Outline For Building-up And Equipping The Body Of Christ

This Biblical Christianity website encourages people to know and to live, God’s Word; thus enabling us to live now as God intended for us to live, and preparing us for eternal life in God’s kingdom.

Site Navigation:This left-column outline contains links to website pages and sources pertaining to helping the Body of Christ gain the potential for which God designed it. The menu below pages down to the individual sections of this outline from which you can navigate to other web pages. There is a fourth level to some of the third level or decimal elements of this outline that is hidden, to view this level click on the (c) symbol in the outline; to hide the fourth level, double-click upon it (I found out, the last time I checked, that Mozilla's Firefox browser doesn't support this fourth level expansion feature, sorry).

Why This World Is In Its Present Condition, Part 2

The condition that the world was in when God created it was perfect (Gen. 1:31); the bad choices that Adam and Eve made changed all that (Gen. 3:1-24), and the subsequent bad choices of mankind have brought us to the brink of destruction.

God speaks of "a pure river of water of life" (Rev. 22:1) that we are privileged to drink from when we submit ourselves unto Him, and there is also a river of death and destruction that all are drinking from when they reject God and give themselves to following the selfish example of Satan. We are using this example of two rivers only as a means to illustrate the good that we receive from God, and the destructiveness that one receives from Satan; we don’t know what God’s water of life contains, and the Bible doesn’t mention any river of death and destruction.

The most pathetic thing about all this is that most people, Christians and non-Christians alike are unaware of all this and continue to drink of the river of death and destruction. How and why does this take place?

There are thousands of polluted streams that drain into the river of death and destruction, far too many to list in this article; so, let’s take a brief look at how this destructive river came into existence and then, how it has expanded.

GENESIS 3:1-5.... Now the serpent was more subtle and crafty than any living creature of the field which the Lord God had made. And he [Satan] said to the woman, Can it really be that God has said, You shall not eat from every tree of the garden? [Rev. 12:9-11.] And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat the fruit from the trees of the garden, except the fruit from the tree which is in the middle of the garden. God has said, You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, You shall not surely die, [2 Cor. 11:3.] for God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing the difference between good and evil and blessing and calamity.

Verse one says, "Now the serpent was more subtle and crafty than any living creature of the field which the Lord God had made," and verses 14 & 15 states, "And the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed above all [domestic] animals and above every [wild] living thing of the field; upon your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust [and what it contains] all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her Offspring; He will bruise and tread your head underfoot, and you will lie in wait and bruise His heel."

Apparently the serpent was a very different creature before it was used of Satan to blaspheme God and to corrupt His truth; so Satan used what was at that time the most attractive and persuasive creature that he could find to deceive Eve. He continues to use the same tactic today by using whatever appeals the most to our fleshly appetites to lead us astray, and to drink of his water of destruction.

So, now we can use the Bible quotations above to suggest that the pure river of water of life, contains God’s truth; and the polluted river of waters of death and destruction, consists of Satan’s lies and schemes. This being so, we can begin to understand why it is so important to know God’s truth from His Word the Bible, and to reject Satan’s lies; because to drink or to make choices based upon Satan’s lies leads to death and destruction, but to choose God’s truth leads to life and peace.

So, this is how the river of death and destruction began. Now let’s look at just one instance, of which there are thousands, of how this dreadful river has progressed.

Many have wondered how the United States has become as degraded and corrupt as it presently is. Again, although there are many, there is one process in particular that began in the early 1930's greatly influenced by John Dewey.

The following is from A Parent’s Handbook for identifying New Age Religious Beliefs, Psychotherapeutic Techniques, and Occult Practices in Public School Curriculums - 1992, by John F. Ankerberg, K. Craig Branch, and John F. Weldon.

In the 1930s, the reality of influence in the schoolroom spurred John Dewey, the father of American progressive education, to write My Pedagogic Creed. In it, Dewey depicts public education as a massive behavior-shaping tool. Dewey knew that you could sway the beliefs of a whole generation in the classroom and thereby alter the course of a nation. While Roosevelt was introducing welfare programs, Dewey saw the public school system as an ideal platform to proselytize his radical socialistic views. Regardless of what the parents believed, it was only a matter of time before the successive generations took over. It was a quiet way to remake the world.

But John Dewey’s ideas did not just come out of a vacuum. He was influenced by an insider group of intellectuals in England known as the Fabian Socialists. Dewey was an American ally of this clique. The Fabians had an agenda of gradualist global penetration by using education as a key tool of influence in this process. (See end note for "The Fabian Agenda.") Dewey, who remained close with Fabian leaders, had his own circle of academic disciples at Columbia University, especially Kilpatrick and Counts, who influenced textbooks and school curricula for decades. Through Dewey’s influence, Harold Laski, right before becoming chairman of the British Fabian Society, lectured at Columbia Teacher’s College for a semester in 1939 amidst John Dewey’s best and brightest disciples.

What did all this mean for American public education? Columbia Teacher’s College influenced other graduate schools and colleges of education. Before long, progressive education, the Dewey-designed tool for reshaping America, was a public school reality all across America.

Dewey knew that to penetrate the existing social order a united front of educators who embodied the new viewpoint needed to emerge from graduate schools. These teachers of teachers would then influence future teachers. Among the new views was a national self-criticism that spurned narrow patriotism for a broader globalism. At the same time traditional values, from parental authority to the validity of established religion, were to be questioned and ultimately dethroned.

Rather than equipping the child to handle the demanding academic and moral standards of the traditional order, with its McGaffey Reader and its implicit moral virtues, Dewey’s progressive education considered behavior-shaping as its highest educational priority. "Socialization" was now defined as a type of learning at least equal to traditional learning. Now the old morals and ethics could be replaced by situational ethics or "values clarification." Reading, writing, and arithmetic took a back seat to an array of experimental programs such as "sensitivity training." The virtues of hard work were replaced by new permissive standards that would pass a failing child rather than harm his "self-esteem" by labeling him a "failure." Total equality was the new ideal; it would jealously guard against too much excellence in any child that might show others to be less endowed, thus implying that abilities were unevenly distributed.

This example helps us to see the progress of this destructive river as this one educational polluted stream along with many others, over a period of about eighty years, grew to where it has become the dominant Worldview. The goal set by Dewey and those with him to "alter the course of a nation" has been achieved, and the result has been the changing of this nation’s viewpoint from a basic Biblical one to a humanistic one. Acting upon and living by these principles creates more and more destruction, because they have rejected God and His truth and instead have accepted and are trying to live according to the lies incorporated in the numerous schemes of Satan.

When America reaches the point-of-no-return, God will judge this nation as He has done all others. But only God knows when this will take place, until that time He is giving us time to reconsider our ways and to bring ourselves into a right relationship with Him through Jesus Christ our Lord. If you have questions concerning getting into a right relationship with God, see our website page entitled What Must I Do To Be Saved.