The Mark of the Beast:
The Tomorrow’s Education
By Julio Severo
If asked how the tomorrow’s education will be, perhaps we would say that it will be an education which, at last, will completely destroy illiteracy and give learning opportunities to everyone. At least, our simple desire is the well-being of our children, including in the educational area. Education is an essential part of life. So the large majority of parents expect to send their children to good schools.
However, what if Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were asked how the tomorrow’s education would be? It seems that they did not worry about this issue, for they were busy in the responsibility to train their children to live for God in this world. God was not also worried, for he knew that Abraham and his posterity would fulfill that responsibility. He said: “For I know him that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of Jehovah, to do righteousness and justice, in order that Jehovah may bring upon Abraham what he hath spoken of him”. (Genesis 18:19 Darby)
So Genesis, the first book of the Bible, shows that God was perfectly aware that Abraham would be able to impart an education rooted in the right place: the commands of God. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob did not worry about the tomorrow’s education, for their attention was focused on the important mission of training their children in the ways of the Lord. For them there was not greater educational interest than creating in the children a mindset having a profound knowledge and fear of God.
What if other men and women in the Bible were asked about how the tomorrow’s education would be? It seems few would be in condition to answer, but there are two men who would know how to give a relevant answer: Moses and John. Having studied in the best Egyptian universities, Moses was qualified to offer an outlook based on his experience in the Egyptian educational system, which was not much different from the system we know today. Yet, it appears that in nowhere in God’s Word we see so a clear and positive answer as the significant revelation found in the last book in the Bible. In Revelation, Apostle John was given the opportunity to see by special revelation how will be the educational system of a future that, very probably, also includes our generation.
WHAT REVELATION TELLS ABOUT FUTURE
Among the many visions that he was given in the book of Revelation, John saw a worldwide government system, under the leadership of the beast, controlling the lives of all individuals:
“The beast forced all the people, small and great, rich and poor, slave and free, to have a mark placed on their right hands or on their foreheads. No one could buy or sell without this mark, that is, the beast's name or the number that stands for the name”. (Revelation 13:16-17 GNB)
Is it hard to understand that verse? God loves the simple people who love him and give attention to him. He wrote his Word so that even an ordinary, unschooled man may comprehend. “The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple”. (Psalms 119:130 ESV) How can we then interpret what God means in certain Bible texts? What we need to do is to compare a spiritual passage with another spiritual passage. In fact, the Word of God itself teaches us that we can learn to distinguish the thoughts, intents and revelations of the Holy Spirit in His Word by “comparing spiritual things with spiritual”. (1 Corinthians 2:13 KJV)
So, comparing the Revelation text with two Old Testament passages containing similar suggestion of mark on the hand and forehead, we can know what this symbolism means.
“This observance will be a reminder, like something tied on your hand or on your forehead; it will remind you to continue to recite and study the Law of the LORD, because the LORD brought you out of Egypt by his great power”. (Exodus 13:9 GNB)
“This observance will be a reminder, like something tied on our hands or on our foreheads; it will remind us that the LORD brought us out of Egypt by his great power”. (Exodus 13:16 GNB)
The repetition of the feast, year after year, would help educate God’s people never to forget God’s Word. Explaining in a simple way, that repetition was an educational method used to mark profoundly the minds of the people, so that they would always remember to recite and study God’s Word.
PROFOUND MARKS
“He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name”. (Revelation 13:16-17 NIV)
Buying and selling is a part of the life system of society. To survive in that system, each citizen needs a job at the very minimum. Especially in large cities, virtually all jobs require certain educational level. In fact, one of the first questions an employer asks to one wanting a job is about his educational level. More than ever, today a man needs a diploma to be able to have an occupation in the marketplace, and the minimal educational demands are increasingly high, compelling children and teens to spend most of their years in the educational institutions. A human being today is only respected according to an official diploma proving he spent years studying in schools and universities. It is getting almost impossible to live without a diploma.
This trend suggests that soon it will be not possible to get a job without a minimal government-approved education. Worried about their children and in order to help them not suffer disadvantages and closed doors in the marketplace, parents make a point of forcing them to spend most of their years in the educational institutions. The today’s social, political and legal pressures do not let a young man get a worthy occupation without a government-accepted diploma, annulling his survival prospects. Without a job, how can one buy and sell to live? This is what the Revelation passage suggests: those not having their hands and foreheads marked cannot do anything to survive in the marketplace. What is then the meaning of the marked hand and forehead?
Mark on the hand: Hand is the body part that acts, works and performs tasks. The sign on the hand is a symbol that one received so a profound and intense education that everything he does brings the mark of what he learnt. He was taught to do things according to the patterns of the government educational system. He was “marked” to act and behave according to the education that was implanted in him.
Mark on the forehead: Forehead is the body part where the mind lies. The sign on the forehead is a symbol that one received so a profound and intense education that everything he thinks and speaks brings the mark of what he learnt. He was taught to think and express himself according to the values of the government educational system. He was “marked” to think according to the education that was implanted in him.
If this symbolism actually represents the influence of an educational system on the way people think and act, then we can consider that influence as a very effective mark, for today a child is obliged to spend years in a formal school being marked by many government-education imposed teachings.
THE BEAST’S MYSTERY AND HER MEANING
What is the meaning of the name and number of the beast? There is a possibility that name and number may be a very simple reference to the basic concepts of language and mathematics, which are the fundamental pillars of education. So in the beast’s system every citizen, Christian or not, is forced by law to attend school to learn the essentials (read and write) and, in the process, absorb “other teachings” the beast consider of value for the children and teens’ education.
Therefore, the beast mentioned in Revelation is not a man, but some kind of spiritual entity behind of a social system controlling and guiding the course and lives of all citizens. So the beast is a system working here on the earth under demonic direction and control. How exactly will the beast control the people’s lives? Who is the beast?
The term beast means in the original Greek savage animal or wicked person. Following this definition, we can understand that all people (whatever his religion, ethnic background or social status) will receive an education conditioning them to think and live without the support of moral values, just as the savage animals or wicked people do. How precisely could the human learning institutions implant in the minds of children openness to behaviors like the conduct of the savage animals or wicked people?
A MAJOR ISSUE: SEXUALITY
God says about the human sexuality: “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united with his wife, and they become one”. (Genesis 2:24 GNB) In fact, the first and most significant positive command of God for the first human married couple was exactly about sex, marriage and family (see Genesis 1:28). Even though man has a special call from God to leave father and mother to get united with his wife, become one flesh, establish a family and subdue the earth, the modern educational system forms children to think and act without moral boundaries, as if human beings were savage animals.
To combat the threat of sexually transmitted diseases, the Brazilian government offers the condom solution. In the public schools, the programs to prevent these diseases have “as a primary purpose make possible for children and teens to be able to choose responsibly and without a sense of guilt in the sexuality area, without incurring the risk of an unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases”. Children and teens are taught to “choose” in the sexual area [they learn to decide whatever they want: oral, vaginal, anal sex.] responsibly [always using a condom and birth control] and without a sense of guilt [without being troubled by sex without a marital commitment]. This is how government wants public-school children to learn to “protect” their sexual pleasure of possible “nuisances”. Among theses nuisances is pregnancy, which is put in the same category of the threat of sexual diseases.
For government, the problem is not sex before marriage, but pregnancy and an innocent child conceived. The problem is everything (pregnancy or disease) that disturbs a teen from getting his sexual pleasure, with or without marriage, with or without moral values. So the government’s aim is to use schools to educate young people to avoid pregnancy, not sex outside marriage. It intends to teach “respect” and “tolerance” toward sexual freedom, not respect toward all moral commitments involved with sex, including marriage, family and bringing up of children.
By barring the essential role of the marital commitment between a man and a woman as the only healthy and natural way to have sexual relations, the public-school education eventually opens room to abnormal sexual choices, including homosexuality. Homosexuality has been presented and taught in classrooms not as a sexual behavior against nature, but as a different lifestyle deserving respect and tolerance. Basically, schools today form a child to think and act as a savage animal or wicked person in the sexual area. Would the beast’s educational system do differently?
Political leaders understand very well the crucial role of education to form the tomorrow’s citizens. In his Socialist government, Brazilian President Lula launched a completely avant-garde, comprehensive program entitled Brasil Sem Homofobia (Brazil Without Homophobia), to cultivate in the Brazilian citizens attitudes favorable to homosexuality and, through educational campaigns, implant in their minds a hostile ideological programming to make them spontaneously reject all view contrary to homosexual acts. This programming will condition them to see as prejudice, discrimination and hate every stance, including from the Bible, regarding homosexuality as a sin, abnormality and perversion. How will this subtle brainwashing happen? The government’s plan is to train especially public-school teachers to make exclusively positive presentations on the homosexual behavior to students. Then will it be a wonder to hear and see, some years from now, most of the young people defending homosexuality naturally? Such defense will be evidence that the years they spent in the schools produced the results expected by the “educational” campaigns. So the government sees schools as key factors in its effort to form and change the children’s mindset. Will the beast see schools differently?
SPIRITUAL RISKS OF THE PLUBLIC EDUCATION
In addition to sexuality, it is the government’s will that the public education should also include, covertly, religious elements. Even though the Ministry of Education of Brazil (MEC) has not the least interest in teaching children to know, read and respect the Bible, such ill will does not apply to the practices of witchcraft. MEC believes that candomblé and other occult religions from Africa are legitimate cultural expressions of Brazilian blacks and wants systematically indoctrinate public-school children not to despise or reject the practices of those religions. So schoolchildren are taught to respect African occultism as culture. Any opposition to that “culture” is considered racism. Would the beast’s educational system do less than this?
A major concern of every loving parent is guaranteeing the physical, spiritual and moral safety of their children. Even wild animals protect their young. Yet, in many public schools a child is exposed to drugs and other situations endangering his moral and spiritual health and, sometimes, his own life. Many schoolchildren are also not protected from bad influences and teachings disrespecting the moral and Bible principles learnt at home and church. It is in the school often teens and children are exposed to improper models and examples of dating and sexual conduct. Is it a wonder then that so many Evangelical young people are falling under the pressures of their friends and are turning from the Lord after spending years under such negative socialization and influence? Would the beast’s educational system do differently?
In the beast’s educational system, children will be conditioned, in some respects, to live and see themselves as an animal. While in the Bible the human being is shown as clearly distinct, different and more important than animals, in the schools of the beast’s system children will learn the human being had his origin not in God, but in animals. Is not exactly this that is happening in our days? In today’s schools, teachers receive government command to teach that man came from monkey, making human beings equivalent to animals. Innocent children’s minds are marked by a lie against God, the Creator. If man is equal to animals in essence, then why cannot his behavior be made equal to the conduct of animals too? If animals do not need to get married before their sex acts, why respect marriage among human beings? Why await until marriage to make sex? Is it a wonder then that the AIDS-government propagandas and the school education stress only preparation for sex, not for marriage? Would the beast’s system do differently?
STUDENT’S VULNERABILITY AT SCHOOL
The influence a child receives at school can mark him for the rest of his life. An important example is what happened to a young man in Germany. He wasted the money of his father in drunkenness. For the joy of his father, who was a lawyer descended from rabbis, the young man was converted to Christianity and left his bad habits. He began to write poems on his Christian experiences. Yet, when he went to study in a school institution he fell under the influence of a teacher who introduced him into an advanced level of Satanism and radical political ideas. From this point on, the young man got a new mindset and increasing interest in Satan. His new inspiration led him to write poems and books on subjects very different from the teaching of Jesus. In his poem The Player, he wrote:
The hellish vapors rise and fill the brain,
Till I go mad and my heart is utterly changed.
See the sword?
The prince of darkness
Sold it to me.
For me he beats the time and gives the signs.
Ever more boldly I play the dance of death. [1]
Somewhere else he said:
Every word of mine is fire and action. [2]
The young man was so marked by the influence he received that he eventually became the author of books that even today influence nations and world leaders: The Capital and The Communist Manifesto. His name? Karl Marx, the Socialism’s founder, a government system established to occupy God’s place in the citizens’ lives and control and determine everything they do, especially in the education and family area. Perhaps no ideology has provoked so much bloodshed to humankind as the Socialistic ideas. In fact, Marx’s words became fire and action, burning and killing. Millions of innocent lives were destroyed in Communist Russia and China. Millions of Christians around the world suffered and suffer cruelly in countries controlled by radical Socialistic ideas, as Cuba, China and North Korea. In nations where a “soft” Socialism thrives — as Sweden, Holland, Canada and Germany — Christian churches are withering and the most fundamental rights of Christians are little by little being suppressed on behalf of privileges and special rights for homosexual behavior, abortion and other practices contrary to the most basic Christian and moral principles. Evangelical parents who, by obedience to God’s Word, physically discipline their children are targeted by the discrimination, prejudice and hostility from the Swedish and Canadian government officials, while homosexual militants adopt children and are allowed to promote homosexuality even to schoolchildren. Would the beast’s system do less than this?
SOCIALISM FOR ALL, BY EDUCATION
In spite of all the cruel reality involving Communism, Socialism, leftism and all their ideological relatives, in the Brazilian schools and colleges Socialism is presented in the most benign and favorable way. An Evangelical young man told me that when he studied informatics in a college in Brasília, the reading of The Capital, by Karl Marx, and other Socialistic books was mandatory, even though those writings have no relation to informatics. Can a young student be contaminated and marked by wrong ideas and influences in school? Karl Marx is a tragic and actual example of what may happen to a young man in a school setting.
Basically, Socialism — in all its forms — preaches entire submission and dependence of each citizen on the government and its institutions. In the most of European nations, their populations have been systematically indoctrinated, by various educational strategies, not to be “intolerant”, “discriminatory” and “prejudiced” against abortion, homosexuality and other perversions. They are being conditioned to see as natural government occupying in their lives a control only God should have. They allow their lives to be dominated from birth to death. In the past, when there were family and national troubles, many Europeans turned to God. Today, they appeal to government. When they needed jobs, they sought God more earnestly. Now they were “taught” to think that it is the government’s responsibility to give job to everyone. European Socialism has indoctrinated citizens to see government as the Great Provider. Is it a wonder then that Europe is forgetting God and experiencing an emptying of its Christian churches?
The “soft” Socialism conditioning in Europe, through schools and media, programs everybody to think that it is the government that has the duty to supply solution to everything and everyone. In short, Europeans learnt to depend more on the government than on God to provide their most basic needs. For perverts, government gives laws favorable to homosexuality, instead of protecting citizens against behaviors harmful to their physical and moral health. For feminists, laws sympathetic to abortion, instead of taking a consistent stance against the killing of innocent and defenseless babies. For wives, ways to work outside home, instead of means for them not to be forced by economical pressures to go out home to work and complement family income. For children, daycares, instead of means for a mother to be able to take care of their own children at home. For elderly, rest homes, instead of working to promote family well-being, for home is the healthiest place to welcome the weakest human beings, including elderly. Not to mention that the mandatory school attendance laws keep vulnerable children many daily hours away from family and its values and close to government and its values. And the whole society sees as normal the government role and its Socialistic policies that replace the most essential family functions. Those policies render family to a certain extent irrelevant and disposable. Consider carefully: Would the beast’s system do less than it?
By imposition of the “tolerance” and “cultural diversity” government concepts, modern schools promote Socialism, evolution, homosexuality and sex without a need of marriage and moral responsibility. After spending day after day and year after year under such “educational” influence, how can children fail to be marked? Would the beast’s system do differently?
So an intriguing question is: is the tomorrow’s education already here? Is the education revealed in Revelation already happening?
SCHOOL FOR ALL, WILLINGLY OR BY FORCE
The modern issue is not only that someone needs to receive a good education, but where everyone is forced to receive it. In Brazil, the only kind of education approved for someone to have a good job is the education from learning institutions following government guidelines. If a Christian child receives a complete education, at home, all that will be needed it is a fair acknowledgment. But government has its reasons and interests for not giving such acknowledgment. Government sees a parent-controlled education as threat to its ideological intents.
That control over school-age children follows the Socialism and Nazism’s track. Public education has never been targeted by compulsory government policies in the past, but the greatest killing dictatorships the world has already known had special interests. Socialist Russia and Nazi Germany are among the first modern nations to completely control schools, not to allow an exclusively Christian education, to force teachers to teach that man came from monkey and to put human being and his will in the heart of everything in education and society. In that issue, there are no significant ideological differences between Nazism and Socialism. In fact, most of the founding members of Nazism were former Communist militants and it is known that the Nazi Party — a short name for National Socialist Workers’ Party — was a political movement organized, with Hitler and his elite, by many secret homosexuals. The greatest human calamity in history — World War II — began when National Socialists in Germany and Socialists in Russia made a treaty to divide, invade and ravage the defenseless Poland. After this, the world saw massive tragedies and destruction. By that cruel example, nations should have learnt that a government system which controls citizens and forces all children to attend only Bibleless, government-approved schools is, literally, on the way to destruction.
Doubtless, the mandatory school attendance laws in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia would have got full and joyful approval from the beast. Yet, has the government desire to control school-age children ended? Sadly, no.
There are already in Brazil and many other countries mandatory laws forcing all children to attend school, and the social, legal and political trends suggest that soon no child will be allowed to stay outside the government-approved education institutions. Then is the mandatory education revealed in Revelation already beginning to become real? Today, all children — regardless their religion, ethnic background and social status — are forced to attend school and receive an education according to the government determinations. A child may study very well and even get an excellent educational formation, but if he does not receive his education through government-determined institutions, authorities will refuse to him a fair diploma, so that families may never have the courage to take the responsibility to control the education of their own children through home schooling. Those government actions leave a child chanceless to enter the marketplace later. The issue is not only that government wants children to receive an education, but also wants them to receive a diploma proving that they were systematically indoctrinated according to government-accepted principles.
A major side effect provoked by the position of education on the social pedestal is that young people are obliged to spend most of their years studying, without being allowed to think in marriage. In Bible times and even recently, the large majority of young people could marry as soon as they felt much need. Today, even in great need, they are forced to await long years to get married, because of the social pressures in their lives: everyone fears that without a government-approved diploma young people will be not able to support a family. Not to mention that the college-environment pressures for dating early and for not marring early are so enormous that we can consider a great miracle if a young man or woman finishes college as a virgin.
Surveys suggest that because of college studies, young men and women now get married increasingly later in their lives. Yet, they keep feeling sexual desires. While young people in Bible canalized those desires to sex within marriage, young people today also canalize them to sex, but not within marriage, partly because of the social imposition that hinders them from getting married before a graduation. It is an important dilemma, where often one or another is sacrificed, even though in the most of times the sacrificed is family and marriage. So even many Christian young people are, when they put their education aims before marriage in their urgent sexual needs, eventually involved in situations very similar to the situations lived by non-Christian young people: sex and pregnancy before marriage and, tragically, even abortion. Government solves those “problems” by training public-school teachers to talk about sexual issues (including birth control, condom and homosexuality) in a level far away from family and Bible values. All that government has done, in its efforts to help take “care” of the children and teens’ sexual needs, is to teach students to make sex without pregnancy and marriage.
It is no novelty the fact that government has an obsessive interest in the education of all children. Its aim, obviously, is to form the future citizens’ mindset since early.
DIVINE ALTERNATIVE
However, God’s Word reveals that God also has a profound and special interest in the issue of education of the Christian families’ children. God’s orientation is for parents to take the responsibility to give their child a complete education at home, where he can learn much more than only reading, writing and add. God says:
“Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. Never forget these commands that I am giving you today. Teach them to your children. Repeat them when you are at home and when you are away, when you are resting and when you are working. Tie them on your arms and wear them on your foreheads as a reminder. Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates”. (Deuteronomy 6:5-9 GNB)
In Deuteronomy, to tie the commands and teachings on the arms and on the foreheads is a sign and symbol used to represent the whole education children are given at home, under the parents’ guidance. Who wrote that text was Moses and he knew very well what is to be marked by education, for he himself had received such mark. The education issue is so vitally important that God, through Moses, repeats the same orientation to families:
“Remember these commands and cherish them. Tie them on your arms and wear them on your foreheads as a reminder. Teach them to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you are resting and when you are working. Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates. Then you and your children will live a long time in the land that the LORD your God promised to give to your ancestors. You will live there as long as there is a sky above the earth”. (Deuteronomy 11:18-21 GNB)
Another translation is even clearer still:
“Place these words on your hearts. Get them deep inside you. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder. Teach them to your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning until you fall into bed at night”. (Deuteronomy 11:18-19 MSG)
That passage makes clear that children and the home environment where they live should be profoundly marked by education. Evidently, that education’s heart is God’s commands. Without those commands, all education, within or out home, is worthless.
Parents were put on the position of natural teachers of their children, with the opportunity and responsibility to teach spontaneously from dawn to sunset of the day, wherever they are. So while children are in their vulnerable phase, their closest and most important educational companionship should be their own parents and their values. God’s desire is for children to stay entirely exposed all the day long, everyday and in everyplace to the parents’ educational example and influence, in order to mark completely their attitudes and thoughts.
GOD’S EDUCATION VERSUS THE BEAST’S EDUCATION
When God used Moses to orient parents to educate children at home, there already was an “excellent” educational system outside the family environment. Today that system occupies so a great position of control and respect that no one believes that at home a child may receive a minimum of adequate education. Supposedly “no one can live respectably without going through an institutional school”. So the institutional education occupies a pedestal of social divinity that no one dares to question.
Even though not attending public schools, the godly families’ children in the Bible received an excellent education, especially in God’s commands. The teachers were not strange people, but father and mother. School was the home itself.
In that time there were not pencils, pens, erasers, exercise books, books, etc. Today, with all the resources available to us, parents think that, before public-school teachers, they are unfit and inferior to teach their children. Yet, having only God’s Word and following the orientation of Deuteronomy 11:18-21, parents in the Bible were able to educate and train children for the Lord. If it was possible to homeschool in that time, why not now? Today there are fewer hindrances for home schooling. There are computers, videos and many other tools that greatly assist the child’s learning. Therefore, from the technological viewpoint, there are not barriers for the child’s education to be dispensed at home. The only barrier is government, which fears to lose the opportunity to mark the child by its ideologies. From God’s viewpoint and calling, parents have the responsibility, with or without barriers, to take on the whole education of their children.
Home schooling is not impossible. Jesus said himself: “What is impossible with men is possible with God”. (Luke 18:27 NIV) My wife and I educate our children by this method, sacrificing everything so that God and his projects may be absolute priority in their lives. We verify by experience that a boy learns to write and read better and faster under the parents’ direct teaching. But we are not in no way alone. There are many Evangelical families in Brazil homeschooling their children, even without any government support and acceptance. In the USA, the number of Christian children in home schooling is 2 million and keeps increasing. Yet, even if we were alone, would it not be worthwhile? After all, God is faithful and he always honors those who honor him above all.
The public education’s aim is to form the mindset of a boy and girl according to government-approved values and transmit to them all that those values regard as essential. God’s aim, when he orients parents to homeschool, is to transmit to a child all God’ Word regards as essential. Of course, government has no willingness to allow God and his Word to occupy the education’s heart in the children’s lives. In fact, the modern social and political system wants us to believe that it is possible to educate a child without mixing “religion”, even though in the public schools there is increasing room for the expression of the African-Brazilian religions under the mask of an appreciation for black culture. The whole education that government demands for children is mandatory and does not include God’s Word in the heart of everything, not much different from the education revealed in Revelation.
“[The beast] also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name”. (Revelation 13:16-17 NIV)
While Revelation mentions the “mark on the right hand or n the forehead”, Deuteronomy mentions tying God’s commands on “the arms and on the forehead”. That Bible symbolism refers to a whole and “marking” education in the children’s minds and attitudes, but with one difference: Deuteronomy presents God’s design to form children at home, but the humankind’s future educational formation Revelation shows will happen outside family’s influence, control and their values. Its most important connection will be the beast’s values, and the most effective way to transmit those values is taking advantage of the opportunities when children are away from the parents’ direct supervision.
What is the place where a boy and a girl stay more hours, daily, away from family’s view and moral protection?
What is the place where they, in their most vulnerable years, stay more time away from the parents’ influence sphere?
What is the place where they stay, during years, most close to government and its values?
Answer: The institutional school setting. Revelation shows that, through education, the beast-chosen values will be implanted in every child and teen: religious and atheist, poor and rich, black and white, employees and employers, etc. One of those values, for example, is the tolerance, respect and acceptance as normal of behaviors such as homosexuality. That education will be, in most future educators’ view, complete because the human being and his will be in the heart of everything.
However, what good will it be for humankind to reach high levels in its education “quality”, without God’s Word? “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26 NIV) Noah Webster, author of the known Webster’s Dictionary, stated, “Education is useless without the Bible”.[3] Would a Bibleless education be worth the sacrifice of our children’s souls? Martin Luther declared, “I am much afraid that schools will prove to be the great gates of the hell unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures, engraving them in the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution in which men are not increasingly occupied with the Word of God must become corrupt”.[4]
Was Luther mistaken? Today almost all examples of Evangelical families where there are children turned away from the Lord, the children began to distance themselves from parents and their values during the period when they attended an institutional school. They turn away through friends’ influence, especially in the school setting, where often there is not respect for the moral values of God’s Word. Besides, in the modern institutional schools a child and teen absorb new values and basically learn independence from family and its values.
MOSES AND THE BEST SCHOOLS, FROM A HUMAN VIEWPOINT
Does God need the government-controlled education to “build” and use a man or woman? Perhaps no one has experienced so much of such education as Moses did. As the adopted son of the Pharaoh’s daughter, the ruler of Egypt, Moses spent significant part of his life receiving education in the best Egyptian universities, which were regarded as the most advanced in his days. In today’s language, it would be as studying in the best American universities. Modern history books confirm that education in Egypt was advanced:
Many of the modern ideals and beliefs, as well as great part of the knowledge on man, had its origin in Egypt. The ancient Egyptians developed the first kind of national government in the world. They produced a significant art and literature. They initiated an architecture based on stone and made the first adequate material for writing, the papyrus. They established the 365-day year, and the basic methods of geometry and surgery.[5]
Moses spent almost 40 years of his life studying! His educational formation in the Egyptian universities was so comprehensive that he became, by all knowledge and training he got, a man having an ability to speak eloquently and achieve great works and undertakings in the political, scientific, social, philosophical an military areas. “Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action”. (Acts 7:22 NIV) Much before his being used by God, he acquired an impressive fame and influence as a thinker, philosopher, orator and entrepreneur. By human standards, which respect only diplomas, he was bound to the success of the great careers.
Because of his special education, he was more than prepared to lead a people, in the political and military sphere. One of his first acts, after years of training in the Egyptian learning institutions, was to kill an Egyptian who was mistreating a Hebrew. Even though God often directs his leaders militarily, he did not need the Egyptian educational and military training to use Moses to lead the Hebrew people in their exit from Egypt. So God led Moses to the desert to remove from him the education and preparation of Egypt and give him the education and preparation of the Lord. There, after years working with flocks of sheep and without access to books and other means to feed the vast cultural knowledge he had acquired in the Egyptian universities, he lost his ability to speak eloquently and courage to accomplish great works (see Exodus 4:10,13). Forty years of desert “training”, without access to the high human knowledge of Egypt which he was so used to, left him humble in his words and actions! The long years Moses spent in the Egyptian universities also were, in the same measure, the same long years God chose to mold him and remove from him the marks the Egyptian education had left in his way of thinking and acting.
After spending 40 years in the desert and being “unmarked” and “decontaminated” from the Egyptian education, Moses could have what all the years of study never gave him: openness and sensitivity to hear and attend to God’s voice. In order to remove from him all negative socialization he experienced in the learning institutions, God put him in a situation where there was almost no social contact, except his wife, children and… God’s presence. Seeking God profoundly in the solitude of the wilderness was a momentous experience that helped him become a man sensitive and open to the Holy Spirit. Hearing the Lord’s voice, he kept learning his will and, eventually, he was used by the Holy Spirit powerfully to teach God’s people. In fact, it was through him that the Lord gave the orientation of Deuteronomy 6:5-9, where parents are instructed to take on the whole education of their children, marking their minds to think and their lives to act as the Lord determines.
Moses knew very well what school education is like. Philosopher Philo of Alexandria (circa 20bc-ad50) remarked that Moses studied mathematics, geometry, science, astronomy, poesy, music, medicine, hieroglyphs, etc. He studied all that the Egyptian universities had to offer. Even though the instruction he received in Egypt marked him powerfully to speak and act according to the education of the best learning institutions of his time, Revelation makes aware that the beast’s system will surpass the Egyptian education, marking much more profoundly the way people speak and act. Of course, the beast’s conditioning in the people’s minds and lives will come disguised as excellent human education.
In Deuteronomy, God uses Moses, a man having vast experience in the human learning institutions, to show parents that the best education happens at home. In Revelation, the beast will show and force all the people to accept as fact that the best education happens at institutional schools, outside the sphere of family and its values. The sign or mark on the hand and the forehead the Bible reveals suggests the power of a systematic education marking profoundly students in their way of thinking and acting. The difference is where each system works to mark the people’s lives.
Mandatory institutional school attendance is increasingly the government choice for families. Yet, God’s choice gives us the option to choose a better way to train our children academically, free from government interference.
God-approved education has home as the essential school, but the tomorrow’s education will happen away from family and their moral and spiritual supervision in the children’s lives. That future education will happen under the responsibility of governments and laws inspired by a spiritual entity which wants to condition human beings to think and act, in some respects, as savage animals or wicked people, who do not follow or respect God’s commands, especially in the issues of sex, family, children, abortion, homosexuality, etc.
JOHN BAPTIST AND THE BEST EDUCATION, FROM GOD’S VIEWPOINT
The current generation needs God’s visitations. And the truth is that he is very much pleased to visit people to bring healing, deliverance, change and salvation. If we want to bring up and educate children who will have a spiritually strong life structure to help prepare the visitations the Lord wishes to achieve in this desperate and needy world, we need to have the willingness and spiritual openness that the couple Zechariah and Elizabeth had. They were willing to sacrifice everything for God and his projects. Because of this willingness, God gave them the honor and opportunity to become parents of John the Baptist, the man God used to prepare the people’s hearts for the coming of Jesus Christ.
John was trained in a very special way, since early in his life. He was born exactly in the time of Jesus’ birth, and he was almost killed, for in his furor against the coming of the baby Jesus in the world, King Herod launched a campaign of persecution against families in the town of Bethlehem. He ordered the killing of all babies, hoping to destroy the Messiah who had been born. To save their baby from death, Zechariah and Elizabeth took John and fled to the desert, where they lived hidden from the authorities. They were already very old and probably spent their last years in the wilderness, protecting and training their special boy.
Zechariah and Elizabeth, who were very godly people and came from sacerdotal families, were very qualified to teach everything about God and his powerful Word. They strongly implanted in John God’s truth and commands and gave him basic instructions on how to survive in the wilderness. By his rustic attitudes, we can notice that he grew up without a “normal” sociability. But God chose exactly such circumstances to train him to grow up different from other people. Men and women who have a special mission from God in their lives are trained, since early, in a special way of life different from “normal” people. The special training of John changed his life, strengthened his calling and moved the Holy Spirit to pour out on him the powerful anointing of Elijah, a praying man who lived in deserts with God, a man who was prophetically used by the Lord to touch a whole nation.
From a human viewpoint, John may have lost many opportunities of social contact, but there were not actual losses, as confirms Jesus, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done”. (Matthew 16:24-27 NIV) His lack of “normal” social contact was met by God with a special training that involved him in very special contacts: most of Jesus’ apostles already followed John much time before knowing Jesus. He got the privilege to guide the early spiritual training of Peter and other disciples of Jesus! From a spiritual viewpoint, the education John received was very helpful and gave him a strong structure which made him able to prepare the men’s hearts who would take important part in Jesus’ ministry.
God found it necessary for John to be brought up in the desert, with many sacrifices to him and his parents, so that he might stay away from every kind of negative socialization and influence that could turn him from the divine calling to him. The only education John experienced in his wilderness seclusion was the Bible and personal instruction that his parents transmitted to him. There was nothing more to divert him. There was no other kind of educational influence. His most important contact was the presence of the Holy Spirit, his parents and their values. And he was not the only man of God to “lose” on behalf of more important aims. Apostle Paul said himself, “Not only those things; I reckon everything as complete loss for the sake of what is so much more valuable, the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have thrown everything away; I consider it all as mere garbage, so that I may gain Christ”. (Philippians 3:8 GNB)
Zechariah and Elizabeth died soon, but their spiritual values and teaching never died. “Son, do what your father tells you and never forget what your mother taught you. Keep their words with you always, locked in your heart. Their teaching will lead you when you travel, protect you at night, and advise you during the day. Their instructions are a shining light; their correction can teach you how to live”. (Proverbs 6:20-23 GNB) They homeschooled his son themselves. Their homeschooling was passed on together with the teachings of God’s Word. The God-intended education has home as school and God’s Word as education’s heart, under the direct supervision and companionship of parents. Even distinguished men acknowledge that the best education comes from the Bible. Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, stated, “A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education”.[6] To acknowledge a truth is important, but to sacrifice oneself for it is of infinitely more value. The parents of John the Baptist sacrificed everything to put God’s Word above all in the education of their son.
All that Zechariah and Elizabeth taught John remained alive in his soul, guiding him in the purposeful mission to announce and prepare the Messiah’s coming. By his home schooling (or, more appropriately, his desert schooling), John was enabled to do what, in God’s sight, is the most significant aim of every human being: to live God’s will and calling on earth.
Modern education and its formal institutions may appear much more appealing, sophisticated and important than the Christian teaching at home, but institutional education is a deceptive-promises filled, treacherous oasis increasingly controlled by governments to indoctrinate children systematically. That control and indoctrination is the central characteristic of the beast’s system revealed in the book of Revelation. In contrast, home schooling offers freedom for families to strengthen and protect their children morally and spiritually. Is that education achievable? In the examples of Moses and John the Baptist, God shows that even in deserts, where there is shortage of educational resources and where no one sees hope for success, he can educate and raise up great men of character, integrity, wisdom and courage to lead a nation, train leaders and, especially, honor the name of Jesus Christ. So if God can work in deserts, how much more at home!
For Christian families, home education is essential because its control does not belong to government, but to parents. Home schooling gives parents the precious freedom to put God and his will in the heart of everything and train and enable a child to become an adult equipped to do God’s will, glorify the Person of Jesus Christ and help advance, in society and the people’s lives, a higher government: the Kingdom of God and its values. So home-educated Christian children are given the wonderful opportunity to know and obey their Master, Teacher, Lord and King and are trained, as John the Baptist was, to help men and women become enthusiastic and passionate followers of Jesus. Such education is perfectly attainable when parents give free room and full opportunities for God to be its Enabler.
Bible translations used:
GNB: the Good News Bible — Second Edition © 1992 by American Bible Society.
Darby: A literal translation of the Old Testament (1890) and the New Testament (1884). By John Nelson Darby (1800-82)
ESV: English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.
KJV: King James Version.
MSG: Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.
NIV: New International Version. Copyright International Bible Society.
Copyright 2004 Julio Severo. Julio Severo is a Brazilian writer. He is the author of the book O Movimento Homossexual (The Homosexual Movement), published by the Brazilian branch of the Bethany House Publishers. He writes especially on pro-life and pro-family issues and his work has been mentioned in the Brazilian Congress and in major national Evangelical magazines, including Revista Show da Fé, Eclesia, Enfoque Gospel, etc. Besides, his articles have appeared in many Brazilian websites and published (including three cover stories) in Defesa da Fé (Defense of Faith), the leading apologetic magazine for Evangelical leaders in Brazil. He is also a homeschool leader in Brazil (see the section on Brazil in the Home School Legal Defense Association site). If you want to publish this article in your site or magazine, contact the author.
Email: juliosevero@hotmail.com
Website in Portuguese: www.juliosevero.com
Blog in English: www.lastdayswatchman.blogspot.com[1] William T. Still, New World Order (Huntington House Publishers: Lafayette, Louisiana, 1990), p. 131.
[2] William T. Still, New World Order (Huntington House Publishers: Lafayette, Louisiana, 1990), p. 131.
[3] William J. Federer, America’s God and Country (Fame Publishing, Inc.: Coppell, Texas, 1994), p. 676.
[4] William J. Federer, America’s God and Country (Fame Publishing, Inc.: Coppell, Texas, 1994), p. 405.
[5] 2002 Enciclopédia Koogan-Houaiss Digital.
[6] CITIZENLINK, April 14, 2004.Other articles by Julio Severo
Targeted By Bias: Evangelicals Who Voted for BushThe Great Gaffe of Lula Against IsraelThe Mark of the Beast: The Tomorrow’s EducationHelping Take Care of the Social HealthMessage to President Lula on IsraelMessage to President Lula on homosexualityGrowth of divorce among Christians: a biblical perspective
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