Know your enemy's schemes Part 2
While we are living our everyday lives, the enemy is busy scheming to keep the next two generations from finding God. He is more than willing to work through tiny short-term influences which he knows will have large long-term impacts. For example, few and far between are the godly people with enough wisdom, to see how a simple TV show comedy of the ’60s can affect the attitudes ofwhole generations in the ’70s, '80s. and beyond.
God always has a greater counterpunch in mind if the church is where they can hear it. Men and women of God from the turn of the century forward were trying to warn the spiritual leaders of that generation. Even back into the 1800s, Charles Finney, DL Moody, and Charles Spurgeon preached messages of the repentance which leads to salvation. They tried warning the generations to come of the sins of the world at their time. As a result of their fervent prayer and God led hard work many were saved.
In every generation, the title prophet has carried with it a stigma. Satan always loves to brand prophets as lunatics, extremists and zealots. To make a mockery of the prophets is at the top of Satan’s to do list. Prophets are New Testament gifted men and women of God who choose a life sanctified unto the Lord. As a result, God reveals truths to them that others just do not get. In this present generation, I believe the mockeries and persecutions are at an all-time high, fueled by the progressive introduction of the established educational levels of higher learning.
No one could be foolish enough to lump all the Ph.D.’s we have in our world together and try to paint them all one color. Some of my favorite people are Ph.D.’s who have accepted Christ as their Savior and are earnestly seeking God and led by His Holy Spirit. Years ago when I was just newly filled with His Spirit, the Lord showed me that this nation was headed for its own type of “cast” system. In essence, casts exist whenever one social stratum of a given society thinks they are superior to another social stratum in their nation. This cast system systematically is being introduced in our schools of higher learning.
In one of my earliest classes in Continuing Education as an adult, I learned that I was going to have to swallow a hard lesson in order to receive any kind of a good grade in that class. Having registered for a college level class of Writing 101, essentially a freshman class teaching students how to write term papers. I chose a familiar topic. “Teenagers in America.” At that point, I had spent most of my adult life working with teenagers and I had a passion to educate everyone on teens’ unique set of challenges.
The paper came back with big red lines all over it. The notes on the side asked,“Where is your reference to this and where is the Ph.D.’s opinion on that?” I had chosen to wait until the end of the paper to talk about my over twenty plus years of experience in working with teenagers.When the professor finally arrived at that point on the paper, she wrote, “Oh I’m sorry, I did not know you had that many years of hands-on experience,” and gave me an “A” on the paper. However, from that day on, she made sure that the class knew that unless you had a Ph.D. as a writer, your own opinion did not matter. From then on we were mandated to reference established Ph.D.’s in the field in our writing.
With that kind of educational infrastructure in place in this nation and around the world for the last three generations, the enemy has effectively sown seeds, which ensure that the words of the prophets now have to meet the approval of the Ph.D.’s to be accepted by the people. From a Biblical standpoint, it is the future dearth to the prophets, a dearth we are seeing even now.
One major evangelical denomination was reported to have about 1900 credentialed evangelists on their ministerial roster about 30 years ago. I sat in a meeting where this was reported back then and I was one of them. It was further reported that there were then about 600 who were being supported full time. Today pastors tell me that within that denomination the ones who are actually doing that work full time, are now down to just a few.
As I reflected back to my first experience writing a term paper, I recently said tongue and cheek, that if I had to live my life over I would do what they have done; work very hard to get my Ph.D., because it seems to me as if people would then freely accept almost anything I would tell them as the truth!
Unfortunately, in many colleges now many Ph.D.'s, even claiming to be Christian, mock such Bible truths as the parting of the Red Sea, the virgin birth and Jesus rising from the dead. It would be one thing if they chose not to believe in them, but it is well known by countless reports by students that the professors are doing their best to convert students to their “higher education thinking.” This has a huge impact on young minds. As they start to doubt some Biblical truths, they one by one eventually end up doubting all the tenants of Christianity.
If we are going to be effective in undermining the enemy’s schemes in this hour we must first become aware of what they are. Then we must evaluate their short and long term effect on our society. Thirdly, we must work overtime with our young people to teach them to know what to expect and how to resist. While we have been guarding our polished edifices the devil has been silently pulling the foundation stones, one by one, out from underneath.
