1-11-18: God Not Allowed!
Sam Rohrer:
Well, when I read reports like the one yesterday, it was on the front page of drudge and now it’s across the world on many articles, it said this. It was a wake up call frankly to me, and I think to all Americans. It was a Pew Research survey, just released, the findings on it were in this title.
This was the title that caught my eye. “Islam on track to be second largest religion in the USA.” And then went on by saying, by 2040, 20 years from now, it will surpass the Jewish population, which is now in second position behind those who identify themselves as Christians. That’s here in America.
Ladies and gentlemen, that sobering thought leads me to the very issue of asking the question, what has happened in America? Particularly, when it was established on Biblical principles and so heavily impacted by the Bible that now we see, this ideology, being undermined by such ideologies as Islam, the teachings of the Quran, which command death to Jews, death to Christians, and frankly, death or subjugation to anyone and everyone not a muslim, right here in this country.
Here today, on Stand in the Gap Today, we’re going to focus the program on the Bible in the public square and specifically prayer and the Bible in the public square and in public schools. Our theme is going to be this, is prayer and Bible reading in public schools constitutional? To help us walk through this discussion today is going to be our returning guest, David New, he is a constitutional attorney, he is an accomplished historian and a Biblical Scholar as well and with that, I want to welcome you today to Stand in the Gap Today.
I’m Sam Rohrer, I’m president of the American Pastors Network and host here of Stand in the Gap Today, and I’m going to be joined today by Evangelist Dave Kistler, president of our North Carolina Pastors Network, and Hope for the Hill in Washington DC, and Doctor Gary Dull, executive director of the Pennsylvania Pastors Network and senior pastor of Faith Baptist Church of Altoona, Pennsylvania.
Men, I’d like to start today’s emphasis on the Bible and it’s importance to the history and the continuance of the United States as we have none. I want to jump right into that. This Pew research I mentioned just a minute or so ago, is startling.
Although, in some respects it’s not new since we’ve been saying for some time that aggressive Islamist activity and goals throughout Europe and the United States in particular, was on track to overtake and subjugate the western world and it’s values. We saw it happening before our eyes, well, now this research really confirms it.
Let me read just one little piece more from this Pew research report just released. It said this, “According to the report, the muslim population is growing at an accelerated rate and it will more than double from an estimated 3.45 million in 2017 to an estimated 8.1 million in 2050.” Now in the meantime, it’s going on saying, “Muslims are expected to surpass Jews as the second largest religious group. The research showed a record number of muslims immigrating to the United States in 2016, a record number, which means,” now get this, “Which means that 3/4 of muslims currently in the United States are immigrants or children of immigrants.”
Now Gary, let me go to you first, this question here if I can. My purpose now and in this program is not really so much to focus on Islam and the Quran or the teachings of Mohammad as found in the Hadith, but as much to indicate that every ideology has some book they hold authoritative. They pull from that their moral justification for how they live. Their legal system or educational system, how they think about life.
For evolutionist and humanist, it may be Darwin’s Origin of the Species. For Nazis, it’s Hitler’s Mind Comp. For Islam, it’s the Quran and the Hadith, but for Jews, it’s the Old Testament, for Christians, it’s the Old and the New Testament. It’s the Bible.
Start here Gary, give us a simple statement as to why the Bible is so important for our nation or frankly any nation who wants to be blessed of God and have freedom as we’ve come to enjoy in our nation.
Gary Dull:
Well the simplest of all statements Sam would be the fact that the Bible is God’s Word to all of mankind. Whatever nation of the world you’re talking about, it’s God’s Word that reveals God’s way to God’s people. Any particular nation that is going to be blessed by God needs to indeed follow the principles and the policies and the doctrine and the commands of scripture.
The Bible teaches us that the blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, and in order to get to know God and have him as our Lord, we need to get to know the Bible. It’s the Bible that directs us to that conclusion that God will be our Lord. The United States of America was founded on biblical truth, that’s what made it great and if we want our nation to be greater again, or any other nation on the face of the earth to be greater, then biblical principles need to be followed according to the truth and the teaching of scripture.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay Gary, I think you were clear. I think our listeners look and say, “Yeah, if people are listening and are believers they would say, Yeah, rah, rah, rah. Dr. Gary Dull, you are right,” but there are obviously many people in our culture who do not believe at all what you say. Have redefined history, have denied that the Bible had any place.
I want to go to you now, David New. I want to bring you in early at this point. From an historical perspective, you’re a historian, you’re a constitutional attorney, from an historical perspective, if there is one book, or maybe there’s two books, but the most important books that have contributed most to the fabric of the United States are foundation for the legal system, the structure of our government, the framework from the beginning, our Declaration of Independence, our constitution, what would that book or those books be David New?
David New:
Well in my opinion, they clearly would be the Bible and here’s the reason. The Bible teaches monotheism, the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence are both monotheistic documents. The substrata on what they assumed to be true in each of those documents, is that there’s one God.
One God whom makes one law. When you have a monotheistic system, human rights take on a definite form. When you have a polytheistic system, which as the ancient world had, then you have many gods and then you have many laws and that means human rights vary from one god to the next. Your rights and [inaudible 00:06:56] with the Greek gods would be one thing. If you go to Egypt, your rights could change. They could go up or down in depending on what the Egyptian gods want, but your rights are not absolute. They are local depending on what god you’re dealing with.
The Declaration of Independence when it says we hold these truths to be self-evident, when Jefferson makes that statement, he is looking for truth … We’re out of time.
Sam Rohrer:
Well, David New, you set it up perfectly, you were calling out the Bible was the primary book, it teaches monotheism, one God from which we recognize the creator from who these truths come, embodied in our declaration and in our constitution.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to further this discussion as we go into the next segment here, because we’re going to talk about how the Bible and how that thought that David New just laid up was actually inculcated into two major institutions, education and that of law and government.
In approximately one generation, our nation here, the United States and our culture at large has not only moved away from the Bible as the sole source of truth, it has moved at a breakneck speed towards counterfeit sources of authority with all of them. All of them, being in competition and in the end, the total opposite of the Bible.
Such is the basis for the continuing and developing division in our nation. We once were ladies and gentlemen, were together on a common view of God, which we talked about just briefly in this last segment with David New and we’re going to pick up on that just now.
Throughout this last generation, the insistent denial of history and the facts of our nation regarding the role of the Bible, has within it the seeds of total destruction for our nation since a denial or reality of the facts of history and documental history will come to bring us to our knees.
Now in this segment, we’re going to look at just two, been very briefly, important segments of society that were once dominated by the Bible, but now become openly hostile to the Bible and the God who wrote it. Those two are education and government. With that I want to officially welcome now into the program David New, he’s a constitutional attorney and recurring guest on this program, historian and biblical scholar.
David, I’m going to want you to be thinking in this segment, in just a little bit I want to come back to you about how the Bible influenced directly civil government and the [inaudible 00:09:27] of law and the judiciary, but I want to go here first if I can, with Gary and Dave, to the matter of education in America.
I just want to pull this as an example. A lot of people aren’t aware of this, but it was in 1636 that the first university was founded in the United States, it happened to be Harvard University and it was founded not to train people to be craftsmen or engineers, both of which were notable then and now and very important, but they prioritized it, because they said we have to have an institution that teaches young men how to preach the Bible, preach the Gospel.
Harvard was a Bible based university to teach men to preach the Bible. Let me read just a short statement as to the purpose of education at Harvard. First placed on its wall, then still hangs there to this day. I would say it’s totally disregarded today, but it’s still there and it’s called the rules and the precepts of 1646 and it says this. This is what the plaque says, the purpose. “Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well that the main end of his life and studies,” now get this, “is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life.” And then it writes and cites from the Bible, New Testament, John 17:3, “And therefore to lay Christ in the bottom as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.” Gary, let me go to you right now. In your lifetime, just give a list of a quick look back. How have you seen education move from this foundational purpose and goal and which hinged on the Bible then, to what it is now, being something more hostile certainly, towards the Bible? Just give us something you recall back in history.
Gary Dull:
Well Sam, as you and Dave often say, you’ve got a preacher here that’s been around for generations teaching and preaching the Bible-
Sam Rohrer:
I know, that’s why we’re asking you to come here.
Gary Dull:
Yeah, I thought so. I kind of figured that was the reason, but you know, I remember when we had prayer and Bible reading in the public schools. I went to a public school and every day the Word of God was read, and we prayed and the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. But in 1962 and ’63, the prayer and Bible reading was taken out of the public school through the efforts of Madalyn Murray O’Hair.
From that time on until where we are today, I’ve seen an increase of an attack against biblical principles and against biblical truth in public education. You know, we see that on the elementary and the secondary level as well as on the college level. You talk about Harvard University or Yale, how they were started to train people for the Gospel. They are very, very far from that today.
Sam, one of the things that concerns me, and I think this is tied into it. We won’t get into it right now, but I can give you illustrations of Bible colleges and seminaries in our generation that have gotten away from the unadulterated teaching of the Word of God, basically based on Genesis 1 through 11 and consequently they have even departed from a solid biblical education that is weakening education across the board. We are living in very serious times.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay Gary, you made it very clear, within your lifetime, you’ve seen it from Bible reading in the public school to none and even in our seminaries, you’ve laid that out. I want to go to another one now, because our founders back then started with college levels, so they could teach pastors, but the next thing was that they integrated and developed a new curriculum.
That new curriculum that they used all the way from 1600s up until 1890s was called the New England Primer. It was produced in New England, it was used throughout the colonies, it produced some of the most literate and character rich people in the world. They started out by doing this. They called the primers and the A, B, C’s.
They started like this to how to teach children the letters. A as an example, the verse was, “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all. B, Heaven to mind, the Bible mind or thy life to mind is what they say in different versions there. And then C, Christ crucified for sinners died. The A, B, C’s taught all about who God was and it went to the Bible.
Matter of fact, Noah Webster who gave us Webster’s dictionary, he said this, That primer, that methodology of teaching our young people to read, “It taught millions to read and not one to sin.” Interesting. Dave I want to go to you next right now Dave Kistler. It brings up a basic question. It’s the point to which I believe the American public’s been fed a lie, and that is believing that you can have education separate from morality and teaching. Just apply something here Dave if in fact we were still teaching the A, B, C’s according to the Bible, New England Primer, how might America look a little bit different today?
Dave Kistler:
Well Sam, America would look vastly different and I want to back up what Gary just said. In 1962, ’63, the Bible and prayer was taken out of public schools, but I attended a rural North Carolina school in 1967 as an elementary school student, and we still had Bible reading and prayer in that public school, so we have moved far a field from the foundation of this country, but if this were all reinstituted or if this had continued unabated, we would have a vastly different country than we have right now.
Sam Rohrer:
We would indeed and I think with all that we’re struggling with, with all the attacks in the schools, the divisions and the sexuality, the perversions of this and the drug usage and all that, Webster said, “It taught millions to read the Bible, that lesson, and not one to sin.” Ladies and gentlemen, go to Egypt as what David said, or go to India where they have some … go to an Islamic school and find out how the people live. They live based on what they were taught and what they believed. Here it was the Bible. That’s what caused Webster to say, “It taught millions to read and not one to sin.”
David New, I want to go to you now in these closing minutes. Go now into the realm of government. The judiciary law of congress, all that kind of thing. Lay out some examples there of how the Bible was specifically used to infuse the structure, the foundation, for what we understand freedom to be and that which we have come to enjoy in these United States.
David New:
Well, number one again, number one on that list is monotheism. That statement where Jefferson says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” He is looking for a source that will make these statements true a thousand years ago and they will be true a thousand years from now. They are eternal truths that never change.
Now for the secularist, they believe that what is true for you, may not be true for me. What is true for me, may not be true for you, but Jefferson wouldn’t have had none of that. He wants an eternal truth and that requires God. The evolutionist has a problem with this statement as well. When did man cease to become a descendant of an ape? Or have a common ancestor of an ape? Well, Jefferson wouldn’t have none of that either. He believes God is the creator and that’s why when he says, “All men are created,” he’s looking for a truth that is universal, absolute, and doesn’t change and the only way you can have that kind of truth, ladies and gentlemen, is a deity, a God who does not change.
Sam Rohrer:
Well, David New, you cited some things from Jefferson and you were talking about things that were principles that were built right into the Declaration of Independence, which really lays the foundation down, but talk to me a little bit more as well. You’ve been to DC, what used to hang, what hangs behind the desk of nearly every court in the country?
David New:
Well, there is the motto … Pardon?
Sam Rohrer:
The Ten Commandments?
David New:
Well, no. What hangs behind every court in the United States and many courts is the motto, In God We Trust, but the other thing to remember also is that when the constitution was written, in it the foundation of the constitution is the Declaration of Independence, and monotheism is the principle behind the constitution, because there’s a phrase on the supreme court that says, “Equal justice under law.”
The concept of equality is a very modern concept. It began with Moses. Before Moses, people were not equal, many gods, many gods favored one group of people over another people, another group. Moses said, that’s nonsense, there’s only one God, and everybody’s equally human in His eyes. The concept of equal justice under the law is a biblical concept.
Sam Rohrer:
Ladies and gentlemen, you’re hearing just a very, very quick focus on the Bible, in our nation, how it under pinned the very foundations of our educational system from our original colleges, like Harvard, and Yale, to our instructional system of teaching our young people how to read, by teaching them the Bible so that they’d know how to read, but they would also know how to live and not to sin as Noah Webster said. It’s all throughout government as well, the entire concept of justice and the separation of powers all comes right out of the Bible.
Now, that’s changed. Our culture now says it never happened-
We started this program off by talking about how Pew Research just yesterday released facts that says that within 20 years, Islam will be the second largest religion in the United States, surpassing Judaism in the United States. Explosive growth. You say, how could that happen? Well, it can happen in a Christian nation when we no longer consider ourselves to be Christian and when we say and allow people to tell us that the Bible had no influence, had no role, and matter of fact, that some will actually stand up and tell us that it’s not constitutional to read the Bible in the public square or to pray in the public square and particularly, public schools.
Now that being the case, I want to welcome in now directly, David New. We’ve already introduced him, he’s a constitutional attorney, recurring guest on our program, he’s an historian and he’s also a biblical scholar. David, I want to go right here with you because I want you to lay out the facts if you could relative to, is school prayer and Bible reading constitutional as many so called experts will try to tell us that it is not? What are the facts David?
David New:
Well the facts are very simple and the first question we need to ask is this. Were the public schools created to keep religion out of the classroom? Is that why they were created? If you ask somebody that question after 1962, they would say, most likely, absolutely. The public schools were created for the purpose of keeping religion out of the classroom. If you ask that question to somebody before 1962, in some states they would say yes, but in many states they would say no.
The further back you go in time, the more often you will hear people say that religion was to have a role in public education. The modern public school system we have today started in the 1840’s by a man, by the name of Horace Mann. Horace Mann did not want to kick religion out of the public schools. What he wanted was to remove sectarian religion from the public schools, and that is what’s key.
For example, take the attorney general of the United States. In 1873, his name was George H Williams. The justice department had just been created in 1870 under President Grant, he just signed it into law, and this individual George H Williams, by law, is required to report to congress about his duties, and one of his duties involved reporting about the reformed school of the District of Columbia, this is a federal institution, paid 100% by tax dollars and this is what it says in the report that he submitted.
This is what it says in the report that he submitted, this is what it says about religion in the reformed school of the District of Columbia where the First Amendment is very much in play. He said, “Labor is a powerful agency and a reformatory, especially on the farm. Man improves the earth and is improved by the earth.” Then he goes on further and now says something very important. He says, “But after, and before all a religious sentiment, which all pains are taken to infuse in them, that is the students, that is the surest basis of permanent reformation. This school was set up for children who were disobeying the law.” Then it goes on to say, “No sectarianism is taught, no creed rehearsed, reverence for God, love for our Savior, and they believe in a future rewards and punishments are infused into the minds of the boys as religious in sentiments. The Bible is read, pure and simple, and portions of it are committed to memory every week, and repeated at the Sunday school. Clergymen and laymen of every denomination sometimes address the boys on Sundays, but no sectarianism is allowed in such addresses.”
Now here’s the Attorney General of the United States, working for the US Justice Department, reporting to congress what is going on in a tax payer institution. Why are they behaving that way, which is exact opposite of what we do today, the reason is because-
Sam Rohrer:
David let-
David New:
… because of … go ahead.
Sam Rohrer: Well, David let me ask you this, you said that public education in America began in the 1800’s with Horace Mann, but if you go all the way back to the 1600’s with the third permanent English settlement that came to the United States and settled at Massachusetts Bay, 16 years after that settlement, they established a law in 1647 called the old Deluder Satan Act, the opening line of which says this.
“It being the chief project of that old deluder satan to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures,” and then goes on and lays out that when any communities in Massachusetts Bay reached 50 families, they had to hire a teacher to teach the children of those families to read so they could learn to read the Bible and not be deceived by that old deluder satan, so this is part of our history going all the way back, is it not?
David New:
I was just on my way there. Now, one of the things … The reason why the attorney general is allowing religion in this school, in this reformatory school in the District of Columbia, it’s because of what we might want to call, America’s first school prayer law. It was passed in 1789 by the United States Congress, we call it the Northwest ordinance. Article three in that law says this, “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government, and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” Because of that law, the attorney general 70 years later, is allowing the reading of the Bible in his public institution.
Because of that law that congress passed in 1789, the states of Ohio in 1872, Michigan in 1898, Wisconsin in 1890, and Nebraska in 1903 are all using that law either to permit or allow the Bible in their public schools. That law is America’s first school religious law. There’s absolutely no question what David Kistler just said, religion was in our schools.
One of the judges who voted against school prayer in 1962 was William O Douglas. Justice William O Douglas, and he quoted article three that I just read to you, and this is what he said about it. “Religion was once deemed to be a function of the public school system.” That is solid proof that non-sectarian religion is permitted under the First Amendment in the public schools.
Sam Rohrer:
And David, when you use that word-
David New:
By the way, this particular law, this particular law ladies and gentlemen, this one article three, you will find it in many state constitutions. For those of you who live in … I’ll tell you, which state it belongs in right now. For those who are in Ohio, you can go to your Bill of Rights, you will see the Northwest ordinance article three, right in there. For those of you in Wisconsin, you can also see it in your law. Let’s see, for those of you in Michigan, you can go to the education article. For those who live in North Carolina, 1971, go to your education article, you can see it there. For those of you, our listeners in Nebraska, go to your Bill of Rights, you’ll see it right in there. This law that congress passed in 1789 effectively put prayer and God in the public schools nationwide. It wasn’t the Christian Church, it was the United States Federal Government that did it.
Gary Dull:
That’s because of the fact that this nation was founded upon biblical principles, and back in those days, when they used the word religion, they were mainly referring to the Christian faith in their understanding. I’m very thankful David, to say that it’s true that even today, through release time programs and so forth, we can still get the Bible back in the public school, or I should say, before the public school students and I know our church has done that down through the years and others have as well.
But quickly in about a minute that we have left, is it not true that Charles Darwin coming along with his teaching on evolution, really was very much involved in secularizing the public school and getting the Word of God ultimately out of it, would you agree with that?
David New:
You just made a hole in one. The reason why William O Douglas, who knows very well that religion was a function of the public school system and never the less votes against it in 1962. The reason he does that is because he is a secularist in the modern sense of the word, which is based upon the theory of evolution. That changed everything. There is the First Amendment before Darwin, and there’s the First Amendment after Darwin, and they are not the same document.
Sam Rohrer:
Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve just heard quite a discussion right here. Bottom line, Bible reading, prayer in public schools, is not only constitutional, even though the supreme court made the ruling that they did as what David New was saying. Constitution clearly affirms it, because that was the purpose for public education. Just think ladies and gentlemen, if in fact we were still teaching the Bible, God, rewards and punishments, would not things be different?
Well ladies and gentlemen, as we now move into our final segment, we also or often call it our solution segment. We try to bring the primary elements of the program focus into a position where we can actually take and put some of this into effect. A lot of information that we often hear is either not usable or we don’t know how to respond to it. You may say, why do you even think you’re talking about the Bible today and it’s role in our founding? Well, we’re doing it because history proves that it was there. We’ve heard incidences, we’ve seen, we’ve talked about how education, with elementary, and college was based on the Bible and the teaching of it so that we would have a people who knew right from wrong, knew who God was, could appreciate what became the principles of our Declaration of Independence and our constitution and the whole concepts of self-government hangs on the whole idea of God and a monotheistic Christian world view as we were to call it.
When you think of this as compared to today when someone, a coach kneels on the field to pray after a game and people cry, “Its illegal, it’s unlawful.” When our public schools long ago were told by the courts that you cannot pray publicly, you cannot read the Bible and even as we’ve talked about here. Gary and Dave and I all remember in our lives, I as far back as 1972, recently had teachers in a public school classroom who would read the Bible. This has been pretty recent.
Now we look at Pew Research that tells that Islam is on its way aggressively within 20 years to being the second largest religion in the United States of America, and yet we have people who say, “well, what’s the difference between whether you believe in evolution or believe in God, or believe in Islam?” Well, frankly, the whole concept of freedom revolves around that. David New, let me go back to you right now and ask you to answer this question.
People are hearing and are saying, “Well, fine I may have heard things this morning I never heard before,” or, “I do recall back when, yeah, there were prayer in the school, but of long ago I thought there’s nothing that I can do.” David, the average listener who’s listening right now, what can they do? What should they do in regard to the Bible? The Bible having a place in our society, not just the public school, but in the public square. Give us some thoughts that you would have at this point please.
David New:
An educated consumer, an educated voter and citizen is an extremely powerful person. Don’t think just because you’re one you have no power. First of all, you’re not one. You are the majority. Remember, what you need to remember is the article three, the Northwest Ordinance was passed and signed by George Washington on August 7, 1789. One month later, September 25th, the congress just finished the Bill of Rights including the First Amendments. If you want to learn more about how monotheism underlies the constitution and the declaration, order my book, The Ten Commandments For Beginners, and I go into it in great detail. For those of you who are talking about the muslim situation.
This is a piece of factoid that a lot of people don’t know about the muslim community. When William O Douglas voted against school prayer, in 1962, to remove it, to ban it from the classroom, one of the reasons he gave in a book that he wrote in 1966 titled, The Bible and the School, just as Douglas said, wasn’t the only reason, but it was one of his reasons, was he did not want muslims to pray in the public schools. This is unbelievable for him to use that as a reason to remove school prayer. It’s absurd.
Sam Rohrer:
Well David, you make a very clear case that it’s going to be an ideology, there is a common unified ideology that governs the country. You can’t have multiple. Forget this pluralism nonsense ladies and gentlemen, that only means you’re moving from one dominant to another dominant. We are in America are moving from one dominant, Judaeo Christian as this Pew Research would indicate we’re moving to another one and that’s Islam and it means bad news for freedom as we know it.
Gary let me go to you, as a pastor, the pulpit has always played a tremendous role. We talked about education, Harvard being formed to teach pastors. What should the pulpit be doing in regard to this in the matter of the Bible and culture?
Gary Dull:
Well simply, you know, answering that question we go to 2 Timothy 4:2 where it says, “Preach the Word,” and in that passage of Scripture, the apostle Paul is speaking to pastor Timothy and telling him what to do. The pulpit must get back to preach the Word of God, and the pastor in the pulpit, must recognize that he is the spiritual authority, not only in the local church but in the community that’s around him.
I remember hearing certain pastors say that we’re pastoring back in the early ’60s when Madalyn Murray O’hair was trying to get the prayer and Bible reading out of the public schools, they made statements like this, “We didn’t think she was going to get anything accomplished so we didn’t do much about it.” Well, look what happened. In 1962 and ’63, prayer and Bible reading was taken out of the public schools. In 1967, we had the rise of the sexual revolution. In 1972 abortion was legalized. In 1983 in that area, aids due to a lot of homosexual activity came on the scene and of course it’s just gone downhill since. Since prayer and Bible reading was taken out of the public schools, sin has increased in society and a lot of it goes back to the fact that in the early ’60s perhaps preachers were not as straight forward in the preaching in the Word of God as they should be. That ought to be a lesson to us today, Sam. As preachers that’s preached the unadulterated Word of God without compromise and allow it to have its effect on the heart of people.
Sam Rohrer:
Gary, excellent. David, Dave Kistler, let me go to you right now. We have folks who are listening, most are probably parents or grandparents or somewhere in that category of relations or siblings of some type. What can parents or grandparents be doing right now? [inaudible 00:35:48] should lift up their hands and say, “Well, water over the dam, we’re changed forever.” How should they come at this issue if there’s going to build back in something that’s going to bring our country back to what it was?
Dave Kistler:
Well Sam, for every parent, grandparent, the Word of God has to become central in their life and their children and grandchildren need to see the Bible central in their life. I mean, they need to have a time in the Word of God as a parent, grandparent every day. There needs to be what we used to call family altar, family devotion time where the Scripture’s read, inculcated in the lives of our students.
Then I want to suggest this. Because of what we’ve talked about today, every child in a public school can carry his Bible to school and I would encourage parents and grandparents to encourage their children and grandchildren to carry their bible to school. They have a right to do that and to read the Bible even while they’re at school. During study hall, during down time, they have the right to do that.
My dad challenged my brother and I to do precisely that. We did that with our children who attended even secular non-Christian colleges, community colleges in the early part of their education, to do exactly that. It can work and it can have a dramatic effect.
Sam Rohrer:
Well ladies and gentlemen, you’ve heard a few just very practical things there. Number one if I could summarize, David New, you said, understand that the Bible did play a great role at one point. It was the document that undergirded what we have. It is our source of information about who God is but interpretation of justice and freedom and self-government, it was here, it did play a role all the way up until the 1960’s all the way through.
Gary, you commented on the role of the pulpit. It used to be that the pulpit was the place that preached the Word of God, it was the great awakening through the primer, the A, B, C’s where kids learned how to read the Bible, understand who God was that helped to come out of that great awakening that changed our country. It’s from the pulpit, always must be there.
Dave Kistler, you just make it very clear, mom and dad, and grandad, you have a continuing role. If you can remember the way things were, you’ve got a responsibility to help bring things back to where they once were and that’s back before God.
