Dear Friends,
I know many of you are deeply concerned about our country today, as I am. It is rocking and reeling like a ship on a stormy sea. Everything we have cherished about America is under assault, encompassing the entire Judeo-Christian ethic. Where do we start to preserve what we can't afford to lose? Specifically, what should be our highest priority in the battle to save our crumbling culture? It is my conviction that above all else, we must rise to the defense of this generation of children. Their minds and souls are in severe jeopardy.
When I survey what is being done to the most vulnerable members of society, I become alarmed and angry. Children are the future of the human race. You and I will soon pass from the scene, and today's younger generation will "inherit the earth." The Marxist-Leftist activists and liberal politicians who are engineering today's revolution understand this dynamic fully. They recognize that everything they and their socialist predecessors have sought to achieve for many decades is suddenly within reach. This is why they are throwing hell itself at the young. They are striking while the iron is red hot.
Life offers us only a few brief years to introduce our kids to Jesus Christ, and to teach them the biblical principles on which tomorrow's civilization will depend. Their eternal destinies will rely on our fulfillment of this charge. Arrayed against us are formidable foes who hate what we hold dear. They are armed with powerful weapons that include the leftist educational establishment, the entertainment industry, the liberal courts, the pornography business, the nation's universities, the Internet, and almost every center of power. Each of these entities and many more are increasingly hostile to the traditional family and to the values that once provided the foundation for Western Civilization. You—moms, dads and grandparents—are rapidly losing your progeny.
Where do we turn to find support and hope? Our best resource is with the committed, informed, dedicated, Bible-believing Church of Jesus Christ. There are tens of thousands of God-fearing pastors, churches and laymen who will come alongside you as you raise your kids. Find one of them and pool your resources there. I want you to hear from one of these insightful leaders now. Believe it or not, I had just finished writing the paragraphs above when a colleague sent me the text of a sermon preached a few weeks ago by Dr. John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. He is passionate about what he refers to as the war on children. Here are some excerpts of his inspired message which target the issues I have raised today. It describes precisely what burns within me.
What we're facing today is fierce, I will confess. Of all the things that disturb me in this culture, of all the horrific, sinful, wretched, wicked, corrupt influences that go on in this culture, I think the thing that distresses me most is the war on children. This culture is weaponized to destroy children; it's systematically designed to do that. 62.5 million of them have been slaughtered in the womb since Roe vs. Wade in the '70s. We all understand the breakdown of the family. If a child can escape abortion and be born, that child has about a 50/50 chance of being born to a married couple. It is likely that that married couple will get a divorce. It is likely that they will be unfaithful to their marital vows. It is likely that the child will be sent to a public school and come under the influence of those whose agenda is anti-God, anti-Christ, anti-Scripture.
And as you know, our country, the politicians who lead it, are making laws that are devastating to children under the pressure of sexual freedom, homosexuality, transgenderism. The desire is to make that normal, and to punish people who speak against it with laws in the category of hate speech. The lies of systemic racism and the race hustlers dominate the ideologies of universities and even churches. Music producers, moviemakers, social media providers, big tech, you name it—they literally pump out things that destroy children. Children are under a relentless assault by all the forces of evil, and they are defenseless. And we have a society and a culture that wants to make sure that these who are pumping out this destruction are free to keep doing it without restraint. Children are defenseless when their parents sell them to a human trafficker who drops them eight to ten feet over a wall into Sodom and Gomorrah all by themselves—or when the Disney Corporation creates characters that are transgender to seduce children into accepting wickedness as normal, or when parents insanely offer their children gender identity options.
Children are under assault now. The government wants to even have more influence on them, so the President announced that they would like to provide government education free of charge from the age of three to twenty. You get the picture. From the President and the leading politicians and bureaucrats, teachers, race hustlers, pornographers, media people, tech people, even medical people—children, the most defenseless, are under attack. There is a war on children.
If you look at Deuteronomy 6 and see how the chapter begins: "This is the commandment, the statutes, the judgments the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you, that you might do them in the land where you're going over to possess, so that"—notice this—"your son and your grandson might fear the Lord your God." You have a responsibility to your children and your grandchildren. And what do you want to teach them? To "fear the Lord your God, to keep all His statutes and His commands which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged." Lifelong submission to, obedience to, worship of, love for, fear of God.
Then verse 7: "You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up." In other words, the constant theme of life and conversation—inside the home, outside the home, all the time, from dawn to dark—is the Word of God, the Word of God.
Failure to raise children—to borrow New Testament language—in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, in the fear of God, is a multigenerational disaster that invites not only the difficulty of the fact that all who are born into it are sinful, that all who are born into it are basically born into a sinful, corrupt culture that's been produced in multiple generations. That is bad enough, it's tough enough, and it invites divine judgment.
Recently, we all realized that aborted babies were being dismembered, and baby body parts were being sold by Planned Parenthood. When it was discovered and chronicled in video, instead of indicting Planned Parenthood for selling aborted baby parts, the man who took the video was indicted on nine counts.
This is a very dangerous place for children. Satan's war starts in the womb and never lets up. It's carried through every medium possible to destroy children: broken homes, sinful parents, in every electronic form of media, the educational system—it's everywhere. Satan's war on children, by the way, is a war on God because the children belong to Him.
But what about us? We're going to have to answer to Him, too, for the little ones He gives us. When they arrive, they're His, and our life commitment is to make sure that as they grow and we influence them, they come to faith in Christ, right? That's raising your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
War in and on the family is pervasive and unmistakable. Family life is hard enough, due to human sinfulness and due to the presence of the kingdom of darkness and the prince of the power of the air, Satan himself. It's made even harder because of the collective culture amassing with great force its wickedness, and driving it right at marriage and the family. All the forces of sin, internally and externally, are driven at destroying the family; and obviously that destructive effort is most devastating to the children.
The politicians are on the side of Satan, busy making laws to protect the very realities that destroy children and families. The politicians are criminalizing truth as hate speech to be punished; and actually advocating for marriage between a man and a woman could get you fired. The culture is propagating lies incessantly, and censoring and canceling the truth. I've told you this before, and I'll remind you of it: Whatever they don't want you to know is very likely the truth.
As a parent, you have to understand you are a dominating force, and God intended you to be the dominating force and the dominating influence. And you have to minimize all other competing influences—influences from the world, friends, school, media. And in this culture you have to fight for the dominance of your influence.
Look, life is deadly dangerous to children, deadly dangerous; and if they get to the age where they become accountable to God, and they haven't been parented in the instruction and discipline of the things of the Lord, then life becomes even more dangerous because there's a shift in their eternal destiny.
This culture is not going to protect your children. This society is going to do everything it can to destroy your children. You don't need to do this alone; we're here. And the Lord will give you grace, and we'll provide resources.(1)
I am grateful for this God-inspired message from Dr. John MacArthur. I think every concerned parent should read it. I'll conclude with a few closing thoughts specifically about what many of our kids are encountering in schools and what we can do to protect them, as follows.
While parents assume public education is about reading, writing, math, and social studies, many boys and girls are being taught concepts that would have horrified previous generations.(2) Schools across the country are embracing LGBT ideology and other graphic sexual content that masquerades as education. Do you understand what it means for teachers to stand in front of their classes and promote homosexuality and lesbianism, bisexuality and transgender concepts to your boys and girls? How do you explain Christian sexual morality to them when they come home? Educators are indoctrinating and manipulating young minds with curricula that is NOT compatible with Christian beliefs and principles.
The reprograming is even broader in some classrooms. Children under 10 years of age are required to strike "non-inclusive" words such as "mother" and "father" or "sister" and "brother" from their vocabularies. They are also being taught that their gender is a choice, not a biological reality. Even kids in elementary grades are being told emphatically that none of them is a boy or girl until they decide what they want to be. If they don't like who they were born to be, doctors can change them. In these and other ways, the public school system is becoming more radical and godless year after year. Their curriculum incorporates shocking new concoctions, such as Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project. These and other politically-motivated programs are designed to cancel American history and democracy itself. For example, kids are taught to hate America and to believe that Abraham Lincoln was a racist.
I'll pose the consuming question again: What can we as parents, grandparents, and patriots do to protect today's children and teens? Here are a few suggestions that you might consider.
1. Introduce your toddlers to Jesus. His name was the first word I learned to spell, and I remember being taught that to this day. As your kids grow older, tell them about the gospel and the plan of salvation. Nothing else will shield them from the wickedness that invades the culture. I consider this to be "job 1" for those raising the young. Remember to pray for them daily.
2. Become involved in your children's school, with their teachers and the curricula. Begin by consulting an attorney whom you trust about your rights to know what is being taught to the students. Get acquainted with teachers, the principal and the school superintendent. Review the curricula for each subject taught. Get copies of the textbooks and other required reading. Visit classrooms to witness first-hand what occurs there. Share what you learn with friends, including other like-minded parents. You need support and encouragement. There is strength in numbers.
3. Remember this: These are your children. They do not belong to educators. Be courteous and respectful when you deal with school personnel. Most of them are decent people who work hard to fulfill their challenging assignments. I was one of them during my twenties. I loved my students and was usually teary-eyed on the last day when my kids were moving on. Many teachers are just that committed to their kids. There are some teachers and administrators, however, who have a different agenda. They will probably try to intimidate and disparage parents whom they view as nosy and crazy. Stand your ground on matters of substance. Your kids are at stake.
4. Consider running for a position on your local school board. Those can be powerful positions, yet few parents accept that responsibility. I say it is worth the time invested. It is a place you can make a difference for your children—and future generations.
5. If the local school district is determined to indoctrinate and manipulate the minds of your children, and if your concerns are falling on deaf ears, take your children out of public schools. I know that will be difficult for some of you financially. But you can't let your precious kids be warped and twisted by those committed to a godless agenda. Shirley and I put our two children in wonderful Christian schools, and they made a valuable contribution to them. Home schooling was not known in those days, but we would definitely consider that option today. The point is that there are alternatives. Parent co-ops are another possibility. Pray for wisdom in knowing what to do.
Well, my time and space are gone, and I must close. I hope you have found this discussion profitable. Perhaps you can help fight the war on children. The next generation is at stake.
Sincerely,
P.S. Here is another insidious way our children are being manipulated to think gay and transgender is normal. Corporate America is working hard to drill this idea into young minds. A classic example was just announced by the Kellogg Company. They are partnering with the GLAAD initiative, (GLAAD is an acronym for Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), during Gay Pride month in June. Kellogg is printing "Together With Pride" on their cereal boxes, along with "pronoun" propaganda! Children are invited to choose whether they want to be "him" or "her."
See it for yourself below. Obviously, this campaign is aimed squarely at your children. The company is also donating $3 per box of the $4 purchase price to GLAAD for every customer receipt sent to their website. Meanwhile, boys and girls will be crunching on rainbow-colored, heart-shaped cereal to drive home the point. Does this offend you? Speaking for Shirley and me, we have bought our last box of Kellogg's cereal.
(1) MacArthur, John (May 2, 2021), Excerpted from "Providing Shade for Our Children, Part 1," Grace to You website,
https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/81-111
(2) Dobson, Dr. James (2020), Excerpted from the James Dobson Family Institute "Critical Issues Series" (Critical Issue #1: The Next Generation),
https://www.drjamesdobson.org/faith-votes-the-next-generation
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