After delivering supplies to a school recently, I was invited by the principal to address his staff. I was honored to do so.
I recounted two experiences I’d had that week. First was a visit to Parchman prison for a Bible study. If only those broken men had embraced the truth as children, I wondered, how many could have been preserved from ruin, and their victims saved from grief?
But I also showed the staff a card I’d received from a Sunday School in Ayer’s Cliff, Québec, 1,463 miles north of here. They heard I was helping with Amory’s tornado relief and wanted to contribute. Their teachers said that, for every Bible verse memorized, one dollar would go to help. What was my surprise to receive a gift of $1000!
The investment of Bible verses deposited in the children’s hearts will far outlast the houses repaired. “Train up a child in the way he should go,” said the Wise Man, “and when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6)
Of course, it’s not enough for our kids to hear the Bible; they need to see the reality of it in our lives, too.
The first law passed in America calling for public education was dubbed The Old Deluder Satan Act of 1647. The Massachusetts Bay Colony called on communities to hire teachers to instruct their children in reading and writing. But why, specifically?
The preamble reads: “It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures…” They were concerned “that learning not be buried in the graves of our forefathers…”
Ouch! The gospel buried in the graves of our forefathers? Society today is ill served when politics is without honor, religion without Christ, and education without the Bible.
The original mission of many universities was reflected in their mottos. Harvard’s used to be Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae, “Truth for Christ and the Church.” Now the school functions under the single word, Veritas.
Yet there can be no certain truth if we don’t know what God thinks about a matter. Jesus said, “If you abide in My word,…you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:31-32)
Likewise, Yale’s motto, Lux et Veritas, “Light and Truth,” references the Urim and Thummim, the means of divine guidance in Old Testament times. God’s light illuminates all truth.
But the old deluder, Satan, has been hard at work. Just recently, “Jeopardy” fans were stunned when not one contestant could come up with a missing word in the Lord’s Prayer—“hallowed.”
A physics grad student, a networking engineer, and a fundraiser stared blankly at the blank. How can you be truly educated if you’re ignorant of the Book on which Western civilization was founded?
It just takes one generation for the whole country to go spiritually dark. The majority of children today have no Bible exposure at church, in the home, and certainly not at school.
We see the lights going out across America.
If you’ve received God’s Son as Savior, what a difference you can make. Verses planted in hearts will never die. And what sweet fruit they produce!
Want your own personal motto? How about Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum— “The word of the Lord remains forever.” (1 Peter 1:25, ESV)
Article by Jabe Nicholson first published in the Commercial Dispatch, Saturday, August 12, 2023