Isaiah 11:1-2).
There is an interlocking relationship between fearing God and loving God. In other words, we cannot truly love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength until we first learn to reverentially fear Him, and we cannot properly fear Him as we should until we first love Him. To fear God properly leads us to love Him wholeheartedly and appropriately. If fearing God is the beginning of wisdom and knowing God as He truly is, then loving God as He really is leads us to the fulfilling purpose of wisdom, which is to know Him intimately and is eternal life. In short, the love of God must be complemented with the fear of God.
God’s Word teaches us that we need to “Behold then the kindness and severity of God” (Rom 11:22). We are in danger of error and judgment when the doctrine of the love of God is not balanced properly with the doctrine of the fear of the Lord. As it says in Isaiah 66:2 and Jeremiah 5:22, a person who truly fears God will tremble at His Word and in His presence. Obviously, we cannot expect to be admitted into the presence of our glorious King with an attitude of disrespect. We learn to give God the reverence He deserves by pursuing the knowledge of the greatness of His glorious character. The greater our beholding of His glory is and the comprehension of His greatness, the greater our capacity for properly fearing Him and reverencing Him according to His divine order.
“Toward Your holy temple I will bow down in fear of You [in reverence for You].” Psalm 5:7
Finally,we must learn to approach God and serve Him acceptably, in reverence and godly fear (Heb 12:28). This is the KEY to acquiring wisdom and understanding, which will lead us to an intimate relationship with God. The holy and reverential FEAR OF THE LORD is absolutely required as the foundation for all true education.
All education that is not built on the fear of the Lord is built on the shifting sands of humanistic philosophies, and as such, will provide its students with a faulty foundation that will not stand the tests and trials of life. As an example, take a close look at the foundation of the modern American public school system: secular humanism. There is no way for a student to receive a truly godly education in the public school system because that system does not teach the fear of the Lord or the knowledge of the Holy One. In fact, state education exalts man above God and seeks to replace God with man. In such a corrupt system, God is ignored as totally insignificant, or worse, He is denounced as non-existent. Can such a system truly educate children? No, it is simply impossible, for the school system has destroyed the very foundation of all sound wisdom and understanding - the fear of the Lord and Jesus Christ. I pray that Christian parents who have their kids in public schools will wake up to this fact and see that they must in all good conscience remove their children from such an ungodly system that can never truly educate their children.
The final posting in this series, Part 3, will follow soon...
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” Prov 9:10
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Prov 1:7
A foundational principle in the Bible is: “the fear of the Lord” is the beginning of wisdom and of knowledge. All true learning and education must begin with the knowledge of God and the holy fear of the Lord.
In what is probably the oldest book in the Bible, and certainly one of the oldest verses in the Scriptures, we read:
“Where then does wisdom come from? And where is the place of understanding? ….God understands its [wisdom’s] way; and He knows its place….Then He saw it and declared it; He established it and also searched it out. And to man He said, ‘Behold, the FEAR OF THE LORD, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding’….With Him are wisdom and might; to Him belong counsel and understanding.” Job 28:12,23,27-28 and 12:13
What exactly is "the fear of the Lord?”
Noah Webster defines it as: “In good men, the fear of God is a holy awe or reverence of God and his laws, which springs from a just view and real love of the divine character, leading the subjects of it to hate and shun every thing that can offend such a holy being, and inclining them to aim at perfect obedience. This is filial fear [of the Lord].”
As we see in this definition and in the Scriptures above, the fear of the Lord is often coupled with the accompanying heart attitude and behavioral action of hating evil and departing from evil. Here are a few other Scriptures that show this important relationship:
“By lovingkindness and truth iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the Lord, one keeps away from evil.” Prov 16:6 “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil; pride, and arrogance, and the evil way, and the perverted mouth, I hate.” Prov 8:13 “Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.” Prov 3:7
In light of these Scriptures, a more thorough definition would be: "The fear of the Lord"is to hate evil as much as God hates evil, and thereby to shun evil and turn away from evil so as not to offend such a holy being. This holy fear of God provides the conscience with the motive to be pleasing and obedient to God in everything, to turn away from evil, and to not give in to temptation.
The book of Proverbs makes it clear that “the fear of the Lord” is a godly virtue that must be valued, that must be chosen, that must be sought after, and that must be desired and searched for as for hidden treasure. Proverbs chapter two teaches how a disciple of Jesus can discern, cultivate, and find the fear of the Lord. Simply put, there is man’s part and there is God’s part, described in an “IF” condition followed by a “THEN” resulting reward. Man’s part is to actively cry out for discernment, to ask for understanding, and to seek for wisdom from God as silver and to search for her as for hidden treasure. This includes receiving God’s words and treasuring His commandments within one’s heart, actively listening to God’s wisdom, and inclining one’s heart to understanding.
In practical steps, this involves listening, reading, praying over, meditating upon, and memorizing God’s Word and God’s commandments. Christian parents need to model this to their children, practice it with them, and teach them this holy discipline of crying out for and searching for God’s hidden treasure of wisdom, knowledge, discernment, and understanding. This process can also be fostered, encouraged, modeled, and practiced in Christian home schools and in Christian day schools.
However, this invaluable spiritual and moral discipline cannot be modeled and taught in public schools which despise the fear of the Lord and the knowledge of the Holy One and which are built upon the shifting sandy foundations of secular humanism, socialism, and atheism. The fear of the Lord is a virtue that is the antithesis of everything the government schools stand for. The fear of the Lord is incompatible with humanism and the idolatry of man found in government schools.
God’s part, the “THEN” aspect of this principle, is to impart into the heart of the searching disciple the fear of the Lord, the knowledge of God, discernment, and understanding. It is the Lord alone who gives wisdom, and from His mouth come knowledge and understanding. In this whole process, the disciple of Jesus will discover the knowledge of God and will discern the fear of the Lord, righteousness, justice, equity, and discretion. God’s stored up wisdom will be poured out on the disciple so that wisdom will enter his heart, knowledge will become pleasant to his soul, discretion will guard him, and understanding will watch over him to deliver him from the evil way and from the perverted man and from the strange woman and the adulteress.
I will continue this message in Part 2 soon to follow...
What is "multiculturalism" exactly? We've all heard the term a million times, but how many of us really know what it means and what its implications are? How is it affecting our kids, American public education, the values of American youth, the church, and the destiny of our nation? These are the questions that Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld discusses in his book, Revolution Via Education, 2009.
Here's a note from the Preface: "In these essays I have tried to show how our country has been in the throes of an ongoing socialist revolution since the turn of the last century. And it has been engineered by real people with real names who consider themselves to be Americans but who have been doing all in their power to change the form of government given us by our Founding Fathers. The two major underpinnings of a socialist, ungodly, controlled society are public education and the income tax. We shall not be a free people until we get rid of both institutions." In this book, Blumenfeld gets to the root of our crisis: our spiritual state and the need for an explicitly Christian form of education. It's a wake up call to the church to make certain and deliberate steps to raising up a generation of Kingdom-builders.
I'd like to share some of my favorite quotes that summarize Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld's insights into "multiculturalism" from his book, Revolution Via Education.
"Multiculturalism has nothing to do with the improvement of academic performance. It is simply part of the plan to use the public schools for political and psychological purposes rather than for academic ones."
"Multiculturalism is based on the notion that the traditional Christian model of American values based on Biblical teachings is no longer valid as the model to be held up to children in public schools....The public school as an Americanizing institution, providing a common body of values for all American children, no longer exists."
"American Christians, for the most part, have lost control over American cultural institutions. All of our public schools, all of our state universities and colleges, and most of our private universities and colleges are now totally and irrevocably in the hands of anti-Christian humanists. Their control of our educational institutions virtually guarantees their dominance over the culture, unless Christians can develop a strategy to regain control over the education of Christian children. It is the Christian patronage of the public school that is permitting the humanists to win the cultural war.The tide of that war could be turned tomorrow IF Christians would remove their children from the public schools and put them in private Christian schools or homeschools where they could be taught Biblical principles."
"Our public schools, in order to be accredited, are now required to teach that there are no moral absolutes, that every individual through a process of values clarification has the right to freely choose his morals, and that ethics are situational. The result has been moral anarchy, moral confusion, moral decline, moral disintegration, and moral civil war. No nation can tolerate the confusion of two conflicting moral codes in its courts."
"What all of this means in practical terms is that American public schools are no longer to be used to inculcate a common set of moral and spiritual values based on our Biblical heritage, but are to be used to promote a plethora of competing values systems, with Biblical Christian values cleverly excluded from competition because they violate the sacred separation of church and state. In other words, the public school is now a marketplace of competing pagan and anti-Christian belief systems. The students have a choice, but the market is rigged. That, in a nutshell, is how multiculturalism works to undermine our Judeo-Christian heritage."
"Multiculturalism is really nothing more than a new form of anti-Americanism. What kind of Americans will the public schools turn out? Americans ignorant of their nation's founding principles, incapable of defending their country against foreign ideologies, adrift in a sea of moral and cultural anarchy, at the mercy of fears, slogans, and terrorist blackmail. The simple truth is that the ultimate purpose of multiculturalism is to wean the American people away from patriotism. In fact, multiculturalism is an all-important steppingstone to globalism, that concept of a future world government, which the public schools are now promoting more aggressively than ever....The NEA recognized no American culture that the student may take pride in."
"The purpose of globalism is to prepare young Americans to accept as inevitable and desirable a world socialist government in which American national sovereignty will be voluntarily surrendered for the great good of 'world peace and brotherhood'. Social studies textbooks have been written to deliberately play down American patriotism and national pride known as 'ethnocentrism' in order to prepare young Americans for world citizenship.....Outcome Based Education is a further attempt to move the American public school in the direction of multicultural world government."
"Multiculturalism is really nothing more than a transition stage in the changeover from one dominant culture to another. America is moving from a dominant Christian culture to a dominant humanist-pagan culture. The transition is usually marked by increasing conflict between the advocates of the two opposing worldviews."
"It is the duty and responsibility of Christian leaders to stop the wholesale paganization of Christian youth. We should take our lessons from the Catholics of the 1850s who realized that they had no choice but to abandon the public schools for educational institutions of their own if they were to preserve Catholic culture for the next one hundred years. Their success indicated that it can be done IF a resolute community is mobilized by a resolute leadership. The fact that thousands of Christian parents are already involved in homeschooling indicates that they are not waiting for this resolute leadership to arise."
When I talk with Christian parents about providing their children with a thoroughly Christ-centered education, one of their main objections is that they believe they should send their children to public school to be "salt and light" in the darkness. In other words, one of the most frequently heard arguments for sending Christian children into the darkness of government schools is that we should try to save the lost in those schools by sending our precious young children there as little evangelists. Does this argument sound familiar?
Here is my reply after an in-depth study of the issue using the Biblical, theological, historical, and educational evidence that is available to anyone who has ears to hear.
The "salt & light" command (and the "Great Commission") were given by Jesus to His trained and adult disciples, not to young children. This is a common misunderstanding in the church today. As an example of the fallacy of this kind of thinking, you'll never find a Christian family sending their 8-year-old son off to Africa to be a missionary to evangelize the lost. Missionaries who are sent to foreign lands are mature disciples and adults, who have been trained theologically in ministering the Gospel and fighting spiritual warfare, who have been trained in the foundations of the faith and in apologetics, etc.
Another problem is that when Christian parents send their young children into the humanist religion government schools, what actually happens is that most of them (85%) have their salt removed by the world (via teachers & peers & curriculum indoctrination) and most of them have their light extinguished. This has been documented by the Southern Baptist Convention's Council on Family Life, by Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis, by George Barna's Research Group, and by many others. When the church tries to apply the "salt and light" argument to putting their children in government schools, the world ends up converting the Christian children and conforming them to the world, not the other way around. And yet God's Word says, "Do not be conformed to this world..." It simply does not work and is not only counter-productive but actually destructive to Christian children and their families. Sure, there's the admirable exception here and there, but the vast majority of these kids actually lose their faith because they are not adequately trained and grounded in their faith before being sent out into the darkness to be light.
I, for one, am not calling for anyone to pull up stakes and head for the hills. I am all for engaging the culture, challenging the culture, and transforming it through Christ & the Gospel of the Kingdom. We are truly called to be a city set on a hill and a light in the darkness, but the city is not a small untrained and unprepared child - it is the "called out ones" of the church who are gathered together as mature disciples of Jesus and who know how to give an answer for the hope that is within them. It is the collection of Christian families that make up the local church.
As parents, our primary purpose is to train up our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, to teach them the commandments of God (see Deut 6), to teach them our spiritual history and the great wonders of God, to disciple them and educate them for God, AND to protect them from the wiles of the enemy and the world that would seek to destroy them and turn them away from God. We protect them while we disciple them and while they mature in their faith and in holy character. Eventually, we they are grown up and mature, we release them as arrows that shoot into the future and God goes with them and makes them His salt and light. However, it is unwise and unBiblical and contrary to the teaching of Jesus and the apostles to send these precious little ones out into the hostile world prematurely, untrained, immature, and not prepared to overcome it by the blood of Jesus and the word of their testimony and by laying their lives down for their King.
I'm in no way "condemning" a lost world or saying that we shouldn't seek to save the lost. As grown disciples of Jesus, yes, of course we should and I do. This is one of our primary purposes. As we raise our kids "in the Lord," we can model this to our children in the safety of our family and home and church as we reach out to the lost. However, this does not mean we are to send them out into the enemy's camp as young children by putting them in government schools where their faith will be assaulted for 13 years and where they will be indoctrinated by and into a new religion - the religion of secular humanism. No, that is not God's purpose or plan for our children.
Nowhere in Scripture does he command parents to do anything so unwise. Instead, everywhere in Scripture He commands parents to teach their own children and train and raise them in the fear of the Lord, at home in the safety of their own families, with assistance from the church. Institutionalizing our children in state education is the most dangerous, unwise, and destructive thing any Christian parent can do, and it plays right into the hands of the humanists and their goal of destroying our children's faith and their parent's authority in their lives and replacing it with the new religion of secular humanism, post-modernism, moral relativism, and evolutionary Darwinism, so that they will become good submissive "dumbed down" socialized citizens who will worship the State as their "god" and look to the State to parent them and to provide them with everything they need. This leads to idolatry, Statism, and socialism, and the complete loss of freedom, independence, and educational freedom.
I pray that you would consider the points I have raised as you think through your philosophy on these things. These are not just my thoughts on the subject. I am sharing what I have learned over the past 3 years of intense research into Christian education and the history of modern education in America. There are many other Christians, including some well-known Christian pastors and leaders, who have done their own research and have come to the same convictions and conclusions. These include: Samuel Blumenfeld, Voddie Baucham, Erwin Lutzer, E. Ray Moore, R.C. Sproul, Jr., Doug Phillips, Herb Titus, Geoff Botkin, Gary North, Kevin Swanson, Stephen McDowell, Bruce Shortt, David d'Escoto, Israel Wayne, Bradley Heath, T.C. Pinkney, R.J. Rushdoony, If you are interested in the titles of a few excellent books on the subject, I would be happy to send them to you. For those who have "ears to hear," there is a vast amount of Biblical, theological, historical, and educational evidence that supports what I have shared.
Let’s begin by defining it. According to Noah Webster, the father of American Christian education, “Education comprehends all that series of instruction and discipline which is intended to enlighten the understanding, correct the temper, and form the manners and habits of youth, and fit them for usefulness in their future stations. To give children a good education in manners, arts and science, is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties.”
Q: In light of this Scripturally-based definition,what are the 6 most important goals of Christian education?
Jesus tells us: “And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the Only True God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou has sent.” – Jn 17:3
The most important task and the primary purpose of every Christian parent is to educate their children for God. The educational role of parents can be briefly summarized in the following 6 goals:
1. to teach their children that the purpose of their lives and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, to love and serve God wholeheartedly, and to know His voice;
2. to form godly character by depositing in them moral virtue and forming godly habits, while reproving and correcting the temper;
3. to train them in the art of Christian self-government so that they are governed internally by the Spirit of God;
4. to renew their minds with the Word of God and train them in Biblical scholarship;
5. to assist them in developing a truly Christ-centered Biblical worldview;
6. to train them in wisdom, knowledge, and discernment so as to equip them to fulfill their Providential purpose in God’s Kingdom.
Our chief aim as Christian parents is to lay Jesus Christ and obedience to His commandments as the only foundation of all wisdom, knowledge, and learning. Our long-term vision is to perpetuate our faith and the covenant we have with God to our children and to teach them to pass it on from generation to generation. This is what it means to educate children for God. Have you ever wondered why God chose Abraham to be the father of faith? Genesis 18:19 tells us, “For I have chosen him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice; in order that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken to him.” In other words, God chose Abraham because He knew that Abraham would be faithful to teach his children to keep the covenant with God and perpetuate their faith from generation to generation.
In Psalm 78:5-7, we find this same generational vision: “For He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, that they should teach them to their children, that the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, that they may arise and tell them to their children, that they should put their confidence in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments.” We see here that God Almighty commands fathers to teach their children His commandments and His works, so that their faith and obedience to God was passed on perpetually from generation to generation.
In my research, I’ve developed a detailed composite of Christian educational goals and objectives that I’d like to share with you so that you can have a target to aim at as you educate your children for God. These are all derived from an explicitly Christian philosophy of education and can be used by any home school parent or Christian school teacher. A combination of the Biblical principle approach, the teacher-mentor approach, and the classic approach is designed to facilitate, model, teach, and enable our students to achieve the following educational goals and objectives.
For the spiritual growth of the student,
To instruct the student in God’s Word, to teach the tenets of its doctrines and principles and leading ideas of Scripture, to edify the student towards full spiritual stature in Christ, and to equip the student for a life of Kingdom service. To impart to the student, by the power of the Spirit of Truth, the full experiential knowledge of God for a deep awareness of the glory, the justice, the holiness, the goodness, and the love of God, and of the fallen state of man, so that the student will be drawn to surrender his heart and submit his life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. To train the student to hear the voice of God and follow the leading of the Spirit in his daily walk in the Spirit. To teach the student the stewardship of his most sacred possessions – his conscience and his character. To teach, model, and develop wisdom in the student, which is the ability to live a godly life skillfully in an ungodly world, and to foster and develop in the student moral discernment, discretion, and practical righteousness (right living and right relationships) before God and man in every area of life. To foster the spiritual disciplines and joys of worship, prayer, fasting, giving, Bible meditation and study, and obedience for the practice of spiritual warfare and for living an overcoming Christian life.
For the personal and social development of the student,
To encourage the student’s personal relationship with the Lord as the dynamic of all his relationships as he grows towards adult roles in marriage and the family, in the church, in the community, in the nation, and in the world. To give the student a vision for his unique purpose, for which he has been endowed with unique individuality made in the image of God, and to lead him to affirm and accept his peers and relations with the same value. To enable the student to pursue his God-given vocation and fulfill his Providential calling with passion and faithfulness. To inspire the student to set excellent standards for the development of his abilities, gifts, and talents, for accountability of personal resources of time, opportunities, health and energies, and for relationships. To inspire and equip the student to become a free and responsible Kingdom citizen who governs himself under God through the Holy Spirit within. To inspire the student to become a godly example in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity. Our teacher-mentors will lead by example, mentoring each student as they integrate wisdom, knowledge, responsibility, and service. To equip the student to share his faith effectively, to make a reasonable defense of the faith, and to inspire him to bring the light of the Gospel to all men everywhere. To enable the student to follow a Biblical model for distinctive Christian leadership that demonstrates Kingdom living as God-appointed stewards over His creation, and that seeks to influence society and transform culture with a thoroughly Biblical worldview. To prepare and train Ambassadors for Christ, courageous Kingdom Statesmen, who will lead others with an excellent spirit through the dark times that are challenging our world, by having the courage to make wise moral decisions, bring Kingdom solutions to society’s problems, and show the way of righteousness.
For the academic performance of the student,
To teach the learner, successfully respecting his unique individuality, and by realizing that teaching is not complete until learning is achieved. To equip the student to be able to think critically and independently. To instill a Biblical worldview by laying a foundation of presuppositions based on Biblical absolutes in the thinking of every student through a curriculum framed by Biblical principles and leading ideas. To equip the student with the textual hermeneutic skills that demonstrate Biblical scholarship, in order to show himself approved unto God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth, and to prepare him to be able to defend the Biblical worldview against the many pagan and secular philosophies of the world. This includes equipping him with sound scientific data regarding the origins of the universe and of mankind. To build a Biblical foundation of knowledge, wisdom, discernment, & understanding for life. To introduce the student to foundational truths and evidences that clearly demonstrate the authority, authenticity, and accuracy of the Scriptures, particularly in light of religious, scientific, and cultural norms conflicting with the Biblical worldview. To raise a generation of defenders of the truth by equipping each student with careful study skills and habits of inquiry and research, patterns of Biblical reasoning, and methods of recording and presenting ideas and understanding. In addition, to encourage students to have real encounters with the living God so that they develop a lifetime of living testimonies of what God has done in their lives as they experience the love and the power of the living God. To give students the appreciation of all areas of knowledge as God-given and experiences in every academic discipline and the arts, so that they can identify their areas of strength and interest for future choices and positions. To cultivate a love for the truth and a love for learning so that each student becomes a self-motivated and self-taught lifelong learner. To build a sense of history and its providential links and purpose so that the student recognizes both his heritage and place in “Christ - His Story,” and is ready to take responsibility for his place in his generation; to recognize the importance of historical and cultural context, and to learn to interpret history and current events through a Biblical Providential perspective. To give students the technical and communication skills needed to prepare for further education and vocation choices.
Dare to Take the TEST: 8 Simple Questions Leading to a Logical & Wise Conclusion
Answer all eight questions honestly, keeping in mind that all education is religious, in one way or another, either overtly or covertly, because all education conveys a specific worldview, and that worldview is either centered around and based on God - or on man.
Q1: As a Christian parent, would you send your child to an Islamic school to be educated, if it were free?
Q2: As a Christian parent, would you send your child to a Hindu or Buddhist school to be educated, if it were free?
Q3: As a Christian parent, would you send your child to a Mormon school to be educated, if it were free?
Q4: As a Christian parent, would you send your child to a Jehovah Witnesses’ school to be educated, if it were free?
Q5: As a Christian parent, would you send your child to a New Age eastern mysticism school to be educated, if it were free?
Q6: As a Christian parent, would you send your child to a school run by a false cult to be educated, if it were free?
Q7: As a Christian parent, would you send your child to an atheistic communist or socialist state school to be educated, if it were free?
Q8: As a Christian parent, if you answered “no” to the first seven questions because they are all centered around and based on man and his explicitly human philosophies and because each one is in reality "anti-Christ," literally, against Christ and His commandments and truth,
then why would you send your child to an atheist, humanist, socialist, pagan government-controlled state school where the very real religion of secular humanism is taught every day? Is the half-truth that it is "free," (which it is not), the main motivating factor that would cause you to give your precious children who are made in the image of God over to Caesar, to be indoctrinated by ungodly and irreligious humanist-trained government employees in a compulsory government monopoly public school...
…Where God is prohibited and where your child is taught that He does not exist,
…Where a spirit of anti-Christ rules, where a spirit of lawlessness is being taught and modeled, and where a lying deceiving spirit is given complete freedom to teach your child that he evolved from slime (evolution) and has no eternal significance,
…Where man and his reason are worshiped as “god” and where vain imaginations and human philosophies are raised up against the knowledge of God,
…Where the Great Deceiver is given complete legal freedom to indoctrinate your child in his ways, to deceive him, to destroy any Christian beliefs and values he might have, and to build an ungodly pagan humanistic worldview as a stronghold in your child’s mind and heart,
…Where your child will be so thoroughly influenced by these demonic spiritual forces that he will naturally become conformed to this world and its ways,
…And where your child’s mind will NOT be renewed by the Spirit of Christ and the truth of God’s Word, but rather, will become defiled and corrupted by the spirit of anti-Christ and the lies and deceptive words of that old Deluder, Satan.
As a Christian parent, you are faced with making the choice between “free” (though it is anything but free) pagan schooling and liberating godly Biblical education for your child.
If you choose the atheist, socialist, humanist schooling that the state offers, simply for the reason that it is “free,” then your choice will cost you dearly because it will lead to its intended purpose which is to conform your child to the world, and thereby transform him into a pagan product of the state.
If you choose the liberating, godly, Biblical education that God requires you to provide for your child and which will cost you to provide, then your choice will be wise because it will lead to its intended purpose which is to conform your child to the image of Jesus and the will of God, and thereby transform him into a godly disciple of Jesus and an ambassador of Christ and His Kingdom.
You must forever live with the choice that you make, and with the eternal consequences your choice will have on your children, your grandchildren, your great grandchildren, the Kingdom of God, and the world. I pray that you make the right choice, that you obey God and raise your child in the fear and admonition of the Lord, teaching him to obey all that Jesus has commanded us, and making it possible for him to love and to know God, which is eternal life. I pray that you will lead your child to eat from the Tree of Life, who is Jesus, and that you will not fall for the deceiver’s lies by leading your child to eat from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil, as our great grandmother, Eve, did so long ago. Choose this day for your children: I pray that you will choose life!
And here's the next logical question: What options do Christian parents have for providing their children with a liberating godly Biblical education?
1. Christian Homeschool – Parents teach their own children at home through the tutorial method using a Biblically-based Christ-centered curriculum. This approach is free, except for the cost of the curriculum and study materials, and presumes that at least one parent is willing to make themselves available to oversee the child’s education. In addition, parents can hire a private tutor to help in the more difficult subjects or can work with other homeschool parents in a homeschool “co-op” where other parents can provide teaching in subjects that one parent may not be knowledgeable in.
2. Christ-centered Biblically-based Christian School – Parents partner together with anointed godly teachers in educating their children in the Lord. Discernment must be used in choosing the right school because many “Christian” schools are based on the same foundations & philosophies as the pagan public schools, but with a Christian veneer and a few Bible verses thrown in. Parents must do their due diligence to ensure that the school truly is Christ-centered and Biblically-based, and that it is providing a truly Christian curriculum and truly anointed godly teachers. This option will cost you because it is truly a valuable investment in your child’s future and because it costs money to pay quality teachers to pour themselves into your child, to pay for school overhead, to provide a high quality Christian curriculum, and to create an excellent learning environment. Tuition is usually paid in ten monthly installments ranging from $200 to $400 per month.
3. A Hybrid Approach Combining Christian Homeschool and Christ-centered Biblically-based Christian School – Parents provide a portion of their child’s education, while partnering with anointed godly teachers to assist them in teaching their child subjects that they are not knowledgeable in. Normally, parents will provide 100% of the instruction while their child is 5-12 years old, but as the child grows, the parents transfer more and more instruction time to the Christian School teachers (or to private tutors). For example, the parents might send their child to the Christian school two or three days a week from ages 12-14, and then send them four or five days a week from ages 15-18. This approach starts out basically free, and as the child grows, the cost begins to increase as the child spends more and more time partnering with the Christian school.
I would like to share with you one of the best satires I've read on government schools written by Israel Wayne.
Below is the link to his website and the article that you won't want to miss. Please forward this blog post to your friends and families so they can also benefit from the insight it provides.
"To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical." - Thomas Jefferson
"Unjust and unlawful is any monopoly, educational or scholastic, which physically or morally forces families to make use of government schools, contrary to the dictates of their Christian conscience, or contrary to their legitimate preferences." - Pope Pious XI, 1931
Below is a YouTube video of Israel Wayne sharing about the focus of his ministry.
How many Christian parents and pastors would be appalled if the government marched into their churches and took complete control of all Sunday School programs of Christian education, including dictating what curriculum would be taught and who would be licensed by the state to teach Sunday School? How many would oppose such an encroachment by the federal or state government? How many would not put up with such a trampling of our religious and civil liberties and would actually do something to stop it? How many would stand up and say the government has no business at all interfering with churches and Sunday Schools? The answer, I'm guessing, is that many or most Christian parents and pastors would be appalled, would oppose such a move, would not put up with it, and would do all they could to stop it and boot the government from trying to control Sunday School, Sunday School curriculum, and Sunday School teaching and teachers.
Now, think about the logic of this type of government encroachment upon churches and their Sunday School programs. It goes against everything that the church in America stands for, especially the freedom of religion and religious expression. We simply would not stand for such a blatant encroachment by the federal or state governments into the church, into our religious lives, into our Sunday Schools, into our Christian education programs, into the indoctrination of our children by the government. And yet, we think it is perfectly fine for the government to indoctrinate our children with secular humanism, evolution, socialism, Marxism, Islam, homosexuality, statism, post-modernism, atheism, and a host of other ungodly and anti-Christian beliefs and behaviors during Monday School, and Tuesday School, etc. Why is that? Why is it not okay for the state to control our Sunday Schools, but it is okay for the government to control our Monday through Friday Schools? How does this make sense to anyone? The truth is: if it is wrong for the state to control our Sunday Schools, then it is equally wrong for the state to control Monday Schools too!
I'm calling out to all Christian parents, pastors, and leaders to somehow explain to me WHY 85% of Christian parents institutionalize their precious children (created in the image of God) and freely render them to Caesar, to the state, to indoctrinate their children five days a week, which adds up to over 16,000 seat hours in a 13 year time period. Jesus clearly said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's." Are we not rendering our children to Caesar when we send them off every day for 13 years to be indoctrinated by the state into secular humanism and other forms of religion that are completely contrary to Christ, literally, are anti-Christ? Are we not guilty of "over rendering" and compartmentalizing our lives between the sacred and the secular?
Too many pastors and Christian parents believe the myth that we can separate religion from education and they are guilty of compartmentalizing their lives into the secular and into the religious. They think that they can teach religion at home and in Sunday School, but during the rest of the day and week it's okay for the government to teach their children all other subjects. This is a dangerous myth that must be exposed as a lie. The truth is that all education is inescapably religious because all education conveys a worldview that shapes and determines the character, life, beliefs, behavior, and future of children. The problem is not that state schools exist; the real problem is that Christian parents are using public schools to train their children, to "educate" their children, to disciple their children, to indoctrinate their children in humanism, atheism, evolution, post-modernism, moral relevance, new age eastern mysticism, etc. The vast majority of Christian parents and pastors are encouraging, participating in, and helping pass on to their children a worldview that is man-centered rather than God-centered. They have abdicated their responsibility to educate their children according to Christ and God's Word. They have simultaneously put their children in harm's way by voluntarily institutionalizing them in public schools which have effectively become "pagan seminaries" and "schools of humanism" that are nurturing their children in alien creeds and infusing them with false and destructive values that are killing our children spiritually, morally, and intellectually.
If you don't believe me, and if you don't believe that public schools are really all that bad for Christian children, then please listen to the words of those who designed the school system to achieve their goals. Charles F. Potter, Signer of the Humanist Manifesto, stated: "Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday School, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teachings?" John D. Dunphy, from the Humanist magazine, declared: "I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers that correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith....The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and new - the rotting corpse of Christianity...and the new faith of humanism." Joe R. Burnett, editor of the Humanist magazine, clarified: "Public education is the parochial education for scientific humanism."
In conclusion, there is a very obvious reason that the evangelical church is losing up to 88% of their children to the world within two years of graduating from public high school. There is a reason that the vast majority of Christian kids who go through 13+ years of government school indoctrination end up with a worldview that has been proven to be secular humanist and socialist/Marxist. If you care at all about your precious children that God has entrusted you with, then you must take them out of Pharoah's school system and set them free. You must join me and many other Christian parents in repenting for over-rendering our children to Caesar and start rendering them to God. To “repent” means to completely change your thinking about an issue, to change your mind, and to then change your direction. It's time to remove our children from the public schools and to truly and faithfully educate them God's way, according to Christ, according to the Word of God, according to the commandments of Jesus, and according to the fear of the Lord and the knowledge of the Holy. When Jesus commanded his disciples to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, He meant for that discipleship and education to begin with their very own children and families, and then, from there, to disciple outwards towards the nations. Humanists and socialists and statists have always understood this principle and applied it, and that is why they are the ones in complete control of the education system in America and in most of the world. It's now time for Christians to take back control of educating their own children, either through homeschooling or through Christ-centered private schools.
This is not a call to try to reform the public school system. No! That is simply not possible and is unbiblical. Jesus warned us about false prophets and false teachers who would try to lead us astray. He didn't say to try to reform them and their schools, but rather to beware of them and stay clear of them. He told us not to follow blind teachers trying to lead the blind. He told us to examine the fruit of the tree, and if the fruit was bad, to recognize that the roots of the tree are bad, which causes the whole tree to be bad, and the only appropriate action was to cut down the whole tree and throw it into the fire (not to try to reform the tree). Study Matthew 7:13-18 and Matthew 15:13-14, where Jesus concludes: "Every plant that My heavenly Father did not plant shall be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit." Remember, God is committed to reforming and reviving only those institutions that He started such as the family, marriage, and the church. However, God never instituted state education or government schools; on the contrary, He warned us about them and how they would end up destroying our children, families, and lives.
For help in removing your children from government schools or for assistance in learning more about homeschooling or finding a high-quality Christian school in your area, please contact: Josiah Friberg, through my blog at www.alleducationisreligious.blogspot.com God bless you in your repentance and obedience which will remove the curse of Malachi 4:5-6 and release the blessing of "restoring the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers."
