By: Randy Olsson

- ANCIENT BATTLES - MODERN TIMES

SPIRITUAL BATTLE

• Acknowledge spiritual reality…

• Wear the Armor of God!!!

SPIRITUAL BATTLE

• Belt of truth

• Reality according to God

SPIRITUAL BATTLE

Your truth sets me free

I live on every word that comes from Your mouth

Sanctify me by truth. Your word is truth.

THE LAST CHRISTIAN GENERATION

• 63% don’t believe Jesus is the Son of the one true God (Pg 15)

• 58% believe all faiths teach equally valid truths

• 51% don’t believe Jesus rose from the dead

• 65% don’t believe Satan is a real entity

• 68% believe the Holy Spirit is a real entity

THE LAST CHRISTIAN GENERATION

• With 65% of youth believing there is no way to tell which religion is true (Pg 34)

• 81% of young people believing “all truth is relative to the individual and his or her circumstances” (Pg 45)

• “After the Vietnam war- a lot of us- anti-war graduate students didn’t just crawl back into our library cubicles. We stepped into academic positions, with the war over; our visibility was lost; it seemed for a while, to the unobservant that we had disappeared. Now we have tenure and the work of reshaping the universities has begun in earnest.” -J Paraney (Professor at Middlebury College)

THE WATER WE SWIM IN-

• SECULAR – SHAME - CONSCIENCE

• PLURALISTIC – REASON - REALITY

• PRIVITIZED – MEANING - PURPOSE

“You're here because you know something. What you know, you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?” “Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world? The matrix is that world has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.” Morpheus -The Matrix-

“As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time.  A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself…The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. 

In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines.  In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men.  Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt.  By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.” - “Orthodoxy” entitled “The Suicide of Thought” G. K. Chesterton

We believe that taboos are taboo.  We believe that everything’s getting better, despite evidence to the contrary.  The evidence must be investigated, and you can prove anything with evidence. We believe there’s something in horoscopes, UFO’s and bent spoons. Jesus was a good man just like Buddha, Mohammed, and ourselves.  He was a good moral teacher though we think His good morals were bad.   We believe that all religions are basically the same, at least the one that we read was.  They all believe in love and goodness. 

They only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.  We believe that after death comes the Nothing.  Because when you ask the dead what happens, they say nothing.  If death is not the end, if the dead have lied, then its compulsory heaven for all excepting perhaps Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Kahn.  We believe in Masters and Johnson.  We believe that man is essentially good.  It’s only his behavior that lets him down. This is the fault of society.  Society is the fault of conditions. Conditions are the fault of society.

We believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him. Reality will adapt accordingly. The universe will readjust. History will alter.  We believe that there is no absolute truth excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth.  We believe in the rejection of creeds, and the flowering of individual thought.  If chance be the Father of all flesh, disaster is his rainbow in the sky and when you hear State of Emergency! Sniper Kills Ten! Troops on Rampage! Whites go Looting! Bomb Blasts School! It is but the sound of man worshipping his maker.” - Creed (on The Modern Mind) by Steve Turner

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints; we spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less.

We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get angry too quickly, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too seldom, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years.

SPIRITUAL BATTLE

• Breastplate of righteousness

• Position and practice

SPIRITUAL BATTLE

He is our righteousness…

Submit yourselves to God as slaves…

Loved righteousness and hated wickedness…

SPIRITUAL BATTLE

• LUST OF THE EYES

• LUST OF THE FLESH

• THE PRIDE OF LIFE

Q AND A

DEVICES

• Internet- Pornography – Chat Rooms – Secret Relationships

• Facebook Me – Socialnomics

• Mobile World – texting, sexting, and what's really going on

STATE OF THE YOUTH

• Internet

• 54% of teens admitted to complaining about or making fun of a teacher online, though only 29% of parents thought their kids had.

• 39% of teens confessed regret over posting something online, while just 20% of parents assumed their children would.

STATE OF THE YOUTH

• 23% of students acknowledged downloading/sharing files illegally, but only 10% of parents thought their kids had.

• 24% of kids admitted they had signed into someone else’s social network account or profile without permission, even though a mere 4% of parents thought their child was capable of such activity.

STATE OF THE YOUTH

• Cell Phones

• 20% of all teenagers have “sent or posted nude or semi-nude pictures or video of themselves,” and 39% of all teens admitted to “sending or posting sexually suggestive messages.”

STATE OF THE YOUTH

• Sexual Expectations and social norms in Youth Culture

STATE OF THE YOUTH

• Nearly half (46%) of all 15–19-year-olds in the United States have had sex at least once.

STATE OF THE YOUTH

• More than three-quarters of teen females report that their first sexual experience was with a steady boyfriend, a fiancé, a husband or a cohabiting partner.

• Ten percent of young women aged 18–24 who have had sex before age 20 report that their first sex was involuntary. The younger they were at first intercourse, the higher the proportion

STATE OF THE YOUTH

• Of the 18.9 million new cases of STDs each year, 9.1 million (48%) occur among 15–24-year-olds

SPIRITUAL BATTLE

• Gospel of peace

• Preparation & Posture

SPIRITUAL BATTLE

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts…

Cast your cares on Him…

Beautiful on the mountain…

Peace on Earth and goodwill toward men…

Boldness to proclaim the message…

Peace to those who are far and near…

SPIRITUAL BATTLE

• Helmet of Salvation

• Perspective and Priorities

• “If truth be not diffused, error will be; if God and his word are not known and received the devil and His works will gain ascendency. If the evangelical volume, does not reach every hamlet, the pages of the corrupt and licentious literature will. If the power of the gospel is not felt throughout the lengths and breadths of the land… anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end.” - Daniel Webster

Americans 16-29 – some to a lot -

•91% Anti-homosexual

•87% Judgmental

•78% Hypocritical

•75% Too involved in politics

•72% Out of touch with reality

•70% Insensitive to others

•68% Boring

SPIRITUAL BATTLE

• Shield of Faith

• Protection and possibilities

SPIRITUAL BATTLE

• Sword of the Spirit

• Power & Authority

• It is in vain, O men, that you seek within yourselves the cure of all your miseries.  All your insight only leads you to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you will discover the true and the good.  The philosophers promised them to you, and have not been able to keep their promise for they did not understand what your true nature is. Or what your true good is. How then, could they have provided for you, a cure for the ills they have not even understood?” -Pascal

- E21-

• “See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.”