We all have a special interest in training young people because they are the future. This is why we teach our children and grandchildren about how to live and how to make a living. It is why churches give so much effort to instill the Bible in boys and girls. We have a few years when their hearts are tender and teachable and we can mold and guide them for the journey ahead.
Governments have understood this for thousands of years. A nation’s educational system reflects the interests of the state. Alexander the Great was tutored by the famous Greek philosopher Aristotle. When Alexander became king, he spread Greek ideas and the Greek language throughout the empire. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the teaching of Karl Marx became the worldview of Russia and eventually other countries. Now godless Communism is the official state doctrine in public schools in those countries. Politicians have always seized control of these institutions as much as possible to serve their interests.
An all-out war is being waged against God in our public schools. I have been shocked in recent months to hear young children say good things about communist countries and nothing but negative things about our nation. Where are they hearing this propaganda? At school. On the internet. Some of them are even listening to sermons that are sympathetic to the doctrine of evolution and the perversion of sodomy. The battle is fierce and the stakes could not be higher.
There is no need to feel that fighting this war is useless. We must look to the Bible for focus and balance. Children in Bible times lived in many awful environments. Daniel andother Hebrew young men were taken from their homes and were placed in an intense three-year training program in Babylon to make them useful to the Chaldean government. They had to learn the language of Chaldea together with their history, customs, and religion (Dan. 1:1-7). But Daniel never changed his convictions about right and wrong. He never gave up his faith in God. He made up his mind to follow the law of God even if it meant losing everything, even his life (Dan. 1:8; 6:10).
Someone may say, “But the situation in Daniel’s time was different. He grew up in the Jewish nation where God and the Scriptures were respected.” The truth is that Daniel was raised in a time of great apostasy in Israel before he was deported to Babylon. The promised land had become full of idolatry, immorality, and government corruption. If you think our children and grandchildren are growing up in bad times, remember that the Jews offered human sacrifices when Daniel was a boy.
The pressure the devil is putting on young people may seem unbearable, but it is not. God gives every person the power to choose even in hostile environments (Josh. 24:15; Ezek. 18:14). No child has to be a pawn or puppet of his environment.
-Kerry Duke
