Today we present the fourth part of a message given in June 2010 by Jim Overholt of Strongtower Financial* to staff at the California Southern Baptist Convention. Currently we are working through the four objections Pharaoh gave to releasing the Israelites.
The Third Objection
In Chapter 10 we get the third objection. Pharaoh says “Go, you that are men.” If he can’t keep the parents, he’ll keep the children—and he’ll split the parents and undermine the sanctity of marriage and family wherever possible.
Current studies that track the loss of our youth from the church are staggering. Somewhere between 75 and 95% of our young people leave the church within a year of graduation from high school! And truthfully, it probably shouldn’t be surprising because for a long time, too many Christian parents—particularly the fathers—have abdicated responsibility for bringing our children up “in the training and admonition of the Lord.”
What are your our children being taught?
I think we may have only a small idea of the extent to which the neglect of Christian parents for the teaching of our children has swelled the tide of infidelity rising up around us. We have left them to the schools and to their overloaded youth pastor. The problem is that our schools have become schools of humanism—almost pagan seminaries—in far too many cases. And it has been an intentional scheme of the enemy. Let me read you a couple of quotes from some prominent humanists who, like too many of their friends, have become influential members of the education establishment.
John J. Dunphy, in his award winning essay, The Humanist (1983), illustrates the strategic focus on our children. He says, and I quote:
“The battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: A religion of humanity—utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to carry humanist values into whatever they teach. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new—the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism.”
As Humanist Charles F. Potter predicted in Humanism: A New Religion, 1930, “Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can theistic Sunday school’s meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?”
The Last Christian generation?
My friend Josh McDowell wrote a book about three years ago entitled “The Last Christian Generation
God views the man and his wife as “one flesh” and the man and “his house” are often addressed as one when God speaks. We need men to be leaders like Joshua who said:
“Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15
Mr. Overholt joined Strongtower Financial in 2006, bringing with him more than 25 years of experience in the financial services industry. During his career, he has served as the chief executive for some of the largest and most successful companies in the financial industry. In addition to his extensive investment, insurance and capital management experience, he has always been active in ministry including most recently serving as the Executive Director of Mission America Coalition.
*Disclosure – Strongtower Financial is the fund manager for our current sponsor.
with Charlton Heston and Yule Brinner in what has become an epic film that is still broadcast every Easter. It’s a story that every Sunday school teaches at a very early age, but generally speaking, what people learned as a child about that wonderful story is too often all they ever learn about it, and that’s a shame, because the fact is, that story is a beautiful allegory of the gospel message… and not just the salvation part depicted in the Passover, but the second half of the message—the part we too often neglect these days—the deliverance of God’s people from the bondage of sin so that we can worship and serve Him. That’s the part depicted by the passage through the Red Sea and eventually, the journey of not just one day, not just two days, but “three days” into the wilderness.
