Commentary: Learning the Right Things (Part Two)

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Given 30-Dec-17; 14 minutes

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The lessons a child learns early will impact them years later. This principle has society-wide meaning as well. If parents have not assumed their rightful roles as the gatekeepers of their children's culture, other philosophies will capture their attention and warp their perception of reality. Daniel Greenfield proclaimed that all wars are culture wars, a fact of which America and Britain have unfortunately been oblivious for many decades. Consequently, these peoples have seemingly lost the last culture war and are on the brink of having their way of life replaced by something vastly inferior. Because we did not think our culture important enough to protect, it will be taken from us. Often God has raised a leader to steer His people in the right direction, but Israel failed to follow him. The ruler of this world has been successfully poisoning our offspring with the garbage of humanist thinking. The current Roman Catholic Pope has even proffered the despicable lie that Joseph and Mary are equivalent to Muslim refugees fleeing from oppression. Children not protected from such lies will succumb to them.


transcript:

I did not realize when I told that joke last week [in the sermon] about Chicken Heart that it would have something to do with this commentary that I am going to make, but David and Julie Maas, and Richard also, found it on the on the web. I heard from David Maas that that thing was broadcast in 1937. When I heard it in the dark with my aunt, I was four years old. Now that's the part that has something to do with this commentary.

My title in this commentary is, "Learning the Right Things (Part Two)." I did not realize when I gave the first of the commentaries on this subject—two commentaries ago—that it would develop into a subject that was a bit longer. I began that commentary quoting Proverbs 22:6, which says, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." During the forming of that first commentary, I saw a link to a second application, so I continued on with that thought in the second commentary, and thus I also began that commentary with the same scripture but used it on a much broader and more serious subject. Well, I am back a third time and I'm beginning with the same scripture.

The proverb does not directly concern a way of life involving a moral conduct issue, but the advice most certainly applies in a case that I quoted briefly in the second commentary. I titled that first commentary, "Staying on Point," and I used as the main illustration in the body of my comments how captivated we are by the wonders of electronics. They seem to open an entire theater of both work applications and entertainment for our minds to be captivated by. But what is happening within our American culture all the while we are being captivated by what the electronics can accomplish? Is what they are accomplishing for us personally moving us to the successful fulfillment of our calling, or are they distracting us from seeing a dangerous reality?

The second commentary I titled, "Learning the Right Things." Now, the proverb itself is primarily aimed at directing a child's training so the child is capable of success later in life. Here is a reality. It will take me a little bit to get to that reality, but here is a reality: The term "train" suggests a continuous procession of lessons aimed at producing a desired goal in the child.

Here is an example from God that involves conduct. I want you to notice the progression. This is from Deuteronomy 6:6-9, and it very specifically amplifies "train," as used in Proverbs 22:6, saying this. Listen carefully to this—this is God speaking:

Deuteronomy 6:6-9 (Amplified Version) And these words which I am commanding you this day shall be [first] in your [own] minds {and} hearts; [then] you shall whet {and} sharpen them so as to make them penetrate, {and} [three] teach {and} impress them diligently upon the [minds and] hearts of your children, [four] and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up. And you shall bind them [another one] as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets (forehead bands) between your eyes. And you shall write them upon the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Brethren, the parents really have to be prepared themselves!

That is a vivid and forceful progression of instruction. Why does it have to be so vivid and forceful?

Here is the reality I mentioned just before reading Deuteronomy 6:6: The child is going to learn whether or not we make the effort. If we do not do it, the world—the culture we live in—will do it. It is a certainty—the world around us will not overlook our children, and in past months or so I have been reading commentaries by quite a number of well-informed people regarding what is happening primarily in the British and American cultures. Our cultural high point is clearly in the past.

Both nations are clearly declining and almost all of the historically-inclined commentators arrive at virtually the same conclusions as to why we are sliding downwards. It is because far, far too few Brits and Yanks have believed what we previously had in the way of a culture enough to support our cultures as valuable enough to continue living it as our way of life, combined with the fact that as parents, we did not drum it into our children. We fell down on the job. As a people, we have frittered it away and it is being replaced by a way of life that is far, far inferior, one that is gradually becoming a mirror image of that violent period the Bible shows existed just before the Flood resulted in the execution of the entire population of planet Earth except for eight people.

Here is a comment that I gave you on December the 2nd, the first commentary. It is from one Daniel Greenfield:

All wars are culture wars. To win you must destroy the values of the other side. [This is what we are in process of losing. We did not protect them; we didn't live them, so they are being taken away.] That is one reason why we're losing to Islam no matter how many times we beat them on the battlefield. You must destroy their sense of purpose and the values instilled in them to break them as an organization.

This is exactly what is happening to Britain and the United States. The values we previously had, we did not hold as important, and so we failed to teach them ourselves, and we are losing them. This period of time's history is already written in the Bible, in the history of Israel. How many times did God raise up the quality of leadership the Israelites needed, only to have the Israelites refuse to follow the leader God supplied to them? No one person destroyed them each time. The majority of them resisted the leader God supplied. It was always the few who chose to follow the leader God's supplied.

Just think of the troubles Moses faced in the wilderness as one example, and it is very clear one. The god of this world knows the way history is moving, and he is continuing to prepare for the battles. And this is why I gave you those many brief synopses of about fifteen men considered as great philosophers because of their major influence on the citizenry of each generation as they taught. They were the main cogs in setting the mindset and worldview of their generation, so the entire world would be thinking pretty much like the devious Satan when we reached this critical stage.

Here is an example. I received an email from David Barnes that read—this is a quote of a world-renowned leader. This leader was the Pope. He publicly compared the Islamic invaders of the mostly Israelitish nations in Europe to the righteous Joseph and Mary, fleeing to Egypt with the infant Jesus. Did Joseph and Mary trash Egypt? These invaders are breaking the cultural backs of those European nations and taking over their cultures, even as they are gradually doing so here.

In this nation they are seriously adding to the cultural demise that was already under way before they began invading. Are you aware that government officials—this is how far it has gone—in the state of California are making initial preparations to secede from the United States of America? These officials apparently want to protect the invaders. The Israelites are in serious need of about a dozen Gideons.

What did my mind choose to remember from March of 1937? It was really nothing but trash, and so what I learned as a youngster, even today, at eighty five years, I still remember what I learned when I was young. That's why God says it has to be done. It has to begin when the child is young.

JWR/aws/dcg





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