Philippians 3:18-19, “(For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)”
Worship Only God!
By David J. Stewart
I
have gleaned the following thoughts from listening to Pastor Jack Hyles'
powerful and needful sermon,
HOW WE GOT HERE.
Dr. Hyles explains Romans Chapter one. Please listen to the MP3 sermon.
Anytime you find someone who denies Christ's deity, they are lowering Jesus to the level of humanity. That is humanism! Humanism is pulling God down and raising man up! Humanism is exalting man and bringing down God. When you have a little God and a big man, you have nothing but homosexuality, adultery, abortion, licentiousness and a wicked society. Idolatry is the forerunner of immorality and wickedness in any society. America turned idolatrous before she became immoral.
Anytime that man is exalted and God is lowered, apostasy results. This is why America is so evil today. We have brought God low in our schools, government, businesses and even churches. People today worship the church more than God. It is idolatry! People worship the body! People worship sports athletes and singers! We ought to love the church, but worship only God! We ought to love our families, but worship only God! We ought to praise the Lord continually. God alone deserves the place of worship in our heart.
Water baptism is good, but it's not the way of salvation. Don't worship baptism. Don't worship denominations. Don't worship men. Never put a man where only Jesus should be. Sometimes God takes from us the thing that you put in His place. Don't do it! Don't place anything over God in your mind. Intellectuals may not have an idol in their home, but they have an idol in their philosophies. They have an idol in their mind. WORSHIP ONLY GOD!!!
“Humanism is mental idolatry.” —Dr. Jack Hyles, from the sermon titled, How We Got Here
Humanism And The Rot Of American Society
By David J. Stewart
Humanism is an insane form of thinking that invades the human mind, convincing it of its superiority over God and His Word. Tragically, humanism is everywhere in American culture today. Most people have elevated their own selfish will above the Words of our holy God. Shakira blasphemes God by accusing Him of being selfish, a monster, freak, selfish, proud and a hypocrite. American culture is saturated with blasphemers and mockers who walk in their own ungodly lusts, whose god is their belly, who mind earthly things. Their day of reckoning is soon coming.
Humanism glorifies man; Christianity glorifies Jesus Christ. Humanism is a religion of self-will, manmade traditions and secularism; whereas Biblical Christianity obliterates these evils. Religious humanism is elevating man through religion or spiritual ideas. Religious humanism is just as common and popular as secular humanism. Anything that is spiritual in nature that excludes the Bible is false doctrine and spiritually dangerous. We hear a lot about spiritual matters on television, but they ignore the teachings of the Bible. Oh sure, they may borrow some ideas from the Scriptures, but the doctrine of Christ is totally missing. Without the Spirit of Christ (the Holy Spirit), no one can go to Heaven. Romans 8:9, “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” You get the Holy Spirit by being born-again by faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ (i.e., His death, burial and resurrection).
Life is short for all of us. Most of yesterday's movie stars and famous singers are now dead. John Lennon and George Harrison of The Beatles are dead, burning in Hell for their rejection of Jesus as the Christ. Bob Hope's Catholic religion couldn't save him, as he now knows in the fires of Hell. Paul Newman's Jewish faith couldn't save him from the fires of Hell. Rock Hudson's faith in the religion of Scientology couldn't save his soul from Hell beneath. Jesus commanded, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:7). There are NO exceptions. Unbelieving Jews who follow the damnable lies of false prophet John Hagee will go straight to Hell with their superiority complex. I say this kindly and with sadness, because I want everyone to repent and believe the gospel to be saved. God plays no favorites.
“The classroom must and will become an area 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, resplendent in its promise of a world in which the never-realized Christian idea of 'Love thy Neighbor' will finally be achieved.”
John J. Dunphy, "A Religion for a New Age," The Humanist, January/February 1983, 26.
It's sad how messed up our culture is in America. I often think about how wonderful it would be if there were no government public schools. I think about how awesome it would be if alcohol were not allowed to be sold as a Madison Avenue product, a key element of our society. The partying, wild, drunkard and meth-head culture in America is demonic. Search about cities all across America and one common denominator is drugs, crime and sex-offenders. This didn't just happen. This is what happens when you remove the Bible from our nation's classrooms, as the U.S. Supreme Court did in 1963. That removed children's defense against evil.
Then Rock music was introduced into their lives, which is literally a religion of sexual immorality, substance abuse and rebellion against God-ordained authority. In a highly publicized New York concert, Bruce Springsteen told the fans that he was there for “the ministry of Rock 'N' Roll” and for their “re-sexualization.” Springsteen admits that Rock music is a religion of sexual immorality. Admittedly his Rock music sexually charges up the audience. As Newsweek magazine advertises, the world is “GOING WILD ABOUT BRUCE!”
“The pagan in Africa gets a piece of wood and builds him a god; the intellectual in the university gets his mind and builds himself a god.”
—Dr. Jack Hyles, from the sermon titled, How We Got Here
Humanism is far more deadly and prevalent in our society than the average person realizes. Humanism is the sinful philosophy that causes people to place their will above God's Word. Over 53,000,000 women in America have placed their will above God's Word by having abortions. Everytime a person curses in God's name they are elevating them self above God's holy name. Every time that a person commits sexual immorality, they are placing their sinful will above the inspired Words of almighty God! Abortion is the consequence of sexual immorality, which is the evil fruit of Rock music. Rock 'N' Roll is of the Devil.
Americans laugh these days at the thought of Rock music being evil; yet at the same time they fail to see the awfulness (the exceeding sinfulness) of sins like abortion, adultery, drunkenness, stealing, pride, gossip, hatred, violence, murder, immodesty, envy, backbiting, jealousy and a hundred other sins. Immorality breeds more immorality. Did you ever stop to think why people love to see violence and perversion so much on television? Why do people enjoy seeing sin?
Romans 1:32 tells us the answer, that is, because sinful people like to watch other people commit sin...
Romans 1:28-32, “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.”
Humanism is of the Devil. Secular universities teach atheism, humanism and evolution, which all replace God with man. Only a fool ignores the Bible and challenges its validity. Walt Disney's History Channel has been going out of their way, relentlessly, to discredit who the Lord Jesus was. They claim that other men performed miracles, so the Lord wasn't immortal. They claim that the miracles taught in the Old Testament were attributed to natural causes, so there is no miracle-working God in Heaven. In short, Walt Disney is trying to create a new religion for heathens—a religion without a miracle-working God, a religion without Jesus Christ as deity (God in the flesh), and a religion without morals (where homosexuality is permitted and encouraged). They're wicked people!
The true and living God of the Bible, the God of true Israel, warns against committing sexual sins (including homosexuality), which bring the wrath and judgments of a holy God (Jude 1:7; Colossians 3:5-6; Romans 1:32; Ecclesiastes 12:14; Revelation 20:11-15). You don't know more than God I assure you. What you had better do is seek Him early while He may still be found. Isaiah 55:6, “Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near.” Luke 6:35 says that God is kind to the unthankful and to the evil. What an awesome God. But consider yourself warned my friend, whoever you may be, the moment that you die your eternal fate is sealed.
The Lord cannot deny Himself for being faithful to you, trying to get you to receive Him as your Savior to be saved. If you go to Hell amidst all of God's kindness and blessings, then you will hate yourself for all of eternity for rejecting the gospel message of Christ crucified to death, buried and miraculously risen triumphant. If you admit that you are a sinner and will receive Christ's payment on the cross (His death, burial and resurrection) as full-payment for your sins, then you will be saved immediately, permanently and eternally.
What a wonderful day it will be when Jesus Christ Himself reigns over the earth during the Millennium period. There will be no televisions. I am convinced of that. There will be no evil influences like we see and hear everywhere these days. The Lord will make our world a righteous, lovely, peaceful, honest and a pleasurable place to live. There will be no heavy burdens from over-taxation. There will be no armed troops marching down our streets with guns, locking us into our homes. God will make it all good. The wicked will be gone. The homosexuals will be gone. The abortion industry will be gone. Hollywood will be gone. The Devil will be gone. Oh, what a blessed time it will be! The Bible will be read and studied everywhere. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
Key to success or failure.
We become what we think about.
A man is what he thinks about all day long.
The opposite of courage is not cowardice, it is conformity.
People with goals succeed, because they know where they're going.
No man is a true success who fails to make pleasing God his most important
goal!
The Results Of Secular Humanism
By Brian Schwertley
Our society is in decay. Violent crime has grown so much in the last thirty years that many people are afraid to go into our cities after dark. Sexual immorality has exploded in our culture since the 1960s. There was a time only a generation ago when premarital sex was the exception not the rule. Now teenagers are having sex at a younger and younger age. Many are even sexually active in junior high school. Young men and women who desire to maintain their virginity until marriage are considered freaks. In the last thirty years families have been disintegrating.
The divorce rate hovers near fifty percent. It is common knowledge that children from broken homes often have more problems functioning in society than children from traditional two-parent families. Adultery is both common and accepted by many in our land. Premarital sex, drunkenness, drug abuse, theft, murder, abortion, lying, cheating, fraud, homosexuality, rape, cruelty and pornography are now a normal part of our societal landscape.
There is no question that there has been a very large moral decline in society since the early 1960s (this decline is a matter of record). This decline cannot be explained in terms of poverty, racism and sexism, for those societal elements have been much worse in the past. We live in a period of great material prosperity compared with almost all of recorded history. Yet literacy rates and family solidarity were higher in the 1870s than today, when people in the ghetto live like princes, compared to their ancestors. There is a reason for the decline: we are experiencing the fruit or results of a worldview change that took place during the earlier part of the twentieth century.
The worldview transition took place primarily between 1870 and 1930. The old worldview which dominated our culture was basically Christian with some right-wing enlightenment thinking tossed in. The Christian worldview had more or less dominated western civilization since the fall of the Roman Empire. This Christian worldview was replaced by materialistic naturalism (or as it’s called today, secular humanism). Secular humanism is the belief that man lives in a closed universe. There is no God who is transcendent above and beyond created reality. The secular humanist presupposes that the Christian God does not and cannot exist—that everything which does exist is merely the product of matter plus time plus chance. The secular humanist presupposes that the only thing which can exist and have importance to mankind is that which is open to empirical verification and observation by man.
Therefore, the Christian God and biblical Christianity are ruled out of bounds from the start by the so-called objective materialistic scientist, even before the investigation of reality begins. The essence of secular humanism is that man is the measure of all things. Man, not God, is the determiner of reality, meaning and ethics.
Secular humanism became the dominant worldview of intellectuals by the 1930s. By this time naturalism, Darwinian evolution, modernism, and biblical higher criticism had captured all the major universities, the mainline Protestant denominations and their seminaries, the large media outlets (e.g., The New York Times), and many politicians. The secular-humanistic elite now believed that since most educators and scientists no longer look to the Bible for truth and guidance, mankind was now capable of solving all the world’s problems. Because of the modernistic view of the Bible the majority found themselves in churches which no longer believed the Bible and submitted to it. There was a certain form of godliness and going through the motions but a denial of God’s power and authority (2 Tim. 3:5). The majority of people now looked toward the civil government, scientists, artists
and intellectuals as saviours who would bring mankind into a sort of millennial paradise. If the secular-humanistic worldview was true and the Christian worldview false, one could reasonably assume that the expectations of the social planners would come true. But what if the Christian worldview was true and the secular humanist worldview was false? Would not a wholesale rejection of God and the Bible, in favour of incoherent, irrational nonsense bring disaster to society and culture? Is this not just what has happened?
Meaning or nihilism?
The secular-humanist intellectuals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been the sharpest critics of Bible-believing Christianity. They teach that the Bible is ancient mythology for a bygone era. They believe that society must rid itself of biblical teaching in favour of "science and rationality." The secular elitists even promised that once biblical teaching was removed from the schools and universities in our country, real progress would be made in solving mankind’s problems.
The secular-materialistic view of reality states that the universe is the product of chance or pure contingency. Everything that is, is an accident. Everything is the product of chaos. In an impersonal, chance universe where chaos, flux, and randomness are king, personality, meaning, and universal laws of logic clearly have no place. If the secular-evolutionary worldview is true, then your life and existence have no meaning whatsoever. You are nothing more than an accumulation of atoms randomly floating in the void. Your thoughts, desires, relationships, love and deepest concerns are merely the illusions of chemical-electronic impulses.
You are an impersonal machine. You have no soul, no future, and no hope. You and the random universe around you are heading toward extinction. Your life has no more significance than pond scum. These statements are the logical implication of the secular-humanistic worldview. All talk of love, justice, meaning, and helping your fellow man are holdovers from the Christian worldview.
The atheistic university professor and socialist politician may speak much of justice, love, and brotherhood but they are stealing such ideas from Christianity, because such things are only possible in a God-created and God-controlled personalistic universe.
The creed of secular humanism is: out of the chaos of pure chance comes meaning and order; out of atoms floating randomly in the void comes man, the giver of meaning. Secular humanism is a religion based solely on faith. That it is irrational, self-contradictory, and arbitrary does not seem to bother its adherents. It is a blind faith in man.
Ethical absolutes or chaos?
Do you believe that murder is wrong? Do you believe that child molestation and bestiality are wrong? Most people do. The question that must be answered, then, is "Why?" The secular-humanistic worldview presupposes that nothing can exist above and beyond the universe. The idea of an infinite, personal God who is transcendent, who reveals ethical absolutes to man (e.g., "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal," etc.) is anathema to an atheistic naturalist. With no higher power, the secular humanist must derive an ethical system from this world alone.
But what is the modern view of the universe, of reality? The universe is evolving. It is a product of chance. It is impersonal. It is in a state of flux. Man himself is a product of chance and is in a state of flux. Thus, the secular humanist teaches that ethics are evolving, arbitrary, subjective, relative and changing. There is no "out-thereness" to ethics; there is no absolute right or wrong.
For the secular humanist, the source of ethics, morality and law is not God but man. The secular humanist says that ethics are whatever man happens to say they are at a given point in time. In such a system moral law is merely opinion, custom, "community standards," what the state says (or the supreme court, or an intellectual elite like hospital ethics boards). Man determines what is right and wrong for himself, and if man changes his mind, then what used to be wrong is now permissible—even virtuous.
The secular humanist who seeks to establish ethical norms apart from the triune God of the Bible actually perverts and destroys moral imperatives. Ethics cannot exist and operate in a void. If the universe is a product of chance and impersonal, then people have no real reason not to lie, cheat, murder and steal, other than the coercive power of the state (e.g., the police, prisons, etc.).
Young people are not stupid. Do you really think that young people are going to be honest, chaste and moral because their parents or some celebrity or the state says it’s a good idea? All talk of virtue is utter nonsense. To the Nazi, exterminating Jews was virtuous. Stalin and the communists murdered 20 million farmers for humanity. To the radical feminist, murdering unborn babies is a virtue. To the gang member, torturing and murdering one’s opponent are virtuous. If morality is constantly changing, evolving, and if it is only what man happens to believe at any given moment, then the modern ethical maxim is, "Do whatever you want—just don’t get caught. And if you do get caught, blame it on someone else."
There was a time when children were told not to lie, cheat, swear, fornicate and steal because such things were against God’s moral law (the Ten Commandments). People were told that such activities offended a holy, righteous God. They were told that good was good because God said so in His Word, and likewise bad was bad because God said so. People were warned that a day was coming in which God would judge all men according to their deeds.
Ethical absolutes are transcendent; they come from outside the universe and are revealed to man by an unchanging, all-powerful God. These ethical commands are objective and unchanging; they are backed up by a morally perfect God who will punish every wicked act committed by man. In a personalistic universe where an absolute, infinite, perfect, moral God (who is the creator of meaning, the revealer and enforcer of ethical absolutes and the judge of wickedness) stands behind all created reality, people have a very real reason for self-government and personal responsibility.
In the area of ethics (as in the area of meaning itself) the Christian worldview is coherent, rational and self-consistent, while the supposedly "scientific" secular-humanistic worldview is irrational, arbitrary and absurd. When the secular humanist speaks of compassion, humility, virtue, helping the poor, the evil of murder, and so on, he is stealing concepts from the Christian worldview. It is one thing to assert that murder is wrong and quite another to explain why it is wrong. Anyone can assert that something is good or evil, but only the Christian can consistently say why.
In the secular-humanistic worldview, chance not God is ultimate; therefore "it is meaningless to speak of imposing the formalizing activity of the universal mind of man, itself a product of chance, on a bottomless and shoreless ocean of chance. The only possible foundation for science and philosophy as well as for theology is the presupposition that God as all-controlling and Christ as actually redeeming does actually exist and is actually known by man. But to hold this position requires us to give up the idea that man himself is the source of unity in human experience. In seeking such unity as only God can have, apostate man cuts himself loose from the possibility of having any unity in experience at all."
The secular humanist, if honest and consistent, would simply assert that "in the end we’re all dead"; the injustice and evils of life are never resolved. Hitler, Stalin and Mother Teresa all turn to dust. The universe expands to an icy death. In such a system your life and supposed good deeds have no real meaning or lasting significance at all. "What advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink, for to morrow we die!" (1 Cor. 15:32).
Does human life have value?
According to the evolutionary, naturalistic worldview, man is really no more than a sophisticated machine brought into existence by chance. Does man, according to this view, have value? No, not in the ordinary sense that people think of the value of human life. That is because a machine, no matter how sophisticated and unique, is still impersonal; it is still a machine. And even if one thinks of man as a great animal—the pinnacle of evolution—man is still just an animal. Very few secular humanists advocate radical vegetarianism. Very few secular humanists allow insects free reign in their homes and among their crops.
It is impossible to attribute a special, real, unique, lasting value to human life, if man is a chance-derived, impersonal machine destined to eternal extinction in the cosmic void. Human life value presupposes an immortal human soul and a personal beginning (i.e., creation by an infinite, personal God). The secular humanist cannot justify attributing human life value to an impersonal, chance-derived machine. In the naturalistic system, not only is man just a sophisticated machine, he is also destined sooner or later to extinction when the universe inevitably expands into an icy death or contracts into a fiery ball. Secular humanists cannot avoid this eschatology of death, of ultimate extinction.
Therefore, in the areas of origins, being and eschatology (man’s ultimate future), secular humanism really has nothing to offer except extinction into the cosmic void. Secular humanists rarely admit to such when discussing ultimate concerns (with the exception of Bertrand Russell). The Humanist Manifesto II, published in 1973, does make an attempt at future meaning for man when it speaks of man living on through children and culture. But this living on cannot last beyond a supernova; it cannot go beyond the death of the universe. Secular humanists are ignoring the inevitable by focusing on the immediate future instead of the distant, eternal future.
If, in the end, everyone who ever lived ceases forever to exist, then life is meaningless. The eternal non-consciousness of the future renders everything that happened on earth totally meaningless, because if man’s soul does not live on it will be as if no one ever even existed. The cosmic void of nothingness (non-consciousness) in the future meets the cosmic void of the past. This is the logical implication of secular humanism. Are you beginning to understand why children brought up under this worldview are willing to commit murder over a pair of tennis shoes or a gold chain? Do you understand how Stalin could murder 20 million people with less feeling than one has when swatting a fly? Are you beginning to see how secular humanism leads to eugenics, abortion, euthanasia, labour camps and genocide?
SIN...
The Root Problem Of Society
