Melanie Phillips is a journalist who writes for the Times of London, one of the greatest newspapers in the world. She visited the Trumpet staff here at our offices in May and delivered a public lecture at Armstrong Auditorium. In 2013, she wrote her memoir, Guardian Angel: My Story, My Britain. In it she discusses the problems plaguing Britain. Her insights into the culture wars are based on the evidence, and the evidence matches the Trumpet’s main source—a source that warns that the family is under attack, and it is going to end very badly indeed.

Ms. Phillips began her career identifying more with the liberal left, politically. She still identifies with true liberal values, like the capacity of human beings to better their society and other classical liberal perspectives. But she saw the liberal left turn radical before her eyes.

From 1977 to 1993, Phillips was a journalist, editor and columnist for the Guardian newspaper in London. She saw writers and editors put their liberal Marxist ideologies ahead of the evidence and ahead of objective facts. She saw this bias turn radical as she covered Britain’s educational system and family policy.

She also proved that the same problem plagues America.

Although many characterize her as a political conservative, Phillips says she is simply an advocate for what the evidence shows. And the evidence she dug up from statistics, from experts, from politicians showed that introducing cultural Marxism into schools and intentionally providing government incentives that break down the family hurts students, hurts children and hurts society.

Traditional Family

Following the evidence led Ms. Phillips to somewhat accidentally stumble into the culture wars. But she has adroitly perceived that it is, in fact, a war—an all-out WAR. She charges that liberals not only dislike traditional family, but they are actively, intentionally and successfully destroyingtraditional family!

Could that be true? If so, that is a diabolical plot! The strength of any nation—from America to Britain to China to Zimbabwe—lies in its families!

At the Guardian, Ms. Phillips wrote about Britain’s family policy. She saw overwhelming evidence that it was in the nation’s best interest for families to stay together whenever possible, as a general policy. But what did her colleagues say?

In Guardian Angel, she writes, “And when I started writing about family breakdown, I was also called ‘an Old Testament fundamentalist.’ At the time, I shrugged this aside as merely a gratuitous bit of bigotry. Much later, however, I came to realize that it was actually a rather precise insult. My assailants had immediately understood something I did not myself at the time understand, that the destruction of the traditional family had, as its real target, the destruction of biblical morality.”

Writing as one of Britain’s most prominent journalists, informed by dozens of contacts, digging into thousands of statistics, Ms. Phillips found that family unity caused national stability—and that family breakdown caused national instability. That is just what the facts showed. And even though she did not realize it at the time, accepting the real-world evidence supporting traditional family brought her thinking in line with the ultimate source of traditional family: the Holy Bible.

Her critics recognized this. “But they understood that the banner behind which I was actually marching was the biblical moral law,” she writes (ibid). It is ironic that sometimes the opponents of traditional family see the link clearer than the supporters of traditional family. They know that attacking the traditional family means attacking biblical morality, and that attacking biblical morality means attacking the traditional family!

The Bigger Picture

Ms. Phillips writes that “the family was the issue of issues.” It’s the most important of all. Guardian Angel shows not only the link between the Bible and the family but also the links between the Bible, the family and the nation.

Ms. Phillips provides examples of how her colleagues believed in cultural Marxism (now called political correctness) and believed that Western nations like Britain and America were inherently evil. “The belief that the Western nation was innately and oppressively judgmental gave rise to a parallel onslaught against its Judeo-Christian heritage,” she writes. Go to the homepage of any national news website and it will take you about five seconds to see multiple examples of that onslaught.

“This great march through the institutions captured virtually the entire British intellectual and governing establishment,” she writes. “It led to the undermining of education and the traditional family and behavioral constraints in favor of cultural and moral relativism and hyper-individualism” (emphasis mine throughout). This is a mind-staggering attack.

If you have a breakdown of biblical morality, you have a breakdown of the family. If you have a breakdown of the family, you have a breakdown of the nation.

But you have something even worse than that.

The physical family is not just a convenient and useful arrangement. It is something far greater.

Unlike the vast majority of journalists and even regular citizens in Britain and the West, let’s recognize this undeniable fact: The strength of the nation comes from the strength of the family—and the strength of the family comes from obeying the one book that defines family: the Holy Bible!

What a unique book the Bible is. How its timeless principles have strengthened our nations when we have obeyed them. How dangerous it is to be ignorant about it, or to dismiss it—or to attack it!

Rejecting the Bible is horrendous because it destroys man’s only hope!

If you really understand the Bible, you will find that the physical family is a type of God’s master plan for human beings! If the family breaks down, the nation breaks down, and the purpose and potential for humankind breaks down! This is what your Bible shows. (If you want to prove this for yourself, request a free copy of our booklet God Is a Family, and we will gladly send you one—at no cost or obligation.)

God is not an impersonal force or a trinity (a term that, believe it or not, is found nowhere in the Bible). There is a Father and a Son. John 1:18 says that Jesus Christ came to declare His Father. The Father is the Head of the Family, and Christ is the Son of God. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.” That is a Family! God is a Family, and it is a family full of the ultimate love.

The gospel itself is the good news of the coming Kingdom or Family of God! And the true Church—which is the Family of God on Earth—is actually the Kingdom of God in embryo! The physical family is a type of the God Family! It is right at the heart of the whole master plan of God. God created human beings and sacrificed His own Son so that we can become part of His Family! That includes all those who have lived and died without ever knowing God. The Bible reveals that He has a plan to resurrect them and give them that opportunity as well (1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9; Revelation 20).

Indeed, family is the issue of issues!

I would add to that: This goes much deeper than just the traditional family. The God Family is the issue of issues in the entire Bible!

How wonderfully profound this subject truly is.

The Enemy of Family

The Bible has lasted for millennia. The closer that people and families and nations have tried to obey it, the stronger they have been. Our modern societies have ignored, neglected and rejected the Bible to the point that even most Christians don’t know or believe much of what it says.

The Bible reveals that there is not only a God but also a devil. This evil fallen angel is real. Look at the grotesque evil in the world around you and in the newspaper headlines, and ask yourself, Where does that come from? It comes from a very real Satan the devil!

The Bible says not only that he is real, but that he is “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4) and has deceived the whole world (Revelation 12:9)—not just a few really extreme “devil-worshipers” out beyond the fringe of society, but the whole world! Do you believe these scriptures? Very few people do.

Revelation 12:12 says, “Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.” If you truly believe the Bible, then you have to believe that the devil has come or is coming to Earth, and in a white-hot wrath!

“And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman [a prophetic symbol here for God’s Church] which brought forth the man child” (verse 13). When Satan was cast down, the very first target he attacked was the true Church of God, which is the embryo of the Family of God! The Kingdom of God is ruled by the Family of God!

Satan’s number one goal after being cast down is to attack the spiritual Family, the Church of God. Satan’s second target is the final destruction of the traditional family.

Could the real power behind this coordinated attack on family be an evil spirit being? Could the evidence of family destruction that Ms. Phillips has highlighted actually be caused by Satan?

If you believe the Bible, the answer is a thundering YES!

Where It Starts: Education

One of the most vulnerable targets in the culture war is the child. That fact is not lost on those who want to redefine family and redefine the West. They actively, aggressively target the schoolchildren.

Education was one of the first areas Ms. Phillips investigated. She found that “education standards had not only plummeted, but education itself had been redefined.” The more she dug, the more she saw that this was not just a simple matter of accident or neglect. It was because administrators, teachers and professors worshiped liberal ideologies over and above actually educating children.

Ms. Phillips also writes, “The ideological dogmas behind the unraveling of education were also eroding family life and the moral codes that kept civilized society together, replacing those by the no-blame, no-shame, no-pain society. Respect for authority, both in and outside the classroom, had collapsed.” She writes, “Authority was being disastrously confused with authoritarianism.” That leads us into lawlessness and the catastrophic breakdown of our societies!

This was a report from ground zero of the culture war zone. Nations depend on families, families depend on proper authority, and authority is exactly what was being bombarded in the minds of children inside and outside of the school classroom.

Ms. Phillips writes, “Most teachers, I wrote, were unaware that they were the unwitting troops of a cultural revolution being now taught to teach according to doctrine, whose core aim was to subvert the fundamental tenets of Western society.” Wow!

She also writes, “A generation of activists had captured academia.” You may agree with that or not, but this is a bold and serious charge she makes, and it needs to be answered. Ms. Phillips is among very few people who are so knowledgeable in this area of British society, and she says that a generation of activists has captured academia. They learned cultural Marxism in school. Then, when they became administrators, professors and teachers, they spread that ideology.

Britain and the West are in a war—a culture war. And this is a war we are losing! But it is really much more than a “culture war.” It is a war against the Bible and God Himself! (Our free book Mystery of the Ages proves this statement. You desperately need this book. It gives a clear understanding of the Bible—the Old Testament and the New Testament.) The traditional family—the strength of the nation—is already mostly destroyed! What does this mean for all of us?

History, an ‘Elitist Irrelevance’?

Ms. Phillips writes about “[h]istory teachers who resist the very idea that they should teach British history as an elitist irrelevance.” If it’s “elitist” and “irrelevant” to teach Britain’s past and the teachers responsible for teaching it resist the very idea of doing so, that is literally a direct strategy to destroy Western civilization!

Winston Churchill led Britain to victory in World War ii. He saved Britain from Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. He succeeded because he was absolutely steeped in history. As a result, he was able to foresee what was coming out of Germany—and what was coming upon Britain!

If you don’t know history, you cannot see into the future.

Today’s educators ignore, erase and rewrite history to suit their purposes. They move people to push aside facts and allow emotions, impressions and feelings to determine what is “true.”

This is the classic tool of dictators and tyrants. They bully people into accepting their “truth”—regardless of evidence and facts. They play on people’s emotions. They stir crowds into irrational frenzy and inspire fanatical devotion to falsehood!

You can read a chapter on “the law of history” in my free book The Former Prophets.

Will Worship

Adolf Hitler once said, “What you tell people in the mass in a receptive state of fanatic devotion will remain. Words received under a hypnotic influence are radical and impervious to every reasonable explanation.” Can that be true? Are people that easily hypnotized? Well, Hitler said they are.

“A new age of magic interpretation of the world is coming,” Hitler said, “of interpretation in terms of the will and not of the intelligence.” This is exactly what is happening to many people today! They push facts aside—and they say that whatever you will to be, so it is! Like magic!

It is by this illogic that the family is being attacked. In spite of all evidence to the contrary, people insist that sexual license has no consequences—that divorce is liberating—that children are better off without both their biological parents—that a child can be raised by a man and his homosexual lover just as well—that marriage is oppressive, unless it is between two people of the same sex—that biological sex isn’t reality—that “gender” is whatever a person thinks in his mind, and that anyone who won’t play along is a hateful bigot—and many other bizarre fantasies.

We are being told that we should enthusiastically dismantle the traditional family—the entire foundation of civilization—and that we will be stronger as a society for doing so!

That is an abominable lie! It is deadly deceit! It is satanic propaganda that will destroy our nations and our civilization!

Can you recognize how the radical left is leading the West into a world ruled by the will and not by intelligence? And many others follow along or do nothing to oppose this satanic, nation-destroying evil.

Notice what the Apostle Paul said about this subject. He warned, “Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of [demons, it should read], intruding into those things which he [has] seen [that is the correct translation], vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind …. Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship …” (Colossians 2:18, 23). Will worship! This is a grave danger: people worshiping their own will!

Realize, Paul was writing this to Christians in the first century—people who were members of the very Church of God—and some of them were falling victim to this disastrous tendency! If they were susceptible, shouldn’t we be on guard against it?

When a person worships will instead of God, the devil can lead that person into anything! Look at the sins and perversions people are getting into and celebrating today. Who would have ever thought it could get so egregiously bad? But Satan is an extremely powerful and deceptive being.

Thayer’s Lexicon says that intruding in verse 18 means to invade or make a hostile incursion into. That is exactly what Satan has done. He has done it successfully in God’s own Church, and the evidence is all around us that he has done it successfully in today’s society.

How did he succeed? Notice verse 8: “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” What does that mean? The New Testament in Today’s English Version translates “rudiments of the world” as “ruling spirits of the universe”; it says this refers to a demon attack through philosophy—through education.

The Apostle Paul warned us to beware of the philosophy and reasoning of this world—because evil spirits have influenced it more than we realize! Can you see that, when you see how educators are tearing apart the family? Those in formal education should beware! Again, Satan has deceived the whole world!

Ending the Devil’s Influence

Nothing shows the devil’s influence on today’s society quite like the assault on the family. It is a hate-filled attack on everything God stands for!

Ezekiel 28:15 describes Satan the devil: “Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.” “Iniquity” here means lawlessness. Satan is lawless. He hates the law of God and has convinced most people to rebel against it. Society is doing so more and more passionately—to our great peril!

“By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence” (verse 16). The Earth is filling with violence now because Satan has been cast down and his influence is growing stronger and stronger in our day. Satan and his millions of demons are attacking America and they’re attacking Britain and they’re attacking the Jewish nation in the Middle East. They are attacking education and family and the West.

Thankfully, as Revelation 12:12 prophesies, he has only “a short time” remaining to do his destructive work. Ezekiel 28:19 says that God is going to deal with him decisively: “… thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more.” God will put a stop to him.

You need God’s help to put a stop to the devil’s influence in your own life and in your own family.

Recognize the propaganda Satan is peddling today. Understand how dangerous and deadly it is, and how it is crippling our nations! Reject the lies about the family. Put the highest value on truth—and follow the evidence where it leads you.

If you really believe the truth, it will set you free (John 8:32). It will free you from Satan’s deceits. And it will lead you right to God. His Word is truth! (John 17:17). He created family—surely we should put high value on His guidance in how to make it work! He can make your marriage happy and teach you how to turn your heart to your children and their hearts to you (Malachi 4:6). He will teach you how to structure your family in a way that leads to beautiful and eternal results!