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Dan Smithwick: Is The Worldview War Even Winnable At This Point? · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

• 0:00
  Well, hello friends and family in Christ. Another very important topic today. Would you agree
• 0:05
  that America is in a world view war? I think most of you viewers and listeners would. So
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  the question we want to ask and answer today is, is there still time to win the Biblical
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  world view war? To talk about that today with the Nehemiah Institute, Dan Smithwick, our
• 0:25
  guest on World View Matters coming up.
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  Welcome to World View Matters discussing controversial issues, discerning current events,
• 0:37
  defending Biblical Christianity, no topic off limits. And now, here's your host, David Feirazo.
• 0:48
  Hello friends, family and Christ. Thank you again for sharing the podcast and especially for your
• 0:53
  prayers. The program is doing very, very well. Praise God and thanks to you. So the website
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  worldviewcheckup.org. That's worldviewcheckup.org. Let's bring in our friend Dan Smithwick. So good
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  to see you again, brother. Thanks for your time.
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  Well, thank you, David, for having me on again. This matter that is your ministry is probably
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  the issue of the day. And so we're a ministry that's been around over 30 years on the theme of
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  world view. We're known in Christian schools for a world view assessment. But the question you
• 1:37
  raise, do we have time to win? Yes. And we say absolutely. But there's a couple of
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  qualifiers for that. First, we have to understand, when we say there's a world view war, what do we
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  mean by that? This is not just a polite conversation about some different ideas that we hold
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  with friends and relatives. This is a war at the highest level ideologically of attempting to
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  control policy that forces behaviors on a nation. Yes. That's the war we're talking about.
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  And your question is, can we win it? And we argue strongly, yes, we can win it. But we have to
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  be engaged. We can't just be on the sideline saying, oh my gosh, look how bad things are.
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  Well, we are running out of time. That's the truth. We're one day closer to Jesus returning and
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  things changing, which we're all looking forward to. But right now, we're losing generations of
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  children. We're losing our nation. We've lost influence, not completely. Because there are a lot
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  of wonderful churches in America, as you would agree. Great pastors, I call them the remnant
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  of true Bible-believing Christians that have a biblical world view that preach the whole
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  counsel of God that are not afraid to talk about issues that affect families and children
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  and our culture. So I want to get to why we're having this conversation, Dan, and you sent me a
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  packet. And by the way, I've got pillars here in front of me. But there's a business card that says,
• 3:28
  make America think again. I'm not even sure that's possible. And I'm a little optimistic in most
• 3:36
  situations, but you're very optimistic about this that we can actually get young people and get
• 3:42
  Americans, even adults, to think again, the critical thinking that talks us about that a little
• 3:48
  bit first. You know, we just did a little play on Trump's MAGA. Everybody in the world knows
• 3:52
  what MAGA means. And we agree with that. But the question there is, can we be great again?
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  And so we just created this MAGA, make America think again, because our thinking wrong is what
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  has gotten us into this problem. So we've been here before. Our nation has been in trouble before.
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  The world has been in trouble for centuries at times. Israel used to get in the trouble because
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  of wrong thinking. You know, they started worshiping idols and doing all kinds of bad things,
• 4:26
  and God would bring about a course correction. And that's happened throughout history. So that's why
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  we say, let's just go to work. Let's not worry about the time. Let's just believe that if we obey
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  God and we're doing that in all these different spheres of life, that we're going to win this thing.
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  And that's why we're optimistic. Yes, there's a battle ahead of us. And yes, it's going to
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  require some work. And yes, pastors have to lead their flocks in perhaps some new ways with some
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  new tools. So that's why we've named this new platform for our world view assessment,
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  worldviewcheckup.org. And we are asking pastors across America to do a world view checkup on your
• 5:11
  flock. And you may be surprised how some of your flocks are thinking about various issues.
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  Yeah, that's where we have to, you know, let like when we're not feeling well,
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  eventually we'll go to a doctor and the doctor says maybe I should take some x-rays. And then he
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  comes back and says, here's what I see. Now what? So that's what the peer test is. It's a world view
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  x-ray of our thoughts. Yes. And you know, this has been around for 35 years. It's been through
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  very critical evaluation, validity and reliability assessment. It's used over at the end of
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  thousand schools, including several higher ed institutions. So we know it is a tool that
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  has meaning. It has validity. And in fact, there's a tab on our website that says,
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  why believe Nehemiah? Meaning why believe us? You know, who are we? But the data is there. And so
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  we've published this peerless trend chart, which perhaps we can bring up at some point.
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  Yeah, well, before I, before we, okay, before we get to this though, that's the world view trend chart.
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  In the letter that you sent me, I want to just read this because I highlighted something and
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  pointed something out. You said that you're quite confident that if we can successfully engage
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  churches with the peers and pillars program, it will go a long way in returning to biblical
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  based education and restoration of our Judeo Christian heritage. And I put a highlight in a big
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  if in quotes. You said you're quite confident that if we can successfully engage churches,
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  Dan Smithwick, how do we do that? Because a lot of pastors are just simply, I don't know if they're
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  not interested. They're too busy. They've got other priorities. They're not engaged. They're not
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  equipping their, their, their congregations. Talk to us about that. That's a big if.
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  Yeah, I realize that I also realize God has always has his remnant out there. Amen.
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  And you know, pastors are, aren't charged scripturally with equipping the saints.
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  That's basically, you know, what churches are to do is equip the saints to rightfully worship the
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  Lord to rightfully occupy until he comes. That may be soon. That may be far off. You know,
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  we're not told that specifically. We're supposed to be about the business of advancing the kingdom
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  of Christ until he decides it's time to come back. So that's it. That's his and you know,
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  ballpark, not ours. So to engage churches, well, I got to back up a bit. Here's what we say,
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  David. The reason that we're in trouble in so many ways is because we have been miseducated
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  about how to do these spheres of life correctly. And that's what we have to acknowledge. And it's
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  why we say that we have to make worldview a pulpit topic because that means we have to start
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  addressing and teaching our audiences in churches. How to reason from scripture to a right
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  understanding in all of these spheres that we address with the Pierce Test. And you know,
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  it used to be that way when America was founded, what the Puritans and the Pilgrims brought over
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  was a very strong biblical worldview, which survived for 200 plus years largely what the founding
• 9:01
  fathers held to. It's what the colonies held to that foreign America. But over the next
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  hundreds of so years, things started to weaken. And we started to let go of responsibilities.
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  And that was a big mistake. So churches, you have to fight the war that's in front of you.
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  And this is the world, this is what it is. It's a worldview war. Pastures want to, you know,
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  do sermons on a lot of different topics and they're all important. You know, marriage, raising
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  children, finances, but we've got to understand the war that's in our face. That's right. Yeah,
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  there's a lack of understanding of the spiritual battle, the warfare, the demonic entities and
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  agendas that are going on that are coming against the church that are coming against people.
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  But let's go back to the worldview trend chart. And let's just take a couple of minutes before
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  we have to take a brief break, Dan, and just just set this up for the, we have a lot of newer
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  viewers and listeners since you were on last. So go back to the basics. Just walk us through this
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  please. So that is a 30 year picture of our testing of results. And this is all high school
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  students from Christian homes that have taken the test over these 30 years, 100,000 students,
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  1000 schools. And so from the bottom up, the black line represents students from Christian homes
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  in public school. The next line up are students in what we call traditional Christian schools,
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  both going down. And that means going away from a biblical worldview toward the secular worldview.
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  The green line is home school students slightly going up here by here, which is good news.
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  And the top line is the demonstration. These are worldview Christian schools. These are Christian
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  schools that make a big deal out of the phrase worldview regarding each of training, regarding
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  curriculum and just doing things with a real emphasis on the right understanding of the term
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  worldview. So obviously it makes a difference. So the bottom two lines, which represents over 90%
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  of our kids from Christian homes, in churches, in youth groups, in Christian schools,
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  going the wrong direction with their thoughts. Wow. And so our box on the corner,
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  lower right corner says 90% of our youth live in that box.
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  They're deep into a secular worldview. Now, pastor, I'm going to tell you this is your biggest
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  problem because if 90% of our kids are in that box, they're not going to keep going to church
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  after they've home. As most pastors already know, they're not going to perpetuate the Christian
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  faith after they leave home. So we have to find a way to turn that corner and get 90% of our kids
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  looking like the top chair. And that's what our worldview test does on our homepage is show that.
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  That's the crisis that we're facing, David. Well, I want to reiterate something. If I understood
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  you correctly, Dan, the bad news, at least 90% of youth from so-called, I should say, Christian
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  homes are increasingly abandoning the biblical worldview, the Christian worldview, in some form,
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  they're turning toward the secular or anti-Christian worldview. This includes,
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  so I quote, Christian schools as well, correct? Oh, it's mostly Christian schools. They
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  at least 85% of our audience are Christian school students. Wow. So that's how badly secularism
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  has crept into our schools, our education system, as well as youth groups, which are a particularly
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  a problem. So when we have a school that does the worldview test, peers or youth group,
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  one of the reports they get is called top 10 out of the 70 questions on the test. We say,
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  here are the top 10 that were missed. And frequently, school administrators, teachers, pastors,
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  they look at that and they say, how in the world could our kids be believing this stuff?
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  But they are. That's why the results are so low. Can you give us an example?
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  Well, let's go to the website and scroll down towards the bottom because we've put five of those
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  questions on the website. Okay. And those five questions are right off of the 70 questions.
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  And, you know, people can just read the statement and you mark and read your disagree
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  and you go through the five and do that and then you hit score anything below a 30 is quite a
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  problem. We like to be above 70. So that's just a sample of the questions that you can read one
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  of them as you want, David or a couple of them. But, um, well, sure. Let's just start with we've
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  got a couple of minutes. Let's just do one before we have to take a break. Yes.
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  Uh, number one, in a democratic society, citizens have a right to an education and this must be
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  protected and enforced by civil governments. Friends, if you don't disagree with that, we've got
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  problems. Am I right on at least that one, Dan? You were exactly right. And that when we think
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  that we have a right for those two problems with that statement, one is not a right. Education is
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  not a right. We have a responsibility to be educated. Uh, Jesus said, you shall know the truth,
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  the truth will set you free. But even if it was a right, which is not, education is not a
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  responsibility of government. Now, that really shocks a lot of people and they want to argue about
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  that, but we did not have education running government until 150 years ago. Our 400 year history
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  did not have government parts of education. It's a big, big problem. Yep. And that's, yes, that is
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  new in recent modern history. But let's take a brief pause. We're with Dan Smithwick. The website
• 15:17
  is worldviewcheckup.org. He is the president of Neumaya Institute. We'll right back on World
• 15:23
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  All right, talk about worldview friends and the Judeo-Christian worldview and principles.
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  at Freedom Project Academy. Back to Dan Smithwick. We're talking about the peers trend chart
• 16:40
  and we're talking about something very important friends and that's getting a worldview
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  check up and our churches need it. Our families need it. If we're going to slow this tide, I guess,
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  title wave, this tide of secularism and anti-Christian movements and ideologies. So let's go back to
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  wherever you want to go back to the questions. Dan, do you want to jump up a little bit to the
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  group testing? Group testing. Okay. Right there. So here's what a church would do. They would
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  click on this lane group testing and have somebody be the proctor for this project and
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  they go through and fill out a profile for their organization, their church. At the bottom of the
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  page you're now showing there's a get started here and they fill out a profile for the church.
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  Let's say that a church wants to test three groups. Let's say the staff of the church
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  and then the general audience, the general membership and then the third one would be the youth group.
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  If they test those three groups, they'll get summary results for each of the three groups
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  and I can promise you the pastors will be shocked at the difference in results between the past
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  oral staff, the general membership and the youth group. And so say they were going to order 500
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  tests. That gives them the best discount and by the way the pricing goes down as the quantities
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  of tests increase. So they buy 500 tests and save 40 for the staff and 250 for the audience and
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  maybe 104 youth groups, college or high school youth groups. And when they take the test,
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  it takes about 20, 30 minutes. They all get an instant scorecard. It's highly confidential.
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  And the pastor will get us, will get summary reports all automatic right at his fingertips
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  that shows how did the three groups do and how were they different from one another. And with
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  that information, he has got a month of Sundays of sermons right at his fingertips. And what's also
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  one other important point here, when the person gets their scorecard, it shows which questions we
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  say when they were on the wrong side of most of those questions will have a position paper digitally
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  linked on their scorecard. So they get a ready made Bible study on that question. They can, you
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  most of them are about a six to eight page position paper given the biblical defense of why we say
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  you should have a greater disagree. So this is a testing tool and a training tool all one.
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  I like that. You're not just being tested, but you provide resources and training. I was going to
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  ask you that question. What if a pastor would say, say he's got a church of 300 people and he's
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  listening to us and go, yeah, well, I have a feeling just by talking to people. I'm doing my best
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  to teach the Bible, but I know that a lot of people don't have a biblical worldview.
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  So can they go to your website and just find resources?
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  Yes, we have a store and on that store is our world view primer course called Pillars.
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  That's that's the main one. Yes, exactly right. That is meant to be a study or a reading
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  discussion, you know, study for small groups or home groups or Sunday school classes. So
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  Pillars work together as the assessment and as the primer. So there is one thing I wanted to ask you,
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  Dan, and this goes back to the letter that you sent me. It says, the great majority of Christian
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  youth have not been equipped with a mature biblical worldview. In spite the fact that nearly
• 20:35
  all Christian schools stayed on their website. Now remember, Christian school, some of them,
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  it stayed on their website that they provide biblical worldview education for their students.
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  My question is why the disconnect? Two things. Where do they get their teachers?
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  And who trained their teachers? Most of the teachers come out of public universities with a degree
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  in education. And the degree in education from a state university today is poison.
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  That worldview is going to come right into the classroom through the teacher.
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  And the second one then would be curriculum. What curriculum are they using?
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  There's very good curriculum and there's very bad curriculum. And so that takes them homework
• 21:28
  to do that. But to your point of what they say in their website, we just recently tested a school
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  in Ohio. And it says on their website, we're giving out your kids a mature biblical worldview,
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  dot, dot, dot, all of the schools say that today in their websites. This particular school,
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  with their seniors, average score, 10, 10 out of what? Okay, our scoring range is plus 100 to
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  minus 100. So it's a raw score, not a percentage. Okay. But anything below 30 is deep into secular
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  humanism. Wow. And we want to see people above seven, seven days are benchmarked for a biblical
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  theistic worldview. And here they're sending out their seniors. I mean, they're going to graduate
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  them in a few days. With that kind of a score that tells me there's no chance they're going to go
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  off out into the world and perpetuate and promote a biblical. It's not in their heart. It's not in
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  their mind. Right. So let me clarify, Dan, these are seniors at a private or a Christian school.
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  Yes. Yeah. I think a lot of people are hearing that and watching right now are having a hard time
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  grasping that reality, that truth. Yeah. Well, it is, it is hard to grasp because, you know, we
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  want to believe that, you know, we're paying all this money 10 to $15,000 a year tuition. Our
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  teachers are professing Christians. We have a Bible class. We have a chapel service. Of course,
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  our kids are being well educated. And of course, they have a biblical worldview. No, not,
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  not necessarily. No, they don't. Because what are they really learning in history? What are they
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  really learning in science? And you're right through all the subjects. If they're not being taught
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  from a distinctly biblical perspective, reasoning from Scripture, it's going to come out wrong.
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  That's what that peer's trench art shows. You know, that's what the the lower results and that
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  trench art is down in the teens. Yeah. This is just one more example or the latest example of that.
• 23:34
  Wow. Wow. This is, this is eye opening and tragic at the same time. So you say in the rest,
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  you really are trying to work for the restoration of our Christian heritage. And you'd say that you
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  are worried that the faith community may sit back now that the White House has the right
• 23:54
  so-called Sheriff in town. And then you say it's not the White House that will restore our
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  Christian heritage. It is our house, meaning Christian churches led by 330,000 some churches across
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  America that will hopefully the remnant of those with the true biblical worldview can help
• 24:16
  cause our nation to glorify God again. In the last three minutes, could you talk more about that, Dan?
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  Yeah. So, you know, that is a real problem in the evangelical world. We're all happy, of course,
• 24:26
  with the change of the administration. Yeah. And he's being, you know, pressure a lot. Yeah.
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  But we cannot make Washington our savior. We cannot make the White House our savior. This has to
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  happen at the local level, church by church, family by family, city by city, county by county.
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  That's the way the Constitution is set up is that we started the local level and elect people to
• 24:52
  take the right views to the next level, to the next level and eventually to the White House or
• 24:58
  to Congress. So we cannot sit back and say Trump's going to fix everything. That's a real,
• 25:05
  serious mistake. Yeah. I mean, he's putting out some great executive orders. He does have many,
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  not all, but many godly men and women around him believers Christ in the cabinet and in the
• 25:18
  administration. But even they can only go so far. It's, you're right. It's got to start with
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  local churches in schools. They can't come into our cities and tell the city hall what to do or
• 25:31
  the county commissioners what to do. That's right. They can promote good ideas and policies at a
• 25:36
  federal level. But unless that's really done at the local level, we just keep
• 25:42
  purchasing the same mistakes. Yeah. Oh, it's great to have you want to get to talk about these
• 25:47
  things down in the last minute, minute and a half. Or so, just, would you like to just,
• 25:52
  is the best place to go is worldviewcheckup.org. Please.
• 25:56
  We're going to check up now. And so for those individuals that are with us,
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  just scroll down and click on the individual start here and they can do their own test.
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  After reading the letter there, or if the church wants to do this, and for every pastor
• 26:13
  that's hearing this, I implore you, do a worldview checkup on your church. It's not difficult,
• 26:19
  it's not expensive. It's just being willing to get the results and look and analyze those results
• 26:26
  and say, wow, here's some things I need to address. And they can call us. I'm happy to talk to
• 26:33
  pastors. I do a lot of interviewing, you know, with people to help them decide which questions
• 26:41
  should be dealt with. Yeah. Yeah. You have the great tools and resources. And I think most pastors
• 26:52
  and overwhelming majority will be surprised at the results from their own congregants
• 26:59
  on their world view. And because we do have a lot of work to do. But Dan, thank you. We appreciate
• 27:04
  Nehemi Institute. Friends, again, the website is worldviewcheckup.org. Worldviewcheckup.org. Brother,
• 27:14
  thanks for all you do. You've been faithful doing this so many years. We appreciate your time
• 27:18
  today. Thank you, sir. Thank you for having me on. God bless you. God bless you as well. What a,
• 27:24
  this is such an important topic. Obviously, it's in the title of our show, guys. Worldview matters.
• 27:30
  Oh my goodness. Well, praise God. Thanks for sharing the podcast and your prayers and financial
• 27:36
  support as well. God bless you. And as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.