The National Center for Family Integrated Churches welcomes Kevin Swanson with the following message entitled, Building A family economy. Good morning. It's good to see you all this morning. Now, I have to confess that I'm a homeschool father. We've been homeschooling for about 42 years, 43 years, something like that.

We started homeschooling in Portland, Oregon. I was five years old. My mother taught me to read there. And I've been homeschooled virtually ever since. In fact, I still send my book manuscripts to my mother, and she grades them for me.

I mean she's almost always working on one of my books. Can you imagine that? After 43 years my mother is still grading my stuff. But a couple of, now I'm not saying, you know, I'm guessing some of you don't homeschool, but I just want to say this is who we are. This is who I am.

And this ties in somewhat to some of the things that I say and some of the illustrations that I give to folks. I don't think that homeschooling is the essence, the end all and be all. It's a great application of some of the principles of God's word. But you can just as easily not love God and not fear God in a home school as in a public school. Does everybody understand?

You have the technology to not fear God in your home school. You can do it. It's possible. We're all able to do these kinds of things. But Here's some of the reasons why we like to home school.

I want to just share some of this with you. One of the reasons why we like to home school is that we don't have to ask permission of the school district if we want to go hunting for two weeks in October. We just go. In fact, almost every December my daughters get a permit. And just last year, I think it was last year, Emily, we were in bed and suddenly bang and I got up, looked outside and there was Emily shot a deer in her pajamas.

Of course most people say, what was the deer doing in her pajamas? But it's one of our family's jokes. But we had venison for about four months, and that was nice. See, that's one of the reasons why we like to homeschool. I'm just sharing some of the things.

Another reason why we like to homeschool is that we can pray any time we want to. We just pray. I know that sounds a little odd for some of you who are involved in the public schools, where you can be right smack in the middle of a science class, and you can fall on your knees, lift your hands, tremble a little bit, and praise the true and living God for making all this stuff. I think that's cool. You know what I'm saying?

I just think that's a good thing to do. So that's one of the reasons why we like to homeschool. We pray anytime we want to. We can actually pray without ceasing, just kind of a biblical thing. So another reason why we like to homeschool is our kids can be in four grade levels at the same time.

You know, I mean, People have come up to us from time to time, and they say, oh, honey, you're homeschooled. What grade are you in? My kids give them that dumb look. Great? It's that embarrassing moment where you have to step in and say, ma'am, He's seven years old.

He's at Algebra II. Back off. You know. One of the other reasons why we like to home school is that we just prefer pajamas to school uniforms. So this is a preference issue for us.

Another reason why we like to homeschool is that we've never missed the bus. And then here's the other one. You can bring guns to school with you in the homeschool. So, my son always felt like he could study better. This is 22, leaned up against his desk.

That's all right. We're OK with that. But the public schools frown on that kind of thing. Besides, if you have the permit and the deer walks by the window, I mean, come on, you know, you got to have it there. Anyway, so I just wanted to share.

The final reason why we like to homeschool, the teaching staff is totally in love with each other and we make out in front of the class. That's legal. That's legal. But it's frowned on again in the public schools to do that. So if you're teaching the public schools, don't do that.

All right. So I just wanted to share some of the things that we like to do. Now let me start with Psalm 128. Something that somebody prayed, I mean it was, he said, We can't enjoy the blessings unless we enjoy the God of the blessings. Did you hear that?

And I just wanted to stand up on one of these tables and say, amen to that. In fact, it was interesting this morning, I was thinking that, but I couldn't quite word it that way. Has that ever happened to you where you're thinking, you're saying, you know, something I'm thinking here, that was exactly what I was thinking between 5 AM and 7 AM this morning in bed, What that guy said. He said, you can't enjoy the blessings unless you enjoy the God of the blessings. And that I think is really the core of everything that we wanna say this weekend.

But let me read from Psalm 128 because I think this goes really to the heart of the matter again. So Psalm 128, here it is, Blessed is every one who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. When you eat the labor of your hands, you shall be happy. It shall be well with you. Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house.

Your children like olive plants all around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed. Who fears the Lord. The Lord bless you out of Zion and may you see the good of Jerusalem all the days of your life. Yes, may you see your children's children, peace be upon Israel.

Aren't these beautiful words, isn't this the way you would like to see your household blessed as well. And fundamentally, you know, it all begins with the fear of God as the beginning of wisdom in those homes. It starts with a man. Starts with a father who fears the Lord. So as you look at the dysfunctionality of the world around you, you know, you see the brokenness in your own homes perhaps.

It doesn't merely matter what the brokenness is, where the dysfunctionality lies, whether it be the anger issue, whether it be the, all these other things, it all begins with a man who fears the Lord and delights greatly in his commandments, that's Psalm 1.12, And all of that comes about, of course, as we stand below the cross of Jesus Christ and in faith receive his great sacrifice for our sins. Now, I want to begin this morning by just saying that God has richly blessed us. I just feel so, so privileged. All my life, I don't think I've ever run into a family quite like the family I had in the 1960s and 1970s. I was raised by parents who loved God.

They had family worship every day. My father was willing to sacrifice everything for Jesus. And I honestly have never met anybody who had quite the raising we had. My father was really pretty balanced theologically. He was always committed to the word of God.

He was committed to the creation story. If scientists came out and said, hey, we found a rock. We think it's 4 billion years old, assuming that the radioactive decay rate was, was, was, was, starting conditions was, was, was, assuming, assuming, assuming, assuming that trust us I've got a PhD. It's four billion years old. If somebody came out with a PhD and said the rock is four billion years old yet God says in six days I made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that in them is.

God says, or my father would say I'm going with God on this one. So he wrote a book called the Bible and Modern Science translated into Japanese And he was, you know, just if God said it, that's the way we're going to go with this. And so we are always committed to the Word of God. So my father was just an incredibly faithful man. I asked him a couple of years ago why he went to Japan to the mission field.

And he said he wanted to get the gospel to the Japanese, but fundamentally something else that was working in his mind at the time. He had been teaching in American public and private schools in the 50s and 60s and decided by 1968 they did not want to raise us in the American culture. He wanted to get out. He wanted to find an island and raise us on an island out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And he chose Kyushu, the southern island of Japan.

And so I'm just trying to explain some of this to you so you understand why me, why this kid raised on the islands shows up. My father wanted to get out of America and he said two reasons. One was the fact that they've been teaching evolution in American public schools. He was concerned about evolution but secondly he saw that the hearts of the children were separating from the fathers. He could kind of see that really metastasizing in the 1960s.

This was the youth rebellion. This is a point at which everything just starts exploding. You get the cultural revolution of the 1960s, the sexual revolution of the 1960s. I mean, think about the difference between 1956, the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, or I want to hold your hand, and then the Beatles by 1968 are doing it in the road. I mean, there's a shift in the 19th century.

It's very, very, very, very dramatic. My father could see it in the youth of the day. And he said there is a incipient rebellion and revolt against all of human society, certainly against God, in the 1960s. And by 1969, he said, I'm out of here. I am out of here.

Now, there's a point at which a man will do what I call a metanoeo. Now, that's a good word. It comes from the Bible. It's repentance. Repent.

The idea of metanoeo is this sort of radical 180. And the application of it in various lives goes in different directions, right? Because people are repenting of different things. My father really went out to the mission field because he felt it was time to do things radically differently. And I'm just so blessed because he did that.

I have to tell you, I mean, our raising was so different from everything else. My father incorporated us into the ministry in the sense that we were passing out tens of thousands of tracts. I remember typing up a fair number of my father's books. I remember putting together an organ. An organ, yeah.

My father had this idea. He's a very, very innovative, pioneering kind of guy. And he thought, well, our little church that met in our home needs an organ. My mother was an organ player. So he bought it in a kit.

And I was soldering transistors in my 11th year. I think it was a summer in my 11th year. I was soldering transistors. So we put together an organ. So we had all kinds of different projects going on all the time.

My father taught me Greek when I was about 13 years old, and I was taking 1 John out of the Greek. I mean, it was just sort of a different kind of raising in the 1960s, 1970s. I'm very, very thankful for my father allowing us to do that. In fact, in 1975, we watched a movie. In 1975, we watched a movie.

So it was Sound of Music. And we didn't make it through the whole thing. It got a little too romantic for Dad. So he turned off the TV and we went off the bed, and that was pretty much the extent of American culture that we received in the 1960s or 1970s. So anyway, I wanted to give you a little bit of a picture of what was going on in our lives, and I'm thankful for it.

Now, did my father overreact? What do you think? Did he overreact? I mean, here we are. Doris Day is singing, How Much Is That Doggie in the Window in 1954 and now Katy Perry is encouraging 13-year-olds to lesbian activity in the 2013s, or whatever it is.

OK, I mean, there is a shift. There's this incredibly radical cultural and social revolution that takes place in the 1950s, 1960s. And please understand that the cultural revolution will not happen unless there is a social revolution. Do you understand that Almanzo Wilder, little farmer boy out of the 1870s, 1880s, plowing fields for his dad in upstate New York, little house on the prairie. Anybody?

Do you get that in Alaska? OK, you get it. OK. I don't know what you get here. But in the 1870s, 1880s, Almanzo Wilder is plowing the fields for his dad.

He's not listening to Lady Gaga on his iPod. Everybody understand that? His sisters aren't showing up at an Elvis Presley concert falling at his feet going, we're not worthy, we're not worthy. Okay, that's not happening in the 1880s. You don't get this massive system of pop culture that effectively takes the hearts and the minds of not tens of millions, not hundreds of millions, but billions of people, and moves them in a certain direction in terms of their world and life view.

That kind of mechanism, that kind of powerful mechanism with leverage over the hearts and minds of billions of people around the globe did not happen in the 1890s. The culture of the average kid was by far more set by father and the pastor than it was by Lady Gaga. Now in the present day, when a youth pastor shows up in front of his class for the first time and everybody has a bone through their nose, what does the youth pastor do? He goes and he finds a bone. He shoves it through his nose and now he's relevant.

But here's the question who's leading the culture. Y'all follow me here. Somebody's leading the culture. It ain't the youth pastor. It's Lady Gaga.

It's the pop culture. But the pop culture would never have the power it has without the centralization of power in AM and FM signals, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We all know that, because there's limited number of signals. So the people who had the power to control the networks controlled the minds of the billions. OK, so number one, the media centralized power.

But number two, the hearts of the fathers turned from the sons and sons from the fathers. It was a relational breakdown. Yes, on the one hand, On the one hand, I want you to think about this for a moment. On the one hand, it is the Industrial Revolution that brings some of this about. It is true that we would not see the massive distribution of labor such that the father walks away from the family farm.

Eventually, the mother walks away from the family farm. The kids walk away from the family farms. And you get this gigantic teaching class that develops. And public schools establish themselves. And the Industrial revolution, yes, it fractured the family.

And media did the same thing, because everybody eventually began to have their own television set, their own iPod, and they gradually moved into their own little individualistic systems. And more and more, the cultural experiences people had was wired into the matrix and not wired into the family or the pastor. You know, it wasn't like everybody for 5, 930 years of world history had iPods. Okay, they'd never had earphones till the 1970s when we had those big, remember the earphones, the big earphones in 1970s that went out like six inches, like this big and they clamped onto your head? Okay, That was the first time that people really experienced massive individualism in their entertainment where they entered into their own world.

No, no, no. For 5, 930 years. What did people do when, when everything got dark at seven o'clock? I'm sorry. Make that six of, I mean, we're in Alaska, make that 3 o'clock.

Or is it 2 o'clock when things get dark? What did people do from 3 o'clock in the afternoon in the wintertime in Alaska until, let's see, 10 AM in the morning or whatever it is. Okay, yeah, you guys, I was like dark a lot of time. But what did people do in the dark hours of the night when they weren't sleeping? No, they weren't entertaining themselves to death.

They sat in the living room and Paul played the fiddle and they danced around Paul in the living room and they did that for 5, 930 years. You say, well, what happened since the 1930s? What happened? Good. I'm glad somebody's saying that because there are three kinds of people in the world.

There are those who make things happen. There are those who watch things happen. And there are those who wonder what happened. And sadly, most people are sitting around wondering what happened. What happened was a massive cultural revolution that was based in a social revolution that ultimately, I think is rooted, rooted in the dissolution of the family economy.

That was around for 5, 930 years. In the 1930s, there were still 70% of 15 year old boys working their family farm the 1930s today it's half a percent. Now let me ask you this, Do you think that that is a social shift? Huge, huge, it's this big. Now I'm not saying that we all need to go back to a grand type of society, but I am saying, what am I saying?

What I am saying is that the problem of 70% of young men not growing up by 30 years of age, up from 30% in 1970, is a bad deal. OK? 30-something kids playing computer games while Rome burns, while we are in the worst possible economic condition any nation has ever found itself in, just read an article indicating that the United States federal government is in worse shape than the city of Detroit. Okay? Now, as far as I'm concerned, we're in big trouble.

Economists have no idea, no idea where we go from here. And I think we added one more trillion dollars of debt in six weeks, and according to my figures, we will be in worse shape than Greece as a federal debt percentage of the GDP in two years from now. We will be the absolute worst nation in the world with the acceleration of debt that we're taking on as a nation today. So anyway, that's where we are. And the young men, the 30-somethings, are playing video games while Rome Burns.

And the front page of Time Magazine, did anybody see this three months ago? The millennial generation is the slothful, the laziest generation, the most unlucky generation, and the most narcissistic generation that has ever lived. And then here's the kicker on the front page of Time Magazine, why they will save us. If they go, now that's a pipe dream. Somebody's smoking something.

Hey, they're starting out. The millennial generation is starting out with less capital than any of the previous generations, as in silent boomers, Gen Xers. The millennial generation is the most poverty-stricken. The unemployment, underemployment rate for high school graduates is 80%. Twice what it was in 2001 has not recovered over two recessions.

And the unemployment underemployment ratio for college graduates is about 51%, effectively making the college degree a raw deal. And most of the Fortune magazines and the Forbes magazines, they're just finding it to be the most overpriced, underrated product on the market today, and on and on and on. So I'm just telling you, things have changed dramatically in the last 10 years. But root issue, root issue is this. This is root issue, as I see it.

Now, some of you may say there are other things. But listen to me, I think this is important. If 70% of young men aren't grown up by 30 years, that is they don't have a job, they don't have a direction in life, they're not married, they're not going to have kids, and all the rest. OK? If that be the case, it must have something to do with a vision for raising boys.

And that vision seems to be all centered around this idea. And it applies to home schools as well as private schools and public schools. I don't care what young man you're talking about. This is the vision for young boys. Here's what you do for a seven or eight-year-old boy or a nine-year-old boy.

You tell them, here's the deal. You get to sit down at a desk and do four to five hours of boring work throughout the day to reward you. You can play computer games for the rest of the day. And they do it for 18 years it's a recipe for disaster somebody go yeah somebody actually go okay give them four hours of boring schoolwork and eight to nine hours of playing computer games for 18 years out of his life, and the American economy is going to be going just fine in the year 2025. I was in Indianapolis a couple of years ago doing a conference, and the conference was held in this large convention center.

I was walking by this large room with little boys ages 25 to 40 years old as far as I could see playing some kind of a computer game or a role acting. I wasn't sure what it was, but they were most definitely playing games while Rome burned. This is interesting for me, because again, I'm a radio announcer. I like to comment on the decline of Western civilization. So I sat there and just watched and drooled at this scene.

I've never seen them like that. Because I've been reading these statistics. 70% are playing games while Rome burns. Where are these people? There they were.

Oh, here they are. I'm here. I got to watch it. This is what it looks like. I've always wanted to know what a civilization looks like coming down and not even here it is you know it's kind of neat but But friends, I'd like to suggest to you a plan B.

A plan B. Everybody on board? I mean, can we be out of the box can we say yeah let's do this differently and I like to put it this way I think right now the macros in bad shape the Titanic has scraped the iceberg for about 150 meters and right now some of us are going hey let's build some emergency life rafts on the deck of the Titanic. And I'm telling you, the emergency life raft manufacturing centers are booming on the deck of the Titanic. Our listenership is going crazy.

And by the way, the first thing you should do, if you're at all concerned about the direction society is going, the direction we've been going in terms of education and raising boys and girls and et cetera, et cetera, is give your children the Book of Proverbs. People have asked me, what do we do? You know, oh, the whole American government's coming down. Should we buy guns? Should we go and get a bunch of food and and be peppers and I say you know what you want to rebuild human society give your children the book of Proverbs.

You stumble back to the old wisdom, and you're going to find the book of Proverbs is going to have everything in it that your children need to rebuild their social systems in the years to come. So let me just encourage you in that direction. The problem with the Industrial Revolution was not the fact that they were building Boeing 747s. I flew over here in the Industrial Revolution, so I like the Industrial Revolution. The problem is the hearts of the fathers turned from the sons and sons from the fathers.

The problem is that Deuteronomy 6.7 was an important verse that really meant something. And there are people like my father in 1969 that looked at Deuteronomy 6.7, and it says, you shall teach your children my words as You sit in the house as you rise up as you lie down as you walk by the way That's you're to integrate the discipleship as of a father Into the day-to-day activities nowhere in the Bible's that say to homeschool your kids Nowhere does it say to establish a quote-unquote family economy per se but the most fundamental thing That God wants you doing you know if you're not open the Word of God blow off the dust And read it Deuteronomy 6 7 What did God say about life on planet Earth? I want you to grow up with your children walking by the way, interacting with them as you do this and as you do that. That's what he says. And what happened was that over time, the traditions of men made the laws of God of none effect.

It's Matthew chapter 15. See, we have all these traditions that, that came out of the industrial revolution, came out of the new teaching class that came out of the gigantic public schools and all of this. And it seemed to make the laws of God of none effect. And So in 1969 or in this case, 20, 2013 people sitting in this room are looking here and saying, you shall teach your children as you sit in the house, as you walk, by the way, as you rise up, as you lie down, you think, I wonder if God means that. I wonder if maybe that could be helpful to rebuild all of human society.

You know, I wonder if God is that smart. I wonder if he knows what he's talking about. I wonder if this could be useful. And so it seemed that with the fragmentation of the family economically, the fragmenting of the family in terms of education, kids were shuffled off into their little slots, the shuffling of kids into their own entertainment world, everybody gets their own entertainment world, the shuffling of kids into different classrooms in church the massive massive massive disintegration of the family seemed to come to the point where the traditions of men was squeezing little Deuteronomy 6 7 right out of the picture. Now, I'm not saying that there isn't an appropriate segregation from time to time.

Occasionally we send our kids to bed, they go to different rooms. I mean, so, come on, we're not saying that. There can't be, we have discipleship and mentorship for young men and other things going on in our church. But I'm just saying that at some point the word of God speaks to you and you say you know what it just seems to me that we've been going our own way doing our own things and maybe we really need to get back to God's Word and figure out how we can do more of this in our churches and in our families well how did all this start it started with John Juckerson in the modern world my book apostate I bring out these stories You've got to read the stories of the most important men, the gigantic, powerful, influential men. I call them Nephilim.

They're giants. I mean, like the giants before the flood that destroyed the pre-Deluvian world. They're just huge. These men not only were very dangerous, very evil men, but by God's providence, they had amazing power over entire civilizations. And that's what made them so interesting.

And they did it, they were able to collect most of their power and bring their ideas to bear through large government oriented education systems. So that's what made them, I think that's what gave them the power and the influence they did. But most Historians will tell you that the most important philosopher of the modern age is Jean-Jacques Rousseau. And Jean-Jacques Rousseau is the man who wrote the social contract. He's the man who brought the modern world from a state in which 8% of human life was governed by governments, or 4% to 5%.

In fact, the English kings could hardly fight their wars. They could hardly do anything. They were like, I can't do anything. Well, how did you get governments taking three to four percent of the people's income to 65% in America in the year 2013? How does that happen?

How does government become this incredible beast that controls every single aspect of life? Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Tell you, it's Jean-Jacques Rousseau. And he did it by way of what he called democracy. If you can fool the people into believing that they're in control of everything, you can aggrandize this state, and they still feel like they're in control.

But it turns out this gigantic state will eventually consume them. So that was the whole idea of Jean Jacque Rousseau's social contract. But he also wrote an important book called Emile, which was the book that set the direction for modern education. And in this book, John Jock Rousseau says the goal is to get the child away from the father and mother, turn them over to state professionals and have them educate the children. But what you need to understand about John Jack Russo is that the man had five children.

And on the day that they were born, each of them, five children, on the day they were born, John Jack Russo, the greatest philosopher of the modern age, the man who was the ideal man behind practically everything you see in your world around you john jacques so abandoned his children on the steps of an orphanage on the day they were born and someone came back later said that you have boys and girls is that I forgot to check the gender okay so this is what his girlfriend has living girlfriend called an interesting madman on the day. He died He was insane. He was completely out of his mind According to those who knew him best and I have the whole story about John's like to send my book because if you want to know Who created the world around you you say there's a lot of insanity around here Who in the world created this insane world? Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He was an insane man who abandoned his children and steps on the organ.

It's because he said, here's the deal. Parents are not qualified to raise their own children. We've got to give them over to this state. In fact, he said the best book ever written on education is Plato's Republic. In Plato's Republic, we find that Plato configures this world where there is no family.

And he says, what you need is a woman and a man to come together, because it's the only way in which children appear, so you bring them together for temporary liaison. The woman gets pregnant, she has a child, child comes out of the womb, it comes into the hands of professionals, often to convey her belts, and from there on the state says, thank you very much, we'll take care of the child, and this is what Plato says, no son shall ever know his father, and no father shall ever know who his son was. Very, very important, very important to a humanist system, that you break the relationship of father-son. It's critical. You cannot establish the humanist state without breaking the father-son relationship.

That's why what we're doing in these conferences is by far the most dangerous thing that has ever happened to socialist America I'm telling you this is dangerous and from time to time the NCFIC actually gets a little pushback. Can you believe that? They do. And I believe that there's actually a demonic oppression too. I believe.

I believe that. I actually believe that Satan's not on board with what we're trying to do. And the tyrants don't like it and then then then then but I see it's great And I think it's great because I think God knows what he's talking about because in Deuteronomy 6 7 He says I think father should know their sons and sons should know the fathers in fact I even think the hearts of the father should turn their sons sons of the fathers and There's a lot of theologians that will come out and tell you that's not what that verse means, but that's because they're more platonic in the way they do seminaries, in the way they do the systems, and the institutions themselves are very platonic, and they have undermined the strength and integrity of the family over years. Now you come to Karl Marx in the 1800s. Karl Marx, the Communist Manifesto is so very important.

It's probably the most important document in the modern world. Have any of you heard of the Communist Manifesto? Very important document. Now the very, very, very, very heart of the Communist Manifesto is this word. Abolish home education, replace home education with social.

Did you know that homeschoolers are mentioned in the communist manifestos this is the very core of it this is a very come very very core commitment of communism communism says you have to destroy the family in fact he says abolish the family is this our agenda he says it is our agenda and he says, it's our agenda because that's the only way you can aggrandize the state. The state itself will never Be able to become what it needs to be in the communist world without abolishing the covenantal concepts of family and church He says the church is already irrelevant in the modern world But the family is going to take a lot of work to destroy and they've been working on it very hard since then Now, let me ask you this Have they been successful? It's been 150 years since Karl Marx said, let's make sure we start doing egalitarian stuff. Let's make sure we get women into the economy. Let's make sure we abolish the family business.

Talked about the bourgeoisie family business. He said, we've got to abolish the family business, and we've got to make sure that everybody's plugged into large corporations, either run or controlled by the state. Do you think that they've made much progress in the abolishment of the family since the 1850s? Hey, listen, the divorce rate is roughly 45%, 50% in America today, up from like 1% at the turn of the century. I was shocked when I was looking at divorce rates or divorce numbers in England in the 1850s 1860s is like 27 divorces in 1855 in England 27 you know now it's like two million seven hundred thousand you know it's it's like every year you know in other words the factors of of increase from eighteen fifty five like forty thousand is like forty thousand times more divorces today than they were in eighteen fifty five so deal just the whole dissolution of the family since the Communist Manifesto has been unbelievable.

Half of marriage is done in divorce. 41% of kids born outside of wedlock. 50% of kids born to women under 30 years of age born out of wedlock 50% and less than half of American households are now made up of a nuclear family yeah absolutely they have dissolved the family and it has been utterly destructive so my father in 1969 says I don't like this plan I'm gonna do plan B I'm gonna reintegrate my family as best as I possibly can. And that's what he did. And my life has never been the same.

My approach to a lot of things has been very, very different. For example, we talk about courtship. We think our daughters should be involved in kind of a courtship instead of a, dad, I'm just going to go out with a guy. I might be back by four. I don't know.

4 a.m. I don't, I'm just not on board with that. You know, if somebody comes to my door and said, I want to date your daughter, I'm interested. I'm engaged. And the reason is because we have integrated the relationships.

We care, we bought in, we we've been doing this for, for a number of years. When I got the opportunity to sign Off a little Social Security because I get a little income now as a pastor So I I'm able to sign off I exempt myself from Social Security from the the money I get from I get partial pay from my church I get a little bit income from other sources But there is a source that I can exempt myself from and that is the church and here's this document I'm sitting here reading this document, and I'm thinking Yeah, sign it What exempt my files out for Social Security? Why not now part of it is that Social Security win the red for the first time in 2011 and that was the first year that 80 million baby boomers started to retire and it was kind of a bad year for everybody so I mean part of the reason is I'm not sure that Social Security is really you know going to come through for us I'm sure they'll provide all the care you need until you get euthanized at 67 or 72 so you know I'm sure they'll be there for you until that final day when they euthanize you but you know I honestly guys I mean I I Honestly from the bottom of my heart do not feel that I need the government I just don't Now I'm not trying to impose that on anybody here I'm not saying you need to sign off Social Security for one thing most of you don't have much of an option you kind of stuck now the Amish do so maybe if you can find some way to create like an Amish Baptist sect or an Amish Presbyterian sect or something like that and you know maybe they didn't get the hat if you got to wear the hat you know that's fine You might be able to work out a way to exempt yourself.

But most people can't exempt themselves from the 15% or whatever it is that's going into this big rat hole. I mean, that's going into the Social Security trust fund. So I signed it away. And the reason I signed away is because my parents raised me, I'm raising my kids, and I'm sitting around looking at my kids and I'm thinking I've got five social security programs. And they're all looking at me and they're all hugging me and I love them And I could live with any one of them and I would love to live with any one of them And they would love to have us live with them.

I'm honest. I'm honest. That's the way it works I understand that that doesn't work with every family I Understand that the relationships of families the hearts of the fathers and sons and grandsons etcetera etcetera have been kind of severed I mean big-time severed It hasn't been a pleasant scene since Karl Marx and Plato said, hey, we've got to start doing our best to make sure that we sever the hearts of sons and fathers. OK? I understand that.

I understand what the bad guy's been doing. But as God, by his mercy, is repairing relationships. Does it have effects upon future generations? It does. It does.

See, right after I signed off Social Security, this would have been like 12, 13 years ago, it would have been five or six years later, I was thinking about inheritance. I was thinking, doesn't a good man leave an inheritance to his children's children? Sounds like the book of Proverbs. Right, yeah, it's very good. And so I'm thinking, a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children.

The apostle Paul actually says the same thing. He says, hey, every father leaves inheritance for a son That's a no-brainer in a functioning society even the ungodly do that and so I'm thinking you know it'd be cool to do that But I knew that that the government has been working very very hard on taxing inheritance called the death tax and they've been very faithful at this for a very long time there was a guy I was I was so concerned this would've been a two thousand six two thousand seven I was very concerned that this fellow from illinois barack obama be elected president on states and you know I was just unthinkable that this would happen but but it was a possibility the barack obama be elected and brought obama had said you know what george w bush has been a little exemption on the death tax in two thousand two two thousand four somewhere there and And there's one year in which the death tax was actually abolished in America and you had to die that year in order not for your inheritance to be taxed. I did not die that year. I'm still here.

And my concern is my concern. Barack Obama had said this. He had said, I am committed to restoring the death tax. I'm committed to taxing the living daylights out of inheritance. Now, why is that?

Because you have to understand that our nation has been largely governed by sons who are not raised by fathers they were what the king james version used to call bastards our nation has been turned over too dysfunctional families and the future will be I think governed by dysfunctional families. It's happening now. It's only going to happen more in the future. I mean, because this is the direction the nation is going. So I'm thinking to myself, OK, so these guys are committed to disenfranchising the family.

And please understand, they are platonic. They are Rousseauian. They are Marxist to the core. They believe in the state. Fundamentally, their social unit is the state and the power of the state, Not the security of the family, because there is no family.

The family is irrelevant, effectively, in the modern age to the average person. We're so far beyond a social system rooted in the family that now it's a non-issue for the most part, but not for me. And so I turned to my wife and I said, honey, I think there's a gift tax exemption because granted there's, you know, you can still go to two to 3 million, but in terms of, you know, passing inheritance, So some of you are saying, I think we're still okay. Are you sure we're gonna be okay in the year 2018? 2022, 2026, you follow me here?

So I'm a little concerned. Now, I happen to love my children even more than Barack Obama and the US federal government and the Internal Revenue Service. Do you know that? I love my children even more than I love the IRS. Anybody else?

Even more than you love the IRS. OK, there's four of you. I'm speaking to you now. So I turned to my wife and said, I'm so committed to my children. I love my children.

And you do too. Let's sign off x number of thousands. It's been 5, 8, 10, 000. Somewhere in there. Let's sign them off to our daughters year by year and gradually move our inheritance onto our children as best as we can, taking advantage of the gift tax exemption, which now is like $14, 000.

You'll have to check it out. Check it out with your accountants. But I just started moving my inheritance onto my kids. And we were all ready to write the big checks. And remember that one day I just stopped for a second and I said, what in the world am I doing?

I know I'm a crazy guy and I'm doing crazy stuff, but I'm thinking, what am I doing? I'm signing away social security. I'm taking our savings, moving it into my children's account. What in the world, how in the world are we going to survive in the years to come? As the children come together, let's have a little Bible time.

Turn with me to Matthew chapter 15. And I did an exposition of Matthew 15 for my children. I said, here is where the Pharisees come to Jesus with their own traditions, all of that. And Jesus points to this issue of core ban and says, core ban was a system whereby the temple had a giant or a government of some sort, had a gigantic slush fund and people could give a lot of money to this slush fund, like a social security fund. And if they did so, they no longer had fiduciary obligation to take care of their parents in their old age and Jesus looked at that system and said you dirty rotten Pharisees you have made the law of God an effect by your traditions and then I said kids, we're coming to live with you.

Come on, group hug. So that's the way that we began to integrate the generations. About six months later, I told my dad what I did I Said I'm moving our savings on to our kids My dad bless his heart. You'll never guess what happened About a year later. I started getting checks in the mail from my dad in that beautiful And that's one way we were able to buy a bigger house and to start a mentorship center, or discipleship center for young men, especially sons of single moms.

And it just, our whole family has been amazingly blessed by these things. Now, what has happened is that we are reintegrating the family. See, I'm committed. And I know that Jean-Jacques Rousseau has pulled together entire university systems, institutions, businesses, entire economic systems. I'm talking hundreds of trillions of dollars of Social Security and university systems.

Entire systems that have sucked everybody into a matrix. And here's little old me writing $5, 000 checks to Emily Swanson, standing right in the back. Hi hon, love you over there. Listen to me, I am committed to doing whatever it takes to have a family, to salvage the family in the year 2067. And even if 97 percent of Americans lose the family, By God's grace, I hope we don't.

I'm encouraging you to come back to the principles of God's word in relation to the family. Now, the word economics is derived from a Greek word, oikonomia. It's found in the scriptures, throughout the scriptures. The concept is an oikos, which is family. Nomia is law or vision.

Economics is the vision of the family. The family being the basic economic unit, not the individual. Let me say that one more time. The family is the basic economic unit, not the individual. The husband and the wife come together.

She is a helper, a helpmeet for what? For the dominion task. She's the axe head on the axe handle. How many kids, how many trees, this young man here, How many trees could you knock down with just an ax handle? Dink, dink, dink, dink, dink.

How long would it take you to knock down a tree with just the ax handle or ax head? What about the ax handle? Whack that thing. Just whack it. Whack that thing with a handle.

Whack it for like a year and a half and you might take one tree down. But if you put the ax head on the ax handle and you went out there, you're taking serious dominion. In fact, a young man came to me and said, Mr. Swanson, where do I need to be to get married financially? I said, young man, you need to be on the road going about 20 miles per hour pretty steadily.

It will take you getting married to take that thing to 80 miles an hour. That makes sense. In other words, do not expect your young man to achieve a steady pace in his dominion work until he gets married. The marriage itself completes him in the dominion task. This is the way God set it up from the beginning.

And so what you find throughout scripture is families engaged in family economic activities. Joseph is feeding his father's sheep. Rebecca is feeding her father's sheep. Rachel is feeding her father's sheep. David is feeding his father's sheep.

Aquila and Priscilla, a couple in the New Testament, Aquila and Priscilla, the word says, they were tent makers. Also, Proverbs 31 is essential. It's totally based in a family economic concept. Again, my family Bible study guides puts about 40 pages directly towards the family economic vision in Proverbs 31. So It's critical, critical.

And the critical verse is this, listen. The heart of her husband does safely trust in her so that he shall have no need to spoil. So whose economy are we talking about here? The husband as the head, and we're talking about a unified household economy, which is something that isn't really thought of very much today. See, today we say, the heart of her corporate boss safely trusts in her So that he shall have no need to spoil right or we say the heart of the hospital administration Safely trust in her so that they shall have no need for that's what it says today, but in in history It's been the woman part of the man who constructs an economic vision.

Now, let's say that my daughters, or one of my daughter, wants to pursue something in medicine. And she seems to be qualified because she has proven herself in her studies. It's what she likes to do. See, on the one hand, yes, you're to train your daughter to be a manager of the home. That's critical.

I think that's critical. But I don't think that negates her own skills and abilities. You follow me? She has a unique set of skills and abilities that could fit a particular ax head. OK?

So she's going to get married to somebody. She's going to fit a particular ax head. So if my daughter is fairly accomplished in medicine because she's dissected frogs when she was two years old and she's worked on her brother's appendix when she was eight and cut them up and all that and kind of sewed them back together, You just kind of get the sense this little gal has some abilities in this area. I'm not opposed to my daughter getting medical training. Now here's the problem, of course, the entire system doesn't agree with what I'm saying here.

See, that's the problem, right? We're in a system that is like, man, heresy, heresy. This is undermining all the social order. Yes. It's effective what I'm doing.

I'm undermining the entire social order with a biblical order of things. Now, personally, I think the social order has hit the iceberg, and it's scraped for 100 yards. So forget that, glub, glub. So I'm working on a biblical social order. But here's the point.

If my daughter needs some training in medical care, medical practices, we'll give her some of that. This was fine. But it's not so that. My daughter grows up and gets her little career job and plugs into the gigantic, fascist-controlled, communist system that controls all hospitals in Anchorage. And she's just one little bitty bitty piece that's 17 layers down in the gigantic bureaucracy and she's enslaved in the system forever and ever.

Amen. But she makes her 47 K a year. She opens up her own little account So she can be divorced someday, et cetera, et cetera. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's the other system.

The system I'm talking about is a biblical system where she marries a man who's got a vision for a mission station in Africa. And he's preaching the word of God. And occasionally people come in with problems with their appendices or whatever it is. And she's been operating on appendixes since she was seven. And she knows how to handle it, and now see the ax head is on the ax handle for a unified household vision in the family economy.

Now I understand that in the present day, it's incredibly difficult to reinstate these ideas and these systems. But it's happening. I'm here to tell you it's happening. I'm really excited. We have our family economics conferences that are stuffed up.

In fact, the one down in Washington state filled up six weeks before it started. And we have two or three others or four others no five there's one in Canada as well that's scheduled in the next year the families are saying yeah absolutely it's time to reincorporate the family economy and I'm saying it's family economy or bust it's family economy or 95% of our young men are playing video games while Rome burns. It's family economies or massive individuation, massive individuation, and pretty much RIP on the tomb of the family in the 21st century. I was sitting next to a Mormon lawyer out of Salt Lake City a couple years ago, and he asked my desk I talked to home school conferences on education. I can character is essential we focus on characters is yeah, I believe that That's why I'm teaching my daughter to be independent And I Independent to see and I looked up independent the course of my Bible I found the use of it in one place, 1 Corinthians chapter 11, where it says, the man shall not be independent of the woman.

The woman shall not be independent of the man. So the Bible really isn't big on the word independent. Now, here's the deal, though. You've got to understand that most Americans say this. It's not just Mormon attorneys.

It's everybody virtually says this, right? I'm raising my daughter to be independent. Read the Girl Scout site, you know, I mean, it's about independent, you know. Raise them to be independent. Of course they're raised to be independent.

90% of young men aren't grown up by 30 years of age, they're useless, worthless, and majority of workers in the workplace now are women. And twice the 23-year-olds graduating from college are women over men. And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that. I know that. I know that.

That's their social system. But as it turns out, you know, when they say independent, what do they mean? Independent of what? You follow me here. Independent of what?

Let's be specific here. And you know, step up the microphone, dad. What is it? Independent of the family of fathers of lousy husbands that are going to be pretty worthless anyway, et cetera, et cetera. Yes.

I want my daughter to be independent because if she gets divorced, I don't want her coming back home and leeching off of, of me. I mean, forget that we're in a mobile home burning our children's inheritance with a bumper sticker. You know That's what we're doing. You know we're busy doing that so the last thing I want is some 40 year old burned-out daughter coming home now. I didn't say that to him You know you wouldn't You wouldn't want to say that to him.

But, you know, I mean, it's just nice if people were to be honest. That's all I'm asking. Just be honest. Independent of the family. But, of course, dependent upon the state.

The largest socialist voting block in America are single women. How many times have you read that on the internet? Every other day, Barack Obama was elected as president of the United States because of single women. This is his voting base. This is the only way, the only way that you can get a socialist nation, a communist nation, by the year 2020 is if Mormon fathers would say on planes out of Salt Lake City to Denver, I am raising my daughter to be independent of the family economy and dependent upon the state.

One of the most degrading signs I ever saw was in a Chicago Midway airport about four years ago. You show a picture of an African woman. It says, the world's greatest untapped human resource. It's an African woman. It's the most degrading sign I ever saw.

Because here's what it is. It's large governments and corporations salivating over these women, to take them away from family economies and plug them into a totally socialized state. I'm here to tell you, I think the family is important. I think the family economy is crucial. And America is doing its very best to bring homosexual weddings, the breakdown of the family economy to Africa.

They want to destroy, they've destroyed us. Now their goal is to destroy the whole world. Now as far as I know they haven't said that on their website. But friends, we've got to salvage something. And I think it's time to start salvaging what I would call the family economy.

What happened in the 1800s, where children had worked on the family farms for like 5, 840 years. In the Industrial Revolution, the children moved, now listen carefully, this is important historically, the children moved from the family economy to the corporations. And then, the socialists came in and said, no, no, no, that's not gonna work. And they told the capitalists, we're going to take the children away from you. We're going to establish child labor laws and compulsory tennis laws, and that will move them into the hands of the state.

You follow me here? Two step process. First thing that happens is children move into the hands of big corporate bosses. The state says, no, that's not going to work. The state comes in through child labor laws and through compulsory attendance laws in the 1830s.

And by the way, the last compulsory attendance law was 1915 in the state of Mississippi. They moved the children from the corporations into the hands of the state by the compulsory attendance laws. Now, what's happening right now is that women have moved from the family economy, and they stuck with the family economies until the 1940s, World War II, 1950s. They moved into the hands of the corporations. And they've been in the hands of the corporations for about 40 years.

Now with Obamacare stepping in, the women are moving into the hands of the state. Again, the children and the women are moving from the family into the corporation, into the hands of the socialist state. You want me to go over that one more time? This is what's going on right now even as we speak. Unless families exempt themselves from Obamacare.

Now here's what's happened. It's amazing. What's going on right now in America is there is an exemption made for families who don't want to play by the compulsory attendance laws and don't want to become statists and socialists. They do not have to move their children into the hands of the state. In the 1970s and 1980s, God in his providence said, I'm going to establish an island of freedom.

We're going to call it homeschooling. And every state in America legalized home education in some regard. And families were able to set their children free from the hands of Pharaoh. It was amazing. It was just like a miracle from heaven.

Honestly, a lot of the court trials were effectively miracles. Chris Klicka will tell you the stories. It is amazing what God did. Now, about three years ago, medicine was moving from the hands of families and corporations into the hands of the state by Obamacare. A completely chance meeting happened between a legislator in Colorado, who's a very good friend of mine, and Samaritan Ministries about 12 years ago, where he came out and he met some very key people who were trying to figure out the direction of medicine for America and these guys were introduced and then in a totally miraculous way the Christian medical sharing ministries were exempted in the Obamacare bill in 2011 or 2012.

It was almost like a miracle from heaven. Families could exempt themselves from Obamacare and continue maintaining some independence from the state in the area of medicine. Why is this important? It's important because now listen, if families do not have control over medicine decisions, the people who control the medicine, the fund the medicine, will take control of the medical decisions in our families. So in the year 2022, If a family has a child who is born or conceived, and that child has been tested by amniocentesis to have Down syndrome, the family itself will not be making the decisions as to the medical care for that child.

Do you understand? There will be a guy on the 26th floor of some building in New York City who will dictate what happens in terms of the money paid for that child. They can turn to that family and say, not a dime for that child's pre-medical care for, not a dime for that child's birth, not a dime for that child's medical care for the next 18 years, unless you abort the child, will pay for the abortion. Nine times out of 10, 95 times out of 100, my guess is that even nice little evangelical families will abort the child. Why?

Because what the government funds, the government controls. And families will less and less have opportunities to make their own independent, free decisions concerning the medical care for the children, unless we right now begin to wean these systems away from the socialist mindset. Unless we say enough of the social security, we're going to start reestablishing our own family economies. We're going to start reestablishing inheritance. And we're going to retain some family freedoms in the area of medical care.

All right, when people ask us, are you a one income family or a two income family, I tell them we're a seven income family You need this mentality You need this mentality your family is not about public schooling. It's not fundamentally about homeschooling it's about a family economy where family discipleship is happening while you walk by the way, while you rise up and while you lie down. That's the big picture. That's the way you need to see your family. That's the way it's presented in Scripture.

So my encouragement is build a family economy. Again, it can be multi-streams. You don't have to sell everything by a family farm. You don't need to do that at all. We have probably 10 streams in our families.

We have so much going on, It's just out of control. I put it all in spreadsheets. I mean, God has blessed us amazingly in just about every endeavor we've taken up. Families are doing this everywhere. I'm finding more and more families are just exploding in their family economies.

God is blessing them. We have a much, much higher percentage of family economies, according to our audience response units, that are debt-free on their homes. They tend to be ahead of the game, often, in income. But that's not their primary interest. Their primary interest is actually Deuteronomy 6-7.

Their primary interest is to reintegrate the family and to provide more opportunities for dad to interact. Because we're at the point now, friends, where we're not going to survive if young boys are not mentored by their fathers. We're way beyond that. We've used up all the capital in previous generations. We are in debt to our eyeballs for the next three to four generations.

Right now, we need to invest way, way, way more into the lives of our precious little boys and precious little girls that God has given to us. How do we do this? This is what families are asking. How do we do this? We're not telling you what to do.

We're just saying these are the big picture issues. Now, tag, you're it, dad. It's time to get down on your knees and pray that God opens up your eyes to the next steps you need to take to establish your family economies and reintegrate your family in the broken down age of the 21st century. Tune into my radio show from time to time, if you will. We talk about these things all the time.

I'm constantly interviewing family economies. It's very exciting what's happening with young entrepreneurs. It's very exciting what's happening with family economies all over the world. There's a guy who moved off the grid out in Idaho. He had a job, they finally moved off the grid because their business, his wife's online business of selling 1930s sewing machine parts took off.

Imagine that, a niche business, 1930s sewing machine parts. It's that small in the macro economy, but they're making a living with it. The Internet has opened up huge opportunities. So, God is paving a way for families who want to be families in the 21st century. God is doing it miraculously, And we're seeing the water's part for families here and families there.

It's exciting what's happening. Here's a family economics and discipleship summary of something like 60 talks that we've done in one of our largest conferences. It sort of summarizes what's going on in the lives of thousands, tens of thousands of families across America family economies are coming back It's going to be a whole different economy It's going to be very interesting very decentralized But families are the technology that took that out of the home can bring dad back into the home It's just a matter of how we use it. God will provide a way to reintegrate family economies. I'm excited.

I couldn't be more excited. Honestly, I'm seeing God doing something, and He's doing it with family economics. Thanks so much. Thank you. Or you