Category: Transforming the 7 Mountains of Culture

To Repair or Replace the Foundation?

May 4, 2018


America has had two educational systems in our past. One foundation can be restored, the second foundation is beyond repair. The one on which we put our emphasis will determine the future of our nation.

The foundation of our original schools—Our country began with schools that included religious instruction. As settlers came to America, one of their first community endeavors, after constructing a church, was to start a school. They often utilized church facilities and local teachers who held the religious beliefs of the community.

The foundation of public schools—Because some of our founding fathers were Unitarian and considered themselves more “enlightened” than their religious counterparts and wanted schools that embraced the new humanistic thoughts of the day that were being discussed in the public squares of Europe and Prussia. They wanted these schools funded with tax payer money. Eventually, they found a willing elected official to help them—Horace Mann, who later became known as the Father of Modern Education.

Horace Mann ran for Secretary of the Board of Education in Massachusetts and in 1837 fulfilled a campaign promise to the Unitarians to build the first public school funded with tax payer money and without religious instruction. At first, the schools didn’t appear to be any different from the religious schools of the day, as most of the teachers in the 1800s and 1900s held strong religious beliefs. But as time progressed, humanistic teaching trickled down through the generations until we are at the point that it is unlawful to have any religious instruction in public schools.

It has taken decades, but the second foundation has eroded to the point where we as a nation can no longer ignore the broken condition of our public schools. Students who fail, cause our nation to be at risk as our citizens become less educated and less moral. Humanists tell us, if they just had more money, public schools could be repaired, but there is never any mention of utilizing that money to repair the cracked foundation by putting God back in our classrooms.

The spiritual battle is evident—If you want to see a violent reaction to the suggestion of reorganizing public schools, just mention, Charter Schools, Vouchers, or even our Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. These reactions are indications of a spiritual battle that is waging in the heavens. Public school defenders emphatically state that tax payer money should go exclusively to support public schools with no tax payer money used to educate the children in any institution that has religious instruction. We must reframe our argument and say, “Tax money should be used to educate the children of this nation in any manner the parents see fit.”

Let us pray that those who embrace Jesus will walk in the truth of Isaiah 58:12, “Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age old foundations…” It is not the time to despair because of resistance, it is the time to press forward in prayer. If we pray, in the not too distant future, we will shout in victory as foundations are restored!

The Perfect Storm in Education

April 19, 2018

Over the past two weeks, we have been inundated with the news of school shootings. The most deadly in recent weeks was the shooting on the campus at Ompaqua Community College in Oregon, where 10 people were killed and nine were injured. The US has had an average of one school shooting per week since January 2012 when 20 children were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary. How did we get here? What happened in America that over the last 16 years school shootings have become common place? Who broke that dam of evil? And more importantly, how do we stop the killings? 

 

Below I’ve listed three historical events that led us to this place:

  1. The Theory of Evolution Introduced in Education—In the mid 1850s Herbert Spencer proposed that education should draw on new scientific principles to make teaching more efficient as well as pleasant for the child. He proposed that learning was subject to the same laws that shaped the evolution of human beings from simple organisms could be used to shape the development of each child from the earliest moments in life to adults. Out of these concepts, came a new branch of science called child psychology. New discoveries in child learning techniques should give helpful information on how to be a more discerning and caring parent or teacher. The problem with this new branch of science was that it was founded in Darwinism/evolution. Learning disabilities in children began to take names. Eventually, the medical community came up with a myriad of diagnoses for those disabilities, which leads us to the next issue—that of drugs.
  2. Drugs—What came in the 1960s and onwards were a plethora of new drugs on the streets of our cities as well as through the pharmaceutical industries. The street drugs appealed to those who desired to check out of a materialistic culture. The pharmaceutical drugs treated children’s psychological issues as well as learning disabilities. We became a nation that medicated her children.
  3. We Lost our Moral compass Meanwhile the school curricula was steadily undergoing a major shift with the removal of the God of the Christians from the classrooms. With no concept of a creator and therefore no accountability to a higher power, no value is placed on life. When life is cheap, killing the innocent becomes prevalent. When children who grow up deprived of knowing God as a creator are legally drugged there is a recipe for disaster.

These “winds” are some of the strongest influencers that created a “perfect storm” in our educational system.

The answer lies in prayer, but not just a blanket prayer that says, “our thoughts and prayers are with you.” The answer lies with those who know God and the power of the Name of Jesus. Now is the time for believers to come together in unity, in order to pray targeted, strategic prayers that will turn our educational system and consequently our children back to God. Jesus said, “If you believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”  Let’s come together in agreement to take the Mountain of Education!

 

Prayer for Oklahoma Education

April 16, 2018

This is the Hebrew month of Nissan, the month of Passover! Nissan is the time for redemption, miracles and a time for us to evaluate every political structure with which we are aligned.

With this in mind, I’ve put together some thoughts on the upcoming proposed Oklahoma teacher “walk out” scheduled to take place on April 2, 2018. I ask that you read the overview with discernment and determine to enter into praise so God can reveal His plans for the teachers of Oklahoma.

Teachers across Oklahoma have organized a classroom “walk out” on April 2, 2018, in order to bring pressure on the Oklahoma State Legislature to pass legislation that would give teachers a salary increase of $10,000 per teacher over the next three years. State employees also want higher base salaries and have plans to join the teachers on April 2.

As many of you have already recognized in the Spirit that the “walk out” has more to do with what is happening spiritually in Oklahoma and less to do with actual pay raises. While teachers certainly deserve a pay raise, there are people and organizations that are using this need for a pay increase to promote their globalist, humanistic mindset. They will do anything they can to continue to feed humanism to the students in our classrooms.

Two Organizations to observe and pray about are:

1. The Oklahoma Education Association (OEA) – The OEA is the state office for the National Education Association (NEA – the largest labor union in the US). Recently the OEA hired a Colorado consulting firm, Harstad Strategic Research, Inc. that specializes in getting liberals elected for positions as Governors, Senators, House Representatives, and getting liberal state campaigns passed. There is also a non-profit that is helping OEA to accomplish their goals – The Professional Oklahoma Educators.
2. The Oklahoma Chamber of Commerce – Two newly created Chamber of Commerce backed non-profits that are helping to push the legislature to pass a pay raise are: Step Up Oklahoma and One Voice. The Chamber of Commerce is a humanistic organization that repeatedly pushes its liberal agenda in education. The use the education platform to blame the current OK state legislature for everything going wrong in this state.

What do they really want?
The OEA and the Chamber of Commerce want two things:
1. These two organizations are humanistic and therefore globalists. In order to achieve their purposes, the Oklahoma Legislature must become governing body that aligns with their agenda.
2. They want the children in our state to be taught social curricula at the expense of their learning basic skills. This was John Dewey’s plan that Samuel Blumfiel called “dumbing down” America in order to make them better global citizens.

Unrealistic Request
The OEA and the Chamber of Commerce are both asking for $10,000 per year salary increase implemented over the next three years. With Oklahoma’s budget short-fall, this is unrealistic and will set our governing body up for failure, which is what the enemy wants.

The result will be:
1. The Oklahoma Legislature will fail
2. The OEA and the Chamber of Commerce will be able to point to the Legislature during an election cycle and cite lack of teacher pay raise, voting records, public statements, and the budget shortfall as reasons why they should not be re-elected.

The people of Oklahoma have voted down past initiatives that would increase taxes for the purpose of increasing teacher pay, because the increased revenue brought in from taxes would not be specified for teacher salaries – they were tied into additional administrative and higher education expenses.

What’s going on in the legislature that would help the enemy?
There are some in the OK legislature who are party to the one-world government agenda, and do not belong in our governing body. Some, both Republican and Democrat, are hirelings. There has been much contention within our government during this legislative session. With confusion and selfish ambition, the enemy has gained ground. Those who are not interested in furthering God’s agenda for our state are unaware that the enemy is crouched at the door poised for an attack.

Prayer and Praise Assignment!
As Nissan is also the time to enter into violent praise and speak forth what we want to see accomplished over this year in the Mountain of Education.

• The teachers in Oklahoma will not be used as political pawns in a humanistic battle for the minds of our children.
• The teachers will receive a fair, just and equitable pay raise!
• All ungodliness in our state legislature will be revealed and those who need to go will be replaced by Godly men and women who will judge righteously for the good of Oklahoma.
• Thank and Praise God for the unmasking/revealing of all those who have ungodly agendas for our children and our state.
• Our teachers will cry out to God and He will deliver them from their oppression. They will not be a slave to Pharaoh.
• Teaching in our state will revert back to the original intent our forefathers had in education – that they will be able to read God’s Word for themselves.

How We Feed our Enemy

November 21, 2016

One never expects to get insight from a drive through the Moroccan desert, but often life can surprise me in the most unlikely places! It was one of those boring drives where the scenery never changes—brown desert sand pitted with volcanic rock droning on mile after mile. All was quiet in the car—the driver and interpreter in the front, my friend Gale Sherrill and me and in the back. That’s when Driss, our interpreter, held up a local newspaper and slapped the huge picture plastered on the front page, and asked, “Do you know who this is?”

It was a Moroccan newspaper written in French. I had no clue who the gorgeous woman on the front page was. I nodded my head, “No.”

Amazing the Ideas that Come on a Lonely Road
One Road leads through the Sahara Desert

“This is a transvestite.” He slapped the newspaper again and again as he made his point. “This is what fuels all the radical Islamic groups across the globe! We think we are being modern when we promote transgender behavior, but in reality we are aiding ISIS by showing our moral decay, which feeds their drive to conquer us.”

Although we were discussing Morocco, the same is true of any country, especially the US where moral decline has progressed at an accelerated rate over the past 50 years. Driss was right. When we accept immoral behavior as a society, we invite the enemy to engage us in a warfare where we cannot win. But where did it all start? How did we get this way? I believe that the seed of embracing immoral change began in the American Educational system around 1895. That was the time John Dewey (the Father of Modern Education) began his work to transform education in America. Dewey wanted  the public schools to be the conduit to promote social change in America, and not just any social change, but social change that would separate us from any Judeo-Christian beliefs. The classroom was to be used to teach the children how they were superhuman, god like people who, with the right education apart from religion, would choose to be upright moral citizens. The new emphasis of the classroom was to be social at the exclusion of any and all Christian references or moral teaching.

In all of the seven Mountains that make up our culture, Education was the only venue seized by men with a godless agenda soon after our country’s inception. So, what do we do now that we are 125 years down the road?

  1. We must realize that we are in a cultural war. We will have to take a stand and losing is not an option.
  2. We must develop a strategic prayer plan. This has to be a new plan that will embrace spiritual warfare at a new level.
  3. We must make prayer for unity among Believers a top priority. This element alone is one of the most crucial. If we are to win, we will need the full cooperation of all who call themselves Born Again Believers.

In his resistance to Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer tried tirelessly to get the German church to resist the changes Hitler was imposing on them. The church was so divided that finally Bonhoeffer started what amounted to another denomination called, The Confessing Church. But the start was too late and never gained the approval of the leadership of major denominations. Let it not be said of our country and our generation that we could not rally the forces of righteousness against the evil tide that is trying to overtake our culture and ultimately our country.