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Transcript

Teach The Children · 5-Minutes of Good News

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, Christians.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is Dallas Beecham.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Stand by for good news.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Before America had a public school system, God gave his people a command.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Teach the children.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: In Deuteronomy 6, Moses told Israel to keep the words of God in their hearts and teach them diligently to their children.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: When they sat in the house, when they walked by the way, when they lay down, and when they rose up, education in the biblical sense did not begin with a government office or a brick building.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: It began in the home, around the table, beside the fire, on the road, and in daily life of a family that feared the Lord.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, when we talk about the origin of schools in America, early Americans did not see education as merely collecting facts or preparing a child to make a living.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: They believed a child needed wisdom, conscience, discipline, reverence, and moral truth.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 1 and 7 says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And Proverbs 22, 6 says, train up a child in the way he should go.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Reading mattered because the Bible mattered.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Character mattered because God mattered.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: A child was not viewed simply as a future worker or a future voter, but as a soul made by God and accountable before Him.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: In colonial New England, this conviction became law.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: In 1642, Massachusetts required parents and masters, masters meaning household heads, guardians or apprenticeship employers responsible for the children under their care.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: They were required to ensure children could read and understand the principles of religion and the laws of the Commonwealth.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Then in 614, the colony passed what became known as the Old Diluter Satan Act.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: The very language of that law warned that one chief project of Satan was to keep people from the knowledge of the scriptures.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: So towns had to provide teachers, and larger towns had to establish grammar schools.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: The purpose was not only civil order, it was biblical understanding.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now that may sound strange to modern ears.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Today we often hear that religion belongs in the corner, behind a curtain, far away from public life.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: But America's earliest school laws tell another story.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: They tell us that many of our forefathers believed ignorance was spiritually dangerous, and literacy was a tool for knowing God's word.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: They did not believe a nation could remain free and moral if its children could not read and study the Bible.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And here is the good news.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: God still cares about the teaching of our children.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 78, 4 says, we will not hide them from their children, showing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: In plain words, God's people were saying, We will not keep the truth about God from the next generation.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: We will tell our children who He is, what He has done, and why His word matters.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: He still calls parents, grandparents, churches, teachers, and communities to pass truth from one generation to the next.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: A nation may forget its textbooks.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Schools may change their curriculum.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Laws may be revised and customs may fade, but God's command has not changed.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Teach the children, teach them where wisdom begins.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Teach them that they are created by God, loved by Christ, and responsible to God's word.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: I hope today's message has touched your heart and causes you to have a good day.