Hope of Nations - When Society Shakes, Part 2

You had spent any time in the classroom or on the college campus recently you would've been shocked at what is actually being taught every day. Our kids are being told the truth is relative, that God is irrelevant in Christian values and morals are oppressive.

What you need to do to protect your children and your grandchildren. From the way of ideologies that are turning them against stay with. Thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge Chip Ingram trips or Bible teacher for this international discipleship ministry start helping Christians live like Christian, just a minute will continue in our new series featuring our guest teacher John Dickerson is a bright young pastor with deep understanding and passion ship friends for many years in this program. John picks up where he left off last time describing the tremendous impact Christianity has had on world history and then identifies the major ideologies that surfaced in the last century in opposition to God before we begin, I want to remind you that you will join us after this message to share his thoughts on this important subject matter, so be sure to stick around for that clear, strong, with part two of his talk when society shakes, gelatin vast majority of people ever born in human history never learn how to read.

Where did reading come from well here in the United States came from the same group of Puritans. They said okay were here, we made it to this new world to create a society where our kids can live out the Bible so we need to get ministers for them.

And secondly, we need to make sure they know how to read the Bible, so they created the first public school and they did so through legislation, a thing called the ye all dilute or Satan, they all dilute, or Satan, and here is their point. Satan is a deceiver, he deceives societies and people through ideas and so were going to create a school so that all of our kids can read so they can read the Bible for themselves, so they're not diluted or deceived by Satan first-ever public school social literacy came about as a result and a first in human history not only public education education for girls, if you look back in human history, especially if you go back more about 300 years girls were often treated as property or as slaves. They were bought and sold into marriages often in the child marriages in almost all societies and cultures around the globe. Christianity changed that for women in Christian societies.

Now here's forgive me a graph. Okay, here's a graph of global literacy okay and maybe we'll put this on the side screens in a moment so you can see starts in the 14 and 1500 now a significant event happened at that time called the Protestant Reformation. I want to unpack that today, but the point of the Protestant Reformation is Christians need to read the Bible for themselves and so a Christian named Gutenberg invented a thing called the printing press so that people could read the Bible and that's where really books as we know them today came from Gutenberg before that it was manuscripts and libraries. A book that you could handle someone came from Christians in the Protestant rubble Reformation saying we want to hand out the word of God so people can read it for themselves. Global literacy if you look back before the Protestant Reformation was around 10%. One in 10 people could read even in the Western world after the Protestant Reformation.

You see this explosion upward of literacy and it led by nations like the Netherlands, Germany, Great Britain and the United States. What did all those nations have in common.

In 1500 to 1800 wallets. A fact of history that those were all nations that were predominantly Christian. And so if you remove Christians from world history you remove literacy as we know it today because this is not just a graph of literacy in Christian nations. This is literacy in the world. Exit is yellow line is the world you see the world eventually catches up as the West spreads its education around the globe.

So why does this stuff matter. Well, if you take Christians out of world history you remove our ability to read and that fundamentally takes society back a thousand years will as Christians started to read the Bible for themselves. They started to look at society and they started to realize where society was out of line with God's word, and so one of those issues was slavery.

The more Christians could read the Bible for themselves.

The more they could look around and see, we gotta change this. We gotta change that.

And so very early as literacy started a group of Christians in North America called the Quakers predating the United States of America started to write pamphlets and say we have to end slavery and their argument was from the Bible that slavery is wrong and the Quakers spread this message so aggressively that it made it all the way to England.

By the way, you know, slavery was a global norm. Before this, you can look at every continent, every major civilization, world history had slavery in Egypt had slaves. Rome had slaves here in North America before Europeans came. It's well documented that Native American tribes would enslave each other. Slavery was a global norm.

Before this time and the Quakers started looking at the work on thing. We can't allow slavery in our society.

They started to spread this message as I mentioned got to England and in England there was a young lawmaker, a guy named William Wilberforce, William Wilberforce was not a Christian. At first, but once he became a Christian he started to experience God's freedom in his own life and then he started to read the word of God and then he met some of these Quakers and they showed him from the word of God how slavery contradicts the nature of God and the dignity that according to the Bible, all people are made in the image of God and should be treated with dignity and respect. And so William Wilberforce became a fanatic about ending slavery in his country, and in all of the British territories and so he wrote a book that helped to end slavery. We call it today. Real Christianity. It's got a really long title. A practical view of the prevailing religious system of professed Christians in the higher and middle classes in this country contrasted with real Christianity hears his whole point. He says here's what the Bible says England slavery is wrong. Here's where you are, might not have a slave in your house but you're making money off of slave trading companies and if you're going to call yourself a Christian, you have to end slavery. That's why the book was called real Christianity don't call yourself a Christian. If you have anything to do with slavery and William Wilberforce for 30 years, gave his life to spread this message eventually convince the entire lawmaking assembly there in England to take his point of view and they outlawed slavery in England and in all the British territories and it became the tipping point in world history where a massive global world power outlawed slavery and soon after that the abolitionists in the United States. The Quakers and many others took their arguments and now we got it we gotta end it here. They been arguing it for hundred more than 100 years before the Civil War.

200 years before the Civil War, but if you look up the people who ended slavery there called abolitionists, and if you don't believe me you can do this on your own, you can just Internet search abolition movement and and just pick out of the top 10 abolitionist leaders who come up pick a random two or three and start digging into their lives. You'll find that there either a pastor or they were friends with the pastor or they were the son of the pastor of the daughter of a pastor and then you can read their writings and in the writings you'll find that there arguing from the Bible for the end of slavery. I'm not making it up.

You can go check it out for yourself.

The point is if you remove Christians from world history you remove the greatest overthrow slavery in human history and the story continues into more modern history Martin Luther King Jr. who no one would disagree is one of the most influential fighters for human rights in all of history and especially in modern history. Martin Luther King, Junior we often forget nowadays. His title was the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. because he was a pastor.

He was a man of the book.

He was a man of God's word and you can look at his speeches on videos for yourself.

His sermons actually their sermons and you can read his writings for yourself and if you do you'll see what motivated the greatest fighter for human rights in modern history and maybe in all of history was the word of God, full of quotes like this when MLK said this, if one is truly devoted to the religion of Jesus, he will seek to rid the earth of social evils. Why, because God's truth sets individuals free and as the power to set families free and as the power to set societies free MLK another time said this, Jesus still cries out in words that echo across the centuries, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for those that despitefully use you. MLK was a man of God's word as he pursued God's truth.

He was key in continuing to set people free.

So what have we learned while we've learned that Christians who have pursued God's truth establish the University created public education than the fact that we can read launched the scientific revolution with we haven't gone into detail on these, but it's just like the evidence I gave you on the others. The founders of Western democracy, modern medicine in the vaccine.

Edward Jenner at the end of slavery in the West, the civil rights movement and the list actually goes on and on and on. So where do we stand today where we stand today while I've used the analogy of the fruit on the trees. We've inherited a society that has these fruits. They seem normal to us because we've always lived in the society.

Many of us have not known life. You know in Haiti or in Sudan or in India.

And so it seems normal to us but people from those countries come here and there, like wall. How does a society like this even come about. Doesn't happen by accident.

We enjoy those fruits now.

My assessment is my assessment as a researcher as a reporter. Is that what is happening in our lifetimes. Next he started shortly after World War II is that many of our smartest people are being trained at many of our best universities to take out in acts and to chop at those roots. In other words, we don't want God in Christianity anymore even while they're still eating the fruits and so here's .3 on your outline today. Many free and wealthy inheritors are rejecting God's truth and this is largely because of what they've been taught to the been taught to view the world in time is my opinion based on principles from the word of God. The freedom and wealth that we take his normal will decline. If the rejection of God's truth continues. In other words, you can start shopping at the roots of the fruit tree and still eat the fruit for a little while but if you keep Those roots.

Eventually the trees gonna stop producing the fruits of your chopping up the roots. You know it as imagine starting in about 1080 Oxford University founded on the pursuit of truth. If you look at the mottos of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cambridge in almost all of them you'll see the Latin word for truth Veritas oriole see the idea of light in God's word.

It was this on even imperfect pursuit of truth, and it was bloodied and it was not pretty. Am not saying that any of these societies along the way were perfect because they want they were messed up but they rose above the historic norm in freedom and in life expectancy, and in human rights. Why I believe because of their pursuit of truth, and so the thing is, when you're in a family you know the worst stuff about the family you know the war you know the underbelly.

And so even if your families a really good family. You know where it's not perfect in my generation is inheriting this whole machinery of what used to be called Western civilization and because were born into it. We know where it's not perfect and a lot of those things are very legitimate concerns were. We still need to make progress. But the thing is, we've lost our perspective of how good our family as compared to other families out there.

We lost our perspective of how unique this civilization is compared to the rest of the world and so right now people are saying things like, we need to blow the whole thing up and start over. The thing is, other countries have tried that we don't need to blow the whole thing up. We need to keep improving, but the improvement came from pursuing the truth standard.

How do we further improve women's rights. How do we further improve racial equality in the striving toward that were not there yet. How do we get there.

It's by continuing to pursue God's truth and what he says about human dignity and human equality, and if we throw out the standard of truth were not going to get to where we want to get as good as our motives might be.

And so here's what's happened, I believe, based on my assessment. I'll show you some evidence for this is that in the in the 1800s Germany was a very very Christian nation, 90+ percent Christian. This was before World War II before the Holocaust before racism in Germany at the level of World War II and a number of their smartest philosophers started to say in their highest universities you know what we could make a better society without God, that old Bible stuff we think is is maybe myths and fables. Let's create a new society without God's truth. Let's do better. We now have science and philosophy at a level that didn't use to exist. So let's create a better society without God. And that's what this point is is this is a moment in history level.

He was a defining moment when a famous German philosopher you may be heard of Nietzsche Frederick Nietzsche wrote God is dead and at the time it was an idea in an elite university that sounded really need to smart people and Nietzsche and some of his peers like Karl Marx started to come up with new visions for a society that doesn't need God or churches or the Bible and Marx got so excited about his. He wrote a whole a whole system called Marxism the foundations of communism, and it started as ideas in the University but as more and more of the professors started to believe that they started to train the culture shapers the teachers the lawmakers the artists and so you got a trickle down from the University were the smartest people and now all the shapers of culture believes we don't need God anymore that Bible stuff outdated. We can do better and so from the time of Nietzsche, about 50 some years past, and this trickles down from the intelligentsia to Main Street and now you got normal people in the Boy Scouts of Germany learning.

We don't need God to make a better society. We can do it on our own, and learning these lies like the Jewish people are our enemy.

Here's a picture of adult Hitler next to a statue of Frederick Nietzsche in the me it's a symbolic image that shows here's what a largely Christian nation when it turns away from the truth. Standard and says we can do better without God, here's where it can and and Germany is not the only case study in how terrible society becomes when it has the science and technology and power that came about from Christian study, but then throws away Christianity and Satan, who came into the world to kill and steal and destroy primarily kills and destroys people through ideas and Satan loves to get a whole society or group of people to adopt the lens of reality that says we don't need God or the Bible happened in Germany and the ends were were the some the worst industrial scale killing and genocide in all of human history with the Holocaust, but Germany wasn't the only nation to adopt this idea from the German thinkers in the 1800s that we don't need God. In fact, little further east in a giant nation called Russia at the time there was a young academic who also came across the writings of Nietzsche and his friend Karl Marx and this young academic started to think what if Russia, which at the time was known as the holy Ruth's holy Russia land of a thousand domes or steeples. Eastern Orthodox Christianity was the prevailing cultural center in Russia little different flavor of Christianity, but still Christianity and this young academic thought.

Let's make a new society in Russia. Let's have a revolution get rid of the churches get rid of all the Jesus and Christianity stuff what's out. While that stuff make a new and better society without this young academic had a really long hard to pronounce name. He knew if he was going to get famous and make it change in the world.

He had to shorten it so we shortened it to Lenin and Lennon and his friend Stalin took the writings of another one of these German thinkers and they they launched about 100 years ago.

It was called the October Revolution in Russia, which was the beginning of the Soviet Union now should be just well-known history, but I'll declare that under the Soviet Union tens of millions of people were killed, freedom of speech completely disappeared, freedom of religion completely disappeared. The largest scale tyranny and just stamping out of human rights in human history happened as a result of ideas that were embraced and spread across the nation. In Russia, which became the Soviet Union there was a brilliant writer and forgive me on the name Solzhenitsyn bear with me okay Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a jet genius writer who, like all the smart people in Russia. Eventually, if he didn't toe the line of the Soviet Union he got sent to the Gulag similar to concentration camp in Siberia where he nearly froze to death, but he lived.

He became a Christian. While he was there and after the Soviet Union fell Alexander Solzhenitsyn look back at the 60 million people who died from famine and from outright murder by a fist of a government, and here's what he said looking back, Alexander Solzhenitsyn says this. If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible. The main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people translation. Why did 60 million people die in my country, Alexander Solzhenitsyn says as I could not put it more accurately than to repeat. Men have forgotten God. That's well this happened. The crazy irony of history is that after United States one World War II physically its leading professors and universities started to adopt the same view of reality that Germany and Russia adopted before World War II and this is documented in a book called the soul of the American University written by a guy named George Marsden, then the point is this. In this book is very academic. It might be boring, but the point is key. Documents to the Monsen the day in the year when Yale University turned away from the word of God for hundreds of years.

It believe this was the source of truth, there was a time when it turned away. He documents when Harvard turned away.

He documents when Princeton which is the most recent turned away and the subtitle of his book from Protestant establishment to established nonbelief in the reality, whether we like it or not, is that now the smartest people in our society for a number of decades now have been taught the same thing that the smartest people in Germany and Russia were taught that we don't need God to make society better that actually Christians are the dangerous ones, and we could do better make a better society. Without them. Now I'm not predicting exactly how it's going to end where it's going to go for the United States hopefully takes a long time. Hopefully there's you know major movement of God and there is a revival and things change what we know from history is that when societies do this doesn't usually end well and we can't predict exactly how little and here's Alan Bloom. Alan Bloom was a professor at Yale and at Cornell. He himself was not a Christian. Alan Bloom is not not writing as a Christian.

He lived through this era where the leading American universities that trickle-down culture to the rest of the country adopted the German philosophers that led to World War II.

He says the popularization of German philosophy in the United States that make sense.

The popularization of that is of peculiar interest to me because I watched it occurred during my lifetime any rights. This is now dead.

But he says I feel a little bit like someone who knew Napoleon when he was six. Those are the time when Napoleon was six years old and playing on holiday and no one knew that someday millions of people would die because of this little boy and Alan Bloom writing as a non-Christian in the Ivy League setting says I've seen my peers adopt the very ideas lead to death and destruction in other countries and I I kinda can't believe it's happening also writing as a non-Christian. Alan Bloom says this about the God's truth. The Bible which was the center of American society until until that turn. He writes this in the United States. Practically speaking, the Bible was the only common culture, not a people my age and younger there. Like all someone's making that up of pastors making that up know it's it's true.

You can read books from the 1800s. If you could go back in time.

Almost every American home had a big old Bible in the middle of the living room, even if the people didn't do what it said or read it. They had one okay and Alan Bloom writing at says that's what made this melting pot possible work. People could come from higher land or from Russia from all around the world and some were Catholic summer Protestant, but the one thing they had in common was they at least had a respect for the Bible and for Jesus. They were perfect people, but they had that in common. Did you know that as recently as the 1940s, 98% of Americans identified as Christian, so you know some of our kids nowadays get taught well. America was never a Christian nation while it was a nation primarily of Christians BUT Alan Bloom says this. The Bible was the one thing that United simple and sophisticated, rich and poor, young and old, without the book the Bible the idea of the order of the whole stable American melting pot society where people are all treated equally is lost because that's where it came from. That's his assessment as a non-Christian academic without the pursuit of God's truth. We know we lose the roots that made freedom possible. So here's the real question how can we respond very simply, we cannot control society.

We can't control society, but we can control ourselves and we can control our families and we as a church can control our movement, which is a pretty significant movement. By the way, so don't despair God has given us great responsibility with what we can control how do we respond all this will first we decide that we will remain rooted to the Christian scriptures. No matter what happens in culture and society. No matter what names we get called, no matter is as the society turns away from God's word, and so we've got a decide right now when the when the pressure comes if if someday churches lose their nonprofit status.

If pressure comes, we got aside as a group of people. We will remain rooted to the word of God, because it's his truth that leads to freedom and won't give it up. And because were committed to his truth will always be loving will pray for those who persecute us will forgive our enemies will love our enemies, because were committed to it, but were also going to be unapologetic. This is the standard for what we do and believe and that's the people we are.

Second thing is the training of our young believe based on the rate of cultural change in the current of cultural force that if were not very intentional about how we train our young people that will lose them ideologically because they're getting a lens to view the world that says you don't need God or the Bible almost everywhere else they turn so if we really want them to live those lives of freedom will be intentional.

We want to help you be a family. The trains your young people to know the word of God. Why because that's what leads to freedom and we want them to live lives of freedom and prosperity will let's close by just imagining for a moment, our kids and our grandkids being rooted in the word of God and living lives of freedom. Freedom that keeps them away from vices and addiction freedom that hopefully will keep them from divorce has the power to freedom that can set them on the path of their best life possible and what we know is that apart from God's word. There is no true freedom and so is the world around us.

Perhaps gets darker because some people will be pursuing their idea of freedom without God and the consequences may be bad. We can be a lighthouse that shines brighter and brighter. The whole that in Christ there is freedom. You're listening to Living on the Edge with your finger. John Dickerson is bitter guest teacher for this program when society shakes his series of nations trip will be here with us in just a minute to share his application for this message. As you look around you filled with anxiety or the instability and chaos overwhelming, if you're looking for tangible hope not only for yourself but for the future of our society.

This series is for you. John explains where we can find true hope in the world spinning out of control.

Matthew chapter 12 says in his name, the nations will put their hope stay with us as we discover what that means and how we can find encouragement in these trying times for limited time the resources for hope of nations are discounted for ordering and pricing details, visit LivingontheEdge.org Listeners tap special offers.

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333-6003, or if you prefer to give online just go to LivingontheEdge.org app listeners tap donate your partnership is a great encouragement that with some final thoughts, peers, chip as we wrap up today's program and John continues to teach us about history. I like how he came to the end and said there are two things that we gotta do number one stand on truth and number two, we have to train the next generation and by the way, that's not the church's job.

The church needs to help but that's mom and dad's job. That's grandparents job that has to happen in the home and what I would say is so often we as believers have missed the boat by always being reactionary. Most believers in Christendom right now so much in America is about war against this war against battery against that we need to get on the offense and we need to be more preventative than defensive. You need to start now and the kind of things your hearing in this series. You kids need to learn. You've got to move them off of screens and soundbites and off their phone and have them read and think and ponder.

And not just about the piety of reading the Bible or having your prayers. They need to be vibrant, intellectually astute people that can discern between right and wrong. This requires moms and dads to sit around the table to have discussions around meals to read books to think carefully. Does this sound like it's a high mountain to climb. Yes, I think it is. But the consequences are so devastating if we don't do it.

What has kept certain cultures intact for thousands of years is, they were absolutely committed to training and teaching their own cultures tribes have gone off the face of the earth, and Judaism has been preserved because at the core of the Torah is the mom and the dad Deuteronomy 6. They teach their children in the home. This is who God is. This is what is true. This is what we believe and this is how we will live regardless of the consequences.

I think we need to take a page out of their book and follow it closely, just before we close.

I want you to know that as a staff we ask the Lord to help you take whatever your next faith step is up there's a way we can be helpful. We'd love to do that you give us a call at AAA 333-6003 or connect with us@livingontheedge.org and while you're there you'll find resources on all kinds of topics, many of them absolutely free will and glad you've been with us and intellect debris saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge