Thanks for having us up here to Alaska. I appreciate everybody coming out to talk about something that's near and dear to my heart, and that is really the salvaging of faith and family in the 21st century America. And I'm concerned about what's happening with the faith in England, America, the entire west. The statistics I think are pretty clear as to what's going on. I cover these things on my radio show.

Any of you ever listen to Generations with Vision? Generations Radio. We're doing an everyday program and you can get it anywhere in the world at kevinswanson.com or generationsradio.com. I encourage you to tune in from time to time. One of the reasons why I do it on the internet is because it's expensive to buy radio time.

It costs about $30, 000 per station per year. We did it for a while, but we found that it's better just to bribe people with a mug. We give away free mugs and free pens. So take a pen and tune in. I guess is what I'm saying.

Grab a free pen and tune into our radio show. So you know try to get people to tune in anywhere and and we're we have a really growing audience. I interview Scott Brown probably what Scott six times a year something like that and we just get the word out to tens of thousands of people, 110 countries around the world tune into us and it's kind of a decentralized form of media that we didn't have 20 years ago. You know, I compete with ABC, CBS, and NBC in my pajamas in my basement. I think that's pretty impressive, to be honest with you.

So, you know, we're cracking the monopoly through the internet. It's actually kind of neat. So I encourage others to get involved in the Internet too. But anyway, we're concerned about the dissolution of faith and family in the Western world. And in fact, in England, it's terrible.

Church attendance is 5% now in England, down from 12% in 1970, and the average age of the church attender has risen from 38 to 58 in 40 years. So the church is pretty much dead in England. According to my calculations, it's probably about a 0.25% of English people are born-again committed Christians who attend a good church on a regular basis. 0.25%, which is probably lower than Japan at this point. What this is is the dying of the faith.

This is how the faith dies out. And I think people like us who are Christians ought to be somewhat concerned about it, especially if we have children and we want our children to go to heaven. Because if you think about it, that's just tens of millions of people, tens of millions of children and grandchildren who are not going to heaven. That seems significant to me. You know, I mean, I'm a Christian.

And I believe, you need to believe in Jesus Christ to go to heaven. Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. And if people are rejecting Christ, then that means they're rejecting heaven. And there's just a lot of people, a lot of our friends and family members that are doing that right now.

And the millennial generation in America are abandoning the church. Right now, the most recent statistics indicate that only a half a percent of the millennial generation believe in absolutes, down from 14% in their parents' generation. Now, if you take 14 minus .5 divided by 14, that's a 96% apostasy rate in just one generation. That's pretty impressive. So right now, just right now, all these children, these tens of millions of children who were raised in the 90s, are walking away from the faith in America.

The cliff seems to be a little steeper here than it was in England. So the dying of the faith is a concern of mine. That's why I wrote my book, Apostate. I wrote it for, you know, 50, 000 to 100, 000 families left in America that will retain the faith in the next generation. I'm hoping that there will be at least 100, 000 families that will retain the faith in this generation.

So I'm as concerned as Noah was for his family a few years before the rain started to fall. That's pretty much where I am right now. And one of the significant causes, one of the most fundamental causes that is bringing about the devastation of the family and the faith, and I'd add freedom as well, is the disappearance of the father. This I believe to be the most fundamental social problem. There are fundamental theological problems.

We could talk about those things, but for tonight I just want to point out that the disappearance of fatherhood is the root foundational issue in the disappearance of the faith and the family in the 21st century. That's why The Hunger Games were so important to this story, to this narrative. The Hunger Games is important for us tonight because it is the most popular movie in America right now. And it was outrageously popular about a year ago when the first movie came out. Now, this is a series of books that is very popular amongst the youth.

And the reason it's important is because it presents a dystopia that almost exactly patterns the breakdown we're seeing today around us. That's why people find it so engaging. It's a very dark, dystopian story. By the way, about every other movie that comes out is dark and dystopian because the modern consciousness is well aware of the fact that Western civilization is dying. It's not just the faith dying, not just the family dying.

You kill the faith. You kill the family. You kill hope for the future. You implode your birth rates, and you will see civilization disappear and other civilizations take its place, as in the Muslims or what have you. OK?

So what The Hunger Games presents is a story about an entire world that is so corrupted by tyranny that the only possibility for salvation is a 14-year-old girl. And the story, as it plays out, is basically hopeless, because tyranny exchanges for anarchy through the story, and then anarchy exchanges for tyranny, and these are the only two options. That is either anarchy and revolution or tyranny. And the reason that there is no hope whatsoever in the world, in a world run by the Hunger Games, is because there is no faith and there is no father. In fact, in the most recent story, now I've done some reviews on this because a very large proportion of our Christian homeschooling population is fairly gaga about the story of the Hunger Games.

So I felt it would be important to analyze that we did analysis last week on our radio show, because we want to be sure people understand what's going on, that these movies are training 14-year-old girls and 16-year-old boys to be hired by the government to become gladiators and put bullets through the heads of other people by the year 2040 or 2050. It's a very scary sort of Nazi world that's being prepared by movies and stories like The Hunger Games. Now, here, by the way, if you're ever caught in a gladiatorial conflict like this, or forced into it, do exactly what the monk did when he stopped the gladiatorial games in Rome. Do you remember the monk that traveled all the way across the Mediterranean Sea, jumped into the middle of the Roman Colosseum and started screaming, stop the madness, stop the madness. They killed him on the spot that that was the last of the games in Rome because it was Christianity.

It was a man who had the guts, the courage to stand in the middle of it without any weaponry whatsoever, wave his hands and say, stop the madness in the name of Jesus Christ on the right hand of the Father. And by the authority of Jesus Christ, who by the way does reign on the right hand of the Father. I understand that these stories don't acknowledge his reign. They don't believe in God, and they make an exception to take his name and gain from time to time, just to prove to everybody they're apostates and they hate God if he does exist. But beyond that, there's no real sense that there is a God or Jesus Christ on the right hand of the Father.

That to us is by far the most important historical point, the historical reality that sets our metaphysic that we could ever, ever bring up. Jesus Christ rose from the dead in AD 33, he's on the right hand of the father, and he will rule, and those enemies will come under his footstool, period. That sets our view of history. If that's not your faith, I would encourage you to get some faith beyond what you get from this naturalistic, materialistic world that is leaving people with nothing but hopelessness. So our perspective is different than theirs.

But again, if you're ever stuck in a gladiatorial conflict, no, you don't run around killing each other. You stand up, you wave your hands back and forth like this, and you say, stop the madness in the name of Jesus Christ. But the point I really want to make is that the Hunger Games presents a dystopia because there is no father. The only possibility for salvation is a 14-year-old girl. Now, in a biblical concept of things, if any of us were happened to be show up in kind of a Hunger Games scenario, the only thing we could possibly do to resolve the problem is not revolution, But regeneration.

You follow me? This is the only solution. Regeneration. That is, a man preaching the kingdom of God, calling men and women to repentance. And I say, first and foremost, men.

Discipling men, moving from village to village, preaching the word of God, pointing at men, calling men to repentance, and then discipling them such that they can disciple their own children in their homes and their sons will one day become principled sheriffs who understand the book of Proverbs and the laws of God whereby anarchy and tyranny may be carefully balanced and a social order according to God's plan, because He's very good with this. He understands human society, understands how to balance the freedom of the one, or the structure of the one, and the freedom or the liberty of the many. He does this by a law, by the way. It's found in the Word of God. It's really cool.

You should check it out. And when these young men are trained in these households, in the book of Proverbs, and in the book of Deuteronomy, etc., through the Word of God, they grow up and they can become future fathers and, by God's grace, future sheriffs who can establish some measure of freedom somewhere in the world and defend their people in a just and proper way from tyranny that may rise up around them. This, my friends, is the solution. But it will not happen if there is not a single father or a single grandfather or a principled Godly sheriff available to defend freedom somewhere in the earth. This is so incredibly basic.

If you don't want to live in the Hunger Games, if you do not want to leave your grandchildren or your great-grandchildren in a dystopian world, my friends, there is only one solution and that is the preaching, the discipling of the Word of God as you sit in the house, as you rise up, as you lie down. Amen. Man, that's got to happen. This is so fundamental. And friends, I'm here to tell you, I've said this before, some of you heard my radio show, we're not going to salvage freedoms in Washington DC with a hockey mom from Alaska who happens to have another daughter with another kid born out of wedlock contributing to the 42% of kids in America born outside of wedlock up from 6% in 1960.

The foundations are destroyed. Do you understand? What do the righteous do? If somebody came to my home in the middle of a gigantic earthquake like that which hit Japan a couple of years ago, and I really decimated the entire economy in Japan for another three years, if that ever happened, somebody came to my door and said, I'm a carpet cleaner. I'm here to clean your carpets.

I would tell them, I don't need my carpets cleaning. I have a seven foot fissure in the basement. What I need is concrete. Somebody get me concrete. I don't need you to clean my carpets in Washington, DC over the next four years.

I need concrete in the foundations. Because friends, without concrete in the foundations, we have no superstructure. We have no society. Whatever people are trying to do in Washington DC to restore freedom and structure in America is not going to work as long as families are as disintegrated and broken down as they are. There is no hope for their reclaiming of faith, freedom, the strength and vitality of the church for the next generation, not going to happen.

Now, some say, well I'm not really part of those statistics. But friends, our churches are filled with these statistics. And these are the single moms that I'm working with all the time. These are the young boys raised without fathers in my home. I mentor them and have for the last four years.

I put thousands of hours of time into these poor boys who've been hit by the shrapnel of the breakdown of the nuclear family in America. You bet it affects us. Of course it does. It should drive you to tears from time to time to see the effects upon these boys and these girls that are part of these statistics that really are seven times worse, seven times worse, than they were in 1960. If the children born today are born in a situation seven times worse than it was back in 1960, What in the world is 2060 going to look like?

Are you with me? I have no idea. Maybe you should watch the Hunger Games. Wait a minute, don't. Just listen to my review on it.

I know that Scott Brown has these same concerns. What I'm talking about is the restructuring of society from the bottom up. What I'm talking about is repentance. God the Holy Spirit needs to just penetrate our hearts by his word and as we read 1 Timothy 3, 5 and 6, I mean we glossed over that a hundred times in the last 20 years of our lives but at some point That verse just needs to hit you like a ton of bricks. If a man cannot rule his own household well, how will he rule in the household of God?

I was reading the Gazette, Colorado Springs Gazette, a couple of years ago. Somebody cut out this article for me. Colorado Springs is the mecca of modern Western Christianity. Focus on the families there, a lot of missions organizations. They have huge mega churches that line the streets.

And here, this was a secular newspaper commenting on what was going on in the state of Colorado. And they found that the highest divorce rate in Colorado was in El Paso County, the county where Colorado Springs resides. And they're like, what's going on here? Because as it turns out, the highest divorce rate in The world is the United States of America. Okay, so if you want to go to a nation that has better concrete, go to Portugal.

Or go to Chile. By the way, I've just done what I call the evil index on my radio show, where I've taken about seven or ten different indices, murder rates, abortion rates, homosexual, you know, on and on and on and I've found the absolute worst hell holes on planet Earth. And America is right now right around number 21, but when it comes to the divorce rate, America is number one. The worst divorce rate in terms of people keeping covenant and establishing good strong families, America is not doing very well at all. But the highest divorce rate in America are the western states as in Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and Alaska.

Okay, it tends to be the western state, the highly individualistic states in which feminism and other things that are very individualistic, these kinds of things really do very, very well. In fact, Colorado is the first state to endorse abortion in 1967, signed by our Republican governor, Love. Ironically enough, his name was Love. But now, let's take a look at this. You look at the whole globe, all of America, all of the world, America's worst divorce rate.

Worst divorce rate in America is the western states. The worst divorce rate in Colorado is Colorado Springs, the Mecca of evangelical Christianity. So, Can anybody say we're in trouble? I mean, like, what's going on? It looks to me like, number one, we're in trouble, And number two, Christians haven't done a cotton-picking thing about it for the last 40, 50 years.

Their influence upon the whole situation is like putting your finger in this thing of water and pulling it out. Not a lot of influence. Seems to be the way things are right now. I think the reasons for this are theological mainly. Our theology is messed up.

And we need to start recognizing where American Christianity has failed, go back to where we have failed and repent at that point. I'm thinking of some of the calls to repentance in Revelation chapter 2 and chapter 3. So anyway, in this Gazette article, these reporters were interviewing different megachurch pastors. And one pastor, Pastor Steve Holt, down in Colorado Springs, he'd been interviewed. His homeschooling dad, a pastor of a big megachurch down there, good man.

He's a good man. And his response to this question, why is Colorado Springs the worst divorce rate in Colorado, in the state of Colorado? His response was, man, I'm a pastor of a church with 3, 000 people. I feel like I'm rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic trying to keep this thing afloat. And the reason, of course, is because three pastors, full-time paid pastors, Ministering in a church where the tithing is like 1.4% per congregant Okay, you follow me here is not Going to work now you have enough resources to put on a really big show, but in terms of mature elders to shepherd and disciple Not more than 10 to 12 maybe 14 families at the most.

That's the ratio we can handle Scott I don't know how many you can you guys can handle but it's somewhere around there you get more than that you have no idea who their names are of the sheep you're supposed to be shepherding and those for whom Jesus is going to hold us to account in the final day. So honestly, brothers and sisters, I think the breakdown of the church and right now I think the mega church is a last ditch attempt for the last few functional elders left in America to get at the very very tip-top of a big pyramid and say I'm hanging on for dear Love baby. We're gonna keep this thing going until it hits the viceberg and then it goes kaboom So that's my theory on on what's going on right now in America It's it's it's the problem is we don't have enough elders. I know Scott made this point I'm not supposed to make it again, but without fathers who shepherd their little sheep in those homes faithfully as they sit in the house, as they walk by the way, as they rise up as they lie down, we won't have shepherd pastors for the flocks.

Someone told me recently they've got some pastors, elders in their church, they're very, very well instructed in theology, seminary grads, etc., etc., a bunch of theological eggheads and they have no idea how to shepherd sheep. And there's that problem too. There's all kinds of problem in our present day. We got a lot of misconceptions of what it is to be a father, to be a man of God. We got the macho man, we got the wimpy man, we got the guy who can't lead a poodle on a potty walk.

We've got the guy who's this theological egghead, and we've got the guy who sits there changing channels and hollering out at his wife, beer me from time to time. We've got the inner city men who smoke in peyote engaging in tribal warfare and impregnating every girl in the tribe, which is ultimately what pagans tribes did when Lewis and Clark made it across the United States. They'd find these tribal men doing what pagans do. Well, we find all of that in our present day, but not very many men who know how to be covenant-keeping, godly, God-fearing, repentance men who know how to live and lead before Almighty God. We just don't have these men today.

They're very rare, and men who can shepherd. I mean, mighty, tender shepherds. We work on Adjectives because we're trying to understand these things And I can't tell you it's so hard for me to come and and speak on some of these issues because you know guys we're just trying to recover some of these things. I come from a father who himself was trying to recover something of fatherhood. I can see it still to this day.

He's 79 years of age. He communicates with us all the time. Every day, he writes all of his kids, because he's trying to reach out to us still, trying to understand what it is to love and to shepherd and to be a father. And he's just, God bless my dad. He's made tremendous progress.

I think of my grandfather didn't know what to do. He sent his kids off to boarding school, especially his younger kids off to boarding school. Billy Graham was sending his kids, because that's what evangelicals did in the 1950s, lost the heart of his youngest son. And he turned into a homosexual and died of AIDS in San Francisco in 1979. So those stories really went through my family.

When you come to 1969, my dad already seen the damage done. In terms of those relationships, he could see the stiffness in relationships between fathers and sons. My dad kind of understood that in 1969. So when the mission board was sending us off to to the Philippines as missionaries one of the last things they were telling my dad is oh by the way You're sending your kids to boarding school in Manila. If you do this mission work in the Philippines My dad had tickets in hand He had the crates ready to ship to Manila and at that point my dad said over my dead body are my children going to boarding school we ain't going to mission field I Mean There it was to me amazing step of faith And this became you know legendary in in the stories that are told in the Swanson household.

Here's my dad saying, over my dead body. I understand that missionaries have been doing this since the second generation of missionaries went to Hawaii in 1830. First generation were homeschooled. Been to the Missionary Museum out there. If you're ever out in Maui, be sure to go to the Missionary Museum.

I've been there twice. I want to make sure I follow through. But the second generation, by 1830, it was boarding schools and from that point on, the hearts of the fathers and the sons weren't doing so hot. So, my dad wound up going to Japan because they could homeschool us there. So, my father was standing on his father's shoulders.

I feel that I'm standing on my father's shoulders as I'm trying to understand what it is to gain the hearts of my children. And believe me, I'm not good at this. And it's been a challenge for me, but God is teaching us some things And I think we're starting to build some things back. James Dobson, a couple of years ago, said the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was the breakdown of the nuclear family in the West. And he nailed it.

Now, I would say that the most fundamental problem with the breakdown of the family was the breakdown of fatherhood. And the world is caught up on this too. Seventy percent of young men are not grown up now by 30 years of age, not grown up, up from 30 percent in 1970. Twice as many 23-year-old girls have college degrees as 23-year-old boys. And the problem is only getting worse.

I'm sort of chronicling this a lot on my radio show. I said I'm chronicling the demise of an entire civilization. I feel like I'm reporting from 460 AD Rome. That's what I feel like's happening right now. It's like, it's exciting.

In some ways, it's really depressing, kind of, in other ways. But it's sort of like, you know, you're sitting there watching Rome fall in 475 AD. This is interesting, guys. Take notes, you know. So I'm checking out this Pew Research study that was just done on bread winning, on who's the bread winner today.

Now it's been 50-50, 60-40, 70-30. The men were engaged. The silent generation, the boomer generation, et cetera, et cetera. You hit the millennial generation. Now, in the millennial generation, 64% of households are provided for by the woman as the major breadwinner, only 17% provided for by men as the major breadwinner in the millennial generation.

Eric, I sat there staring at those results. I had to go over it like four times because I didn't want to report it wrongly to my audience. You know, do you understand what's going on? Because I keep thinking, well, what happens in the next generation? What happens in the next generation?

After the millennial generation? Friends, there won't be one. You understand? You don't get another generation. Once the men have walked off the plantation, There is no new generation.

You don't have more children. Who's going to have children? Do you understand why it's so important that Obamacare provide Plan B pills for 15-year-old girls now? Does everybody understand why it's so important? Why are they fighting tooth and nail to be sure that there is no age limit on Plan B pills for 14-year-old girls?

Why is it so important? Because society is dying. Now, why are we here? We are here because we want to salvage something does anybody else agree say Amen if you agree I want to salvage something I think there are probably some people with vision. Some grandpas, some grandmas, some moms and dads in this room saying, you know what?

Can we not ride the Titanic all the way into the iceberg? Can we not? Can we just not participate in the 87% or the 62% or whatever it's going to be? Can we just not play that game? Can we not be part of what The Atlantic Magazine calls the end of men and what Time Magazine calls the demise of guys.

And by the way, the feminists are still celebrating. They're toasting on the bow of the Titanic. It's kind of tipped a little bit. They're trying not to spill their champagne, but kind of hard to toast when you're doing this. But they're toasting, and they're all so excited about the end of men and the demise of guys.

There's only 70% that have a clue in life. And 95% of the jobs lost in the last recession were lost to men. And 70% of those retained were retained by women. And they're just so excited that we're seeing the end of men. And what happens, friends, is men are the first to check out.

The women will Try to retain something of a civilization for another 12 years or 20 years max. But when men have checked out, that's the end. So it's for us to understand what the Bible says about manhood. I'm still believing the Bible is a good book. Okay, I think it's really a good time to go, you know what, I'm not going to go with what the macro is saying right now.

I'm just getting a long shot here. God knows what he's talking about, what he says. The family's important. Let's just go with what God says. Now believe it or not, there are people who do not agree with me on this whole Bible thing.

I was interviewed by a liberal station down in Austin a couple of months ago, And I pointed out, hey, you guys got 42% of kids born outside of wedlock up at 6% in 1970, destroying the family. Half of marriage is in in divorce, nuclear family now. Less than half American households, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. The whole thing's dying. You're killing the families.

He said, yeah, but it's just an experiment. We're just going to see how it works if you destroy the whole foundation of society. Just go in under that 75-foot tower and chip out all that concrete. Just it's an experiment. We just want to see what happens.

I'm thinking to myself, Can I not be a part of that experiment? Can I go over here? Y'all with me? Some of you guys are in contracting. You chip out a foundation.

Have you ever seen these Chinese towers, these big old apartment buildings? That they're just brand new apartment buildings and they're, poof, they fall down. You know, they didn't have any foundation. That's what happens. Okay, so.

Honestly, I think now is the time to get back to the word of God. And if people get a little nervous when we start bringing in Proverbs 31 and the husband's head of the wife, as Christ has had the church, and the heart of her husband, say if they trust in her so that he shall have no need to spoil, oh that's so patriarchal, and that's so, that's evil. My attitude is, so what? I could care less what they think. I'm going back to scriptures and I'm gonna try to understand what the word of God says.

And here, stay humble. Because in the incorporation of the principles of God's Word, it's going to take some tweaking. We find some families hitting this guardrail, hitting that guardrail, stay humble. Understand we don't always do this right, And we've got to adjust it from time to time. But to avoid the Hunger Games scenario, let's get back to the Word of God and let's form things right there.

Judges 21 is probably the key chapter for what happens when societies come apart at the seams. Judges 19 and 20 and the whole war that happened there. Something similar to that happened in Richmond, California, by the way. The whole Gibeah event happened in Richmond, California, when a Christian father dropped his daughter off at the most dangerous high school in San Francisco Bay Area for homecoming dance night without a chaperone. And the whole Gibeah thing played itself out.

I'm not going to describe what happened. It was just so sick and so horrible. And it hit the news. Very few churches reported on it. As far as I know, no one cut up a body and sent it all over the United States.

But the abandonment of fatherhood, the destruction of our daughters, and the asexuality and other things, these things are happening everywhere wholesale. And the reason why these things happen is as a wake-up call to the rest of us to wake up and say, whoa, where are we? What have we become? And how in the world can we restore fatherhood in our families and churches? So let's take a look at a vision for fatherhood.

Again, this is not the end all and be all. We've had some great presentations today. We'll have more tomorrow. But I want to draw from Joshua, chapter 1 in Joshua 24. I was asked to speak on this part.

Now, we don't have a great deal about Joshua, but we have some. We have some very important points happening in Joshua. Now, in the Old Testament, you don't have many examples of good fathers, the strong fathers. However, it appears to me that Caleb was a good father and a good father-in-law. He cared very much for his daughters and he wedded his daughter off to a very strong and courageous and faith-filled man.

So there's examples of good fatherhood at this time. But let's look at Joshua 1, verses 6 to 9. As we restore civilization or some semblance of family and church, and that's kind of where we are. We're just we're in the concrete now and we're saying we need a vision for how we get decent concrete in your family, in my family and somehow we have some basic basic structures For our kids and grandkids how do we do that in our own lives? And we're going into the Word of God where say you Lord teach me Lord You know something about what it is to be a man to be a man of God So teach me from your word and give me some sense of biblical godly manhood.

Now, I know some of you have named your sons Joshua and David and Gideon and fill in the blanks. You know what? These are all names that connote character traits and neat things that were happening in the lives of great men who went before us. I think that's why we name our kids that because we want them to know something about these patterns. So here's Joshua 1 verses 6 to 9.

Joshua is speaking here to the people. He's referring to the words that God has given to him. He says, Be strong and of good courage, for unto this people you shall divide for inheritance the land, which I swear to their fathers to give this, God speaking. Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded thee. Turn not from it to the right hand or to the left that thou mayest Prosper whithersoever thou goest the book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth But thou shalt meditate therein day and night that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein For then thou shalt make thy way prosperous and then thou shalt have good success have not I commanded you Be strong and have good courage be not afraid neither be thou dismayed for the Lord thy God is with thee whether so ever These are the The the commands that God gave to Joshua, and then later in the chapter, he conveys them to the people of Israel.

So the first point I want to make about this man of God and the character of this man is that he was a kingdom-seeking man that was obedient to God in gaining the land and giving it to the people of Israel. In other words, he fought the battles. He engaged the battles. So the first thing we know about Joshua is He was faithful. Now, throughout the period of the judges, you don't find a lot of success cases because they soon forgot the importance of the kingdom of God as the primary objective for what God wants men doing.

Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. In fact, this is the most fundamental goal or purpose for the education and training of our children. People say that They want their children to get a good job, or they want their children to be successful. In fact, I was just reading the National Education Association goals and missions and the Harvard University. I went through all these major institutions in America.

I was just kind of wondering, what is it? What do they want? Well, they're seeking success, material success, and the kingdom of men, the building the empires of men. This is really what the goals and objectives of the public schools are all about. But the Bible says that our primary objective in our families is not to get rich.

It is not to see that your children get a good career. It's not to see that your children be successful even in their work. It's primarily the goal is that they seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness. It's not that they gain a bunch of toys. It's not that they entertain themselves to death.

And it's not that they build gigantic empires as the ultimate goal in life. It is to seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And here's the other thing that ought to be thrown into it when you say righteousness It seems to me that that what Joshua is is is challenged to do is to take the land But to do so by way of observing the laws and the commandments that have been given to Moses. So this objective of getting out there is to get the kingdom of God around the world and to disciple the nations in whatsoever Jesus has commanded. So some people say, well, whatever is going on in the Old Testament is different what's going on in the New Testament.

But I don't see much difference between him saying, go take the land and observe my commandments. Now, in the New Testament, it says go take the entire earth and teach the entire earth to observe my commandments. Does anybody see a difference there? There is one difference. In the Old Testament, it's like 2, 000 square miles.

In the New Testament, it's like 60 million square miles. I don't know if I get it right, but somebody can do the math. All I'm saying is it seems to me that there are more square miles involved in the New Testament than the Old Testament. Everybody with me here? So this is the task of dominion, and this is the passion of a godly man.

The Godly man wants to see the kingdom of God spread geographically. I mean, it's so exciting to do that. He wants to see the end of sati in India where they burn the widow on the funeral pyre of their husbands. They want to see the end of child sex slave trade down in Cambodia. He wants to see an end of human sacrifice down in Mexico.

Oh, wait, that's pretty much been taken care of. But there are a few other problems down there, too. So he wants to see the nation's disciple. And he's passionate to see this come about. John G.

Paton is one of my favorite stories. Be sure to read all these missionary stories to your children. We put the story of John G. Paton and four other autobiographies in a course called Great Narratives. And we were just getting it published in a brand new form, a hardback with a CD-ROM and the whole nine yards, as new curriculum, what we call Christian curriculum.

It's really called Christian curriculum. It's for Christians. It's exciting. Imagine curriculum for Christians. And the focal point is not Hawthorne anymore.

And Shakespeare and the Greeks and all that, our focal point is Christians who have written cool stuff and established the kingdom of God. Isn't that a cool idea? Well, anyway, one of the greatest autobiographies all the time is John G. Paton's autobiography. But, now, this man was a guy who accomplished something.

And that's what's so impressive about him, is that he was very pioneering. And he was the second guy to hit the island of Tanna in the New Hebrides in like 1875. First guy, John Williams, was was eaten by cannibals the minute he touched soil, but John G. Paton made it there and he tried to do some initial discipleship work and he was persecuted and persecuted, almost killed 25 times. It's harrowing the kinds of things that happened.

Moments at which he was completely surrounded by the natives that are already to pierce him through with their things and then he looked up and saw the face of Jesus Christ looking down on him. A gigantic thunderstorm came, lightning struck and almost killed the men that were there. I mean, incredible miracles happened throughout the story. This man was a man of incredible intrepid faith and yet all of this started. This powerful missionary that took on these spiritual battles that were amazing, and eventually, the entire island chains were converted to Jesus Christ.

The stories were amazing, and these cannibals eventually came to love each other and to celebrate the Lord's Supper, and amazing things happened in these stories. But it all began a little cottage in the 1820s when he was raised by his Scottish father who was a sock maker in a small little no-account cottage somewhere in the highlands of Scotland. And then he says, this is where it all began, He says, we would do family worship every day, and I would see my father on his knees, crying out to God for the salvation of the pagan world. And I would look in his face, tears running down his cheeks. And I would so desire at the bottom of my heart to take the blessed gospel to some part of the foreign world.

See, it was the passion of a father. It was the focal point of a sock maker in a no-account cottage in Scotland that impelled this man of God, who I think was probably the most significant Christian of the 19th century, to do the kinds of things that he did out of the New Hebrides. So what I'm saying, brothers and sisters, is it's just got to start right here with just a desire, a heart desire, to get that snow machine. No, not the snow machine. The kingdom of God and His righteousness.

And so the kingdom of God is a geographical thing. You know, it's getting the kingdom into the next island chain, into Saudi Arabia, somewhere else. We need to have world maps in our living rooms. You follow me here? And say, this is a very big world, children.

And by the way, Greenland needs the gospel. As it turns out on my evil index, Greenland, after North Korea, Greenland is the most evil nation in the world. Isn't that amazing? Highest abortion rate, highest suicide rate. It beats out Saudi Arabia, believe it or not.

So, somebody needs to take the gospel to Greenland, and we could add other things. But the gospel is not just this idea of preaching three or four things and getting people quote-unquote saved, But it turns out the commission is to disciple the nations by teaching them whatsoever I have commanded, which I see to be 66 books. So it's a huge project. So here's the Father Saying, okay, now where in the world do we need to take the commands of God? Because to take the land, you notice there in Joshua 1, it says, if you're going to take the land, you have to do so by observing the commandments and laws given to us by Moses.

So it doesn't matter who you are. You're an MD. You're a doctor. And you're thinking, you know what? There's something wrong with medical care in America.

I hope you're saying that right now because it is stinking bad out there. I mean, there's something very, very wrong with the medical system in America. They're killing babies, for one thing. And it's getting harder and harder for even Catholic hospitals to exempt themselves from abortion, you know that? And it's getting harder and harder for anybody to not inform people that they can have, they can abort their Down syndrome child or their child who's missing some other chromosome, you have to inform or you will be sued.

These things are happening. And the medical situation is needing all kinds of private solutions. And the Christian medical sharing ministries I know are doing their part. But we need to bring all kinds of training to our Christian groups. Because you know what?

In the years to come, I think euthanasia is happening. I can't imagine any other scenario. After killing 80 million babies and electing the most pro-infanticide president of the United States and socializing medicine and bankrupting Social Security, somebody here is telling me that euthanasia is not going to happen in 2020? You've got to be kidding me. No, if a family is sitting around the living room and that dad's in the Word of God and he's like getting excited, he says, well, we've got to disciple the nations.

We've got to use God's Word and God's law and apply it in the area of the medical field. And we need to get some training going on in this area. And here's the eventual goal is to establish a decentralized form of elderly care. We'll root it in churches. We'll re-empower the diaconate so the church comes in and starts providing.

You see now this is a visionary man. This is a man who has something in mind rather than buying the next snow machine and having a good time for seven minutes out in the snow on a Saturday. Until he gets in a ditch, you know, and has to pull the thing out. There's just so many opportunities. I just, you know, and you know what?

Our house is pretty wild, because we got a lot of projects going on. A couple of months ago, I said, we gotta get some elderly care going, And I invited 90 people to our house to start the first relational family-based, family economic oriented elderly care system in America. And we're going to have a big conference, 2, 000 people in 2015. We want to build family economy. We're going to talk about that tomorrow.

But what about art and culture and music and movie making? There's families, believe it or not, they're firmly artistic. Any families with artistically minded children likes to take pictures, videos, do different things like that. No? Oh, just a few.

Okay, just a few. You've got to be thinking, yeah, we need to do something. I got really, really excited about a concept of a video the other day, and I brought my son in and said, we've got to do this, we've got to do this, this is going to be great. We'll have a scene where it'll be like this and then I'll come in and I'll say this. So we set up this whole video and project and he's going to do that in about the next two to three weeks.

But you're thinking, you're sitting there watching these movies, hopefully not watching too many of them, but like Hunger Games or No Country for Old Men that wins the big Academy Award three years ago. And this is like a serial killer who's a nihilist being corrected by an existentialist who says, really, there is no right and wrong. Just make the choice yourself. Stop flipping the coin as to who you shoot. Just these two world views that are nothing but destroy the whole world world views, and they win the Academy Award in 2007.

And you're thinking, I can do better than that. Come on, no brainer, right? Some families are going, I can produce better stories that are rooted in a biblical worldview and leave the audience with hope in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Ooh, there's a concept. Let's start writing the story now.

We'll get the plot out in the next three years, and then we'll do the screenplay, and then after that, we'll get the movie out in our basement, and we can shut down Hollywood someday and we'll do our own film festivals up in Alaska. And what am I talking about? Talking about doing the kingdom of God in his righteousness while the rest of the world is burning. I think we've got great opportunities going on. We had great ideas.

Okay. So, I've talked about the aspect of the kingdom of God that is geographical as we press it out. But institutional is this idea of sinking into the earth. It goes in, the tentacles go in, and it begins to affect things. When the gospel came to John G.

Paton's Tanna, the first couple of years of worship service, everybody brought their goats and their pigs and their chickens. And the reason was that they left them at home, somebody would have ripped them off. But believe it or not, as John G. Payton discipled these island chains, you know what? He stabilized society using biblical law.

And they could leave their piggies and their chickens at home after like five years. The point is this, when you disciple the nations, you affect their marriages. Guess what? Polygamy started to disappear. Guess what?

People didn't get divorced. Guess what? People had decent fathers who read the word of God to them. Guess what? The systems of law began to change.

They actually established some halfway decent Christian systems of jurisprudence. So that's what happens when people take these commands seriously and they begin to change the world according to the principles of God's word and they make the world a better place. Okay, the third aspect of the kingdom that just needs to just be there all the time is what I call generational. Institutional is every aspect. Generational is the idea of time, the time element.

Imagine taking the gospel to some foreign island chain. 40, 000 people converted. And in the process, the missionary left his kid in a boarding school. Let's just say that happened. Just pretend that it happened, okay?

And he forgot to teach them Ephesians 6, 4, Deuteronomy 6, 7, the entire book of Proverbs, every single verse in the Bible referring to how to raise children that almost without exception involves parents. What would happen, here's the question, what would happen to these island chains in 40, 50, 60 years. If the missionary left his kids in boarding school and forgot to teach the natives, Deuteronomy 6, 7, what would happen? The faith would disappear. And the incredible influence of children standing on the shoulders of their parents, you never really gain that leverage.

It would just bust apart and bust apart and bust apart. And that's the kind of thing that's happened in missionary work for the last 150 years or so in many, many places. Not everywhere, but in many places. Okay, well I don't have time to move on through that anymore, but the first thing we find in the life of Joshua is he is a kingdom man. Secondly, Joshua 24, 14, and 16 is really where we wrap up the life of Joshua.

I'm going to read this to you. Now, this is the very end, and he's done with all his work and taken the promised land. He's already done a lot of kingdom work. And Joshua 24, 14 is at the end of his life. He's saying, okay, guys, I'm leaving, I'm dying.

He says, he turns to everybody, he says, now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and truth and put away the gods which your father served on the other side of the flood and in Egypt and serve ye the Lord. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, Choose you this day whom you will serve whether the gods which your father served that were on the other side of the flood Well the gods the Amorites in whose land you dwell but as for me in my house We will serve the Lord and the people answered and said God forbid that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods Okay, I want to say several things The first thing I want to say, remember, Joshua is a kingdom-seeking guy. Secondly, Joshua was a God-fearing man. So we read here, first thing in verse 14, now therefore fear the Lord. So he's a God-fearing man.

A God-fearing man is one who understands the beginning of wisdom and knowledge is the fear of God. You've got to be sure. You give your children the book of Proverbs. The very basic, basic foundation of all knowledge and wisdom is the fear of God. And you know what?

There's crazy, crazy people who think you can teach character in the public schools without the fear of God. That's just nuts, okay? Don't you ever try that. The beginning of wisdom knowledge is the fear of God. The beginning of character is the fear of God.

It's the beginning of all order within your own home. I've had parents come to me with their 14-year-old girl, and they'll say, these homeschooling conferences and other places I speak, they'll say, I just can't seem to get my 14-year-old daughter to obey me. And My question to this man is going to be very simply this. Man, do you fear God? You don't say, what?

I say, man, do you fear God? He says, what does that have to do with anything? Well, the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom in your home. And if a police officer is running down the street after you and they pull you over for doing 70 at a 55, and he goes nuts, You know, he loses his temper, starts stomping on the hood of your car going, I can't believe you. I'm so sick of you.

Ah, I can't. Have you ever had a police officer do that to you? They never do that. They're very, very calm, aren't they? They say, ma'am, sir, roll down the window, please.

You understand? You're going to 70 and 55. And you're like going, oh, oh, oh, oh, I'm sorry, officer. You're the guy doing the sweating thing. He doesn't care.

I mean, he's just being calm and cool and collected. The reason of course is because he's got the entire power system, the judicial system of the state of Alaska behind him. You follow me? He's got all that authority. He's been deputized by the Alaska state government.

He's got that power. And you, well, it's just little old you. Now, in your own home, If you're a little two-year-old or 13-year-old or 14-year-old, whoever it is, is going 70 and 55, or right through your living room, whatever it is, you're going to pull her over and say, ma'am, do you understand you were doing 70 and 55? And she's going, no way. Why is she doing that?

Because she knows, and you know, that you've been deputized not by the government of Alaska, but by the government of the universe. You follow me here? So, if you understand your authority, then suddenly everybody understands your authority in your home, but only if your entire home recognizes that you've been deputized by the CEO of the entire universe. And if there's a problem in the child raising department of your home, The CEO of the universe is not going to call the pastor, the youth pastor, the Sunday school teacher into the front office and say, you know, no, no, no. If there's a problem in the child raising department in your family, the CEO of the universe is going to call you in.

Now you men understand what I'm talking about here, right men? If you work for a CEO of a company here in Alaska, and he has given you a project over the last year to do this, and at the end of the year you come and say, well, it was just, you know, my employees, none of them really did anything, and I delegated it all, and I just can't understand these people these days. You can't get good workers, you know? It's all these workers. And he says, that's right.

We can't get good workers. And you're one of the problem. You're out of here, baby. Right? Isn't that what he says?

No, you can't blame your employees. You can't blame the people you've delegated to. If there's a problem with the project that the CEO of the company gave to you, you're the one responsible. Because if God says in Ephesians 6, 4, Dad's, fathers, bring your children up in the nurture and admission of the Lord. He's talking to you, and he's holding you responsible and accountable for what's happening in your home.

Let's move on. I'll move a little quicker here. My first point, kingdom man. Second point, God-fearing man. Third point, he's a repenting man.

Now look at this again, verse 14. Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and truth and put away the gods which your father served on the other side of the flood. He wants you to put away your gods. You've got to be a repenting man. The repenting man turns away from all the idolatry that he wants, the gods he wants to serve, and he serves the true and living God.

One of the greatest illustrations of this is Gideon. First thing that God does before he goes and gains all this incredible ground for Gideon, he says, I have an assignment for you. You need to get rid of the idolatry in your house. You know, there's a porn problem in your house. There's an idolatry problem in your house.

There's an anger issue in your house, whatever it is. It's in your house, your problem. Before we even go out there and try to correct the systems and try to change Hollywood or stop abortion in America, we've got an anger problem in your home. You can't go out and deal with everybody else's sins until your obedience has been perfected that second Corinthians 10 4 to 6 Tear down imagination etc. But whatever you do don't go out and do that until your obedience and then perfected So so that was the first thing that's got to happen is the putting away of the idols.

And the beautiful thing is that it was a multi-generation idolatry problem. It was like Gideon's father had the porn problem. And now he passed it on to his son. And so the son comes in, burns all the porn magazines. I'm trying to put this in modern lingo for you, burns all the idols.

And the next day, all the guys from the neighborhood come in and says, where is the library of porn magazines? What happened to our idols? And this is the coolest part about the Gideon story. It's a multi-generational repentance vision because Gideon's dad goes, he burned them all. And then he goes to his son, give me a high five dude too.

From now on I'm calling you Jorubba Belle, which is in common tongue Belle you big old goof you're a stupid idiot. Okay that's what Gideon's new name is. It's not an exact translation but you get the idea. There's a humor thing here. Gideon's father is on board.

This is like the homeschooling grandpa that didn't quite do it right, you know, didn't quite present his kids a good education in the fear of God as the beginning of knowledge. His kids decide to homeschool and the father, the grandfather, is humble enough to say, I think my son is standing on my shoulders, he's way up there, how you doing up there boy? And I am so happy with this son, I'm proud of you, I love you man, yeah, yeah, God bless you for homeschooling my grandkids. You get the idea? Now that's a repenting man.

And God wants, I believe, a multigenerational vision of repentance. Isn't that beautiful when you have a son who repents, Father repents, Son repents, Grandson repents, and you get this sort of multigenerational repentance program happening, generation by generation, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. All right, fourthly. He's a covenant man.

And this is the classic text. If you see me able to you serve the Lord, choose you to stay whom you will serve, the gods which your father served on the other side of the flood, the gods of the Amorites, if you find you dwell, but ask for me in my house, will you serve the Lord. Here's the way it's put. Most people don't understand the way it's put. Just look at it and see how it's put.

What he's saying is looking at all the Israelites. He's saying, okay, you guys can choose whether you want to serve Idol A or Idol B. Go ahead, make a choice. Idol A or Idol B. As for me and my house, we don't get a choice.

We will serve the Lord. That's called a covenant man. In other words, he's given up on choices. Nobody gets a choice. And this is the way he's raising his kids.

He doesn't raise his kids with a choice. Now, I have a lot of people today. In fact, I was with a homeschooling curriculum supplier, one of the most popular in the entire Christian home education movement. And I said, why are you using 95 percent of your literature as not Christian? In fact, a lot of it is anti-Christian.

Old Earth evolution, etcetera, etcetera. He says they're just good writers. I think that people ought to just make a choice for themselves. You give them all the options, and your little 7-year-old kid is going to make the choice of whether he's going to serve Idol A or Idol B or Yahweh or whatever. Now, I don't agree with that.

I don't believe that you should take your child, your 7-year-old child, up to the top of a 40-story building. And you turn to your son and say, Son, now you can jump off this ramp and commit suicide or you can walk down the steps with the rest of us. I'm sorry, I don't give my kids those choices. That's a covenant keeping father. The assumption is that your children will walk with you.

This is the difference between John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress Book 1 and Book 2. And this idea of covenant is something we're really going to have to start working with more and talking about more. Because in the first book, John Bunyan is not as mature until he gets the second book. The first book, he travels by himself. It's a very individualistic form of Christianity, which is by the way, the way most of Western Christianity has gone, and that's one major reason why a lot of families will lose their kids.

Rather, what you get in the second book is everybody going together. They all get baptized, they all have the Lord's Supper together, they all walk the pilgrim way together. The family is integrated in the second book. Now the Bible is very family integrated. Households are working together.

Households are believing together. Households are fearing God together. Households are baptized together. Households are, again, together, together, together, together, together, and the modern day mind that is incredibly foreign, incredibly foreign. Now I know there's a little bit of controversy on this matter, but I think there needs to be a way more thought given to this.

Because I think one of the reasons we lose our kids is theologically we're not covenant minded. I don't have much more time on that, but that's all I have to say. Last point, last point. And this is really important. Verse 14, Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in truth.

Joshua says, you want to be a man, you want to be a father? You be a sincere man. Much of modern Christianity is incredibly hypocritical. There is so much hypocrisy right now and the facades are coming down big time. It is scary how many facades are coming off.

Now you guys know this in national ministries that I've gone kaput. Because there has been a lack of sincerity, there's been a message, but no real heart level living out. Now, I'm not pointing to any person. I'm just saying this is all over the place, I see it all over the place. It is incredibly bad.

And it's showing the vacuousness, the vacuity, and the emptiness, the hollowness of modern Christianity. I'm telling you, the old fundamentalism is stripping off. It was a facade anyway, and good riddance. I'm glad it's coming down. We're finally realizing there wasn't much of a heart in all this kind of faith, and it exemplifies perfectly in the story of Ernest Hemingway.

It was referred to earlier. It's in my book. The story of Ernest Hemingway is critical because it really tells you the story of Ernest Hemingway who is raised reading henti novels, going to dinosaur days where His father was talking about creationism. He was the ultimate vision forum kid in the 1920s or 1910s. And yet, this man had a heart that was just pure rottenness.

And there was the kind of pornography and stuff that he was doing was just awful. And it turned out that he committed suicide eventually in 1954, I believe it was. But here's something most people don't understand. His father, who is a Wheaton College boy and his grandfather, et cetera, was a friend of Dwight L. Moody and so forth, Eric was sharing that earlier.

Turns out his father committed suicide 20 years before Ernest Hemingway did. It turns out that the hypocrisy in the apostasy was generational. And yes, there was all kinds of fakiness, all kinds of facades in this family's life, but I'm here to tell you that has characterized a huge amount of Western Christianity. And here's the deal, Jesus can't stand it. If there's fakiness, he's bringing it down and he's gonna do it again and again.

The beginning of the church in Acts chapter 5, Ananias and Sapphira presented themselves as being better than they really were. They gave a nice little spread of how wonderful their lives were and how wonderful they were as Christians. And they had given all of this money to the church. They were just, you know, this is how cool we are and this is the vision and this is how we're doing the vision and they were just given the whole nine yards of how wonderful they were. It turns out it was a big lie.

God killed him. He killed him. This kind of stuff is striking fear in the hearts of God's people everywhere. I'm telling you it is. It's because God demands sincerity.

There is so much inauthenticity in the American Christian religion. I know in the 1970s and 80s, the younger generation said much of Christianity is formalistic. It's all formalism outside. No heart to it. It's all formalistic.

It's all rituals and formalistic. Even the hymns and all that. Just a big formalism. And so they said, We'll replace formalism with informalism. That is, we'll show up in tennis shoes and t-shirts and maybe that'll be real.

The eyes, for the most part, even that's another brand of inauthenticity. No, what God wants is the fear of God right here in the very, very, very, very, very inside of who we are. God wants true faith on the very, very inside and love on the very, very inside. And I think as men, as fathers, as moms, as kids, We just have to say, God have mercy on us. So what I'm saying is every Sunday now, God have mercy on us.

Cleanse thou me from secret faults. Amen. How many of you think you have some inauthenticities in your life? Oh, we all do. I just want to go find them all, don't you?

I just want to rip my chest open. God, you show me. You show me. Let me turn this way. Let me turn this way.

I'll pull some more skin up this way. I'll pull some more skin up this way. God, show me. Show me where I am not authentic and I will repent, Moserus. But for the mercy of God, my friends, we're all done for.

And so what God wants is sincerity. God wants a repenting man and God wants a courageous man, a man of faith. I know I don't have much more time, but we need courage and faith to confess our sins. Faith to confess our sins. Faith to know that it's okay to confess your sins.

To say, this is who I am. To turn to your wife and say, this is who I am. These are my habits. This is what needs cleansing, right here. I'll turn like this so you can see it.

That's what needs cleansing. A couple of months ago, it might have been a year or two ago, I sinned against my wife in front of my kids. We were preparing a meal and I sinned against my wife, raised my voice, impatient, unloving, you know. And we sat down to eat dinner right after that. And it was my turn to pray, I was all ready to pray.

I couldn't pray. I just sinned against my wife, all my kids had heard it. And so I just sat there. And everybody's looking at me. What's wrong with that?

And I just sat there. And I couldn't quite say it. And I couldn't... I was wrong. I said that I guess man, sorry.

It was just stinking pride, you know what I'm saying. But for some reason, it's just hard to get it out. You all know what I mean talking about here. There's points at which you just got to see it out. You just say, it's me.

And then it came easier. And we said, oh, okay, we forgive you, dad. We love you, dad, okay. It's okay. We accept you.

But you got to have the faith, the courage to confess your sins. And He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all righteousness. There's a lot more to say. I've got like another page or two of notes, but I'm done. Thank you.

God bless you. We'll see you tomorrow. Online network to find family integrated churches in your area, log on to our website ncfic.org. You