Commentary: Mightier Than The Sword (Part Eight)
#1277c
John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 18-Jul-15; 11 minutes
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transcript:
I think it's interesting that the subject of Austin's sermonette was humility ["The Value of Humility"], because the last three commentaries that I've given have focused on a man who was anything but humble.
In this current commentary series, I have been attempting to impress on your mind an important fact we must learn to live with. It is that the depressing, enslaving, overall living quality of life didn’t happen by chance. I am talking about life as it is today. It didn’t happen by chance. It was planned. I do not mean that every detail was planned. I do mean that the general spirit of the times, as well as major factors that will impact upon or be impacted by the spirit of the times, was planned.
All one needs for a basic understanding of this truth is a fairly high level of belief in God and His word. His word informs us clearly through prophecies that evil will abound in our times, nature will be in turmoil in our times, and diseases raging, and fear will abound. The quality of life will continue to descend until its main theme will be outright terror as the exact time for Christ’s return draws ever closer. It is building toward what Jeremiah 30:7 terms as the time of Jacob’s trouble. That occasion is a concentrated period of history unlike any other time in mankind’s existence. It will be of intense danger to one’s mind, life, and limb.
God doesn’t lie, and Jesus reports that the times we live in will be like the days of Noah. Therefore, life is going to reach the intensity of that period before the flood in which the intent of every thought of man’s heart was only evil continually.
In these commentaries, I have been attempting to alert us that the anxiety magnitude of the quality of life we are living in didn’t just pop out of ground. It was caused by two powerful influences overseeing life in this creation. Those two influences are, of course, God and Satan. As I have been showing you, it has taken centuries of time to maneuver the circumstances of life to the point we now live in. I have been presenting ever-so-brief overviews of the lives of a few humans very effectively used by Satan.
How do I know they were prejudiced toward Satan? Though not named in the Bible, the Bible provides us with two truths that reveal their minds. One is, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” The other is, “You shall know them by their fruits.” How does one know they were tools of Satan? It is actually easy because every one of the philosophers clearly showed they were anti-God, anti-Christian, and anti-God’s law.
The philosophers' thoughts of their hearts are preserved in writings they produced. Those records are available—records of their lifestyles made by their associates were recorded and preserved. The evidence is clear: I am sure God made certain those evidences were made available so we would have a clear window into how the end-time came to be.
I am having a hard time letting go of Jean-Jacques Rousseau as a subject. Why? Because he has had such a negative impact on the Western world. Rousseau is heralded as the father philosopher of the social systems of the times we live in—right now.
Rousseau is the archetypical big government, anti-God liberal. This was a man whose own personal behavior was radically loony by biblical standards. It is hard to comprehend the deceptively dangerous character of Rousseau’s social theory—that is, until we trace his ideas through to their ultimate consequences in the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, China’s Revolution, and other nations, including the United States of America and Britain, which are headed down exactly the same path, but have achieved a lesser degree than those others mentioned.
Rousseau, in one of his books, attributes all the horrors and misfortunes on earth to the ownership of private property. How does that square with God giving each family settling in the Promised Land property to produce wealth, of all things?
Will and Ariel Durant summarized an educational concept of Rousseau in this way: He wanted a system of public instruction by the state. Not the parents; the state. He prescribed many years with an unmarried tutor, who would withdraw the child as much as possible from parents and relatives. We are living it—it is happening.
His ideas go further: Rousseau desired that the father is expected to raise the child for the state, not the Kingdom of God, God’s glory or the family’s glory. He wrote, “A father owes men to humanity, citizens to the state.”
Here is a word you are familiar with and may think you know. The English word "economy" is derived from the Greek word oikonomia. The Greek term means, “family law,” or “vision of the family.” How was Rousseau going to get around this? Well Rousseau, in an essay, applied this term to mean, “the great family of the state.”
When a composite picture of all of Rousseau’s concepts are brought, together a clearer picture of what Satan was using Rousseau twisted genius for arises. Rousseau was being used to lay the groundwork for a lifestyle that destroys the family.
He was being used to create a social system whereby people's concentration on themselves intensifies in order to develop narcissism, self-centeredness, and sociopathic tendencies to greater degrees. His model for this was himself. I kid you not. He was there model. If you remember some of the quote about what he said about himself...was there anybody else on earth a better model to be the perfect father-leader? The obliteration of the family is Rousseau’s ideal, with the authoritarian, anonymous state replacing parents. Thus, in practical fact, the government must be totally in charge of all education. A mass government-operated educational system is a necessity.
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