"Let your children stand before you as your judges; they can settle this dispute, for if your children cast out devils by the breath of God, then the kingdom is indeed come to dwell among you." --Jesus
Casting Out Devils
The ultimate measure of the spiritual health of a culture can be found in the children. If parents have been feckless, indifferent and downright neglectful in protecting the next generation from true Satanic evil in the world, the evidence is in the behavior and attitudes of the children.
Measuring Manners
In a recent conversation with my father in law about his Amish neighbors (whom he's never had a particularly high opinion of) I asked him to consider the fact that the Amish community still knows how to raise respectful, kind and hard working kids. I said you could make the case they are raising the kind of kids most Americans were like decades ago. "If you doubt me," I said, "walk through the halls of any public school or ride a school bus. You'd be appalled at the language and conversation of today's American children!"
Targeting youth has always been the aim of those who want to see generational change. Here are just a few quotes from the dark side of history:
"Give me just one generation of youth and I'll transform the whole world." Vladimir Lenin
"Give me your four year olds and in a generation I will build a socialist state." Lenin
“The whole function of education is to create a Nazi.”
Bernhard Rust, Nazi education minister, February 1938
“We begin with the child when he is three years old. As soon as he begins to think, he gets a little flag put into his hand. Then he follows the school, the Hitler Youth, the SA and military training. We don’t let him go. And then when adolescence is passed, then comes the Arbeitsfront, which takes him again and does not let him go until he dies, whether he likes it or not.”
Robert Ley, Nazi labour chief, 1938
“The children of today are the fighters of tomorrow. Their hardening and preparation is a task as important as that of the armaments industry.”
Schul-Rundkfunk education journal, January 1940
“My teaching is hard. Weakness has to beknocked out of them. In my Ordensburgen, a youth will grow up before which the world will shrink back. A violently active, dominating, intrepid youth, that is what I am after. Youth must be all those things. It must be indifferent to pain. There must be no tenderness or weakness in it. I want to see once more in its eyes the gleam of pride and independence of the beast of prey. Strong and handsome will my men be… Then I shall have in front of me the pure and noble natural material. With that, I can create the new order.”
Adolf Hitler, quoted by Herman Rauschning, 1940
“Nazi schools are no place for weaklings. All children must, of course, finish primary school before they are ten but after that, the schools are proving grounds for the Party. Those who betray any weakness of body or have not the capacities for absolute obedience and submission must be expelled.”
Gregor Ziemer, American teacher, 1941
“[Hitlerjugend leader] Baldur von Schirach was guilty of far more than war crimes. His was the deadly evil of corrupting the young. He poisoned the minds of an entire German generation. He trained and schooled the SS men, the men of the gas vans, the men of Auschwitz and Majdanek.”
New Central European Observer, 1948
The Holy Spirit revealed to Paul 2,000 years ago that the end of the age would usher in an epidemic of demon-inspired disobedient children! The current influence of the Tic Toc app is a great example of combining an atmosphere of rebellion with a willing audience to achieve destructive ends. My 5th grade granddaughter has reported that the current trend on Tic Toc is to video yourself slapping a teacher! In a conversation with a local high school custodian, I learned that not a week goes by without the police being called in and escorting a student out of the building, often in handcuffs, for doing destructive things, imitating what they saw on Tic Toc and other social media!
Do these anecdotes prove we are in the period of time Paul described in II Timothy 3:1 as "perilous" characterized by, among many things, "disobedient children"? Or are we just living in a time period when technology magnifies the "outliers" creating another illusion that things are far worse than they actually are?
If God assured Elijah that 7,000 had not bowed the knee to Baal, we can be assured that Jesus' work of Righteous Redemption has born fruit in tens of (if not 100's of) millions of people world wide who choose light over darkness. But since darkness seems to be in charge of much of what is projected through media, Satan's message that "resistance is futile" will cause many to succumb to the relentless assault on righteousness as we approach the last of the last days.
As Satan as always done, he continues to target children. It's why, in my opinion, children were such an important focus of Jesus' teachings while on earth. In fact, He went so far as to say that unless you and I become like children we will never see his kingdom!
Settling Disputes
The argument the religious leaders put forward, that essentially deflected away from their own spiritual impotence, was that Jesus' ability to "cast out demons" came from Satan himself. Jesus, of course, exposed the folly of such an argument and demonstrated that it was an emotional attack designed to elicit shock from the public and undermine growing public confidence in Jesus' teachings and power. As He did on many occasions, Jesus used Children to illustrate eternal truth:
-When the disciples got embroiled in a dispute over
-When Nicodemus questioned Jesus' authority, Jesus said understanding the work of God's Spirit requires a born again experience, essentially returning to a childlike state of grace and trust.
-He became indignant at any attempt to keep children from receiving His blessing and being near Him.
-He made it clear that receiving a child is indeed receiving His childlike, obedient nature, the truest picture of the Nature of God himself.
-If the childlike character of grace and truth can overcome and "cast out" the lies and deception of Satan, what does it say about the sorry state of religious legalism?
There is a growing controversy in American culture over what many believe to be Satanically inspired school curriculum and parents who want to protect their own children from wrong influences. The moms and dads showing up at school board meetings to defend truth are the offspring of the baby boomer generation who have failed to protect our culture from the lies and deception of the evil one! May God help these children settle this dispute and restore childlike character to our culture!
