Satan's Devices, Evolutionism, Liberalism, and Progressivism - Lesson 11

In our series on the devices of Satan, devices designed to capture men, women and children, we have discussed:

his ethics expressed in humanism, his philosophy expressed in materialism, his politics expressed in socialism,

and his psychology expressed in expressionism.

Our next academic area of study is Science, where Satan has devised what the humanist has demanded.

The humanist, exercising the lust of the mind, imagines a world without God and therefore he must, he absolutely must, have an explanation for all that he sees with his materialistic eyes and that explanation at this time is called evolution.

This of course is in opposition to what God has told us relative to what we see with our eyes.

To us God is the creator and that settles it.

Those who have the mind of Christ do not go any further than that understanding, but those without God’s mind imagine a world which has come into being without the agency of a Creator.

Evolution is simply an attempt to explain all that we see in terms of natural, mechanistic processes rather than in terms of an all knowing, all powerful Creator.

Evolution is a religion and it is believed religiously not scientifically.

No knowledgeable evolutionist holds to his beliefs based on experimental grounds for it cannot be demonstrated in the laboratory.

No single fact of Science demands an evolutionary explanation.

Already, through the study of genetics, there are signs that evolution is failing to answer questions of origin.

Genetics is showing a common ancestor of all human beings in lieu of human lines being evolved from many different directions and locations.

If evolution is true shouldn’t there be many lines from which humans came?

In recent years, DNA, the code that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms, has been discovered.

By the way, that is all that man can do, discover what God has already made!

The role of DNA molecules is the long term storage of information.

DNA is basically God’s blueprint or recipe for all living things that he has created.

What more convincing proof does a scientist need to believe that there is a God who has designed this code?

Study God’s creation and you will come to a conclusion that an instantaneous creation was demanded since every living being or living plant depends on other beings or other plants to continue life.

All living things have what is called symbiotic relationships, which are close, long term interactions between species.

Indeed, no man or animal or plant is an island.

You are not self contained or self existent, neither is anything or anyone else.

God has brought about all things within that short period of time described in the book of Genesis for it was necessary for the propagation and continuation of life.

God’s word is clear when He tells us that the man or woman who has chosen to see the world without Him is a fool and as a fool will arrive a foolish conclusions.

Psalm 19:1 tells the fool,  The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handywork.

That word "declare" means to score with a mark, to inscribe.

In days gone by it was popular to carve a heart on a tree which enclosed a romantic message, Roger loves Eva, for instance.

Now upon seeing that, it would only be a fool who said that inscription just happened, that it grew by itself on the tree.

The fool would say it formed on the tree by itself over generations.

We would not think twice before thinking of such a person as a fool.

Each star in the heavens is God’s love note telling his creation that His hand brought about that star.

The daily warmth of the sun, without which we could not live, tells of his love for his creation.

The firmament shows his handiwork, that is, it announces that God was its maker and only a fool would claim otherwise.

Now you can be sure that eventually the claim of fools will fail.

You can be sure as all false doctrines eventually do, evolution will fall by the wayside only to be replaced by another false way.

For humanists will demand an alternative explanation rather than bow the knee to Almighty God.

Christians ought not to try to accommodate God’s word to current understandings by science.

You cannot harmonize evolution with creation into some kind of theistic evolution.

The Bible is trustworthy, authoritative, and inerrant and has no room for imaginations that exclude or even limit God to some decreased participation in the act of instantaneous creation of all things from nothing.

Let the scientists come up with new theories and let the science text book publishers issue their annual revisions, some with new imaginations, while God’s word goes on continuously without revision.

Christians do not have a revision committee for God’s word, for we know from Hebrews 13:8,  that Jesus Christ (who is the Word of God, is) the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.

And as verse 9 of Hebrews 13 continues, we are with this knowledge to,  Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines, in other words be steady in the Lord Jesus Christ.

For when we have the mind of Christ we think within the boundaries of the Word of God.

The sixth academic area we are to discuss is religion, the contrast being between liberalism and fundamentalism.

Liberalism in Religion is a continuous attempt to keep religion up-to-date with an evolutionary scientism.

In liberalism a science that is ever evolving is on the throne and its dictates govern.

The subject of science is a man created subject with all the fallacies and limitations inherent in that statement.

God’s word is fixed, the word of science is not.

Science is a continuing effort to discover and increase human knowledge and understanding through disciplined research.

From a Christian’s perspective science is simply the effort to discover knowledge of God’s creation.

God is the main player in true science.

It is the mark of the fool to let science be the dog and God’s word the tail of the dog.

We are not to interpret the Bible in light of the current views of science.

Why are science texts rewritten and brought up to date a few years after being printed?

I have no addenda to my Bible that changes John 3:16 or Genesis 1 nor does anyone.

If scientific conclusions were right or complete in the first place it would not be necessary to make changes.

Scientists are not concerned with truth or falsity but with workability.

Scientific laws are simply the best currently acceptable explanation for certain laboratory evidence.

God’s laws are fixed, but science’s laws have no such anchor and are subject to change upon new discovery.

When the Bible speaks about matters Scientific, it speaks correctly.

We must not twist or distort God’s word in trying to accommodate it to modern science.

That term, modern science, in itself warns us that if modern today, it will be passé tomorrow.

Do we have such a thing as the modern word of God?

For the most part Science and Religion operate in different spheres.

When they meet, the Fundamentalist considers the Bible to be authoritative and interprets Science in the light of the scripture.

The Liberal interprets the Bible in light of science.

The whole approach of the theological liberal is to attempt to cast doubt on the authority of the Bible presumably by using scientific means.

Now on to Education, the last academic area, where we contrast progressivism with authoritarianism.

This is one of Satan’s devices which incorporates all of the other devices we have already studied.

Again we see the device of progressivism as a device of Satan where there is no acknowledgment of God.

We see in our own community the zeal that is displayed by Satan’s forces to rid any reference of God in government schools.

This ridding any reference of God is even extended to the simple act of a public giving of thanks for food. That is astounding!

In Thursday’s Pensacola News Journal it was reported that it is now the Santa Rosa county school board’s policy to not allow student speakers at graduations to pray or to even make religious remarks.

Talk about a barren land.

What ever happened to the first amendment of the constitution whereby Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion.

Dr. Henson in his Projector article notes that advocates of Progressive Education:

Teach that there are no absolutes. (Contradiction in terms)

Now the authoritative view of education takes the opposite position to that of Progressive Education.

Christian Education has as its foundation the absolutes of God’s Word.

We cannot vary from those absolutes for they are part and parcel of the mind of Christ with which we are endowed.

Our mind is to be hedged in by absolutes.

The ever changing morality of the progressive educator has produced the product that our society now operates with.

Isn’t it ironic that after years of teaching no absolutes we are seeing the chickens come home to roost for God’s absolute that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap is still God’s absolute which proves the progressive’s foolishness.

1. Teach that there are no absolutes.

2. They stress "Life Adjustment" and "Group Acceptance."

3. They downgrade the role of the individual and glorify the

importance of the group.

4. They feel the curriculum should depend on the immediate interests and needs of the group.

Life adjustment and group acceptance may seem useful at first glance.

Certainly we must try to get along with people but the biblical precept is that man is not to adjust or try to conform his absolutes to the demands of the group but resist those demands.

As Peter said in Acts 5:29,  We ought to obey God rather than men.

Knowing that you and God are the majority in any community should strengthen your resolve to obey God and to resist the group who would have you go against God.

The progressive has no sense of accountability to God and therefore any sense of accountability he has, he yields to the group.

This is said with an understanding that we are accountable to God when all is said and done.

This, the progressive does not believe, and this is what moves him to group think the way he does.

5. They believe that memorization is a waste of time.

This is a mark of Christian Education. Therefore its an anti-mark of Progressive Education.

God has made our brains to hold much information for a purpose.

Principally it is to do what Psalm 119:11 says,  Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee.

Memorization is the exercise of the mind which will allow the mind to absorb the doctrines of the faith, to have at the ready the truths of God’s word so that sin will be hindered.

Memorization is hard work, both for the student and for the teacher but again this is the position of the authoritative educator who wishes to instill in his students basic tools with which to function.

Memorizing the alphabet, multiplication tables, poems, songs, historical time lines, and passages of the scripture is a must in order to have a wealth of information stored for use at the right times.

6. Progressive educators advocate "experiencing" learning thru as many sense avenues as possible.

Here again is the use of Expressionism where we let the student learn by expressing him or herself before being prepared.

The teacher is no longer the teacher for that is authoritative but becomes the resource person who is to simply guide the student in self expression.

What do we want to do today? is asked, for anything else is authoritative!

By the way, did you know that asking that question of your little child falls into the progressive kind of thinking. What do you want to wear, what do you want to eat, where do you want to go, what do you want to watch? Parents are to be authoritative until the child is prepared for those decisions.

The progressive has all kinds of fun things to suggest but consequent to the time spent in experiencing things in the classroom time is taken away from real teaching.

Discovery is emphasized instead of having an authoritative teacher who already knows and reveals what it takes forever to discover.

Certainly discovery has its place in learning but it should not be the primary method in the classroom.

We have only touched the surface in comparing the progressive approach to the authoritarian approach to education.

Maintaining the Biblical approach to education is the challenge that we must face head on in our own Christian school.

The culture of the day, known as the course of this world, guided by Satan, constantly pushes itself into our school in subtle ways.

Every day that pressure to conform to the course of this world is felt by our administrators and our teachers.

But we are to stand and not be weary in well doing.

But unless we are alert and are awake to Satan’s ways our school will simply become another avenue to his program for this world, a program where we may talk the talk but not walk the walk of God’s word.

Dr. Henson ended his Projector 1973 article with this paragraph:

We look around in wonder and horror at those things which have transpired in our land in the last five years (now it is 36 years later). If, at the beginning of that period, you had told someone what was going to be happening today. he would have thought you were stark, raving crazy. I have been attempting to show in this article that in every area of our life we can see the atheistic, anti-scriptural attempts to destroy anything which smacks of God or the Bible. However, most of us have never made the effort to understand what has been going on around us. We can be perceptive about the fact that Satan and his emissaries are frantically busy in every area of endeavor as this age draws to a close. If we are to use our time and talents wisely we must be knowledgeable about his activities and we must be able to identify the spirit and philosophy of the Anti-Christ Isn't it about time we become aware of Satan’s devices?