Kevin Swanson shares his experiences homeschooling his children and the reasons his family chose to homeschool, emphasizing the importance of character development and integrating life experiences with education. He highlights the Book of Proverbs as God's book on education, focusing on knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. Swanson also discusses the differences between the secularist Greek model of education, which is often irrelevant and disconnected from life, and the Hebraic form of education, which emphasizes practical application and real-life experiences. He encourages parents to focus on character development and consider the sufficiency of Scripture when making educational decisions for their children.

We homeschool our children out in the eastern plains of Colorado. And you see a picture of my family up there. So we homeschooled and yes those are all mine. So we passed out that we can move on. Actually my wife has done most of the homeschooling over many of the years and she would she'd get pretty stressed out about it, I can never understand why.

I'd come home and she'd be still in her pajamas. Her hair's out like this and she's going, I was not gonna ask her what's for dinner tonight, honey. Have any of you had a day like that or a couple of years like that? Yeah, okay, okay. And about five or six years ago I came home and she was looking like that.

And I did not ask what's for dinner and we had a conversation about your son and she was having some difficulty some some conflict with a 11 12 year old boy Does that ever happen to any of you? Okay, and in the conversation she said, cuz I've been in leadership at the Christian Home Educators of Colorado organization for 11 years now. She said, you know, you've been traveling Colorado in the country talking about homeschooling all these years. How would you like to try it? I said, sounds interesting.

Yeah, we'll give it a shot. So I've been homeschooling my son for the last six years. He travels with me. Actually, we don't homeschool very much. We car school, we office school, we conference school.

We do a lot of hotel schooling, but somehow or another I think we're trying to get it accomplished. Now I have taught in public and private schools, but there's just something different about home educating my own son. And I guess I want to touch on some of those things from first-hand experience, But before I do that, let me give you the 10 reasons why we like to homeschool our children. I realize people make different choices for the education of their children, but here are the 10 reasons why we like to do it out on the eastern plains of Colorado. I'll just count a countdown.

We do the top 10 list on my radio show, Generations with Kevin Swanson, which by the way you can hear anytime anywhere in the world at kevinswanson.com. We broadcast from my basement a safe distance from the demise of western civilization, huckered down in the basement deep in the woods of eastern Colorado. So, and here are 10 reasons why we like to homeschool our children. Number 10, we don't have to ask the school district for permission. We go hunting for a week in the middle of October.

We just take off and do whatever we want. Number 9, number 9, here it goes, we can pray all day long. Amen? We can pray without ceasing, which sounds biblical. We can put the Ten Commandments on our wall.

We can wallpaper our house in the Ten Commandments if we want to. Number eight, we can teach Leviticus 20 in verse 13 as part of our high school civics curriculum. I'm sorry if any of you know what Leviticus 20 13 is that does not usually show up in the average public school curriculum. Okay, number seven, our children can be in four grade levels at the same time. In fact, people come up to our children from time to time and say, oh honey, you're homeschooled.

That's wonderful. What grade are you in? And they give them that dumb look, you know, that homeschooled dumb look. I'm 11 years old. Then you have to step in and say, but he's in algebra 2, so back off.

Number 6, we just prefer pajamas to school uniforms. Number 5, as a homeschool high school graduate myself my folks homeschooled me in the 60s and 70s I can have a Homeschool high school class reunion anytime I want to just gonna sit there. I just had one right down there I had one right there before I got up Number four we've never missed the bus Actually we like to we bound the back 40 of our properties time to time the bus comes around the corner, we just like to wave at it. Our kids call it the jail bus. Look at the inmates.

Number three reason why the Swansons like to home school, you can bring guns to school if you want to. Lock and load. Maya, My son just feels like he can concentrate a little bit better if he's got his 22 leaned up against the desk there. And we're okay with that. Just fine with that.

Number two, there's always somebody to take out the trash, which is nice, convenient. And number one, the most important reason why we like to home school is the school staff is totally in love with each other and we make out in front of the class. And they love it when you do that, you know, they just, mom and dad, then somebody comes inside and becomes a sandwich and it's fun. Some of the reasons why the Swansons liked to home school. Well, my topic is education, so let me share with you some of my thoughts in relation to this.

In 1844, a very important Supreme Court decision came down. It was in reference to the first secular public school in America. It happened in Pennsylvania. The case was taken to the Supreme Court in the United States and they argued against the establishment of the first secular public school in America. This was 1844.

And the reasons were threefold. Number one, Pennsylvania's declared in its Constitution to be a Christian state. Number two, United States is a Christian country. And number three, the Bible is the inspired Word of God and must be read authoritatively in American education classrooms, that my friends was a decision on the part of the Supreme Court of these United States. And it happened in 1844.

I'm not sure that the Supreme Court of the United States would rule that way in the year 2009. A lot of things have changed since then, but let's trace things back. What happened to our country? Where has our country gone? Well, in 1776, the establishment of the nation and the first Continental Congress, a very important thing happened.

I picked this up in John Adams, the story on John Adams. And by the way, I'd encourage you to read the McAuliffe book on this. But at this time, Benjamin Rush was sitting next to John Adams in the Continental Congress. And he whispered to John, Could we possibly win this conflict against the greatest armies, the greatest empire in the world today? And John Adams whispered back, if we repent of our sins and fear God, That is very important brothers, sisters.

You don't hear our leaders encouraging a nation to repentance and the fear of God. Now do you understand why a man who had become the President of the United States understood in the most critical moment in his leadership as a political leader in this country, this man said that it was vitally, vitally important to fear God. In fact, they proclaimed a day of prayer and Thomas Jefferson decided it wasn't a very good idea and spoke against it. And John Adams stood up and shamed Thomas Jefferson back into his seat and they continued with the day of prayer in which case they were on their knees before the living God for multiple hours at a time pleading for his aid because they still believed that there was a God who was in providential control of everything that happens in all of life, in the establishment of empires, in every sparrow that falls. It was still a reality to them.

And I'll tell you why in 1776 this man felt it was important to fear God. It's because the first primer in America written in 1655 began with A. In Adam's fall we sinned all. Now of course We don't have those primers today in most American schools. By the 1900s, mentions of God was purged from our history books, our literature books.

God as sovereign, God as one to be worshiped, God as one to be feared were eliminated from our curriculum. And that's where we lie today. Folks, ideas have consequences and you've heard that before, I'm sure. Ideas have consequences. The reason you live in a world today where 40% of kids are born without fathers up from 6% in 1960.

Half of marriage is ended in divorce. The reason men do not worship God in the Senate today, the reason we obliterate God's law, we ignore God's law in every single aspect of society is because of the ideas that are taught and transmitted in the schools across the nation. It is the ideas that set the direction of this country and for the most part the ideas are taught and told and transmitted in the schools of the nation's not the churches. Ideas have consequences and we my friends in the area of education are on the front lines. Welcome to Omaha Beach on D-Day, in the war of the world views.

This is the very nub of the battle. Now, let me point out the elephant in the room right now. I want you to raise your hand if you have ever been to a homeschooling conference Where you heard Doug Phillips, Vody Bockham, R.C. Sproul Jr., Kevin Swanson, one of these speakers speak in a homeschool conference. Lift your hand right now if you have ever been to a homeschooling conference somewhere in America.

I thought so. Most of you have raised your hand. That is, you would not be here right now listening to some of the most important Reformational speakers in America unless you had been to a homeschooling conference. And Many of these speakers have spoken to tens of thousands, some hundreds of thousands of people across the nation and they're bringing these ideas to bear and I don't think we would see any reformation in this country if it had not been for the reformation of education. This is the elephant in the room.

My encouragement is that you pray for these men. They are on the very, very forefront of the most important battle. Ideas have consequences. The way you educate children will direct the future of the nation. And by the way, any of you get Ken Ham's monthly magazine, newsletter that comes out, you get that magazine?

The recent one has a really neat front page article where he quotes an atheist who went through the Creation Museum and then blogged this statement, we are in a battle for the minds and the hearts of the next generation. This is an atheist, he understands the battle and they have fought well and they have won the battle to a great extent in this country And the reason we live in the nation that we do today is because they have made the progress, and we have not. That's why when you get guys like Vody Baucom, and Doug Phillips, and Ken Ham to a home education conference where they plead and they beg and they preach to the hearts of parents everywhere that they come out from among them and be separate and they begin to establish the fear of God as the beginning of wisdom and knowledge in those little parental classrooms across this country. They are making somewhat of a difference. Pray for these men.

Pray for these men. This is the battle for the church. This is the battle for the minds and the hearts of the next generation. This is Omaha Beach. May God bless the work that's done by these men.

Well, it all began for me. I'm a keynote in some conferences across the US. I've spoken in Canada, Mexico, Japan, homeschooling conferences there. And it all started one day When we were trying to potty train our fourth child, Bethany. Now some of you are saying, okay, this is not education.

It's not algebra, but they do have to learn to go. So we were bound and determined to do it we've been changing diapers for about 10 years straight non-stop and we thought okay we're gonna have a break because Abigail was coming we wanted about a three-month break so one Saturday we said you are gonna be potty trained today, honey. We put her down on the potty chair in the middle of the kitchen and we went to work. We did everything that we could think of. We squared the water in there to get the identification going.

We did the little rain dance and read the books and did the instructions. But it was not going very well for us. She just sort of sat there for an hour and then she'd get up and go in her pants about 30 seconds or so. And so it was pretty frustrating to be honest with you. And you know again as parents you're sitting there wondering is this child and it doesn't matter where it's algebra or potty training is this child have a basic biological issue?

You know, is there something mental? Intellectually, she's just not where she needs to be. But then we're also wondering, Is this a character issue, right? I mean, do we take her into the room? What is this?

What is this? We're always grappling with these issues as parents and you know what I'm talking about, don't you parents? You're wondering if it's a character issue and I noticed that she was sort of she was sort of fighting me as I was changing her clothes for the third time. And she was signaling to me, Dad, I am not cooperating with the program today. That was the message I was getting.

And so I turned to my wife and said, honey, I don't think this child's problem is biological. I think it's Adam. I think we've got a basic depravity issue. And if you're anything like us, from time to time, we are not really all that consistent. It's hard to say the word but you know what I'm talking about.

We're not all that consistent with, and Bethany was a little bit of a strong-willed child, so we said okay here's what we're gonna do. We are not gonna worry about potty training. We're just going to put it on the back burner and we're going to focus on character in this child's life for the next week. We're going to make sure that she obeys mommy and daddy. She honors her mom and dad.

She obeys the very first time we tell her to do something with a big smile on her face and she is going to be part of the program. So we said, okay, here we go, we're going to do it. And we were trying to be really consistent and the very next day, guys, I woke up, I was walking by the bathroom and I heard the sound of tinkling which by the way delights a parent's soul doesn't it you're tinkling and so I I walked in and there she is, she's kind of pulled her diapers down and she is going all by herself. And it was just like, victory! And yet, here's the amazing thing, we really didn't work on potty training, we just tried to be good parents for 24 hours!

And I learned something that day. I learned that sometimes you need to move the academics aside and focus on what God wants you to focus on and that is the character of the child. And so what we did was we went into the Word of God. We said, we're not sure that we have inherited the right idea of education from Aquinas and Dewey and all these other guys. So let's go into God's Word and find out what God has to say about the education of a child, because the Word of God has to be sufficient for all things.

That's 2 Timothy 3 16 and 17 that's been part of this this conference the entire time. So we were convinced that God is very smart. That's an understatement. But God made this universe, God made you and me, and if God can make something that can do this, He has to be really, really smart. I'm an engineer and I know this stuff.

So we decided to go to His Word and and crack it open and find what God has to say about education went into the concordance couldn't find a whole lot about education in the Bible it's not there however we brought in the search to knowledge wisdom understanding sons daughters etc etc and we wound up in one particular book a great deal of the time and that happens to be the book of Proverbs. Thank you. And so we were shocked, of course, that God has an entire book on education in his Word. The only thing is, we didn't find curriculum. We were looking for something like, use Bob Jones curriculum.

Abeka is where it's at. And we didn't find that. We didn't find geography, geology, geometry. We were shocked! God didn't seem to be all that interested in the Pythagorean theorem, which by the way is a cool theorem.

But He seems to be really focused on this stuff called character. But see, this was a revelation to me. And again, this is a progress in my life. God has something to say about the paideia, the education, the training of a young boy. And we find it in living color in the book of Proverbs and I'll tell you this this is a sideline I have yet to find a teaching college anywhere in America that assigns the memorization of the Book of Proverbs as an important part of their curriculum.

Now why is that? They have denied the sufficiency of scripture. God is stupid. God doesn't know what he's talking about. God has no clue how to train, educate the child for life on planet Earth.

That's the assumption that works in the minds of hundreds of thousands, millions of Americans. I'm talking about academics. I'm talking about university people. I'm talking about Christian colleges. Please understand when God says, I've got a book on the dispensing of knowledge wisdom and understanding Mr.

Teacher in a teaching college Mr. Teacher in a Christian college Are you in the business of transmitting wisdom and knowledge? If the answer is yes, go to the book of Proverbs! This is God's book on it! So I'm trying to teach my son algebra and I'm running into some flack.

And I came to my son, I said, son I think you've got some problems here. Now he's He's always been two or three years ahead in his math. And I said, son, you're getting 67, 74% on the test. You're just not doing very well. I got the sense that your feet are just up there on the dashboard and you're just kinda letting it happen.

We've got a sloth issue in your life right now, so you need to get cranked up here on this thing and so here's what we're going to do. You take the Saxon lessons, you do four to five lessons, take the test. If you get less than 85% of the test, you got to redo all four or five sections all over again. So he's real confident from the get-go and he goes and works his lessons and winds up getting 72% on the first test. So I said okay son we got a problem here.

You're less than 85, you got to redo all the four to five things and You know and he starts getting emotional now What the world's motion have to do with math? Here is get emotional that is dead no works. Oh, I did all those 147 problems. I don't want to do it, Dad. I know this stuff, Dad.

Why? I said, I know you know this stuff, son. I'm not teaching you math I'm teaching you character I'm just using math to do it math is one of the best ways to teach character. That's my real focus in life. That's what I want to do because character is the substance, it is the warp and move of the education of a child.

If the education of a child is a building, the foundation, the studs and the drywall is the character of education. Geometry, geology, geography, that's just the wallpaper. That's just the pictures. It makes the place livable, but it's not the substance of it. What would happen if you were trying to put wallpaper on walls that didn't exist try it sometime try teaching in the public schools hmm go ahead, put your wallpaper on walls that don't exist and do it again and again and again.

God is wise. God is wise. He's given us the principles for the education of a child. But as we continue, we find in Proverbs 23, in verse 26, the very heart of what it takes to educate a child. This is where the Father in the Proverbs cries out, oh, Son, give me your heart.

Come close and observe my ways. And you know what? I'll tell you one thing. I did pretty well in teaching in public and private schools, But when I started homeschooling my child it seems to me that I was getting a little Frustrated at points. I I never yelled at anybody I never raised my voice in the public or private classroom outside of preaching a little bit time time But man when I start working with my son, I start raising my voice a little bit here, a little bit there.

Why is that? Because I'll tell you what, when you begin to bring somebody into your life, you begin to have some relationship with somebody, you are going to be able to see their sins and they can see yours. And it's tough. There's a proverb that says one way to keep the barns clean is just keep the whole crowd of cows out of there. And one of the neatest ways to keep your life as clean as you can possibly keep it is to keep the kids out because if you let your children into your life you're going to find out there's going to be little piles of defecation everywhere I speak metaphorically of course But that's just the way it works.

But the proverb also adds, without the cattle there will be no increase. That's why sanctification occurs within the context of relationships. Alright, let me give you one more principle, life integration. Now these are biblical principles in relation to the education of a child. Jesus brought his disciples into his life.

He traveled with them, he lived with them, he taught them, he walked with them, And then he sent them out. It wasn't long before he sent them out. They were always going out and applying the things that they had been taught. You also find in James chapter 1 to be doers of the word and not hearers only. This is very important.

It came home to us one night when it was about 10 o'clock kids have been in bed for about an hour and Brenda shoots up and says, oh Emily forgot to do her grammar today. And I thought the first thing I thought was well let's get her out of bed and she will do her grammar until midnight if necessary. And then a little better sense hit me and I asked my wife, well, what was Emily doing all day if she was not doing her grammar? And Brenda says, well, oh, you know what, she was writing a letter to grandma. And Emily at that time was about 8 or 9 years old and she was just writing everything to grandma.

It was kind of embarrassing. She was telling everything that was going on in our life. But she would do 3, 4 page type written letters at 8 or 9 years old. Just constantly typing to grandma and just updating her on what's going on. And as I was thinking about this, I thought to myself, why do we do grammar?

Does Anybody know why we do grammar? Is it so that when you're 27 years old, you get out of bed and say, it's time to do my grammar. I have prepared all my life for this moment. Grammar time. No, the reason that you do grammar is so that you can write letters to grandma thank you yes now this is a revelation to me because a great deal of my life and my college life was spent it was known as a classroom Have any of you heard of a classroom?

Okay, a few of you have a classroom is an island where you take a child away from life You know places like family church a work life etc etc and you put them on the island Where there's this relevance where there is no real connection to grandma or to work or anything else in life and you keep that on the island for 18 years. It's like learning how to ride a bike by taking bike 101, bike 102, bike 103, All 18 textbooks on bikeology for 18 years, but you've never really gotten on the bike. This is education in the secularist Greek model. It is irrelevant. It is the thinking man who thinks ideas but never applies anything.

The Hebraic form repudiates that form of education. Don't put it on the island. Keep it in life because if you're a hearer of the word and not a doer, you're a man who beholds himself in the mirror and straightway forgets what manner of man he was. My friends, these are very powerful principles of education. Very powerful principles.

But let me say this, I talk about these things all the time in my conferences. These principles are nothing compared to the are nothing compared to the most basic and fundamental principle on education you will find in the Bible. Proverbs is God's book on education. It begins with six verses that talks about what it's gonna talk about. It says we're gonna talk about knowledge, understanding, and wisdom and how to give it to a young man.

Then verse seven is the key verse. The most important, the most basic, the most fundamental lesson you will ever, ever, ever learn about education is found in Proverbs 1 and verse 7, the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God. That's it. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God. This is absolutely essential in education.

It absolutely must be in every single aspect of education. If you are a teacher, if you have any responsibility in teaching math or science or Latin or Greek to your students, You have a responsibility under God to teach the beginning of that wisdom and knowledge which must be the fear of God. You say, what is the fear of God? The fear of God is knowing that there is a God in the heavens who has made the galaxies in the universe. There is a God in heaven with whom we have to do.

There is a God who looks around the world several thousand years ago, and he says, I have found a man who is the most righteous and the most faithful man on earth now let's put the screws on him I will slaughter his crops I will take away all of his sheep I will ruin his house I will ruin his health and I will kill his ten children and this man falls on his face and says the Lord gives the Lord takes it away blessed be the name of the Lord this is the God with whom we have to do He is a God that visits a church out on the East Coast and takes two of these beloved women in one fell swoop with a drop of a tree on a vehicle and 18 children are motherless overnight. He is a God to be worshipped. When Job saw that God had acted in his life he fell on his face the Word of God said and worshipped him. I bought a book called Galaxy from Barnes and Noble's bookstore. And here in the modern world we have all the technology to look at the creation of God and to open up the vast universe of galaxies, trillions of galaxies covering a universe the breadth of which we cannot measure.

And there are storms on Jupiter that are the size of our globe, that would wipe out all civilization on this tiny little rock, swinging around the sun in a 20-30 minutes we'd be gone. Meteorites that crash into planets. We have stars that blow out in cosmic explosions. God did that. God did this and God did that.

He ought to be worshipped. But in this book, not a mention of God. Not a mention of God. What a travesty. What a travesty.

We were down in Wyoming at the the Capitol with a team-pad group a number of years ago embedded in the marble floors are fossils everywhere. And as I'm teaching these young people the principles of Christian civil government, I said, look what God did! One time, men, their civil governments on this earth, refused to honor the true and living God. They refused to worship and obey his commandments. They engaged in a breaking of his law in this area and that area.

These men that walks these floors in this capital should beware that God is still there and in Genesis chapter 6 he said, I will come and I will destroy all flesh from off the earth. I will do it. This is a God to be feared. He is the God that brings everlasting torment. At the end, men cry out for one tiny drop of water to wet their tongue in the infinite eternal burning that torments their bodies and their souls.

He's a God to be feared. And yet, we don't teach our science that way. We don't teach our science that way. May God have mercy upon us. You dare to teach science.

I'm talking to Christian teachers too. People who teach in the public schools. And this is difficult to say. Because my guess is there are some here that teach in universities, in Christian schools, secular colleges. If you teach, if you dare, if you dare to teach science, if you dare to explain the vast beauty and expanse of the universe, the internal complexity of the human body, if you're going to bring that out in the biology class, the astronomy class.

If you're going to bring it out in the chemistry class, if you dare to do that, you have not taught science until you have been down on your knees in front of the class saying, class, worship the God who did this. Stand in awe of him. Worship him now. You must do that or you are in treachery against the God of the universe. You will perpetuate the continual rebellion against God in our society.

You will raise up presidents and congressmen that refuse to say, we as a nation must repent and serve and fear the living and the sovereign God over all things. I tell you you must do it or you are in cosmic treachery against this God. You teach the fear of God as the beginning of wisdom and knowledge. If you dare, if you dare, if you dare call yourself a teacher. These are hard words, but I'm telling you it is time that somebody say it.

All of us need to say it. We have abandoned the fear of God in our universities. They have not worshiped God like that in chemistry classrooms and laboratories and universities and K-12 schools in the state of Kentucky and Tennessee. For a hundred years they haven't done it. And they are destroying us.

They're destroying our science, global warming, evolution, etc. And I fear the world we will inherit. I fear the world we will inherit when these scientists who have not studied the fear of God for a hundred and fifty two hundred years will do in their genetic engineering, in their politics. The kind of bloody genocides and pogroms that await us in this country blow my mind. And it is rooted to the fact there are Christian teachers right now in America, in classrooms, K-12 classrooms teaching chemistry, and they will not, they will not, they will not worship the true and living God, and acknowledge Him in fear, and take upon themselves the responsibility to teach that the beginning of that knowledge they are giving this morning is the fear of God.

The acknowledgement of his existence, his reality, his presence. You can reach out, you can touch him. He is there all the time and he is connected. And when you teach history, you're going to stand up and you're going to talk about the bubana plague where God wiped out a third of Europe. I say God did it.

He is sovereign over everything that happens. And at the end of the lesson you have not taught history. You have not taught history until you say it is time to fear the God who did this and you must teach your students to tremble. To tremble. To shake.

Your students must know how to shake in the chemistry classroom. They must! If you are to salvage our country, our churches in the future. Let me talk about the seminaries. The reason you have preachers today in churches across America that preach boring messages, that do not connect, that do not have feeling, that do not have fear, that will not tremble, they will not tremble, they will not tremble, is because they sat in seminary classes And they were not trembling there They were listening to too many boring lectures God was not real to the seminary professors if he was they would have been trembling I Tell you brothers pastors seminary professors here we must return the fear of God at the very least to our seminaries.

Is that a no-brainer, Scott? Is that a no-brainer? At the very least, is there repentance that must happen in this area? Brothers and sisters, I tell you there is repentance. God demands it of us.

It is time to come face to face with the Word of God. The beginning of knowledge and wisdom is the fear of God. Does that speak to you? May God help us here. May God help us here.

We teach rhetoric. Brothers, let me tell you this. Most of the forms of classical education brought into our Christian schools and our Christian homeschooling movement is missing most of these points, including the fear of God. Aristotle does his book on rhetoric. He has 300 pages, I know I've taught the book.

He has 300 pages on rhetoric. He of course forgets Thelema, the will, because the Greeks are terrible in life application. They will not bring the will to bear in their presentations. One problem, but second problem, look as you will, you will not find the fear of God. In his definition of the character, the ethos of the man who needs to be speaking.

Now Peter, by God's grace, has one solitary verse on rhetoric in 1 Peter 3.15. And Peter says, be prepared to give an answer to every man who asks for a reason for the hope that is within you but he says if you dare if you dare give a reason if you dare teach your children to give a reason if you dare to teach rhetoric you absolutely positively must do it with meekness and fear. Peter has one tiny little verse on rhetoric and he says meekness and fear, meekness and fear, meekness and fear. Aristotle missed it. Missed it by a mile!

Throw away his book! You can save the cover if you want. Because you've got to take something from the Egyptians. Let your kids write drawings on it. Okay.

People say, classical people say, you've got to get something from the Egyptians. Okay, they can scribble on the cover if they want to. But if he's going to forget meekness and fear, And let me tell you this, you dare to teach your children something about theology or philosophy or rhetoric or any of these things. Every lesson you take them to the top of what I call the well of knowledge. The well of knowledge.

And as you're climbing the well of knowledge, of course every young student, every young seminary student gets prouder and prouder and prouder and prouder as he looks down at all those scummy people who don't know squat. But at the end of the lesson, any teacher worth his salt takes the cover off of the well and shows them everything they don't know. The mysteries of how faith and works are involved in sanctification, justification, their relationship, sovereignty and responsibility, the one and the many in God. The particularity and the unity, on and on and on, every single subject is going to lead back to the mysteries the mysteries of God and at the end of that lesson if those men are not on the floor on their faces on their faces on their faces on their faces worshiping the God they cannot comprehend yeah I haven't taught anything. This is a biblical perspective on knowledge and education and it is the reason why we have ruined our science, our churches, our seminaries and the gospel.

Look up the gospel in the bible you're going to find in the book of revelation the gospel is the fear of God I get tired of people talking about the gospel there are two or three verses that define the gospel, one is 1 Corinthians 15 the second is in Revelation the gospel is the resurrection of Jesus Christ the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ And it is the fear of God. And unless you have taught a child to fear God, they have not learned the Gospel. This is the beginning of any knowledge and wisdom concerning the Gospel. And this is why a lot of children are not getting saved in their cutesy little evangelical services in Sunday schools. Nobody's teaching them this character trait called the fear of God.

And unless you can fear the God who would put his own beloved son on the cross. This is the God who brought a destructive sword to the family of Job. This is the God who puts his own son on that bloody cross. But why did he do that? He did that because he is an infinitely just and holy and wrathful God that cannot tolerate the the concept that you, your children have sinned against Him.

And this pressed Him to put His Son on the cross. That we might come to Him in humility, in fear, and receive in love. That's salvation. Love and fear meet at the cross. Noah's ark would make no sense if there were not dead bodies floating around that ark.

You have got to fear Him if you will love him for his salvation in that arc. You have to fear him. You have to fear him and you have to teach your children this fear. Why is the faith dying? We talked about why the nation is dying.

The faith is dying in the Western world. Why? I'll tell you why. Education. But there's a deeper thing.

This is why, as I'd say, 95% of the explanation for the death of the faith over the last 1, 000 years. It is because of dualism. Now let me help by giving you an example. A little 13 year old girl in our church was babysitting a little 4 year old girl whose family attended some big mega church somewhere in the Denver metro area. I have no idea where they went, but it was some kind of a church thing and something happened that evening that was an answer to prayer, a good thing.

And this little girl who is of our church said, oh we need to thank the Lord! Let's worship God right now! Let's get down on our knees and thank the Lord for what He has done. And the little four year old girl turned to her and said, we only do that on Sundays. Now she did that, she said that, because of 800 years of a man named Thomas Aquinas.

Thomas Aquinas wrote that there is a theology that includes sacred doctrine, but it differs in kind from that which is part of philosophy. Now, I met with a number of pastors the other day and they wanted to understand why I thought it was important for parents to be engaged in the education of their children. I said it's absolutely essential, It's throughout the whole scriptures. And it has to do with the book of Proverbs and Ephesians 6.4 and 1 Thessalonians 2.11. I gave them all these verses and the guys came back to me and said, that's great for family worship, teaching character, teaching faith.

That's great for Sunday schools. That's great for all these things. But we're talking about teaching algebra and chemistry and reading and believe me these were reformed conservative pastors And I said what in the world are you guys talking about? The problem with America is that we have separated the fear of God from chemistry You say we can teach the fear of God in Sunday school and family worship And then we'll send them to secular schools to teach them chemistry. I say that's treachery, that's a travesty against Almighty God.

You teach the fear of God in chemistry. Any teacher who teaches chemistry, who is a Christian teacher, must ascertain that his students are fearing God in the chemistry. And the reason our nation is where it is today, the reason why there are no men who will fear God in politics, the reason there are no men who will fear God in business, the reason there are no men who will fear reason there are Christians in these genetic laboratories and the reason there are Christians teaching in these schools and the reason there are Christians to doing this politics is because they will not fear God they've been taught by reformed pastors for a long time that you teach the fear of God in family worship and you teach chemistry and chemistry and never the two will mix and therefore parents aren't engaged in the teaching of that character in that chemistry. It's a separation of education discipleship. Now what are we talking about?

We've been talking about education, haven't we? We've been talking about character, life integration, relationships, the fear of God. But is that education? Or do we have a better word for it? Discipleship!

Is that a better word anybody? I think we're talking about discipleship. This is going to radically transform the way that we educate our children in the years to come. Radically. I'm putting together a shepherd's center.

I was convicted by God that I've been talking about all this stuff and how seminary is is not cutting the muster in these areas. But Gary North used to say something that always convicts me, You can't replace something with nothing. And so I thought, well, we've got to do something. So I'm bringing six to eight young men into my house. I've been mentoring Chad for four years.

Chad Roach. He's with me this time. He's at the silver booth in the back. Great man of God that's learned some things from me. But I've been bringing Chad into my life, I've been bringing six or eight more guys into my life with my son, with Chad, and we're going to worship God.

We're going to combine life integration, worship integration, and the study of church history in my basement, on my couch. We've got a tiny little 500 square feet we're gonna get together. It's gonna be relational. We're bringing relationships into it. I went all the way through seminary and nobody turned to me and said Kev I think you got a pride issue in your life.

I had nobody say hey Kevin how's your lust life? Nobody, nobody ever asked me that. That my friends is not seminary, that's not education. It's just, it's horrific is what it is. We all have to repent in this area.

We have to know our students. I cannot, I will, I will not. I will never ever have a seminary with more than twelve people. Jesus took twelve for three years. He didn't take any more than that.

He discipled them. That's discipleship. I'm going to do that in my house. We study church history. We study apologetics.

It will be on our knees. We will confess our sins to each other, lift our hands to God, and worship Him in the apologetics. We're combining it. We're bringing this focus on the fear of God, on character, into the education of our children. Now, let me talk just briefly about the motive for education.

80% of what I would call the Christian home education movements, I'm not sure about the Christian school movements. I've been apart from that now for about 15 years. But about 80% of the home schoolers, I'd say their number one motive for educating their children is to get their kids into a good college. Still. And you ask them, why do you want to get into a good college?

They say, well, also they get a good job. Why do you want them to get a good job? So they make money. This is the motivation. The motivation that God commends to us is not that.

He says, forget all of that. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. So when the families say, I will seek what God wants in the book of Proverbs. I will seek that with all I can. I'm not going to seek academics.

I'm not focusing on algebra here or math, or church history or whatever. I am focused on the character of this child. God says focus on the things that I focus on. And all of these things, their grades, their academic performance, their their college degree if they need it, their 82k a year, okay you need 97k, whatever will be added unto you. The motive must be correct.

Secondly, here's one last thing. We have got to be preparing our children for the right city as you teach your children you're going to find there's the history of the city of God and the history of the city of man that works side by side throughout history God is doing something as man builds his empires And typically history will give you the outline of what's happening in the city of man. And so as they build their empires, they build their Egyptian empires, after a while it comes down. They build their Syrian empire, it comes down. They build their Babylonian empire, it comes down.

They build their Roman empire, it comes down. And then they go for about a thousand years of dark ages where it's really depressing because you don't get to build big towers and become powerful and centralized power everywhere. It gets really depressing. And then you start building empires. You get the Holy Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire, the English Empire, the American Empire, and then they all come down.

They all come down. They all come down. It's futile! That's the history of the city of man. Teach your children that.

Give them the two minutes, I just gave it to you, that's good enough. But teach them what God is doing. Give them the Word of God. Show them the history of the man who had one solitary little altar there in the land of Canaan 3, 000 years ago as Abraham worshiped God. Everybody else was building their empires.

Show them what's happening in church history. You give them church history textbooks. We just go from conference to conference. We even have some here. We just sell all these Christian history textbooks.

Because if you have not given your children Christian history, you have defrauded your children. You've defrauded your God. Because that's God's project. That's what he's doing. He's building his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

He's been doing it for 2, 000 years. Give them church history. Secondly, give them the literature of the City of God. Way too many Christians are out there. I've seen this at the back end, Bob Jones as well.

Giving them all kinds of the City of Man. They give them the Hawthorne and the Dickens and the Alcott, who by the way was one of the first feminists, And they give them all these humanists and transcendentalists and the Greeks and all of this. They sometimes mix it in with a few Christians. But for the most part, it's all a bunch of pagans. And they say, there's your education.

No, you don't do it that way. You say, those are pagans. These are Christians. Give them the best Christian literature you can find. A Christian education will focus upon the John Bunyan's, the John Calvin's, the Augustine's, the Patrick's, the Okempa's, the John Payton's autobiographies.

We're putting together Christian curriculum. I believe it's pretty much the first distinctively Christian literature curriculum that's ever been produced in Christian home education in recent history. And we've got some samples on our table you might take a peek at. But I just don't see it. People aren't focusing on what the best Christians have written.

Most of them are testimonies. They're boring. It's about people getting saved. It's about people building the church of Jesus Christ, going to heathen lands, and ministering to cannibals out in New Hebrides. I don't know, really boring stuff while you've got other people, George W.

Bush, building his empires and then seeing them come and crashing down all the time in America. Give your children a Christian literature. Give your children a Christian history. So, what is my passion here? Have any of you noticed I'm a little passionate about some of these things?

My passion is, very simply, this. And you can accuse me of whatever you accuse me of but I want every single person, every person in here today to walk out of here saying we need more of the fear of God in the way we educate our children. We need to find ways to do that. My wife came home from somewhere late at night a couple, six, seven months ago and she saw something on the side of the road and she just came and she stopped and she went and sure enough there was a dead raccoon on the side of the road. And she got excited.

She put it in the back of the car, and she went on home, put it in the freezer. Of course, I come and open the freezer and say, honey, what's the dead raccoon doing in the freezer? She says, it's curriculum. It was free. I got outside of the road.

So the next day, she had all the home schools in the area, all there. They had the thing on a board out in the driveway. And it was tacked down. It was a beautiful animal, Just beautiful. I mean, it was hardly damaged at all and I stood there looking at it through the window and I thought, oh no, no, no.

And I went rushing out and I put my hands up over this animal. And I said, let's worship the God who made this. Can you make this? I asked a little boy, can you make a raccoon? Make a raccoon for me.

Just go ahead right now. Here's a piece of fur. Make one beautiful piece of fur like that. Can you do that? Go ahead.

You can't do that. Well then, we've got to worship the one who did. I don't know how you're going to do it, guys. But you have got to bring the fear of God back. And love, until our teachers are kissing their students again.

You don't see that in seminaries much. But until the teachers are going to kiss their students with love. With love. With that intense, brotherly love, agape love. Until they love their students like a father dearly loves his son.

Like our Father loves His Son. Like our Jesus loved His disciples. Until we have that intensity and love, until we have the fear of God, such that a 17-year-old is prostrate in the chemistry laboratory, hands raised, worshiping God and trembling, We're not there. This is what we need. If we are going to see real education in this country, let's pray.

Oh Heavenly Father, we worship you. We worship you. What have you done? Oh God, what have you done? What have you created?

What have you produced in us? In men? In the creation about us in the universe? Oh God, you are worthy to be worshipped. And God, you have not received the credit you ought to receive in the books and barns and nobles and the universities the k-12 schools and the home schools you have not been worshipped in our churches as you ought to be worshipped Oh God you were worthy of our worship our praise our honor Oh all for now and forevermore.

In the name of Christ, amen.