“The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none who does good.”

— Psalm 14:1

There are “four horsemen” of the godless apocalypse, who have done so much to intellectually create the society in which we live today. It begins with philosophy, then impacts the culture, and then moves to everyday people and to the politicians.

Freud’s views of man totally changed the thinking of the vast majority in our modern age and gave a picture of man totally at odds with the previously held biblical picture. Marx, the second horseman, through his writings brought so much evil upon the world—leading to the deaths of more than 100 million people in his effort to create “the worker’s paradise.”

Of course, there was Darwin, whose views of the origin of the species and biology affected not only biology, but all of the sciences, then all of the social sciences, and then almost all of life itself. The Nazi Holocaust was based on their interpretation of Darwinism, leading them to try to create a “Master Race”—killing millions of the supposed inferiors in the process.

Then finally there was Nietzsche and his book Übermensch (Superman), which also added fuel to the super race notion of Hitler. Nietzsche coined the phrase “God is dead.”

But those four horsemen have largely been thrown to the ground. All of these men built their philosophy on practical atheism, but those who deny God only show themselves to be fools.

O Lord Jesus, even though these “four horsemen” have been largely discredited, we see pagan religions and Islam coming in like a flood. Only You can give our society another chance to return to You…

ONLY BY GOD’S STRENGTH, CAN THIS
POST-CHRISTIAN SOCIETY BE TURNED BACK.

“You shall teach them [God’s words] diligently to your children…”

— Deuteronomy 6:7

Several years ago the State of Nebraska jailed seven fathers for a supposedly heinous crime. These seven fathers spent Thanksgiving in jail. They spent Christmas in jail. They spent New Year’s in jail. What had they done?

They placed their children in a Christian school to receive a Christian education. The bone of contention was that this was a church school that refused to be licensed by the state or to have its teachers accredited by the state. And in an example of the exercise of raw power, the state clamped down, padlocking the church and the school, throwing the pastor in jail and imprisoning seven fathers and then with warrants for their arrest, causing the mothers to flee out of the state with their children.

Now, it cannot be said that the state is interested in the educational achievement of the children because two independent testing organizations came into the school and ascertained that the children were two to two and a half years ahead of the children in the public schools in the state of Nebraska. No. It is simply a determination to repress Christian schools, to establish precedents, which can be used all across the country so that there can be no competition to the completely atheistic, secularistic, humanistic education that is being forwarded in our public school system today.

There is a battle today over who owns the children—the parents or the state? The Bible says the parents, specifically the fathers, are responsible for their children’s education. It is to God we must ultimately give an account.

God our Father, we thank You for letting us be parents and we desperately need Your wisdom and guidance. We see the state taking upon itself more and more authority, and we pray for Your help in educating and rearing godly children…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE CAN
REAR GODLY CHILDREN.

“These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also.”

— Acts 17:6

The apostle Paul and Silas had been preaching in Philippi (in modern day Turkey) where many people had been converted. There was a great tumult and they were cast into prison. Finally released, they went on to Thessalonica (in Greece), where they went into the synagogue and preached the Gospel with great power.

Numbers of the Jews were converted to Christ. A great multitude of devout Greeks also were converted, as well as a number of the notable women, so that some of the Jews, being moved with envy gathered together some lewd fellows of the baser sort. They gathered a company and they came to the house of Jason, where Paul and Silas had been. They were going to drag them out, but they could not lay their hands on them.

They took Jason and some of the brethren and brought them before the rulers of the people and they said: “These who have turned the world upside down have come here also.” I love that description. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have inscribed on your tombstone: “Here lies one who turned the world upside down.” That is what Christianity does.

As we see it from the proper perspective, the world is already turned upside down. What we are trying to do is turn it right side up. It was the pagan conception of turning the world upside down. Certainly we live in a world that desperately needs to be turned right side up in our time—and the Gospel of Jesus is the answer.

Lord Jesus, thank You for coming into this world to turn it right side up. As Your followers we ask for strength to work on this task with You. Help us to have a positive influence on the world around us…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, THE WORLD
CAN BE TURNED RIGHT SIDE UP.

“All the believers were of one heart and one soul, and no one said that what he possessed was his own. But to them all things were in common.”

— Acts 4:32

Some people like to say that early in the book of Acts we see an early form of socialism. The early Christians shared what they had, in some cases even by selling their houses and sharing the proceeds so no one had need. But I believe a close look at that passage will reveal that it is in fact antithetical to socialism.

A husband and wife team, Ananias and Sapphira, decided to sell their property, but they kept back a part of the price, told the disciples that they had sold it for more, and then “brought a part of it and placed it at the apostles’ feet.” “Then Peter said, ‘Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to deceive the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, was it not your own? [There you have an apostolic confirmation of the right of private property.] And when it was sold, was it not under your authority?…You did not lie to men, but to God’” (Acts 5:2-4). Both husband and wife dropped dead because of their sin of lying.

Not only the property and the means of production, but the results of that production were in the couple’s power, not in the power or the hands of the state. Furthermore, you will notice, that this action was voluntary. And where was the money given? To the church—why that’s enough to give Karl Marx apoplexy! Socialism may sound Christian, but in reality it is anything but.

Lord Jesus, You who are the Giver of all good gifts. Thank You for what You have given me and help me to be generous in sharing, especially with Your people. Help us to be honest in all our dealings with money and to give freely…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH,
WE CAN BE GENEROUS.

“The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.”

— Proverbs 22:7

We have given up the free enterprise economy the founders of this nation gave to us. We have followed the socialists, albeit a number of paces behind them, down that disastrous road. We are suffering the consequences right now. But we haven’t even begun to see the consequences that will be coming one day.

Our politicians are recklessly spending money like there is no tomorrow. The federal government spends regularly more than we take in. But if we just took the figure of $1.4 trillion (which is smaller than the amount of our federal spending) and you stacked it up in dollars, it would reach 88,000 miles—one-third of the distance to the moon. This is incredibly selfish because the government has no money of its own.

Author Rus Walton put it very well when he said: “Government is not a producer; it is a taker, a taxer, and a spender. Every dollar spent by the public sector is a dollar the government must take from the private sector, from the workers and earners and investors. The dollar taken by government cannot be spent or invested by that productive private sector.”

What is happening is that too many Americans are living off of the public trough—they are living off of the sweat and labor of their fellow Americans. And who will pay for all this? Our children and our children’s children. Because we have turned our back on God, our national greed is destroying the future.

Pray for revival.

Dear God, help us to get our national house in order and to stop spending money we don’t have. Thank You for what You have given us and help us to be good stewards of that which You have entrusted to us…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH,
WRONGS CAN BE RIGHTED.

“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be given to you.”

— Matthew 6:33

I always remember the admonition of Charles Spurgeon who said that Christ never told us to seek the kingdom of God. He is right. Christ never told us to seek the kingdom of God. He told us to seek it first.

Instead of being worried about “all these things,” that is, what to eat, what to wear, providing basic necessities, Jesus tells us to make His kingdom and righteousness our top priority.

When we get so consumed with all “these things” to the point that we put the kingdom of God way down on the list, then the result is 1) we don’t begin to have all of the things that God is more than willing to give to us, and 2) we miss out on the blessings of seeking the kingdom of God.

As we consider how to engage in “spiritual purposing,” so that His kingdom really is our true priority, then consider ways to spend more time with Christ—time reading His Word, time going to Him in prayer. That quiet time is the essence of the Christian life. Without that, you will never grow in God’s kingdom. I would urge you this day to determine that starting now you are not going to let a day go by that you don’t spend some time in His Word and in prayer. That has been a goal of mine for virtually my entire Christian life. I hope you make it yours if it isn’t already.

God, our King, we are citizens of Your kingdom and we are so grateful for being included and accepted by You, our rightful King. Give us the grace to put You first and seek to advance Your kingdom every day…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, HIS
KINGDOM GOES FORTH.

“It is God who clothes me with strength…”

— Psalm 18:32

“You’re a dunce.” That’s what she said. “You’re a dunce, and I am going to fail you,” and the teacher failed Einstein in mathematics. Who was the dunce? “I’m sorry, we don’t want you in our choir. You can’t sing, so don’t come back,” but Jerome Hines became the greatest basso profundo the Metropolitan has ever known.

We believe the lies of our past. Our own failures speak eloquently to us: “You can’t do it. Don’t you remember? You tried before and you failed. You even tried twice, three times, and you failed. You can’t do it.” Those are lies.

Walt Disney went broke seven times before he succeeded. Thomas Edison made 10,000 experiments that failed before he developed the incandescent light. Babe Ruth drew up the largest record of failure—of strikeouts—in the history of baseball. Nobody remembers the failures of these people. They remember their successes. Zig Ziglar says that a big shot is just a little shot that kept on shooting.

“I can do all things through Christ.” Who said that? Was this small Paul, the apostle, so-called—little Paul with his thorn in his flesh, with his weak eyes, whose bodily presence was weak and his speech contemptible? Yes, that is who it was. And through Christ he changed the world.

May God give us the grace to accomplish that which He wants us to do.

God of truth, we praise You that You have revealed Your truth in Jesus Christ, who is truth incarnate. Forgive us for believing lies that cause us to be on the sidelines of life when we should be out on the field. Lord, give us strength for today to believe Your truth in a world that rejects it…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE KNOW
THE TRUTH IN A WORLD OF LIES.

“For though by now you should be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God and have come to need milk rather than solid food.”

— Hebrews 5:12

Babies are universally loved and we are drawn to them at whatever their age. But if we visit a newborn and then come back in six months and that baby is still the same size as he was at birth, we know something is seriously wrong. Something is interfering with that baby’s development.

I’m afraid there are some people in our churches today who are suffering from arrested development. They haven’t grown much. Oh, I think the average church member probably grows to be the equivalent of about a five-year-old. You know, a five-year-old can do a lot of things. He can throw a baseball and run around and ride a tricycle and get into some mischief and talk and do a lot of things.

There are a whole lot of things he can’t do. And spiritually I think people sort of grow to about that point. They learn sort of the basics of Christianity. They know the Lord’s Prayer and most of the Apostles’ Creed and probably at least six of the Commandments and a few selected verses that aren’t too long to memorize. Then they decide that now this will get them along and get them by and they forget all about growing at that point. It is a case of arrested development. But that is not what the Bible calls us to do.

Lord, give me strength for today to move beyond shallow spirituality. Thank You for the means of growth. Help me to actively use them. Show me anything in my life that may possibly be holding me back from growing in You…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE
CAN MATURE SPIRITUALLY.

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image’…in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

— Genesis 1:26a-27b

When you come to discuss Adam and Eve, you immediately run head on into the great wall of evolution. This view has so permeated our society and indeed the society of almost the whole world, that there are few people today who are even willing to give an intelligent hearing on a true Adam and Eve. As well we might examine something from Aesop’s Fables, they say, as to examine Adam and Eve.

Well, it is my conclusion after decades of studying the matter, that never has a bigger lie been foisted on the human race with less evidence than that of evolution. Many people suppose that it is a scientific fact that has been established by overwhelming evidence. Well, is that the case or not?

Aldous Huxley—grandson of Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s bulldog—admitted that it wasn’t science that caused them to believe in evolution. Evolution allowed them to pursue their own immorality. In his 1937 book, Ends and Means, Huxley admitted, “We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom…The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world.”

Science? It had more to do with sin than science. “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to a debased mind,” Paul tells us in Romans 1:28. Keep studying and keep seeking the truth, and the God of Truth will reveal it.

Dear God, we wish to be true to Your Word and to read it correctly. Give us the grace to interpret it wisely and not through the lens of popular thinking. Thank You for the scientists who work so diligently at seeking truth. Give them Your wisdom…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH AND
WISDOM, TRUTH IS REVEALED.

“For what may be known about God is clear to them since God has shown it to them…”

— Romans 1:19

For the last century, students have been constantly inculcated with the atheistic, humanistic, materialistic view of evolution, which is the foundation upon which every anti-Christian system rests. Every anti-Christian “ism” that has come down the pike for 150 years has found a pseudoscientific foundation in evolution. To wit:

• Communism
• Nazism
• Fascism
• Humanism
• Freudianism
• Behaviorism

Evolutionists have done everything in their power to prevent evidence for creation from being shown. Even if you ask that when the evidence for evolution is taught that the evidence for creation also be taught—that has been defeated in court. There is no other scientific theory in the world where the evidences on both sides cannot be taught. Only evolution is a politically protected “scientific theory.” That is not education, dear friends. That is indoctrination.

The late evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard said to his colleagues that there had been more than 100 major debates between evolutionists and creationists, and the evolutionists had lost every one of them.

Why do they lose every debate? Because the creationists are such wonderful debaters? Could it be that the evidence is on the side of the creationists? That, Gould could not admit. Everyone knows deep down about the Creator because He has made His handiwork so clear in His creation.

God of truth, You have revealed Yourself and Your creation to us. Help us, Lord, to see truth in the midst of lies. Give us discernment and clear thinking so we may know what is true…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH,
HIS TRUTH WILL STAND.