Tag Archives: Christian education

Dinosaurs Ate Rice

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From the Institute for Creation Research ~

www.icr.org

Dinosaurs Ate Rice

by Brian Thomas, M.S. *

Just what did dinosaurs eat?

One way researchers are finding out is by studying coprolites, or fossilized dinosaur dung. And as it turns out, some dinosaurs ate rice plants. But if flowering plants like rice did not evolve until millions of years after dinosaurs lived—as evolution maintains—how could dinosaurs have eaten them?

Some coprolites contain phytoliths, which are uniquely shaped microscopic crystals manufactured by various plant tissues. Most phytoliths are made of silicon dioxide, the same chemical that comprises sand. Scientists examining these tiny grains can often discern from which plant they came.

For example, in 2005, researchers found phytoliths from grass, palm trees, conifers, and other flowering plants in (probably sauropod) dinosaur coprolites from India.1 “It was very unexpected….We will have to rewrite our understanding of its evolution….We may have to add grass to the dioramas of dinosaurs we see in museums,” palaeobotanist Caroline Strömberg told Nature News at the time.2

Recently, Strömberg and two of her co-authors from the 2005 study described coprolite-encased phytoliths that are so similar to those made by certain modern rice plants that those found in dinosaur rocks “can be assigned to the rice tribe, Oryzeae, of grass subfamily Ehrhartoideae.”3 They collected these samples from the same Indian rock layers, the Lameta Formation, that contained their 2005 finds.

This find joins others that have shown that rice, grass, palm trees, and conifers from dinosaur rocks were essentially the same as their living counterparts. It’s as though millions of years of plant evolution never occurred.

The Lameta formation includes sedimentary layers interbedded with volcanic rock layers. It is huge, covering a large area of India.4 The Flood described in the book of Genesis is the best explanation for this scale of upheaval, showing that the fossils found there resulted from the Flood.

Thus, these coprolites show that rice plants existed before the Flood. Either rice had diversified from an originally created grass that was common to many other grasses, like wheat and bamboo, or God created rice grasses separately from other grass kinds. Studies show that rice grasses do not hybridize with other grasses.5 These dinosaur-eaten phytoliths add weight to the idea that rice was a distinct creation from the beginning.

According to Scripture, God created all the grasses, plants, and grazing mammals, along with any grazing dinosaurs like sauropods, by the sixth day of the creation week. As far as what the fossils have shown, Scripture is right.

15 Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox. 16 Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly. 17 He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together. 18 His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron. 19 He is the chief of the ways of God: He that made him can make His sword to approach unto him. 20 Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts of the field play. 21 He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens. 22 The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about. 23 Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not: he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth. 24 He taketh it with his eyes: his nose pierceth through snares. Job 40: 15-24

sage

Hints for Home Schoolers – Field Trip!

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The past three hints have been a rough idea on how to squeeze it all into your day without losing it! Our next topic is the ever popular field-trip, and some ideas for making the most of it. One of the great advantages a home-schooling family has, is the freedom to adjust schedules.

  • If you have a zoo within reasonable driving distance, consider purchasing an annual family pass. Our zoo included parking with our pass, as well as entry into other zoos around the country.
  • Science and history museums also offer annual passes, with similar reciprocal entry to related venues.
  • State parks offer an annual car pass, usually consisting of a vinyl, dated sticker for your windshield.

Our home school had a field trip every month. By watching the weather closely – we would cancel school for that day – and go to the zoo! By taking our field trips during the week, we were able to avoid large weekend crowds. On nicer field trip days – we visited an outdoor interest. During brutal winter weeks, we still took a field trip, but spent the day roaming around a museum. I will stress, that our field trip schedule was never scheduled. Sometimes, the kids would wake up, and while they were eating breakfast – I would announce it.

If you are following an accredited curriculum, the missed school day will need to be made up for. Our schedule from A Beka Academy allowed for a large block of vacation time during December. I would shave days from that block of time, and use it for field trips. I discovered that if we had too much time off in December, it was too hard to get back in the swing of things.

If we brought lunch from home (almost always) we would get a treat like ice cream, or something from the historic bakery at the museum. The scene above is from the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.

Don’t overlook large outdoor museums, usually consisting of historic buildings. Often the employees and docents are well versed in the lore of times past, and will regale any children you have that are willing to listen!

The image above is from the Henry Ford Greenfield Village Museum in Michigan.

Important field-trip tips to remember:

  1. One field trip a month
  2. Watch the weather
  3. Watch the runny noses! No fun going anywhere unless everyone is feeling well.
  4. Spontaneity can add to the experience and reduce stress. If I told them ahead of time we were going – and something went wrong (ie: one waking up with a sore throat, severe weather) there would be disappointed faces all day.
  5. If you bring lunch from home, allowing the kids a treat from the venue will quiet any quests for the other stuff. It’s a kind of bribery, but heck – it works!! And can save a heap of money over buying lunch out. Especially teen and preteen boys can eat so much, you could regret taking them anywhere!!!
  6. By buying annual memberships to places you like to go, it will save money and the necessity of budgeting every month for the field trip. The annual passes are always a better deal over individual ticket prices.

In spring, we often opted for the metro-park, which had a farm.

Babies everywhere!

She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.

Proverbs 31: 26

sage

Hints for Home Schoolers – Pets

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Our home school has always had pets.  We actually had pets before any children came along – so from their infancy animals were a constant presence.  Children and pets – a match made in heaven. . .

Pets can be a valuable “spring-board” for many home school adventures!  In addition – kids can learn responsibility for another living creature.  Pets can help human beings, who come into this world as  completely self-centered selfish creatures, to grow into mature, dependable individuals.

  • A pet can be the basis of a writing project.  Any composition, book report or research paper will be enhanced by the child’s interest in their pet.
  • Pets (particularly dogs) will a be great ally in enforcing schedules.
  • Recalcitrant nappers can change into the most eager sleepers if allowed to nap with a pet.
  • Measuring food and counting treats are excellent for teaching basic math.
  • Developing and making home made dog biscuits is a great project.
  • Growing “cat grass” and sunflowers (for seeds) is a good botany/biology project.
  • Pets can reduce test time stress simply by being there.
  • Pets can console kids (and adults) that are feeling down.
  • When kids are home with pets all day – no one gets lonely – kids or pets.

My kids very often had a cat on their laps or desks, and a dog at their feet all day during school.

As they get older, the pet may stimulate the child to work at an animal shelter, or even pursue a career in human or animal sciences.  The benefits of home schooling with pets are too numerous to cover here, but every study shows that caring for and living with pets makes us better, healthier people all around.

What about outdoor pets?  Positioning a bird feeder outside the window where you have your home school, can be a constant source of delight – no matter what the kid’s ages are.  Keeping field guides and binoculars at the ready will spur kids to look for identifying marks, and triumphant cries of delight will be heard when the correct identification is made.

 

The feeder(s) can be an excellent exercise in record keeping and charting comparisons of most desirable seeds. Unsprayed lawns will have even more birds and critters, as well as insects to study.  Dandelions can be picked in heaps for pet guinea pigs to eat.

In cold winter areas – home made suet cakes are a good science project, and again – a good basis for experimentation.  Do downy woodpeckers like suet or peanut butter better?  Oilers or stripers? (sunflower seeds)  Writing it down and illustrating it involves all the areas of school – art, math, language skills, science, and history.  Bird calls have been used as the basis of some great classical music and poetry – such as ‘The Lark Ascending,’ by Ralph Vaughan Williams, which was inspired by a poem by George Meridith.

To A Skylark

O skylark! I see thee and call thee joy!
Thy wings bear thee up to the breast of the dawn;
I see thee no more, but thy song is still
The tongue of the heavens to me!

Thus are the days when I was a boy;
Sweet while I lived in them, dear now they’re gone:
I feel them no longer, but still, O still
They tell of the heavens to me.

–George Meredith–

2 Praise the Lord with harp: sing unto Him with the psaltery and an instrument of ten strings.3 Sing unto Him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise.4 For the Word of the Lord is right; and all His works are done in truth.5 He loveth righteousness and judgment: the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. 

Psalm 33: 2-5

sage

Hints for Home Schoolers – The Prodigal

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So, you’ve done everything right. You’ve home-schooled for years, surrounded your kids with the love of Christ, and after years of careful tending – your semi-adult child rebels. And not a little rebellion – we’re talking major rebellion. I’m not referring to the sullen eight year old who refuses to finish his math paper – what is on the table here is the child who morally rebels, and may even leave home. Can this happen in a Christian home school? Yes. Rarely, but it does happen.

Every person born in the world has the potential for rebellion within them. One only needs to hear that first NO! out of a toddler’s mouth to believe it. This is natural rebellion as a result of the fall of man that every parent must quell in their child, or the infant terrible will grow into an intolerable human being. But is teenage rebellion “natural?” Homeschool parents become defensive when overly helpful outsiders promise them, and none too kindly, that their teenagers are going to put them through hell. Is teenage rebellion inevitable?  

To answer that question, we must address what causes it.

  • Attention starvation – Ok, you have three younger children that need 100% supervision. Your 15 year old doesn’t need that much from you – right? Wrong. The teenager that is “acting out” is actually “crying out for attention.” 
  • Too much criticism from you– NEVER publicly chasten your teen. Bear in mind that teasing can be taken as mocking, and it is very, very painful. And please have a tender heart for other people’s teenagers.
  • Be informed – Always make every effort to be fully informed before you make a judgement on something. Often kids are so fearful of disappointing their parents they will compound what they have done by attempting to conceal it.
  • Making assumptions – Both teens and their parents make assumptions about each others’ motivations. And they are usually wrong!
  • The Golden Child – This is a toughie. It very frequently happens in multi-child households that one of them will seem “golden” to the other kids. They don’t seem to get disciplined, their grades are wondrous, they are talented, everyone loves them! Every person on this earth, including your “un-golden” child has something they can do well. Make it a priority to dig for that “gold.”

Alright, you did all that and you still have a rebel. What now? Cling to the Word of God like a life preserver in a stormy sea, and heed this promise:

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6  (This Proverb does not guarantee that your children will be saved.  Salvation is an individual choice that every person must make.  The Proverb does, however, assure us that what we teach our children regarding character stays with them – even through rebellion.)

True story time –

A conservative family with seven children, all raised the in the same fashion, had one child that chose the world. After twelve years of homeschool and careful nurturing, the unsuspecting parents were greeted by a note and an empty bed one morning. Their 18 1/2 year old daughter had simply moved out in the middle of the night.

In her note she said she wanted to “see the world.” For these parents, it was almost like a death. For the first time in her life, the parents did not know where she was. They did not know who had helped transport her, either. All of her clothing had been taken, so it was clear she had moved out.

This experience was so terrifying for the parents, they called the prayer chain, and began fasting and praying with all of their being. Days passed, then weeks, then months. Then years. Not a word. The toll on the mother’s health was drastic. They acted hopeful around each other, but inwardly carried it like a ten ton weight.

The one day, out of the blue, the daughter returned home. She was a broken person. She no longer had that sparkle in her eye they all loved. She looked more like a hunted animal. And – she was four months pregnant. But – she was penitent! She came into the home, and in front of the entire family, got down on her knees and begged forgiveness from her parents, saying that she had already asked the Lord for forgiveness. And, those blessed, weary parents embraced that child with all the love they could muster, praising God and giving thanks for her safe return.

Did they reprimand her? No, because they could see that she had already “paid the piper” several times over, and bore scars that would last a life time. The purpose of this story, is to know that there is restoration for the rebel and their families. With God – all things are possible.

I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.

Luke 15: 7

If you are coping with a prodigal, try not to give way to consuming fear – it is not the Lord’s will that we live in fear – even for our children.  I have counseled women who are completely overtaken with thinking and fretting about their children.  Jesus must be our all-in-all, not our children.

And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Ephesians 6: 4

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sage

The Keepers of His Word

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Bible translations – it’s a mess. If you are anything like me (logical, analytical, likes to read peer-reviewed research for *fun* on the weekends), the confusion surrounding Biblical translations seems to almost invalidate the Bible as a whole. To an external observer with a penchant towards experimental and evidence-based analysis, contradicting results invalidates the authority of the results. Due to the conflicting views on translations of Scripture, I am working to assemble my research to validate the authority of the Scripture in terms of the Authorized King James Version.

When Emperor Constantine took over the Roman Empire thanks to strong connections that were enabled by his father Caesar Constantius of the First Tetrarchy (AD 293 – 305), he sought to unify paganism and Christianity. By unifying them, he would be able to manipulate himself into a position of absolute divine authority and unanimous approval from all classes through an imperial cult, a state religion wherein an emperor or group of emperors are worshipped as demigods or deities. When Emperor Constantine did this, he:

  1. Increased tolerance of Christianity while limiting regulations against Roman polytheism.
  2. Mingled pagan holidays with Christian beliefs.
  3. Called for the Council of Nicaea, establishing the Nicene Creed and deity of Christ.

All of the unified religions established as the official religion of the Roman Empire were called, as a unit, Roman Catholicism. In an effort to unify Christianity and people who had pantheistic views for peace under his “divine leadership,” Constantine played his role carefully after analyzing that the Christians would not be so easily eliminated with simple persecution and massacre as was attempted during the reign of prior Emperor Diocletian and his Tetrarchy. Roman Catholicism embellished Christianity with ritualistic ceremonies, focusing on the value and authority of paganist rituals and ceremony as opposed to the authority of Scripture. Thus, any Scripture which was derived from the influence of that intermingling of Gnosticism, paganism and Arianism that was the result of Constantine’s efforts for a unified religion (Roman Catholicism) and any translation of Scripture which stemmed from that unification and desperate attempt to unite the pagans of the world with Christians uses a translation that:

 1.) is anti-Trinitarian

2.) denies the authority of Scripture.

Most English Translations of Scripture come from copies of Greek codices of questionable translational authenticity kept in “the holy city of Catholics” – Vatican City.

Please note the following illustration:

I will be providing more information on this topic as time permits.

Matthew 5:18

18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

Five Reasons NOT to Send Your Kids to Public School by Pastor Voddie Baucham

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By Pastor Voddie Baucham

Anyone who has kept up with my blog knows that I am no fan of government education.  I have made it a point to carry The Continuing Collapse on a regular basis, and I try to make biblical, philosophical and theological arguments in favor of Christian education as often as possible.  However, I recognize the obstacles those of us on my side of the street face.  As many as eighty-five to ninety percent of professing Christians send their children to the government for their education.  That is simply an astonishing figure considering the fact that the Christian community fought mandatory government education tooth-and-nail for its first fifty years of existence.  Since then we have gone from fighting against government schools to fighting for them and implying that those who fight against them are fundamentalists, anti-intellectuals, and racists.

In the meantime, our schools grow progressively worse.  As fall approaches, I want to appeal to those of you with children in government schools.  Please don’t send them back!  I beg you to consider what you are doing.  As Dave Black has written: “No academic skepticism, no secularist authors, no blatant materialism can so undermine the spiritual life of the country like the completely secularized training of the child under the authority of the state… Bible-based education is mandatory for Christian parents. If we think we can keep our children in a secular school system and escape the dumbed-down, amoral, and immoral results of secular humanism in schools, we are sorely mistaken (See: http://daveblackonline.com/our.htm).”

With that, here are the top five reasons not to send your kids back to government/public school.

5. You Don’t Have To

This may sound like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many people ask home educators the ‘authority’ questions (i.e., to whom do you report? Who approves your curriculum?).  These questions are the byproduct of statism.  The Gramscian, neo-Marxist influence is so prevalent in our culture that we don’t even recognize it anymore.  We actually believe that children are wards of the state when in fact they are not.  As a result, some people have a hard time believing that they have the right to educate their children in a manner of their choosing.  Well, I’m here to tell you that you are free.  Your children are yours.  They do not belong to Caesar.  You don’t have to take them back to the local government indoctrination center next semester.  And in some states (thank God for Texas), you don’t even have to tell them you’re not coming back!

4. America’s Schools Are Among the Worst in the Industrialized World

One of the issues that many Christians seem willing to ignore is the fact that sending children to American schools represents extremely poor stewardship.  American students continually rank at the bottom in math, science and reading compared to other industrialized nations.  That’s right, our educational system is among the world’s worst!  Of course everyone says, “Our schools are different.”  News flash… that’s a lie!

One of our elders taught honors math at one of the ‘best schools’ in one of the ‘best school districts’ in Texas (you know, one of those schools people lie and cheat to get their children into so that they can get a ‘better education’).  His advanced geometry class was filled with a bunch of imbeciles who could barely do basic arithmetic.  As a result, most of them failed their first major test.  You know what happened next?  The principal called him into the office and told him to make things right.  One of the things he was told was to employ a grading technique called “Square root times ten.”  Thus, a student who made a 49 on a test ended up with a 70 in the grade book (for those of you who went to government schools like me, that’s the square root of 49 times ten).

This is what’s happening at our ‘best’ schools.  Don’t believe me?  Ask a college admissions worker how many students coming from our ‘best’ schools with grade point averages hovering near 4.0 need remediation when they get to college.  It’s an absolute joke.  The overwhelming majority of children in our schools have a B average or above (mostly for self esteem reasons), which serves to give them and their parents a false sense of achievement.  It also results in people who ‘feel really good’ about their schools.

Please don’t buy the lie.  Your child’s school is probably terrible.  If you really care about the stewardship of you child’s mind, don’t send them back to the worst schools in the industrialized world.

3. America’s Schools Are Morally Repugnant

The headlines speak for themselves.  Student-teacher sex scandals, student-student sex, immodesty, foul language, drugs, alcohol, radical homosexual agendas, teachers taking students for abortions, “sexting” leading to suicide, sexually transmitted diseases, brutal beatings, and school shootings.  These are just some of the headlines that have become the norm.  And that does not include things like cheating, disrespect for authority, impropriety towards the opposite sex, and other moral behaviors children learn regularly and repeatedly in school.

Van Til said it better than I ever could: “Non-Christian education puts the child in a vacuum…. The result is that child dies. Christian education alone really nurtures personality because it alone gives the child air and food…. Modern educational philosophy gruesomely insults our God and our Christ. How, then, do you expect to build anything positively Christian or theistic upon a foundation which is the negation of Christianity and theism?…. No teaching of any sort is possible except in Christian schools.”

Moreover, the system itself is funded by virtual theft.  Homeowners are forced under threat of the loss of their property to pay for the education of other people’s children.  How is that appropriate?  The government tells everyone that they have to send their children to school, then tells homeowners that they are going to be the ones to foot the bill whether they like it or not.  Not only is this a form of welfare, it is also a form of theft.

For those of you ready to read me the riot act and yell and scream about paying for roads and bridges, hold on a minute.  Why is it that we get all up-in-arms about our tax dollars being used to fund abortions (while our opponents make the roads and bridges argument), but we don’t see this one?  Our schools are morally repugnant.  They are also neo-Marxist, secular humanist indoctrination centers.  Why should I as a Christian be forced to pay for children to have every vestige of Christianity beaten out of them?  Americans are not forced to pay for Mormon schools, or Muslim schools; why should we be forced to pay for neo-Marxist schools (remember, all education is religious in nature)?  And why should any Christian contribute to such a system by sending their children to such schools at the expense of others?  And before you yell, “I’m just using the tax dollars I spent,” ask yourself if you’re willing to take advantage of all that abortion funding going to Planned Parenthood, or those tax dollars going toward fetal stem cell research.

2. Government Education is Anti-Christian

“I am as sure as I am of Christ’s reign that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of anti-social nihilistic ethics, individual, social and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen.”  (A.A. Hodge)

Jesus made it quite clear when he said, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” (Matthew 12:30 ESV).  I am amazed at how many Christians refuse to acknowledge this fact as it relates to the government school system.  Our education is either based on biblical truth, or some other ‘alleged truth.’  There is no such thing as neutrality in this regard.  All education is religious in nature.  Since it is illegal for students in our government schools to be taught from a Christian perspective, then it follows that they must be taught from a non (or anti) Christian perspective.

As Hodge pointed out, the result of non-Christian education is anti-Christian education.  Government schools must be anti-Christian.  They can be nothing else.  Therefore, to send a child to a government school is to have them trained in an anti-Christian environment for 14,000 instructional hours.  To get that much instruction from church a child would have to attend two hours a week for one hundred and forty years!

1. The Bible Commands Christ-Centered Education

“This whole process of education is to be religious, and not only religious, but Christian…. And as Christianity is the only true religion, and God in Christ the only true God, the only possible means of profitable education is the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” (Charles Hodge)

I recognize that educational antinomianism is the norm in the modern American church.  According to the common refrain, “It doesn’t matter what educational choice you make… you just have to pray about it and do what the Lord leads your family to do.”  However, I must confess I find this concept disturbing on a number of fronts.

First, this kind of thinking denies the sufficiency of Scripture.  The Bible speaks either directly, or principally to every aspect of life.  There are no grey areas.  Sure, there are things that are difficult to discern, but education is not one of them.  Though you won’t find the word ‘education’ in Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, there are a number of passages that speak directly to the issue of training ourselves and our children intellectually, spiritually, philosophically and morally (See Deut. 6:6,7; Prov. 1:7; Eph. 6:4, etc).  We also have numerous warnings against allowing others to influence us intellectually, spiritually, philosophically, and morally (Psalm 1; Rom. 12:1,2; 2 Cor. 6:14ff; Col. 2:8, etc.).

Second, this line of reasoning smacks of mysticism.  Instead of making an argument with an open Bible we dismiss all opposition with the flippant, trite, overused, and theologically problem-laden phrase, “we prayed about it and this is what the Lord told us to do.”

The Lord ‘has spoken.’ (Heb. 1:1-2)  We are not awaiting new revelation.  Instead of doing what the Lord ‘told us,’ Christians are commanded to do what the Lord ‘has told us’ in His Word.

The London Baptist Confession speaks to this matter rather poignantly: “The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving Knowledge, faith and obedience; Although the light of Nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom and power of God, as to leave men unexcusable [sic.]; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and His will, which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal Himself, and to declare that His will untoHis Church; and afterward for the better preserving, and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment, and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan, and of the World, to commit the same wholly unto writing; which maketh the Holy Scriptures to be most necessary, those former ways of Gods revealing His will unto His people being now ceased.”

The Cambridge Declaration states: “We reaffirm the inerrant Scripture to be the sole source of written divine revelation, which alone can bind the conscience. The Bible alone teaches all that is necessary for our salvation from sin and is the standard by which all Christian behavior must be measured.  We deny that any creed, council or individual may bind a Christian’s conscience, that the Holy Spirit speaks independently of or contrary to what is set forth in the Bible, or that personal spiritual experience [i.e., “the Lord told me”] can ever be a vehicle of revelation.”

There’s enough here for an entire series of posts (so many posts… so little time), but for now let me simply say that the “the Lord told me” line of argumentation has serious theological problems.  We must make our educational decisions with an open Bible.  “The Lord told me” is no substitute for ‘the Bible says!’  Please don’t make a decision about your child’s education without consulting (and obeying) the Scriptures.

Conclusion

How I long for voices like Hodge, Van Til, and Machen (who called government education a “soul-killing system”) to be heard among my Southern Baptist brethren.  However, with over eighty-five percent of our children in the government schools and more government school teachers and administrators than any other ‘denomination,’ it is highly unlikely that our side will prevail on this issue any time soon.  One wonders what the schools will have to do to our children before we are willing to acknowledge the folly of our choices.  In the meantime, I will continue to watch, fight, and pray, and try to convince as many of you as I can to liberate your children from Caesar’s indoctrination camps.

I have quoted John Wesley on this issue in previous posts.  However, his words are far too pertinent for me to ignore on this issue: “Let it be remembered, that I do not speak to the wild, giddy, thoughtless world, but to those that fear God.  I ask, then, for what end do you send you children to school?  Why? That they may be fit to live in the world? In which world do you mean, — this or the next? Perhaps you thought of this world only; and had forgot that there is a world to come; yea, and one that will last forever! Pray take this into your account, and send them to such masters as will keep it always before their eyes. Otherwise, to send them to [a government] school (permit me to speak plainly) is little better than sending them to the devil. At all events, then, send your boys [and girls], if you have any concern for their souls, not to any of the large public schools, (for they are nurseries of all manner of wickedness,) but private school, kept by some pious man, whoendeavours to instruct a small number of children in religion and learning together.”

I can’t help but wonder if people called Wesley divisive or extremist for making the aforementioned comments.  Perhaps not.  Perhaps they simply said, “That may be right for you, but it’s not what the Lord told us to do.”

Voddie Baucham is a husband, father, pastor, author, professor, conference speaker and church planter.  He currently serves as Pastor of Preaching at Grace Family Baptist Church inSpring, TX.  He has served as an adjunct professor at the College of Biblical Studies in Houston, TX, and Union University in Jackson, TN.  He has also lectured at Southern Seminary. To contact Pastor Baucham visit his website at http://www.voddiebacham.org or call toll free 1 (877) TRUTH-58.

http://exodusmandate.org/public-schools/top-five-reasons-not-to-send-your-kids-back-to-public-school