July 21, 2017 Show with Israel Wayne on “Education: Does God Have An Opinion?”

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear

from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arnson.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the

planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Friday on this

21st day of July 2017.

I just came back from a wonderful reunion with

my niece Patrice, my niece Patrice who is the oldest of two

daughters of my oldest brother John, and I have not seen Patrice

since 1995, and not only did I see my niece Patrice for the

first time since 1995, I met for the very first time ever four of her

seven children, and her children that I met today for the first time

are Gabrielle who is 18, Elisha who is 14, Nathaniel who is 10,

and Shiloh who is 5, and we all paid a visit to my other

brother Andy, my second oldest brother, over at the Forest Park Nursing

Facility, and what a blessed time I had, and I am so thankful to God that quite

a long time ago our Lord was pleased to save Patrice, and she married a

wonderful Christian man, and they just celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary,

and they are raising their children in the Christian faith, and it does my heart a lot of joy to know that,

but that is actually connected to our subject today, and that is

our subject with Israel Wayne who I am interviewing today for the first

time.

The subject is his book, Education, Does God Have an Opinion?, and Israel

Wayne is a conference speaker.

He's a regular columnist for Home School Digest, Home School Enrichment, and the Old School

House magazines.

He's a site editor for ChristianWorldview .net, an author of a number of books including

Full -Time Parenting, A Guide to Family -Based Discipleship, Questions God

Asks, Questions Jesus Asks, and Pitching a Fit, Overcoming

Angry and Stressed -Out Parenting, and more, and as I said, we are discussing his

book, Education, Does God Have an Opinion?, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron

Sharpens Iron for the very first time, Israel Wayne.

Thank you, Chris.

It's a blessing to be on your show.

Also joining me again, Steve Schultz has been a guest

on our program in the past, and he is going to be a guest again in the future, but today he is serving as

one of two co -hosts with me as we interview Israel Wayne.

Steve Schultz is headmaster at Grace Christian Academy of Long Island, located in

Merrick, New York, and this is a classical Christian school, and it's affiliated with the congregation

where I was formerly a member, Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you

back to Iron Sharpens Radio, Steve Schultz.

Great, and in studio with me is my more regular co -host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor.

Hello, it's great to be here, and I love the subject.

Great, and our email address, if anybody would like to join us on the air with a

question for our guest, Israel Wayne, our email address is chrisarnsen at

gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live

outside of the good old USA, and please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter,

and I could see a subject like this very easily lending itself to a private and

sensitive question, so if it is about something like that, you may feel free to remain anonymous, but

otherwise please give us your first name, at least your city and state and country.

Well, Israel, what I typically do when I interview guests for the first time is I ask them to

give our listeners something of a summary of your own personal testimony of salvation,

what kind of religious atmosphere, if any, you were raised in as a child, and what were the providential

circumstances that our Lord used to draw you to himself and save you?

Ah, great question.

Well,.

My background is, I'll try to simplify it as much as I possibly could,

but my upbringing is kind of dualistic, I guess I would say.

When my parents got married, mother was not a Christian,

and so their marriage only lasted about six years, and then they divorced at

the time that I was

born, essentially, but when my mother remarried after my parents divorced, she married a non

-Christian and it was a very abusive situation, and I was in a very toxic,

very heavily physically abusive relationship with my stepfather from the age of about

six to fifteen, and so during that time, though, my

mother and I never ended up going

because of

the fact that homeschooling was illegal in those days, it was

against the law to teach your children at home in the United States, in almost every state back

then, and a couple of times where

we were given an ultimatum that we, my mother either had to put us into a,

taken away from her situation,

and then we would, of course, be forcibly put into government education, and so my mother chose

a private Christian, second grade and sixth grade, but

never ended up being in government education at all.

I was bored from the time that I was a young child,

and I think I first asked Christ to save me when I was three,

and then I was baptized when I was seven, and I never abandoned the Christian faith, and some people say

it's not possible for somebody to be saved that young.

I don't know exactly where we find that in the scripture, but...

John the Baptist might have been in the womb, right?

...hand on my life throughout that time and

relationship that I was in.

I had to ask myself, you know, am I embracing the

Christian faith simply because, you know,

do I embrace, and my mother,

soon after that,

and myself, and my

sister, my mother's conversion,

experiencing covenant with the Lord

was pretty radical, and the trajectory of what I'm doing

now, we have a ministry called to

the issues that relate to the

family, marriage, and parenting, and education, and those issues, they're too

messed up, they're too dysfunctional, and God can't really do anything with

them, and it's to say

to change anybody's situation.

Great, and before I move on, I'd like to also have one of our co -hosts, Steve

Schultz, just give a little plug, in your own words, for Grace Christian Academy on Long Island in

Merrick, New York.

Well,

great,

and

for

anybody

who wants to look up information

about Grace Christian Academy later on.

After the program, the website is gcali .com.

G -C -A for Grace Christian Academy, L -I dot com.

Well, Israel, and by the way, Steve, since I cannot see you, you can just butt in any

time, as long as you're not entering into a sentence midstream, but in any time that you

have a question to ask of our guest, Israel Wayne, because obviously, I'm not going to be able to see you raising your hand

or anything like that, since you're on the phone, and obviously, I think a good place to

start off, Israel, would be the purpose of education.

What is it?

And the way I think about it is that I think of life as being like a pie, and if you can identify

what kind of pie you have, if you take a pie,

I live in southwest Michigan, where we grow more blueberries than anywhere else in the world, so that would

be a blueberry pie, and we slice that pie up into eight different slices.

If I take one slice of that pie and I give you a slice from that pie, you will know

definitively what kind of pie you're getting.

If you know what's true for the whole, you know that what is true for the whole is also true for the sum of all its parts,

and so when you think about the question of education, education is a slice of our life.

You know, think of work, you can think of relationships, you know, our hobbies,

all of those slices of who we are, how we allocate our time,

but all of them should be integrated.

They should be consistent with the main purpose of our life.

I think, honestly, Heart 1636, when they were founded, their

original mission statement says it pretty well.

It says that every student should be earnestly pressed to consider well the main end of

his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, John 17 3, and to

lay Christ as the foundation for all sound knowledge and learning.

So the reason that we're here is predominantly to know God, to

love Him, and to obey and serve Him, and then we do that

through practical application and loving and serving other people.

So my family actually has a mission statement, and we have a poster that's on our wall,

and it says, in our living room, and it says, we exist to know, love, and serve God, and love, and serve other people.

So the reason we educate our children, love, and serve the God who created

everything, who made all these different academic disciplines, and then to be equipped practically

to go out in the world and bless other people in the name of Christ, to glorify

God.

With their knowledge and with their talent.

And what about government schooling, commonly called public schools, which

ironically in the UK, I believe they call private schools public schools,

but there seems to be a mixture of opinion amongst

those in the body of Christ in regard to sending their children to public schools.

Some think that this is a way for their children to be salt and light in the

world as Christians, if they are indeed Christians, and they think that

is a good way to help them develop social skills and

discover what it's like to be in the midst of the world with opposing views to

Christianity and so on.

What is your view of that?

Each of those, I think, first of all, I'd like to kind of identify what the purpose of an education would be from the

government education model.

Sure.

And 80 to 90 percent of

all viewpoint by

involved in teaching children.

But when you look at that form of education, you ask parents, why are you sending your children to school?

Why are you teaching them?

Why are you educating them?

About 80 percent of all Christian parents will say, well, I'm educating them so that they can, you know, get

good grades and learn things and have good information so that they can.

And I say, okay, awfully hard to get a

job.

I say, well, why do you need a job?

And they say, well, it's important to have a job because if you don't have a job, then how are you going to make money?

I say, well, what do you need money for?

Why is it important to make money?

They say, well, and if you don't make money, how are you going to pay the bills?

I mean, the people

that these questions, they basically

stop there.

Like, they don't have a way to even think beyond that question.

Self -evident, like, well, that's what you do.

That's why we're here.

That's why we're living is because we're supposed to work a job

and support our family.

What else is there?

It's really the American dream.

And what I see is the

teachings of Jesus and the apostles kind of turn everything on its head and say that none of

those things about the difference between

ends and means.

And we tend to look at a lot of things as ends that really are not.

And so even a job, even money, for what end?

Well, I would suggest going back to the purpose of life, that there are means for us to know, love and serve God and love and

serve other people.

That's why we're here.

So ultimately, if I can break it down this way, you really only have two models.

You're here to know, love and serve God and love and serve other people, or you're here to know, love and serve.

Essentially, that's the

mantra between K -12.

Even if they're Christian,

of my time and my money to Jesus, and then the rest of all this

life, become a bondservant.

Or a greater purpose.

And could you tell us something about the state of the government

schools throughout the country?

I'm assuming that there would be some areas of the United States where the agenda has been

more dominated by leftism.

I don't even use the term much anymore, liberalism, because so much of what we see

is not liberalism.

Because liberals, at least the classic liberals of years ago,

believed that conservative ideas and Christian ideas were an acceptable

voice in the town square and the table of

exchanging ideas and so on.

Now, you have what is more resembling of leftist

totalitarianism, where many and not only your average household, but those

even more dangerously in positions of authority in government want to just remove

our voice and our opinions from the town square,

from public hearing, from elected office, etc.

But if you could tell us what you know about the state schools.

Across the

nation.

I think there are pockets, obviously, of the

country.

The northeast is going to be way more liberal.

People who are

involved, there is a concept that

people have,

especially if they happen to live in an area that might be marked

by more conservative people.

There's a belief system that I hear all the time.

If you ask people, what do you think about government education on a national basis?

Almost anybody, anywhere, I'll tell you it's in trouble.

Academically, there are issues with it.

Morally, in math,

school district.

I don't think I've ever been in

government schools that does not firmly believe that they live in

a...

It's interesting because he and I

did a tour.

It's a heavy church.

You've got the Assembly of God at their national

headquarters.

This guy went in and

he took out the

request and showed it on PowerPoint.

He said, I'm just going to read you this.

This is required reading.

I got this out of your school's library.

Just let me read this to you.

He would start reading from it.

The people complained to the pastors

at the church and said, these people should not be allowed to come here and speak in our church.

They were using profanity and reading what essentially amounts to

poorly put out.

They should not

be

allowed to

come

here and

speak

those

words

that

you

don't

have.

I was just curious if I could ask my co -host Steve Schultz a question about

children leaving the government school systems to enter into

enrollment in Grace Christian Academy.

What kind of things have you heard from parents who are making that decision?

LGBT schools have

been...

I say

it that way,

but

worldview.

They'll need

to make

an

alternative.

And we're going to go to a break right now.

If anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question, and we do have a number of people who have already

lined up to have their questions asked and answered by you, Israel.

But if anybody else would like to join them, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H

-R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

And as always, please give us your first name, at least your city and state and your country of residence, if you live outside the USA.

And please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter.

Don't go away.

God willing, we will be right back with Israel Wayne and our discussion on, Education,

Does God Have an Opinion? A Biblical Apologetic for Christian Education and

Homeschooling.

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Welcome back.

This is Chris Orns,.

And for those of you who just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours, with about 90 minutes to go, is

Israel Wain.

We are discussing his book, Education, Does God Have an Opinion?

A biblical apologetic for Christian education and homeschooling, co -hosting with me

is Steve Schultz, the headmaster of Grace Christian Academy of Long Island in

Merrick, New York, and also in studio co -hosting is the Rev. Buzz Taylor.

If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at

gmail .com.

If you have a question for Israel Wain, and perhaps even for Steve Schultz,

and please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter.

Otherwise, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

We have a question for you, Israel, from Daniel in San Jose,

California.

He says, Hello, brother.

I am a father of two young boys and another child on the way.

Lord willing.

Christian education and discipleship is very important to my wife and I, who are new to homeschooling.

We are struggling on what curriculum to use.

Can you shed some light on how to choose the right curriculum and how to get the most out of

homeschooling?

Also, I live in California, and sending my sons to a public school is out of the question because of what is

taught at schools today.

Should I completely keep my kids away from what is taught in the secular schools, for example, evolution,

or is it beneficial to educate them on such subjects?

So you've got a couple of questions there, Israel.

Yeah, great.

Well, thank you for your question, and I'm excited to hear about your commitment to discipling your children.

That's very refreshing.

I'd like to abstain from mentioning any particular curriculum

publishers, although I have biases to

avoid promoting one over another.

I'll just say that you want to look for a publisher that is specifically

integrating a biblical worldview into every aspect of their

curriculum.

Most of the major Christian publishers who produce K -12 curriculum, I think, do this

fairly.

I would recommend, I don't know where you live in California, but there is a

conference you can go to

that's in Sacramento, and it used to be one in San Jose.

I've spoken at that one in the past, but there's one I'm going to speak at as a keynote for 2018, and it's

called Schooling in Sacramento.

You can find out about their homeschooling conference, and at that conference, you can go and actually look at the

curriculum.

You can pick it up.

You can browse through it, and that'll help you in making the selection of what

you actually choose.

On the aspect of teaching evolution, I think it's vital

for Christian young people to be taught about the theory of

evolution.

I think the problem with government schooling is that it teaches

that evolution is true.

My wife and I homeschool.

We have nine children.

My children know about the theory of evolution, and we talk about it frequently and extensively, and

we're not afraid to talk about the viewpoints of the other side, but we don't

present that as being truth.

I think it's really difficult for children, started again

with 10 ,000 to 14 ,000 hours of a narrative that says that everything that exists came

out of an explosion and then flowed out of

the primordial soup to where we are today, confused when they have that

narrative that's just impressed on them over and over and over, not just through school but through

television, social media, everywhere,

and then they go to church and their parents tell them, ah, we

don't believe that stuff.

I think they feel like, okay, so these Christians just don't know anything about science, and

I think it's important for us

because we do live in a world that was created by a

divine infinite.

In fact, Steve.

Schultz, as headmaster of Grace Christian Academy, I understand that

classical education would be in full agreement with what Israel just said because of the fact that you

want children to be taught the truth, but at the same time you want them to be able to think critically,

think apologetically, and they are exposed to the

anti -biblical, un -biblical theories out there, at least in certain classes, but they are taught

not as a alternative option for truth or possible truth, they are just

taught so that your students can more intelligently communicate with people that.

Hold

those

views,

am I right?

And Reverend

Buzz Taylor, my

co -host in

the studio, has

something to

say.

Well, you're also teaching debate there.

That's great, but for our listeners' question, I'm very

pleased to hear that you're making that decision also.

I made that decision a long time ago when I first learned about homeschooling.

I went home until my wife, there's nothing else for us to do.

We homeschooled six children, but when we started homeschooling, there weren't a lot of curriculums

available.

It's developed so much over the years.

Back when we started homeschooling, it went by a different name.

Back then it was called child abuse, and there really wasn't a lot of stuff written for it, but as we went through

the years, we changed curriculums a few times because that wasn't the big issue.

The big issue was that they were getting an education and it was not going to be an education that was going to destroy their

faith.

Thank you, Buzz.

We have Joe in Slovenia who has a question.

Dear Brother Chris, thanks for filling each day with excited anticipation about the rich topic you'll address for us.

Please ask Brother Israel to address the issue of socialization for homeschoolers.

The most frequent question or objection that we receive about homeschooling our children is, how are they

going to be socialized if they don't go to public school and learn to interact with other children?

I'm amazed at how this seems to be such an important value for so many people.

The same people agree that much of the socialization that kids get in public schools is negative,

yet somehow they think that it is a necessary aspect of becoming a well -adjusted member of society.

Can you please dispel some of this wrongheadedness for us?

Thank you so much for sharpening us today to care deeply about the proper education of our children.

Great question, and one of the things that I set out to do when I wrote my book, Education,

Does God Have an Opinion?, is I wanted to completely examine

and get down to foundational presuppositions, if you will, to examine what is it that we

believe fundamentally and why do we believe it.

For example, when we think about education, if I were to tell the listeners, just close your eyes and tell me what

comes to your mind when I say the word education.

They probably say big brick building, playground,

chalkboards, school desks,

kind of thing.

I say, okay, textbooks.

I say, okay, that's great.

Now, let's say that you and I were, and all we had was a Bible

and some free time.

You're with me because I don't know how to build a boat.

So I say, let's try to find out, what does God have to say about education?

And what would education look like if all we had to describe it was a Bible?

Would any of those things that you just mentioned be in the list?

They would say no, because none of those things that they think of when the word education comes up in

conversation are anywhere found in Scripture.

So what I think that shows us is that the things we believe about education have been informed

to us by something other than Scripture.

They've been informed to us primarily by our experience.

We've been told this is what the paradigm of education is.

I would say that as Bible -believing Christians, we supposedly

believe that God's word is the final authority for life and morality and

practice, and that that's our starting point.

That's our foundation.

So as it relates to this issue of socialization, when I ask parents, is it

important for children to be socialized?

Everybody says, well, of course it's important to be socialized.

And what's interesting is if you go to a Christian homeschooling conference and there's a workshop on

socialization, almost inevitably you will have a speaker who spends 55 minutes trying to

give you 300 different ways that you can properly socialize your

children.

Because even within the Christian homeschooling community, we have accepted this premise, we've bought into this

presupposition that children, in order to be properly socialized, need to spend large quantities of

time around other children their own age.

Now let's just drop everything we thought we knew about education for a minute and go to Scripture.

Does Scripture reinforce that viewpoint?

Where in the Bible does it say, make sure that your children spend large quantities of

unsupervised time with other children their own age?

Or just even large quantities of time with other children their own age?

Give me a chapter, give me a verse, any verse in the Bible that would give us that idea.

I'm going to suggest to you it's not there.

I would also suggest that the Scripture says the exact opposite of that.

And one of the passages that comes to my mind is Proverbs 13 verse 20, where it says, he

who walks with wise men will become wise, but a companion of fools

will be destroyed.

What's interesting to me about that is that the Bible actually gives us a definition, two

definitions actually, of what a fool is.

The one is where it says that the fool has said in his heart there is no God.

So that's one category or one definition of a fool, the person who does not acknowledge God and dismisses

God from the equation.

That would be one example of a fool.

The other would be found in Proverbs 22 15, and that's where we're told that foolishness

is bound up in the heart of a child.

A place that we can go to expect to find foolishness would be in a child, because

it's not just there, it's bound up.

When we think about a social context where we want our children to be, when it says

that a companion of fools will be destroyed, then you shouldn't have your children spending large quantities of

time around, A, other children, or B, people who say there is...

I think you can infer that from...

What's interesting is when you think about someone who's wise, and you say, well, what does that look like?

Well, a wise person typically would be someone older, someone who has some life experience,

someone certainly who acknowledges God.

That would be a wise person, and the scripture tells us that that is who we want our children to hang around.

We want them to be around those kinds of people.

So that wouldn't look like a classroom with 30 students all the same age.

There's another verse in the New Testament where the Apostle Paul says something very similar.

It's in 1 Corinthians 15, 33, and Paul says, do not be deceived

or do not be misled.

Bad company corrupts good character.

And this really ties in with that salt and light argument, because people say, well, you need to have your children in

the public school so they can be salt and light.

And the Apostle Paul, I think, dismantles that argument by saying that rather

than your Christian child going in there and converting this whole class of non -Christian

students, the tendency, the rule, is that your good

child who has good character is going to be influenced negatively by the social

context of the classroom.

And I say there's three different teachers in every school.

There's the person who stands up in front and says, good morning, class.

I'm your teacher.

There's the textbooks, which is also a teacher.

And then there is the teacher who actually influences your child and has the most influence of all in the

classroom, and that is the peer group.

And the peer group is the most dominant force in the school.

And so that social context of the child being with other young people who have a

tendency, a trajectory towards foolishness, is very

harmful for the child.

So the Scripture tells us that we should have them be with wise people, those who fear the Lord,

those who are older and more mature.

The analogy with salt and light that I think is important to consider

is, the argument is sort of like this.

Your child is like an apple, and people are saying there's this barrel of bad apples over

here in the school, and you have a good apple.

You need to take your good apple and throw your good apple over into that barrel so that your

good apple can make all those bad apples turn good.

The Apostle Paul says, do not be deceived, do not be misled.

Bad company.

There's really nothing in Scripture that would support the idea

that children spending large quantities of time hanging out together is beneficial for them.

I think it is important for children to spend time with people of all ages, but they should do

that in a context where there's oversight, and where there's guidance, particularly by their parents, where

their parents are there, where the parents are involved.

And this is a little bit of a rabbit trail with this, but that whole concept of age

segregation, it was actually created by John Dewey, who was a signer the first

time he was an atheist and a socialist, the father of the progressive

education movement in the 1920s and 30s in the United States.

He created the 30 to 40 student classroom specifically because he wanted to break

the allegiance of children from their parents.

And he said, in order to do that, we have to shift the children's allegiance away from

their parents, the child's allegiance, to something else.

And the easiest way to do that is to create a herd, to create a peer group.

So he said, if you take 30 to 40 students all the same age, and you set them in a classroom for

one year, in one year's time, most of those students will become peer dependent.

And once they're peer dependent, and you've created a herd, then you as a teacher can infiltrate that herd.

And if you do it smart, you can lead that herd anywhere you want to take them.

And in the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx said, he said, you accuse us of wanting to destroy

the most hallowed of relations between parent and child.

He says, to this crime, we plead guilty.

He said, the communists want to replace home education with social.

And it's interesting, he uses the word social.

The whole theory, if you study the history of the concept of age segregated,

it comes from Marxist socialists and social engineers

who wanted to break children away from their parents, and they wanted to use a peer group to do it.

Now to really segue away, but still tied in, we took that Deweyian

Marxist concept of lumping children all the same age together in one classroom,

creating a herd of children, you know, creates

dependency to where students are afraid to go against the opinions of their peers, and they're afraid to

stand out from the group.

We've taken that model that was very intentionally created to destroy family unity.

We've imported it into the church wholesale.

We've basically taken what the government education system has done with their school system.

We've imported it into the church and never thought twice about why we were doing it.

We just thought, this works so well in the school system, we should bring it into the church and duplicate the same model

here in the church, even though we don't find anything in scripture that ever says we should be sectioning off

children by age or by grade into little subcategories within the church.

The New Testament church certainly never practiced that, but where did we get it?

Well again, if we're on a deserted island and all we know about church is what we find in the Bible, we didn't get that idea from the Bible.

We actually imported it from John Dewey, Karl Marx, and others.

So it's interesting, there's way more history to that than what I have time to share, but there's a great video out there if

you go to indoctrinationmovie .com, the 90 -minute documentary on the history of government education.

I'm on the video, Ken Ham's on there, Dr. Erwin Luther from Moody Church, Dr. Al Mohler, a lot of

other Christian leaders are on this documentary.

If you want to know the history of government education, check out that video, it'll be very eye -opening for you.

Indoctrinationthemovie .com?

I think it's just indoctrinationmovie .com.

Oh, indoctrinationmovie .com.

Great.

Yeah, if you search indoctrination movie education, if you google search that, it'll come up.

Another excellent resource to look for on YouTube is the lecture that Dr. Tony Costa

of Toronto Baptist Seminary, he is the professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist

Seminary, he gave a lecture to a group of pastors out here in Carlisle,

Pennsylvania at my most recent Iron Sharpens Iron radio pastors luncheon, and his lecture was

on the subject of the effects of cultural Marxism on American society, or North

American society, since he's from Canada, and I think that you will be blessed and edified and

have an eye -opening experience by that lecture, so just look up Tony Costa, C -O -S as in

Sam, T as in Thomas, A, Dr. Tony Costa, cultural Marxism lecture,

look that up on YouTube, and you'll be able to see the whole thing.

We're going to a break right now, and the Reverend Buzz Taylor has something to say, so please don't forget what you were going to say, Buzz, and we'll have you

chime in when we return from the break.

And Seth from Greensboro, North Carolina says, tell Joe in Slovenia, great minds think

alike, I was going to ask the same question.

So think of another question, Seth, and you will ask that on the air as well.

So don't go away, we are going to be right back, God willing, with Israel Wayne right after these messages.

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Am I now seeking the approval of man or of God?

Or am I trying to please man?

If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, Pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

We are a Reformed Baptist Church and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689.

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We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do

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That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the Apostles' priority, it must not be ours either.

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Linbrook Baptist Church on 225 Earl Avenue in Linbrook, Long Island, is teaching God's timeless truths in

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We're a diverse family of all ages.

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Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko inviting you to tune into a visit to the pastor's study every Saturday

from 12 noon to 1 pm eastern time on WLIE radio.

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We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in

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Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you never dull.

Join us this Saturday at 12 noon eastern time for a visit to the pastor's study because everyone needs

a pastor.

Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnsen.

If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about an hour to go is Israel

Wayne.

We are discussing his book, Education, Does God Have an Opinion? A

Biblical Apologetic for Christian Education and Homeschooling.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Israel regarding this topic, our email address is chrisarnsen

at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

And we also have two co -hosts today, Steve Schultz, headmaster at Grace Christian Academy of Long

Island located in Merrick, New York, and the Reverend Buzz Taylor who is in studio with me.

Before I return to our guest and our discussion, I have some important announcements to make from

sponsors of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

The Word of Truth Church is pleased to announce that the Word of Truth Bible Institute will be offering two

free classes this summer, Old Testament Survey and the Book of Romans.

The Old Testament Survey will meet tonight from 7 to 9 p .m., and the Romans class will meet next

Wednesday, July 26th from 7 to 9 p .m. at the Word of Truth Church,

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Registration is required by calling Pastor Bruce Bennett at 631 -806

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And even though the Romans class and the Old Testament Survey have already

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The church website is wotchurch .com, W -O -T for Word of Truth,

church .com, W -O -T church .com.

Coming up in August, in just a matter of a couple of weeks, August 3rd through the 5th,

Fellowship Conference New England is being held at Reverend Buzz Taylor's Old Stomping

Grounds in Maine at the Deering Center Community Church in Portland, Maine, and the

speakers include Pastor Don Curran, who is the Eastern European Coordinator with

HeartCry Missionary Society, the organization founded by Paul Washer, my friend Pastor Mac

Tomlinson, who is an author and a pastor at Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas,

and Pastor Jesse Barrington, who's been on this program as well, a pastor of Grace Life Church in Dallas,

Texas, the sister church of Grace Life Church in Lake City, Florida, who has a radio station that

airs Iron Trumpet and Zion Radio every day in a pre -recorded form, and also Pastor Nate Pickowitz,

who has been on this program.

He is the author of Reviving New England and also the new book, Why We're Protestant.

He is also a pastor of Harvest Bible Church in Gilmanton Iron Works, New Hampshire.

If you'd like to register for this conference, go to fellowshipconferencenewengland .com,

fellowshipconferencenewengland .com, and then in November, from the 17th through the 18th, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

is hosting their Quaker Town Conference on Reformed Theology at the Grace

Bible Fellowship Church in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania.

The theme is For Still Our Ancient Foe, a line from the classic

Reformational hymn by Martin Luther, A Mighty Fortress, and obviously our ancient foe being

a reference to Satan.

The speakers at this conference include Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and

Scott Oliphant.

If you would like to register, the website is alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org.

Click on Events, and then click on Quaker Town Conference on Reformed Theology.

And coming up in January, from the 17th through the 20th, the G3 Conference returns to

Atlanta, Georgia on the theme Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship.

January 17th is exclusively a Spanish -speaking edition of the conference, and January

18th through the 20th is exclusively an English -speaking version of the conference, featuring

Stephen Lawson, Vody Baucom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .P. Charles Jr.,

Tim Challies, Josh Bice, my dear friend, Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, Tom Askell,

Anthony Mathenia, Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas,

and Martha Peace.

If you'd like to register for the G3 Conference, go to g3conference .com, g3conference

.com.

And now, finally, it is that uncomfortable moment that I feel compelled to participate

in, even though I don't really enjoy doing it.

That's grubbing money from you at the urging of the advertisers that are already keeping

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio afloat and on the air.

I've been urged by them to make public appeals for donations, even though for years, I have never made a

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Months ago, they urged me to begin doing so due to our great financial need in order to keep Iron

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If you love this program, if it's a part of your regular habit, if you find it edifying

and you are blessed by it, please consider donating to us by going to ironsharpensironradio .com,

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Those two things are commands of God.

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And again, go to ironsharpensironradio .com and click on support for the address.

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That's also the email address where you could send questions right now for Israel Wayne, our guest today, on the

subject of education, Does God Have an Opinion?

Chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

And by the way, I forgot to mention to both Joe in Slovenia and Daniel in

San Jose, California, I forgot to mention to you two something very important.

You've both won a free copy of Education, Does God Have an Opinion? A Biblical Apologetic

for Christian Education and Homeschooling by our guest Israel Wayne.

Compliments of our friends at Master's Books and New Leaf Publishing.

And also it will be shipped to you, compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service,

cvbbs .com.

That's cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for BibleBookService .com.

So keep your eye open in the mail for a package with a return address that says cvbbs

.com.

Please give us your full mailing address so that Todd and Patty Jennings of cvbbs .com can have that shipped out to you

as soon as possible.

Now I know that the Reverend Buzz Taylor had something to say that we did not have time to have him say

before the break.

So Reverend Buzz.

Yes, I'll tell you, if today's discussion is any indication, I think that's

a book that should be in many people's hands.

So I'm glad that our listeners are getting them and everybody else, if you've got children, should buy one anyway.

But I remember years ago hearing D. James Kennedy, you know, we're talking about, we were talking about the socialization

issue and the witness issue of children in the public schools.

And I remember him saying it, and it just made so much sense when he said, he said, you don't pit your nine -year -old kid against

a trained humanist because the kid's going to lose.

And you know, why not?

You know, that made so much sense.

But talking about socialization, I have heard about the

stratification being a leftist technique and all.

And, but you can just do a little experiment on this.

Go to a Christian camp or go to maybe even your own church.

And you'll notice a number of people, a number of young people cloister in their little groups.

And then others will actually engage in conversation with you.

If they engage in conversation with you, ask them if they're homeschooled.

And I think you'll be surprised most of the time the answer is going to be yes, because those are the ones that really do develop the

socialization.

And as far as negative socialization, you know, we of course didn't want that either when we kept our children out

of the public schools.

But then the unfortunate thing is we started seeing some of the influence coming in.

And we're like, where's this coming from?

And it turns out it was from the public school children in the Sunday school.

Do you have any comments.

Israel?

Let me just give a quote from the Puritan writer, Richard Baxter.

He lived from 1615 to 1691, wrote a lot of excellent books.

This is what he said about socialization.

I quote, keep your children as much as may be from ill company,

especially of ungodly playfellows.

It is one of the greatest dangers for the undoing of children in the world,

especially when they are sent to common schools, for there is scarce any of those schools

so good but have many rude and ungodly ill -taught children in it.

Wow, powerful words.

Yeah, the scripture does not affirm this concept of pure segregated, pure,

you know, separate.

And really the reformers did not.

And most of the Christian leaders throughout society did not.

If you go back to read the writings of Charles Hodge and A. A. Hodge of Princeton,

or J. Gresham Machen, or some of these other great writers, they warned against

the harmful influence of government education.

But unfortunately, the convenience of just being able to drop your children off into a school classroom

that you don't have to pay for has really won the day with most Christians.

There is a survey that was done by an organization, I'm gonna leave unnamed,

but a very large Christian organization sent out an email survey, and it asked this question.

It said, if you could give your children a Christian education, either through homeschooling or at a Christian school,

and cost was no consideration, you didn't have to pay for it in any way, would you choose

Christian education over government education, or public schooling, as they put it?

And they never published the results.

So I had a friend who worked for the organization, and so I called and said, are you gonna publish the results?

And they said, no, they decided not to.

They just wanted it for internal use.

Can you tell me?

Well, I'll just tell you this, the composite answer was 77 of

our evangelical respondents said they would choose some form of Christian education

as long as they didn't have to pay for it.

And that tells me a lot.

And what I believe is that when you hear these arguments about, oh, well, we want our kids to be in the public

schools, to be salt and lighter.

We have a great public school and all that.

I'm thinking if 77 say we would opt out if we didn't have to pay for it, the real rub here is the

money.

And that's where most parents is, that's the issue, that they just don't want to, or in some cases

financially cannot at the present time, make the sacrifices to put their children into

Christian school or to homeschool.

But for many of them, I think a lot of these other arguments are smoke and mirrors.

It's their way of justifying to themselves that the decision that they feel is an

inferior decision, it's going to work out okay somehow.

Steve Schultz, do you have anything to add?

You seem to be in hearty agreement with Israel.

You heard my amen?

Yes, it did.

Um, yeah, again, I dialogue with parents in the church and I ask

them why, why not?

Well, we have Gordie in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who

says, my wife and I homeschool our seven children and we were wondering what you see as the

biggest challenge for homeschoolers in the coming five to 10 years.

Israel?

I really don't even have to think about that.

I know exactly what it is in my mind.

When we were fighting those fights for homeschool freedom 25 years ago, you know, the biggest

objective was to stay out of jail.

I mean, it was the fear of, will my kids turn out okay?

Will they be able to be academically successful?

Will they fit into the real world?

Will they grow up and be good citizens?

You know, all those kinds of things.

Like, will they grow up and have a good relationship with me?

And all the evidence is in now.

And all of those questions are answered with a resounding yes.

Affirmatively, homeschooling is successful on every level that you can think of in terms

of an outcome that would be desirable.

But I think moving forward, the greatest enemy of the Christian homeschooling movement

is not some kind of federal, it's not some sort of threat

from without.

I think the Christian homeschooling movement is its own worst enemy right now.

I think we are very likely not going to have our freedoms stolen from us.

I think we're going to voluntarily give away our freedom.

And the reason I think we will do that is because increasingly now, the government has

figured out that the way to fight homeschooling and combat homeschooling is not to oppose it

outright because they get a big pushback every time they do that.

The way to fight it and oppose it now is to offer homeschoolers

free money.

And if you give them free money, they will take that bait, hook, line, and sinker, and

they then can be controlled by it.

I'll just tell you something that happened a couple of months ago.

I was speaking in Alberta, Canada at the conference, homeschool conference there.

And what just happened in Alberta is that the government just mandated

that all government schools, private schools, and

homeschools, all schools in Alberta have to teach an LGBT,

gender -neutral, what do you call it, gender -fluid curriculum,

or else they'll lose their government funding.

And what's interesting is there are no Christian schools and there are no homeschoolers in Alberta

who don't take government funding.

I found that shocking.

But for 20 years now, all the Christian schools in Alberta and all of the homeschoolers are

taking government funds.

And in Alberta, the only way you can homeschool legally is to homeschool through the private schools.

So just quickly, what the state's done there, what the government's done, province, is they have given

Christian schools $5 ,500 per child per year if

they register with the state.

And the homeschoolers are all homeschooling through private schools.

They don't have a separate homeschool exemption.

They just are considered private school students.

And so the homeschoolers then get a voucher for $2 ,750.

They get about half of that if they school.

Just being part of the school, they automatically get this voucher money.

So I spoke at the homeschool conference, and they go, if you have four children, you're going to the homeschool

curriculum fair with a check for $10 ,000, a voucher, and you have to spend it

to get it.

You know, so if you don't spend it, then they don't reimburse you.

If you basically bring in your receipts, they reimburse you.

Anyway, all this to say, they've been doing this for 20 years.

The homeschoolers have never fought for a separate category legally other than private school because

they think, well, if we did that, we wouldn't get our government money anymore.

We wouldn't get to go with thousands of dollars to go buy all our Christian curriculum.

You can buy Christian curriculum with it.

We can't go buy Christian curriculum with our government bucks.

And so two of the main Christian schools in Alberta said,

okay, we're not going to teach this.

You can have your government money.

And they said, no, that's not good enough.

We're actually going to shut you down.

And so they've actually shut down the two of the largest Christian...

All the homeschoolers who are under that umbrella covering are now homeschooling illegally because they don't have a

separate exemption.

Now, I know that Canada is not the United States, but we just have a thing here in Michigan and almost

every state is going to move towards this where homeschoolers are getting money in partnerships

with the public school system or you get special classes and so on.

And I'm seeing this happen all over the United States.

And the Trump administration and Betsy DeVos have talked about how they want to help homeschoolers by giving them federal money.

So it's not only are they going to have access to state money, they're going to have access to federal money.

And the Christian homeschool community just thinks this is the best thing since sliced bread.

They're just chomping at the bit, can't wait to get, you know, eat out of the government trough.

And what they don't realize is that whoever pays for the child's education controls it.

And so they're basically going to turn over their freedom and their ability to teach whatever they want to

because the government already has their hooks in it since they're funding it.

So that's the biggest threat homeschooling faces in the next five to 10 years.

And by the way, I don't know if while you -.

Government money.

I'll repeat the last thing you said because I was talking over you who didn't realize you were still speaking.

What was the last thing you said, brother?

The very last few words.

The threat that faces homeschoolers, yeah, that faces homeschoolers in the next five to 10 years is homeschoolers

taking government funds.

Okay.

By the way, I don't know if you met while you were out there in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, if you met

my favorite new preacher.

When I say new preacher, he's new to me.

Armin Tamasian.

If you haven't met him, you've got to meet him the next time you're in Alberta, Canada.

He is the pastor of the Calgary Free Presbyterian Church of Alberta,

Canada.

And he is absolutely phenomenal.

He's a young man and listening to him preach puts me into a time machine back to the

days of the Puritans.

And it's just phenomenal to listen to this gifted young man proclaim

the gospel of Jesus Christ and its purity.

And I just want to give a plug to my new friend, Pastor Armin Tamasian.

His website for the Calgary Free Presbyterian Church

in Alberta, Canada is calgaryfpc .ca.

That's C -A -L -G -A -R -Y -F -P -C for freepresbyterianchurch

.ca.

Calgaryfpc .ca.

By the way, thank you, Gordy in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania for the great question.

And since you live so close to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, you're only about 10 minutes away being in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

Why don't you swing by there tomorrow and pick up your free copy.

Maybe Monday.

Oh yeah, that's right.

Monday, I'm sorry.

They're closed Saturday.

Swing by Monday and pick up your copy of Education, Does God Have an Opinion?

A Biblical Apologetic for Christian Education and Homeschooling by our guest Israel Wayne.

Compliments of our friends at Master Books and New Leaf Publications and also

compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

So thank you so much for contributing an excellent question to our guest today.

And man, time is flying by.

We are going to our final break right now.

And if you would like to join our other listeners who have asked questions, if you

want a question of your own asked, please do so now before we run out of time.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And please give us your first name, your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA.

And by the way, I'm going to read a question, Israel, for you.

And you can have time to mull it over during the break.

And you can as well, Steve Schultz.

And then you can answer when we return.

We have a listener from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, CJ,

who says, I know that we are always to put God first and doctrinal biblical

purity before any of our other activities in life.

But I think it is a very serious issue when a child that demonstrates

gifts in athletics may be deprived from pursuing

these skills and even perhaps making a career out of them.

And these are things that are very rarely found available in Christian schools.

And of course, the homeschoolers have their own problems with this.

Can you please give a Christian response to this question?

And thank you, CJ, from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York.

And we'll have our guest answer that question, God willing, when we return from the break.

Don't go away.

God willing, we'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzin.

If you just tuned us in, our guest for the last 90 minutes and for the next half hour has been

and will continue to be Israel Wayne.

And we have been discussing his book, Education, Does God Have an Opinion? A Biblical Apologetic

for Christian Education and Homeschooling.

And also we have had two co -hosts, Steve Schultz, who is the headmaster of Grace Christian

Academy of Long Island, located in Merrick, New York, and in studio with me, my co -host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnzin at gmail .com.

Chrisarnzin at gmail .com.

And both Israel and then Steve, if you could chime in on

the question that we had from our listener.

CJ from Lennonhurst, Long Island, New York, is fearful of gifted children, children who are gifted

athletically specifically, that may be deprived of pursuing those interests and even

pursuing a career in those fields because of the fact that either private Christian schools or

homeschooling sometimes can be a roadblock to those kinds of pursuits.

If you could answer that very, I think, very good question from CJ.

I'm going to answer it in two different ways.

The first answer, I'm actually going to allow the Apostle Paul to go to this issue

in 1 Timothy 4, 8.

And from the New American Standard Bible, he said this, Her bodily discipline is

only of... but godliness is profitable for all things since

it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.

The Apostle Paul, when he's considering the option of physical

exercise over against godly instruction and equipping someone to really know, love, and

serve God, he says the weight of the decision is really not

equal.

You need to pursue godliness and character and eternity

above the pursuit of a physical sport or physical exercise.

The other thing I would say is he doesn't completely dismiss the concept of sports in

that he uses that as an analogy in some of his other messages where he talks about if a runner

is running, how they seek a prize, and those kinds of things.

He uses some sports analogies.

So I don't think the Apostle Paul condemns all sports out of hand, but

he, I think, makes sure that we keep our priorities in order.

Now, here's what I would say on the issue of public school.

I think that mentality that we have where we say, well, I have to put my kid in a public school so that he can play

football, he can play basketball, baseball, whatever it is, or track or something, and he'll just never have an opportunity

for a career to be an Olympian or something if we don't go down that track.

I think it's that kind of thinking that keeps progress from happening in the private sector.

You know, what if 30, let's say 40 years ago, what if Christian school

administrators had said, well, you know, I'm afraid that if we don't put our kids in public school,

they'll never be able to get a job somewhere.

Well, that's more important than playing a sport, isn't it?

But they didn't say, so let's just keep sending our child to public school.

They started Christian schools, and lo and behold, guess what?

Students did really well, and they got jobs.

Or what if somebody said, you know, well, I think we shouldn't homeschool because, you know, what if our

children won't be able to succeed in life and whatever?

Today, there are homeschool basketball teams.

There's actually a national basketball conference that happens down in Springfield, Missouri every year.

There's a homeschool baseball World Series.

There are lots of Christian schools, particularly in the Southern states, have very large football programs.

There is a bias against Christian -educated students on the part of the establishment,

but I think that would go away if people stopped going to the default of we have

to choose a government solution to our problem.

I don't know if that makes sense.

What I'm saying is the default that Christians have is we have to find a government solution to our problem because you'll

never be able, the private sector will never be able to compete, will never be able to be as successful.

Socialistic options are always better.

That's the Christian mantra of today.

I don't believe that.

I don't think that's true.

So I would say that if we close the door on that kind of thinking and say, how

do we solve this problem?

I think you'd see like the person who created this homeschool basketball league or who started these Christian

school football teams, you would find solutions being provided within the Christian community.

And I think the students coming out of there would excel.

I think they'd be the Daniels and the Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego who would excel to the point that they would be recognized.

The level of endeavor they go into, they would be the cream that rises to the surface.

They'd be noticed.

And I think that you'd find NBA and Major League Baseball, I think you'd find them getting drafted and

recruited right out of Christian schools if people didn't just bail out on that idea and say, well, we have to go to the

government because they're the only ones who have the potential of being successful.

So I'll kick that back over to Steve and see what you have to say.

And of course, there's always the option for the Christian schools to have bare knuckle boxing in the parking lot.

I'm just kidding.

But by the way, I hope that these Christian avenues for

athletics are not having kids participate in these activities on the Lord's Day because I'm amazed

how many Christian parents I have met who have said to me, oh, we haven't been to

worship service in a month or so because we've been taking our kids to soccer.

And it's just amazing how Sunday has become the official day of

athletic activity.

And it's such a tragedy.

But anyway, Steve Schultz, if you could comment on that as well.

And also, I understand you have a couple of your own questions for Israel.

I do.

I'll hold off on my questions for a minute.

We're going to get everything that you want.

And

now,

CJ,

it

gives

us great

facilities,

community, prioritically Christian.

Again,

I'm

evangelical,

so

I'll

use

my,

so we just went to one

of the

things.

Great.

You had a couple of questions.

Church basketball team.

Yeah, as a homeschool student, I played on a basketball team.

There was a church basketball team.

We didn't have homeschool groups back then.

But churches used to have teams, softball leagues and things like that.

There's a lot of opportunity.

If the point is just for physical exercise and sport, then I think there's a lot of community opportunity.

Churches could do this kind of thing, homeschool groups.

Homeschool groups could come together with Christian schools, work together.

There's a lot of things.

Let me just throw this in real quickly.

I'll try to be short with this.

On the funding side, I think this is something just creative to think outside the box because we kind of come back a lot

of times too that we don't get to do everything we feel we should do because we don't have enough money.

I was in a church in a state I won't name, but this was a Dutch Reformed

church.

They had a commitment that every student in their church would have an

opportunity to have a Christian education if they chose it.

But they just didn't want anybody to not receive a Christian education if that was possible.

So what they did was they said, before we send a nickel to foreign missions,

we're going to look at our own children in our own church as the priority, kind of like Jesus

said about, you know, the Great Commission starting in Jerusalem and then Judea and Samaria and the uttermost parts of the

world.

This is our Jerusalem, our own children, really our first mission field.

And so we're not going to give any money until every child in our church is

subsidized to receive a full Christian education if they choose.

And I thought, you know what, that is so incredibly bold and creative.

And I just think if we thought more that way and prioritized Christian schools, then you wouldn't

have Christian schools who were financially deficient all the time, couldn't do things so they didn't have finances.

You wouldn't have people who say, well, we can't homeschool or whatever.

You know, how you work all that out, I'm sure, is a challenge.

I just throw that out there to say, I think if we made Christian education a priority, you'd start

finding solutions like that rather than saying, well, why don't you just send them to public school, which is what everybody does.

They just go, well, why don't you send them to public school?

It's always better.

And so I'm going to say, I think we need to start thinking first and primarily that Christian children need

Christian education.

And Steve, if you have your questions.

Okay,

keep

the

gospel.

Well, I would say this, it's impossible for a school not to indoctrinate a child.

The question is, are they giving them the correct doctrine?

Of course, children will be indoctrinated into some kind of doctrine.

The question is, is it a true doctrine or is it a false doctrine?

I was on NPR, a state NPR station one time, and the guy asked

me the question.

He said, don't you think that homeschoolers have this small provincial monolithic,

one size fits all worldview that they're presented because they only get one perspective from their parents.

They don't really get to see all the different views and all the different perspectives like they do in

public school.

I said, like they do in public school?

You mean like evolution?

He said, exactly.

Okay, so in public school, can you teach intelligent design?

And he said, no.

I said, in public school, can you teach young earth creationism?

He said, no.

I said, can you teach any other theory besides macroevolution in public school?

He said, no.

I said, so basically what you're telling me is they get a one size fits all monolithic provincial education and

government education.

In homeschooling, we don't.

Viewpoint's all different sides, but we have a thesis that we think is true, just like you have a thesis you think is

true.

It's impossible to have an educational system that does not promote

values because that really is the goal is to try to transmit not just information, but to

teach a child, what do you do with this information?

And you can't teach values unless you have a moral law and you can't have a moral law unless you have a moral law giver,

but that looks an awful lot like God and you can't have him in a government school system.

So all you can ever do is teach knowledge in a vacuum, which I would posit just

equip somebody to become a more educated heathen and we don't need more of those.

What we need is we need information in the context of ethics.

All right.

Steve, did you have another question?

Yeah, if I may.

Yes.

Okay, I'm going to do my best to articulate this so it makes sense.

If it doesn't, it's my fault.

Allergy between three

begins with a very

used

adverb.

Yeah, if I'm understanding the question correctly, it's humanism.

Absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, it's humanism.

And that is what the founders of government education said that they were trying to

do is they were trying to create a system that would be

exclusively promoting humanism.

The guy who was the founder of compulsory attendance laws in Massachusetts, he said this, we who

are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents

as having given hostages to our cause.

I mean, he was very clear that he had a set of principles of

a worldview that he wanted to indoctrinate these children into.

And it was the religion of humanism.

And Charles Potter, the humanist, John Dewey, lots of these guys have just been going

through a number of their quotes this last week working on a new book for next year.

And they were just outright forthright about the fact that they wanted to promote

the doctrines of humanism, that man is the center, man is the measure of all things.

Do you have a list of any?

I do privately.

I haven't published them, but yeah, I've got a few, probably a few thousand quotes right now.

And I'm looking on incorporating them into the next couple of books that I write.

I'm going to do one that's, this book, Education Does God Have an Opinion, is really just trying to help

people to establish what a biblical philosophy of education looks like, and then how a

biblical philosophy can be taught in every academic discipline.

So I teach that, you know, mathematics is not religiously neutral.

Physics is not religiously neutral.

Geography, phonics, there's no subject that's religiously neutral.

People say, oh, math is math.

Jesus doesn't have anything to do with math.

I contend that emphatically in my book.

And I say, you will either teach the Lordship of Jesus Christ as it relates to math, or you will teach a humanistic version

of math.

There is no middle ground.

So this book is going to radically tweak the way people look at education.

But I've got a couple more in the pike.

I've got one in the back of my mind on the history of government education.

And then I've got a kind of bullet point Q &A style apologetic

book to help people to defend their decision to choose Christian education and homeschooling that's scheduled for next year.

Great.

Any follow -up, Steve?

Can I just...

Yeah, just real quick.

The reason I ask that question is because I...

To families, nothing

is

more

effective...

Yeah.

...to incriminate that.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, that video that I mentioned earlier, indoctrination, every Christian who's considering this issue of

education needs to look at it.

The full title of that is Indoctrination, Christianity...

Or sorry, Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity in America.

That's the subtitle.

Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity in America.

That video in 90 minutes lays it out as clearly as I've ever seen anybody lay it out.

But there are some other resources that you can get if you go into that video, two

experts that are mentioned in there, Samuel Blumenfeld, who just passed away this last year in his 80s,

one of the best educators and historians of education.

Was that Blumenfeld or Blumenfull?

It's Blumenfeld,.

Okay.

The Samuel Blumenfeld.

And then also John Taylor Gatto, G -A -T -T -O.

He was a New York State and New York City Teacher of the Year.

This guy is an insider's insider.

And in 1991, at his acceptance speech for his award for Teacher of the Year for New York State and

New York City, he stood up and said, we're doing the greatest disservice we could possibly do these children by having them in government

education.

Best thing we could do is just shut down the whole thing.

So anyway, he wrote a book called The Underground History of American Education,

Dumbing Us Down, and a bunch of other books, John Taylor Gatto, G -A -T -T -O.

Those two guys are both on that indoctrination video.

He's also, I think, in his 80s now.

But that video is a springboard into other resources.

But those two guys are the two leading historians.

They just put hundreds and hundreds of pages of information that's still out there, just most people don't know about them.

In fact, I could confirm that you are correct as far as the website.

It's indoctrinationmovie .com.

I'm looking at it right now.

Well, Israel, I'd like you to summarize what you most want to have etched on the hearts and minds of our listeners

before we run out of time today.

I think the fact that there's almost nothing that is going to shape the future of a child's life

more than how they are educated, and that parents are the ones in

Scripture who are really the only agency that God has ever commanded to teach children.

God didn't command the church to teach children.

He didn't command the civil government to teach children.

He commanded parents.

And then in two Bible verses, grandparents, where he said, teach your sons and your sons' sons.

God puts the burden and the weight of responsibility for education on parents, and he

tells them it has to be done in the fear of the Lord, and has to acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so I'm going to suggest to you that you get a copy of Education.

Does God Have an Opinion?

I think it'll be a game changer for you.

I think you'll never look at education the same way.

Great.

And you can get that book from Cumberland ValleyBibleBookService

.com.

I'm sorry, CVBBS .com is the website which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com.

And I know that Israel Wayne's website is IsraelWayne .com.

IsraelWayne .com and also FamilyRenewal .org.

FamilyRenewal .org.

Israel, do you have any other contact information that you could share?

Look me up on Facebook.

I'm at forward slash IsraelWayne.

And also forward slash FamilyRenewal.

Podcast, if you listen to podcasts at night,

you can find our podcast.

But I would love to keep in touch with you that way.

If people want to subscribe to our email list, go to FamilyRenewal .org.

Forward, send them our once a month email update.

If you're interested in having me speak at your church or a conference, I would love to come and speak

to your group.

My email would be FamilyRenewalEvents at gmail .com.

We're going to be doing a trip out east in October.

So maybe we can piggyback something while we're out there and speak to your church or group.

So we'd love to hear from you.

Great.

And of course, the publisher of this book can be found at MasterBooks .com.

MasterBooks .com.

And Steve Schultz, please say a few words before we run out of time about Grace Christian Academy.

Okay.

The internet one is through our main website, which is GCALI .com.

Activities that

we're engaged in

are waking

up.

Great.

Well, I would love to have you both back on the program again in the near future.

In fact, I know, Steve, we already have an interview with you sometime in the future.

Do you have the calendar in front of you?

Or I don't recall when we have you scheduled.

Okay, great.

Well, everybody, you can mark your calendars for that.

October 12th, 4 to 6 p .m. when Steve Schultz will be returning as our guest to discuss Grace

Christian Academy and classical education.

And hopefully we'll also have both of these brothers back on the program together in the near future as

well.

I once again want to thank all of our listeners who took the time

to write in questions.

And I think I forgot to tell CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, you have won a free copy of

Education, Does God Have an Opinion?, a biblical apologetic for Christian education and

homeschooling.

So make sure we have your full mailing address and we'll have Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service ship you out a free copy of the book as

well.

And I want to thank both of you men for being on the program.

I want to thank the Reverend Buzz Taylor for being my co -host today.

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far

greater Savior than you are a sinner.

Have a very safe, blessed, joyful, refreshing weekend and Lord's Day.

And please, if you do not have a church home that's biblically faithful, seek one out prayerfully.

And if you need help in finding one, we can help you with that as well.

God bless you all.

And we look forward to hearing from you and your questions for our guests next week, God willing, on

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.