I just wonder if we lowered the lights in the auditorium, if that would help with the heat
buildup out there a little bit.
So why doesn't someone do that for me?
Thank you.
Tonight I want to talk to you about a religious movement in our nation which is sweeping our
society.
I'm not talking about Jehovah's Witness, Mormonism, Herbert W. Armstrong, or any of
the traditional cults, but I am talking about a religious movement which really embraces
many of those and others.
It is the religious movement of humanism.
Whatever you just turned off, I need that one still.
Thank you.
That's fine.
Thanks.
I'm talking about the religious movement of humanism.
A few days ago, a number of us had the opportunity to attend a pastor's conference sponsored
by the Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts here locally.
Some information was presented there which stirred me to bring this material afresh to
your attention.
I'm going to be using a set of overhead transparencies supplied by the Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts.
So it's a little bit difficult because my heart is stirred with the message and I'm
using another man's outline.
If you know anything about being a preacher, that's a little tough.
So I'm going to give you my message and my burden using the outline basically that Mr.
Gothard gave to us on the transparencies.
The title of the transparencies and of a good deal of what we're going to say is the real
power and purpose behind humanism.
There's a certain truth in this statement that Gothard presents which says whenever
God's people abandon scriptural principles, God raises up a heathen power to judge them.
And he uses the verse in Judges chapter 2 verse 22 which applies to Israel.
And it certainly does say there that God intended to do that through those people that were
left in the land when they did not entirely conquer the tribes of Canaan.
In Matthew chapter 5 he reminds us of the principle that we are the salt of the earth
but when salt has lost its zestiness, its real saltiness, that it loses its purpose.
I believe that one of the reasons that we are facing an onslaught, a flood of humanism
in our day is because we Christians in too many cases have lost the real zestiness of
our salt in our testimony.
Instead of preserving truth and righteousness, we have allowed the lie and unrighteousness
to have its way.
Every heathen power is an expression of the lie which says that man is equal with God.
I'd like for you to open your Bible to Romans chapter 1 for a moment as we review something
we saw a year ago in our study in that chapter.
We are living in a Romans 1 society.
Whether the apostle had in mind the society before the flood or the Roman world in his
own day, he certainly pictures for us what's happening around us.
Beginning in verse 18 he warns of the wrath of God which is revealed from heaven against
all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them.
For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature
have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made so that they are without
excuse.
For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks.
But they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Professing to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God
for an image in the form of a corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and
crawling creatures.
Therefore, God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies
might be dishonored among them.
For they exchanged the truth of God for the lie, very specific, the lie, and worshiped
and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.
And so the lie, as it says here on our transparency, is that man is equal with God and is therefore
worthy of worship.
The religion of humanism or the cult of humanism teaches that man is worthy of worship.
He reminds us further of the verse in 2 Thessalonians 2,
They receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie.
In 1933 and again in 1973, ten years ago, the lie was enunciated in the human manifestos.
We must understand their basic tenets in light of God's perspective.
And so my purpose is going to be to contrast the tenets of the human manifesto with the
principles of God's Word.
We're going to look at several principles.
The first one is the principle of design.
And that simply stated is that God created all things for His purpose and glory.
Let's turn to that first passage mentioned in Genesis chapter 1 verse 1.
I suppose most of us could quote that verse, but let's look at it afresh and understand
the implication of it.
It says in the beginning God created.
And what did He create?
He says, the heavens and the earth.
And down a few more verses in the same chapter, verse 26.
Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness.
And so God not only created the physical universe, the heavens and the earth, but He created
specifically man.
And it says, let them rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle,
and over the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
And God created man in His own image.
In the image of God He created him.
Male and female He created them.
Turning to the New Testament to Colossians chapter 1 and verse 16.
And here we learn something more personal about the creation.
Speaking about Jesus Christ, it says Colossians 1 and 16, for by Him all things were created,
both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions
or rulers or authorities, all things have been created by Him and for Him.
There are basically two propositions in the world today.
One proposition is the truth.
It is the truth of God.
And specifically in the principle we're thinking about, the truth that God created, that God
designed the universe as it is.
The second proposition is the lie, the lie that's enunciated most recently in humanism.
In the humanist manifesto, the first tenet is this.
Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.
In other words, matter is eternal.
It always has been and always will be.
It is self-existing, not created, an absolute denial of the biblical principle of design.
Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as the result of a
continuous process, which is called what?
Evolution.
And so evolution is a basic tenet of humanism.
Tenet number three in the manifesto declares this, holding an organic view of life, humanists
find that the traditional dualism of mind and body must be rejected.
In other words, humanists see only material as being real.
This is a denial of the spiritual, the immaterial aspect of man.
So that dualism of mind, the immaterial and body must be rejected.
They hold only to an organic view of life.
As long as you are in this organic body, you exist and when your organic body ceases to
exist, you no longer exist.
We want to talk about the inroads and destruction so far of humanism in our society.
As regards this specific scriptural principle, let's talk about their inroads in education.
This is a strong statement, but it's one that I believe.
In education, secular humanism is now the established religion in public schools.
That is not a broadside attack against every person who's in a public school or parents
who put their children in public schools or teachers who teach in public schools.
But I believe it is a fair and viable statement that secular humanism is the established religion
in public schools.
That humanism is a religion as recognized not only by their own writings, in which they
declare that it essentially is, but also by the Supreme Court in the case that is footnoted
here for you.
And we must keep in mind that a neutral education is impossible.
Teaching knowledge without God is the religion of secular humanism.
That of course is what we are facing today in our public educational system.
Education by its very nature must have a moral base.
That moral base will either be God's or man's.
John Dewey is the guru of modern education.
He is the founder of what is called progressive education, which has basically ruined our
educational system these days.
John Dewey wrote the 1933 Humanist Manifesto.
Charles Francis Potter, the former honorary president of the NEA, the National Education
Association, and a manifesto signer stated this, education is the most powerful ally
of humanism and every American public school is a school of humanism.
That is not a statement by Tim LaHaye or by some fundamentalist, but that is a statement
by Charles Francis Potter.
In addition to that statement, let me read to you a statement that came to my attention
in the seminar.
This statement was taken from an address given at a childhood education seminar in 1973 by
a professor of educational psychiatry at Harvard University.
Unless you think that this statement is something he said ten years ago and he doesn't believe
today, the Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts called him in March of this year, read this
statement to him to make sure that it's not been taken out of context and to affirm the
fact that it's still his position.
And he affirmed that both are true.
He made this statement and he still strongly believes it.
Here's what he said, every child in America entering school at the age of five is mentally
ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our founding fathers, toward
our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, toward
the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity.
Because he believes in those things at the age of five, he is mentally ill.
It's up to you teachers, says this man, to make all of these sick children well by creating
the international children of the future.
That is a man who is instructing our teachers in our educational system.
In the January, February issue of the Humanist Periodical, these statements, and by the way
it's January, February this year, page 26, the battle for humankind's future must be
waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role
as the proselytizers of a new faith.
The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new, the
rotting corpse of Christianity and the new faith of humanism.
That written six months ago, some of these things you will be aware of.
Courts have ruled that it's illegal to display the Ten Commandments in a classroom of a public
school.
When we lived in Kentucky, those commandments were displayed in the classroom and this became
an issue that was taken to the courts and this is the case cited.
It was decided it was unconstitutional for the Ten Commandments to even be hung on the
wall even if those were donated to the classroom by some organization so there was no cost
to the public school.
Another ruling has prohibited a moment of silence before class because it might be interpreted
as a time of prayer by public school students.
In the Lubbock Civil Liberties Union versus Lubbock Independent School District decision
in 1982, the Supreme Court upheld the lower courts ruling that it is unconstitutional
for students to meet before or after school to read the Bible.
In the Humanist Manifesto 2, there is this statement.
We affirm that moral values derive their source from human experience.
Ethics is autonomous and situational, needing no theological or ideological sanction.
Ethics stems from human need and interest.
To deny this distorts the whole basis of life.
And so the ethics being taught in our public schools are the ethics of humanism, which
says it is not necessary to have a theological or biblical basis.
Our ethics arise out of situations and out of human needs.
We've already gotten into this somewhat, but what about the inroads in the courts?
Humanist fairness laws are being made which are contrary to biblical laws of justice and
mercy.
Every legal system must by its very nature have a religious foundation.
That would seem to be obvious.
There are those, however, who say, well, you cannot legislate morality.
That is a myth.
Laws legislate morality, either God's morality or man's morality.
If you stop to think about it, even tax laws are based upon morality.
Why should I pay anything to the government in my taxes?
Well, because, says the government, I have an obligation to help pay for the defense
of this nation and to care for the impoverished of this nation, etc.
Is not that a morality?
God's laws promote life.
Humanistic laws promote death.
We'll see an example of that in just a moment.
Humanistic evolution reduces man to a species of animal.
Court cases based on humanism justify killing unborn and handicapped children and punish
doctors and hospitals which do not cooperate.
I'm going to prove that in just a second, but I want to back up to the statement here
that humanistic fairness laws are being made which are contrary to biblical laws of justice
and mercy.
We think that justice has to be fair, and yet justice and fairness are not necessarily
the same.
For example, justice is based on the universal, unchangeable principles of God's Word that
right is right and wrong is wrong.
And fairness is based on the variable customs of a society and change with the will of the
majority.
So that what is fair at one time in a society may be unfair at another time, but justice
remains the same.
Another example, justice establishes guilt when God's standards are violated, but fairness
tries to remove guilt by lowering God's standards.
A third example, justice causes us to confess our failures and to plead for mercy.
That's why we came to the cross, because we saw what justice was to bring us, what we
truly deserved, and therefore we cried out for mercy, which God manifested at the cross.
And fairness causes us to justify our failures so that we do not think that we need mercy.
And then a fourth example of the contrast.
Justice and mercy are based on personal responsibility to a holy God, and they will produce revival
in a nation.
If we could help people to see that they are personally responsible to God for their actions,
it would produce revival.
But our judicial system has turned rather to fairness than justice.
Fairness is based on personal rights and leads to rebellion within a nation.
Justice has to do with personal responsibility, but fairness focuses on personal rights.
And of course, that's what we hear so much about these days.
Let me give you some examples of this last statement.
I apologize if that's a little low for some of you.
Let me lift it up a bit.
That court cases based on humanism justify killing unborn and handicapped children.
In 1973, the Supreme Court decided in the now infamous decision that abortion should
be legalized, and that was based upon humanistic reasoning, that the fetus is not a person.
And yet our law system is in conflict on that because there are some laws that declare that
the fetus is a person.
New York's highest court ruled that their legislature must determine which human beings
are actually persons who are entitled to live, that and a decision that is cited here.
Now, do you understand what they're saying?
The Supreme Court of New York said that the legislature had to determine which human beings
are actually persons and who have a right to live.
That has to do with abortion.
And yet we ask the logical question, what about the elderly?
What about a person who's had a stroke or who is senile?
Does that person have a right to live?
Or what about Jews?
Should they be allowed to live?
What about Christians?
Are they human beings who have a right to live?
You see, you can't imagine a society saying that they shouldn't.
Remember Nazi Germany.
And realize that we're moving in the same direction, dear people.
Germany's Supreme Court ruled that a handicapped child can sue his parents for being born.
Here's the case.
Parents sued a Sacramento hospital for not informing them of prenatal tests for brain
damage.
The courts required the hospital to pay $900,000 in damages.
The case I was thinking of about a child suing parents was a different one.
This one is the parent suing the hospital for allowing the child to be born $900,000
in damages.
The Attorney General of Delaware issued an opinion stating that a doctor who has failed
to kill two unborn babies with lethal saline injections could be sued for criminal malpractice
because he did not commit murder.
Indiana courts, parents, and hospitals allowed an unwanted newly born child to starve to
death last year.
Do you remember the tragic story of Infant Doe who was born with a number of physical
problems?
The parents and the doctor ordered that the baby should not be fed but should be starved.
And when some people tried to intervene and it was taken into court, the process was dragged
out and the baby was not fed day after day.
The nurses who worked on that floor in Bloomington, Indiana were so upset by the cries of that
little baby being starved to death that they finally put the baby in a closet and locked
the door where the baby died in darkness.
Now does that shock you?
That is the result of the religion of humanism being promoted in our public schools, now
the basis of many court decisions in this land.
I'm going to take time to talk about one more scriptural principle tonight.
This is the scriptural principle of authority.
The inspired word of God is to be the final authority in our lives, isn't it?
Our doctrinal statement is that God's inerrant word is our final authority in all matters
of what we believe and how we are to behave.
It is the final authority.
Jesus said, heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
And there are multiplied scriptures that affirm the same.
What does humanism say?
Well, let's talk about tenets four, five, and six of humanism.
Humanism recognizes that man's religious culture and civilization, as clearly depicted
by anthropology and history, are the product of a gradual development due to his interaction
with his natural environment and with his social heritage.
The individual born into a particular culture is largely molded to that culture.
In other words, humanism is saying that anthropology and history prove to us that religion has
evolved with man, that it was not delivered from God as a final word, as an authority,
but that a religion evolves within each culture.
It furthermore asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes
unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values.
In other words, they say that there is nothing beyond man that should tell us what is right
and wrong.
There's nothing supernatural or cosmic that should guarantee or insist upon certain standards
of right and wrong.
They furthermore say we are convinced that the time has passed for theism, deism, modernism,
and the several varieties of new thought.
Now let's talk about authority.
Have you ever heard of values clarification?
That is a certain teaching which has swept the public schools in the last ten years or
so.
Humanistic values clarification courses indoctrinate children to reject the authority of God and
of their parents.
Rather than being clarification of values, what these exercises actually do is to tear
down the values the child may have learned at home, for example, not to steal, and inculcate
within the child situational ethics so that in certain cases or situations it's really
okay to steal.
I've heard parents give examples of this, such as a teacher asking the classroom if
you had a little brother who was starving to death and you had no money to buy the child's
food, and yet there was a rich person who owned a store down the street and there was
food in that store.
Don't you think it would be right to go down there and take some food for your little brother
who was starving to death?
How many of you children think that would be right?
Lift your hand.
You come up here into the front, and then those who think it's not right to steal are
left by themselves.
You can imagine the tremendous peer pressure in that kind of a situation.
Of course, the teacher doesn't give any of the alternatives how God might provide, or
maybe there are some other ways that food can be received.
They create situations to try to convince children that there are situations when it's
right to steal or right to lie.
All traces of Christianity are being removed from public schools and institutions by the
misapplication of the idea of the separation of church and state.
Did you know that the Constitution does not even mention the separation of church and
state?
It does talk about religious freedom, and it says that the Congress shall not infringe
upon the states regarding religious freedom.
Did you know, in fact, that when the Bill of Rights was adopted to the Constitution,
that one-third of the states at that time had state churches or preferred denominations,
and that was not unconstitutional?
The point of the first amendment to the Constitution is simply that the federal government is to
keep its hands off the states with regards to religion within the states.
In 1802, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to someone and he talked about the wall of separation
between church and state, and that's where the phrase came from.
But in his inaugural address a few years later, Jefferson made it clear that he was simply
talking about a wall of separation between the federal government and religion in the
church.
It had nothing to do with the states and whatever laws they may have even favoring certain denominations
or churches.
And so this whole concept of separation between church and state has been grossly twisted
and perverted.
Until today, most people are convinced that the Constitution states that there is to be
absolutely no interference from the part of the church into the federal government, and
nothing could be further from the truth of what the founders of our nation intended.
They intended for morality and for religious truth to influence the course of these great
United States.
An example of how this is being carried out today is the recent decision by the Supreme
Court in the case of Bob Jones University and the IRS, in which Bob Jones University
has now lost its tax deductible status.
I am not here to particularly support Bob Jones University in the policy that brought
the case to court, which was a policy against interracial dating on their campus.
Nor am I particularly supporting the reaction of Dr. Bob Jones, which I saw on television
after the decision of the Supreme Court was announced.
But the principle behind all of that is that that particular religious institution is convinced
that it is a biblical theological issue, that there should be no interracial dating on their
campuses.
Students of any race are welcome to come.
There is not discrimination that way at all, but they simply are not allowed to date because
they don't believe in intermarriage of the races.
Again, I'm not necessarily promoting that.
That happens to be their position.
They base that upon the Bible as they interpret it.
It is a theological issue with them.
But now the Supreme Court of the United States has said that public policy, in this case
against discrimination of race, overrules the guarantees provided in the Constitution
for religious conviction and liberty about that.
So that even though this university has a religious conviction, which they hold to sincerely,
the public policy of the United States of America overrules their freedom to have that
conviction.
You say, what's that got to do with us?
Folks, what's going to happen when it becomes the public policy of the United States that
homosexuals should have certain rights in our society?
What's going to happen when churches like ours take a position, as we do now, against
the practice of homosexuality and would not allow a practicing homosexual to be a part
of our church?
I'll tell you what will happen.
We'll be in the same position as Bob Jones University if the court acts as it acted in
this case based upon public policy.
And even though we may have strong religious conviction about that issue, it will make
no difference if public policy is otherwise.
What about an ERA passage?
And we say that we will not allow women to be elders in our church because of a biblical
conviction that we have.
Suppose someone were to take us to court for that.
Based on the logic of this particular decision with Bob Jones University, our tax status
would be in jeopardy.
Maybe we'd better off without the tax status and without that hanging over our heads.
Let me go on.
Marriages and families are being destroyed by liberalization of divorce laws.
Divorce for any reason.
In fact, there are some places you can get a divorce.
All you have to do is fill out certain papers and send them in.
You don't have to go to court.
Very little cost involved.
Very easy.
The family is being attacked by children's rights laws.
Did you know there's a bill of rights for children?
These were publicized in the International Year of the Child a couple of years ago.
For example, the right to self-determination.
Children should have the right to decide the matters which affect them directly.
The right to alternative home environment.
If they don't want to live at home, they should have the right to live wherever they
want to, even if it's in another home that's run by children.
The right to educate oneself.
Children should be free to design their own education, choosing among many options.
The right to freedom from physical punishment from parents, schools, etc.
The right to sexual freedom to conduct themselves in the way they want to without any restriction
of adults.
The right to economic power.
The right to vote, etc.
Those are children's rights being promoted by some.
Christians are being sued for giving their children a godly education.
It would seem that there is a new movement coming in our land, following on the heels
of the Christian school movement, and that is the home school movement.
It's growing in strength amazingly right here in the Twin Cities.
There are some people who say if you think the Christian school movement has mushroomed,
wait until the home school movement has reached its blossom, where parents choose to teach
their children at home.
By the way, there are apparently viable studies that have been done showing that children
learn better in a home environment fewer hours a day than they do in a school classroom.
So authority of every kind is being challenged by humanism.
God's authority, parental authority, government authority, church authority.
We're going to continue next week.
But please make no mistake about it, you and I, who are Christians, are on the battlefield
of a war.
It makes no difference if you choose not to be on the battlefield.
If you are a Christian, you are on the battlefield.
And the question is now, will you take the stand you ought to?
I believe, along with some others who have written some books these days, that we may
not be far from the time when we Christians will have to perform acts of civil disobedience
and even be willing to pay the price in terms of law for that disobedience in order to uphold
the convictions that God has given to us.
The reason that we're talking about all of this is so that we can be aware of what
humanism is, what it teaches in contrast to what God has declared in His Word.
And so having that knowledge, we may be better equipped to fight the battle that we are in.
Well, to be continued next week.
Would you stand with me and let's have prayer together?
Father, we thank You that You are God and that though the enemy may threaten to undo
us, yet the truth will emerge as the victor.
And I pray that we will be strong as Your people, that we may understand clearly the
issues, that we may resist the brainwashing taking place all around us, and that being
armed with the Word of God, we may be effective soldiers of Jesus Christ and be armed with
the might of the Lord to fight this spiritual battle.
In Jesus' name, amen.