And we have seen that humanism is another incarnation of what we call biblically the
lie. Throughout the history of mankind, the truth and the lie have been locked in combat.
The truth being the revelation that God has given to man, the lie being essentially what
Satan sold to man in the Garden of Eden, and that is that he could be as God. Today the
lie is incarnated in humanism, which teaches essentially that man, the creature, is to be
worshiped. That lie has been expressed, has been written down for us to study in documents
called the Humanist Manifesto I, published in 1933, and the Humanist Manifesto II, published
in 1973. We have been looking at a contrast between what God's truth says and what the
lie of humanism teaches. We've talked about two biblical principles where that contrast
is evident. One is the biblical principle of the lie, and the other is the biblical
principle of design. The Bible tells us that the world was designed by God himself and
spoken into existence. It is His creation. It is of Him, it is for Him, and it will all
be to Him one day. The lie of humanism tells us that man is the
eternal, and that mankind is the result of evolution. Then we talked about the principle
of authority. As biblical Christians, we believe that the final authority is God Himself, and
His Word, which has been inerrantly given to us by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
There is no authority in all of creation higher than God and His inspired Word. But human
ism teaches that the highest authority is man Himself. We do not need, they say, to
listen to what God says is right and wrong, because God doesn't exist anyway. He is the
product of the humanistic world. We are not the only ones who are in the
same situation. We are the only ones who are in the same situation. We are the only ones
who are in the same situation. We are the only ones who are in the same situation.
Man has created his own God, they say. Rather, we need to listen to what man says is right
and wrong. Therefore, morality is situational and changes with culture.
Tonight, we are going to pick it up at a third principle, and that is the principle of responsibility.
The Bible says that we are accountable to a holy God for every word, thought, and deed
which violates his moral standards. The verse from Romans chapter 1 is quoted here.
I would like to turn you to another verse in Romans chapter 2 that I think better speaks
to the subject. Romans chapter 2, verses 5 and 6. We are cutting
into the middle here of a paragraph, but we must do that for time's sake. He says in verse
5, But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself
in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render
to every man according to his deeds. The biblical principle is that life is a stewardship from
God and that we are therefore responsible to God for the way that we live.
Now, what is it that humanism teaches us? Well, let's take a look at the Humanist Manifesto
and a couple of their tenets. It doesn't work very well having the projector about
five feet behind me, but we are doing the best we can here.
The seventh tenet of the Humanist Manifesto states, Religion consists of those actions,
purposes and experiences which are humanly significant. That is, religion as they would
define it. Nothing human is alien to the religious. In other words, anything that comes naturally
to me as a human being should be a part of my religion and should not be judged or reckoned
evil by my religion. Even sexual perversion, because it is a human experience, is not alien
to the religious.
Furthermore, they say, religious humanism considers the complete realization of human
personality to be the end of man's life and seeks its development and fulfillment in the
here and now. In other words, the purpose in life for the humanist is to realize all
of his own dreams and aspirations and desires. The end of man's life, they would say, is
not to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever, but rather it is simply to fulfill his own
human desires, or in the terms of the Bible, his own human lusts. And the emphasis is on
the here and now. They reject any thought of a hereafter.
They further state, in place of the old attitudes involved in worship and prayer, the humanist
finds his religious emotions expressed in a heightened sense of personal life and in
a cooperative effort to bring social well-being. We'll talk a little bit more about that in
a moment. It follows that there will be no uniquely religious emotions and attitudes
of the kind hitherto associated with belief in the supernatural. In other words, there
is a denial of supernatural, and there is nothing unique about those emotions and attitudes
of those in the past, those who are outdated, who believe in the supernatural.
And so, with God's moral standards and the thought of responsibility to God removed,
humanists can justify adultery, homosexuality, incest, and other forms of perversion. Which
Romans chapter 1 clearly tells us is at the end of a civilization, when it begins to fall
apart because it rejected the truth and turned itself to the very lie that humanism represents.
I'm sure that you're aware that there are movements these days to try to get the laws
against adultery, fornication, and sodomy off the law books. And some of the amazing
things we face is that that is even true of religious movements. A church council in Minnesota,
and let's be more specific, the Minnesota Council of Churches, published a booklet urging
churches to accept homosexuals and lesbians and to help them celebrate their lifestyle.
And that is a perverse statement. It came out last fall and was really the thing that
spurred a lot of us to action, including the formation of the Berean League, which we as
a church are a part of officially and some of us individually. Recently, and I don't
have any documentation on this because I was out of town when it took place, but within
the last three weeks there was some Lutheran group here in Minnesota that essentially said
the same thing as this and is urging the legislature to pass the gay rights bill next spring.
New York's highest court recently ruled that a 32-year-old homosexual man could adopt a
43-year-old homosexual as his son. Isn't that perverse? And so because the humanists
do not believe that they are responsible to God, they discount the supernatural and the
fact that God will hold every man accountable for his deeds. Having said all of that aside,
they turn to their own lust to fulfill them. And they say that whatever comes naturally
to me as a human being is perfectly okay and should not be alien to the religious. And
there are apostate religious groups today which are agreeing with that.
We should go ahead quickly to another scriptural principle, and that is the principle of ownership.
All that I am and have belongs to God and must be used according to His purposes. And
this verse from 1 Corinthians chapter 6 helps undergird that truth. Essentially what we
are saying here is that we are stewards of everything that we have. For all that we have
has been given to us of God directly or indirectly. And we are held accountable by God as stewards
for ownership of what is His. What does the humanist manifesto say?
Their eleventh tenet is, Man will learn to face the crises of life in terms of his knowledge
of their naturalness and probability. Reasonable and manly attitudes will be fostered by education
and supported by custom. In other words, this is an effort to minimize accountability, stewardship.
It is an effort to minimize death. They say things like this should be accepted in terms
of their naturalness and their probability. Well, it is probable, I guess, that everybody
is going to die. And because that is probable, we should simply accept that and not worry
about it. And eventually education will foster and support this with custom so that we will
have reasonable and manly attitudes about death and not worry about the fact that we
are held accountable to God for what He has given to us.
Believing that religion must work increasingly for joy in living, religious humanists aim
to foster the creative in man and to encourage achievements that add to the satisfactions
of life. It goes back to what we were saying before. They are pushing pleasure here without
any morality, whatever gives satisfaction to life. They further say religious humanism
maintains that all associations and institutions exist for the fulfillment of human life. The
intelligent evaluation, transformation, control, and direction of such associations and institutions
with a view to the enhancement of human life is the purpose and program of humanism. Now
this control is a very bothersome thing. We will talk more about their ideas and control
in a moment. They go on to say, certainly, religious institutions and communal activities
must be reconstituted as rapidly as experience allows in order to function effectively in
the modern world. In other words, we who are Bible believers who are fundamentalists or
evangelicals, whichever word you may choose to use, we are outdated. We are not a part
of the modern world. Religious institutions like ours or communal activities such as ours
must be reconstituted, must be changed in some way, in makeup, as rapidly as can be
done, in order that we might function as we should as religious institutions in the modern
world. What are some of the implications of this? Rejecting God's ownership leads man
to the pursuit of death. Galatians chapter 6 talks about sowing to the flesh and reaping
corruption, but I think probably this is illustrated by the experience in the Garden of Eden when
man rejected the lordship of God, his ownership of all things, and instead of being a king
under God, wanted to be a king as God, did not want to be accountable as a steward any
longer, and of course the result of that is death. This whole concept of ownership and
accountability for stewardship leads to permissiveness. Humanistic permissiveness has made suicide
the number one cause of teenage death that reported by the Chicago Tribune a year ago.
There was a letter, a sad letter, in fact in the St. Paul Dispatch yesterday, perhaps
Friday, from a mother whose son has committed suicide in the last months, and she cries
out from her heart as to why this should happen, and I felt for her emotional grief at this
time, but within the letter there were grains of thought that gave this very insight into
their home, that it was a permissive home where there were not standards, where responsibility
was not taught, and we believe that the result of that leads to dissolution with life and
often to suicide. Immorality has produced an epidemic of venereal diseases, including
herpes I and II, and AIDS, which is largely found among homosexual men in the United States,
other groups as well, but largely among the homosexual male population, and we are not
certain at this point how AIDS is even passed on to other people, and because of that particularly
homosexuals are encouraged not to give their blood to blood banks, and I saw an article
yesterday in the paper that blood donations are way down across the country because of
the fear of AIDS. Folks, there is a very strong likelihood that AIDS is going to jump over
into the general population and will be a plague that will sweep across this nation
for which there is no known cure because we have allowed the sin of homosexuality to run
rampant in this land and not be judged. The humanist failure, excuse me, the humanist
ultimate, defiant act against God is to commit suicide, and there are organizations today
which are promoting suicide as an alternative to end one's life. Their idea is, well, why
shouldn't I choose when to die? After all, I am the captain of my fate. There are associations
whose sole aim is to teach people how they can commit suicide painlessly to end their
life when they well choose. That is a humanistic idea.
Another scriptural principle is that of freedom. The purpose of personal freedom is to meet
the needs of others. Galatians 5, the Apostle tells the Galatians, you have been set free
by God, but do not use your freedom as an occasion for your flesh to fulfill its own
desires, but rather by love serve one another. Folks, that is why God gives freedom, whether
we talk about spiritual liberation of freedom or even personal political freedom. It is
so that that freedom can be used, employed in the right way to serve others. What is
the humanist's idea about freedom?
Tenet number 14 says in the humanistic manifesto, the humanists are firmly convinced that existing
acquisitive and profit motivated society, in other words capitalism, has shown itself
to be inadequate and that a radical change in methods, controls, and motives must be
instituted. A social and cooperative economic order must be established to the end that
the equitable distribution of the means of life be possible. In other words, we have
to spread out the wealth. The goal of humanism is a free and universal society in which people
voluntarily and intelligently cooperate for the common good. Humanists demand a shared
life and a shared world. There is another name for what is said in this rather wordy
paragraph as called socialistic communism. That is the aim of humanists in the United
States of America. They want to do away with our present economic order, which is not perfect,
which has its injustices, but which is far better than any other system in the world.
They want to do away with capitalism and instead establish a socialistic state. You see this
kind of thing pushed on television talk shows, radio talk shows, in editorials in the newspaper,
in some religious publications, particularly of apostate denominations, as they talk about
the need to go into Central America and other places and to redistribute the wealth that
is there. It's simply another word for socialism and communism. They're not the same thing.
I recognize that, but they often work together, don't they? We assert that humanism will
a. affirm life rather than deny it, b. seek to elicit the possibilities of life, not flee
from it, and c. endeavor to establish the conditions of a satisfactory life for all,
not merely for a few. What are they saying? The political goal of religious humanism is
a one-world government controlled by man, not God. If you're a student of Bible prophecy,
you recognize what this is talking about, don't you? It is that world order that will
come to pass in the days of Antichrist. World government requires control of all money,
thus humanists attack free enterprise, private ownership, and family or business assets,
and they do strongly. So when you see those kinds of things attacked, as you do if you
read, recognize where it's coming from. It's coming from the religion of humanism. I have
before me a statement of goals and beliefs of a group called the World Feralist Association.
I talked about this a few months ago. This World Feralist Association is a part of the
New Age movement, which is like an octopus in our society, has many tentacles going into
all avenues of life. The WFA is committed to world government. Here's what they say
in just a couple of sentences. We believe that achievement of this goal, that is of
a structured and just world community, requires enforceable world law attainable through a
federation of nations. In such a federation, international conflicts would be resolved
by political and judicial means rather than by violence, while national governments would
continue to be free to manage their own internal affairs. They go on to say world federation
is not a new or radical idea, simply an extension to the global level of the federal principle
now in effect in many nations, which was adopted by those who framed the U.S. Constitution.
In other words, what they're advocating is simply an extension of what we are as the
United States. That sounds innocent, doesn't it? They're saying just as these colonies
federated themselves under a united government, so now we have progressed in our evolution
of things to the point that nations need to do the same thing. And so they're advocating
that the United Nations be transformed into or replaced by a truly effective global institution
which would have authority to maintain world peace. We're living in those days when some
of the things prophesied in the word of God I believe with all of my heart. They are the
things I believe with all of my heart are about to come to pass. How are we to live
in an age like this? How are we to respond to a movement like humanism? Well, we can
say things like this. We need to be informed. We need to be alert to what's going on around
us. We need to be reading even some of their own publications so that we know what they
are doing. And then we need to be vocal. We need to express our convictions as biblical
Christians to our legislators. I talked yesterday with one of our state senators and she told
me that there is great pressure in the state senate from this movement that we're talking
about and how glad she was for movements of evangelicals which are beginning now to be
vocal to express the other side to give some semblance of balance in the lobbying that's
being done before our state. She also said that her opponent in her district is on a
one-woman crusade, speaking everywhere she can before churches, clubs, etc., warning
people about the new evangelical movement in Minnesota, warning that we are out to take
over, and all kinds of alarmist statements such as that. Alarmist statements such as
is found in a letter that was sent out within the last year, I don't have a date on this,
by Richard Manns who is president of the Minnesota Federation of Teachers and Edward Bolstead
who is executive secretary of that same organization. In this particular letter sent to all teachers,
they malign and slander evangelicals and the moral majority, they lie about us, claiming
what we are attempting to do, absolute perversions of the truth, and their whole punch is that
all of the teachers of Minnesota need to join the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union to fight
the new evangelical, the new right movement in Minnesota. And of course the MCLU and the
ACLU is the political arm of the humanist movement in our land and has probably done
more to destroy the true freedom and the true liberty found in our Constitution than any
other movement in our whole society. That was a little editorial. I'd like for you to turn
with me to the book of 2 Timothy as we close. Next week we are going to do something a little
unusual, at least that's my plan at this point. We're going to show a film based upon John
Whitehead's book, The Second American Revolution. It's an appropriate film for the July 4th
weekend. It will deal with some of the issues that we've been talking about and I want
you to see it. I think it will be a provocative, stimulating film. I'm going to preview it
this weekend. If it's not what I'm looking for, I'm going to do something else. But my
intention at this point is to show you that film in our service next Sunday night.
But in 2 Timothy chapter 3, we see some words of instruction to us in this age. As important
as being informed and being vocal are these words, but realize this, that in the last
days difficult times will come. And now he begins to express to us the essence of humanistic
society. For men will be lovers of self, doing what comes naturally to humans, seeking as
the highest goal of life the satisfaction of one's own lusts. Lovers of money, boastful,
arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents' children's rights, ungrateful, unholy, unloving,
ungrateful, irreconcilable, malicious, gossips, lying about those who are of the truth, without
self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather
than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power. Does
that not express exactly what humanism is all about? Isn't that the lie as it is found
in society? I think it's fantastic the parallel between this passage in the Word of God and
what we see in our increasingly humanistic society in the United States. He goes on to
talk about them. For time's sake, let me take you to that portion which deals with our
response. He says in verse 14 to Timothy and to us, You, however, continue in the things
you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them. In
other words, don't allow these modern movements to sway you from the truth. Don't be deceived
by them. Don't be taken in by them. But know of whom you've heard the truth. Recognize
that this revelation has come from God and continue in those things that you have learned.
Be careful when some new thing comes down the road, some new reformation.
Before I get chasing rabbits, let's move ahead to the next charge that he gives and that's
in chapter 4 verse 2 where he says, Preach the Word. So what are we to do in this society?
Well, we're to be informed, be vocal, but the greatest thing that you and I can do is
to preach the Word of God. Whether it's convenient or not, we're to use it to reprove, to rebuke,
to exhort with great patience and instruction. And so we're to focus on the Word of God.
We're to communicate that. I believe that we ought to communicate it to our legislators,
to our elected officials, to tell them what the Word of God says. And I don't care whether
they accept it as the Word of God, whether they consider it to be of any authority to
them or not. We are responsible to tell them what the Word of God says. We're to preach
the Word to all of our society. Then in verse 5 he says, Be sober in all things. Literally
he says, Don't be drunk. But by way of application, it means that we are to be alert, to be diligent,
to have our minds working, not to be taken in, to be aware of what's going on in our
society around us. He says, Endure hardship. It will come. We can count on hard times.
He says, These last days are going to be times hard to deal with. And we must endure that
hardship faithfully. Do the work of an evangelist. Proclaim the good news, telling people how
to be saved. We are to emulate Noah, who lived in an age similar to ours, in those days before
the flood, in those days before God intervened in a dramatic way as he will soon in our own
world. When he faithfully proclaimed the Word and told men about the judgment that was to
come, and the Spirit of God preached through him to the society in that day. And so in
our day, we are to do the work of an evangelist. To tell people the good news of Christ's
death and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins. And we talk harshly about sin, but
let's remember that God loves sinners. We're all sinners. And we need to have compassion
for sinners. And to do everything that we can to speak to them, to urge them to trust
the Savior. And then finally, we are to fulfill our ministry. I don't know what God's called
you to do, but God has called each of us to some ministry. It may not be a full-time pastor
teaching or in some other aspect of what we call Christian work, but God is a ministry
for every one of us, folks. And we are charged by the Lord to fulfill that ministry. To accomplish
his will in our lives. And so that's how we're to respond in this day of religious
humanism. To be faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ and preaching the Word of God. Telling
others how to be saved. Being alert to what's going on around us. Enduring hardship. Fulfilling
the ministry that God has called us to. And may God help us to be faithful to that. God
help us to be his faithful people in these strategic, exciting, difficult end-of-time
days. Would you stand with me please? Let's pray. Father, we want to be your faithful
people. We do not want to be asleep like those who are of the night, but rather we want to
be fully awake as children of the day. Children of light. Who've been called into moral light
and salvation by the effectual working of your spirit. We want to be your faithful chosen
people. Showing forth the excellencies of your glory to a darkened, blinded world. Father,
we pray for a spiritual awakening in this land. For a great moving, a mighty moving
of the Spirit of God in the hearts of your people. And then spilling over into society
in general, under the saving of multitudes. How we long for that and pray for it in Jesus'
name. And yet we recognize the possibility that that won't occur. That we'll proceed
on into those very dark end-times. We pray that we will be faithful whichever way you
sovereignly choose to work in our world. And may we be eagerly with perseverance await
the glory that is coming. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.