Copyright © 1999, 2004, 2016 Philadelphia Church of God
Kathleen Parker wrote in the Sunday Oklahoman, July 25, 1999: “Now is the time for all good fathers to come to the aid of the family.
“Hurry; your days are numbered. If you happen to be a heterosexual male (further doomed by Caucasian pigmentation), your days are already over, according to a cover article in the June issue of American Psychologist, published by the American Psychological Association (apa).
“In their article—‘Deconstruction of the Essential Father’—researchers Louise B. Silverstein and Carl F. Auerbach challenge one of the core institutions of our culture—fatherhood. More or less, fathers, as we’ve known and loved them, are obsolete.
“The article makes numerous breathtaking assertions, but basically the researchers say that:
“—Fathers aren’t essential to the well-being of children.
“—Gay, lesbian and single parents are as good as any other.
“—Heterosexual marriage isn’t necessary to produce healthy, well-adjusted children” (emphasis mine throughout).
I agree wholeheartedly with Kathleen Parker’s condemnation of the apa article, except for one statement. She called fatherhood “one of the core institutions of our culture.” I want to show you why it is the core institution of our society!
The goal of this conspiracy is to rip apart the family. And if you believe in the biblical family, the father is the head (1 Corinthians 11:3). So he becomes the main target. Yet the conspiracy goes much deeper than that.
The August 23, 1999, feature article in Time magazine was titled “How Man Evolved.” Notice that is an absolute—no room for disagreement whatsoever, even though evolution is an unproved and unprovable theory.
To support their faith in evolution, Time included an article by a Harvard geology professor, Stephen Jay Gould. Here is what he wrote: “The Kansas board of education voted 6 to 4 to remove evolution, and the big-bang theory as well, from the state’s science curriculum. In so doing, the board transported its jurisdiction to a never-never land where a Dorothy of the new millennium might exclaim, ‘They still call it Kansas, but I don’t think we’re in the real world anymore.’”
In other words, if you believe in the Bible’s account of God as Creator, you are not in the “real world.” Mr. Gould thinks you are on the edge of insanity or beyond if you believe the Genesis account! (And, incidentally, creation is taught throughout the Bible.)
“The Kansas decision represents creationism’s first—and surely temporary—success with a third strategy for subverting a constitutional imperative: that by simply deleting, but not formally banning, evolution, and by not demanding instruction in a biblically literalist ‘alternative,’ their narrowly partisan, religious motivations might not derail their goals” (ibid).
He presumes to be a great authority on religion. And if you reject the unprovable theory of evolution, because of your belief in the Bible, then you have “narrowly partisan, religious motivations.”
And of course he would know because he teaches at Harvard and writes for Time.
“First, no other Western nation has endured any similar movement, with any political clout, against evolution—a subject taught as fundamental, and without dispute, in all other countries that share our major sociocultural traditions.
“Second, evolution is as well documented as any phenomenon in science, as strongly as the Earth’s revolution around the sun rather than vice versa. In this sense, we can call evolution a ‘fact.’ (Science does not deal in certainty, so ‘fact’ can only mean a proposition affirmed to such a high degree that it would be perverse to withhold one’s provisional assent)” (ibid).
Here he gets much stronger. He says “evolution is as well documented as any phenomenon in science, as strongly as the Earth’s revolution around the sun.” Anybody who has intelligently studied evolution and astronomy knows that is a grotesque, twisted statement! But if you don’t believe him, he says you are “perverse”—even though he is careful not to use the word proof regarding the theory of evolution.
This man is a Harvard professor. But does he know more than the Creator of the universe and of mankind?
If I just want to believe what the Bible clearly states about creation, this is his attack on me.
But if you can’t believe the creation account, can you believe any of the Bible? So this is really about destroying faith in God. But the evolutionists insist that you have faith—and it is a faith—in their theory. If you don’t, their attack becomes very perverse.
The more that people surrender to their intimidation, the more fervently they attack the Bible.
Do our people still believe in freedom of religion based on the Bible? How shamefully they treat people just for believing in the Bible!
Mr. Gould has still more to say. “Dorothy followed her yellow brick road as it spiraled outward toward redemption and homecoming (to the true Kansas of our dreams and possibilities). The road of the newly adopted Kansas curriculum can only spiral inward toward restriction and ignorance” (ibid).
If you believe in creation, then you are in a “spiral inward toward restriction and ignorance,” he says.
How about that for intimidation—apparently because he lacks proof of evolution!
Still he says, “Science and religion should be equal, mutually respecting partners” (ibid). But if you believe the creation teaching of the Bible, according to this man you 1) are not in the “real world”; 2) have “narrowly partisan, religious motivations”; 3) are “perverse”; and 4) in a “spiral inward toward restriction and ignorance.”
Does that sound like he is a respecting partner?
Who is really ignorant? “For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them” (Matthew 13:15).
Jesus Christ had to deal with people who had closed their eyes. And that is exactly what the proponents of evolution have done today. They have closed their minds to any proof or belief in creation. They have literally become some of the most ignorant people on this Earth! How else can you describe a closed mind? And if you disagree with them, then they begin to demonize you with ugly labels by powerful institutions. They attack with massive intimidation.
That is the typical way people act when they have strong beliefs and little or no proof! These people cling to evolution in faith—like some extreme cult.
Herbert W. Armstrong’s book The Missing Dimension in Sex (please request a free copy if you don’t already have one) states: “There has to be a knowledge gap—a missing dimension—somewhere! It’s high time we learn what it is!
“For every effect, there has to be a cause!
“There has to be a cause for all the world’s evils! There has to be a cause for the worsening moral problem! There can be two kinds of knowledge—true and false.
“In this feverish development of knowledge production, scholars in universities have been placing emphasis on academic freedom. Academic freedom is defined as the independent judgment allowed teachers, scholars, scientists, students, in the pursuit of knowledge.
“Science as a whole, and higher education, have exercised the academic freedom to postulate a creation without a Creator. They have engaged in the activity of knowledge production with total rejection of any possibility of the miraculous, the supernatural, the existence of God—or anything outside the realm of the material. In the realm of knowledge of the spiritual they know nothing. They have rejected utterly revelation as a source of basic knowledge!
“When I engaged in research on the theory of evolution, I studied Darwin, Haeckel, Huxley, Vogt, More, Chamberlain and other exponents of the theory. I also looked at the other side of the question. But I would venture to say that most of those whose higher education has been acquired during the past half century have been taught and have accepted without question the evolutionary theory, not having examined with any seriousness the biblical evidences of special creation. To go along with the evolutionary concept has become the scholarly ‘in’ thing. In most institutions of higher learning, the world’s ‘Best Seller’ has been dismissed without a hearing.
“Is it not human to err?
“Could it be possible for the most highly educated minds to have been intellectually misled or deceived? Could they, viewing only one side of the question, be infallible, entirely above making mistakes?
“For many years now, I have observed that errors almost always come from a false basic premise, carelessly assumed as self-evident, and taken for granted without question, then building on that false basic hypothesis. The basic premise for knowledge production in our time has been the evolutionary concept. It has been the eyeglasses through which all questions have been viewed. Yet it remains unproved, and by its very nature it is a theory not subject to proof. It is a faith. And to question it is—to those who embrace this faith—academic heresy!
“Do we, then, dare question the theories so generally accepted by advanced scholarship? Is it heretical to question their assumed conclusions and ask for proof? Is it academic heresy to look at the other side of the coin?
“Suppose, now, we appropriate the academic freedom to carefully examine that which has been dismissed without examination.”
Why are educated men in this world so arrogant? Why are they so quick to close their minds?
These educated men have brought us to the brink of human extinction with our nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Unless Christ intervenes, man will destroy all human life on this Earth. “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened” (Matthew 24:21-22). No flesh would be “saved alive” (Moffatt translation).
“Educated” men of this world have brought us to this state. Man is the cause, but still he challenges and rebels against the Word of God. These “educated” people still think they know better than their Creator!
Thank God they don’t have much longer to think that way.
These “educated” people have brought us to the point of human extinction—and it would happen if Christ didn’t intervene to stop it. However, Christ won’t do that until we have almost destroyed all human life. We must learn how horrendous our rebellion against God is.
The same Christ who prophesied this nuclear catastrophe about 2,000 years ago also created life—and not through evolution. Unless He returns, man has no hope!
But that hope is being destroyed through the false teaching of evolution, and man is heading into a nuclear tribulation of suffering, unparalleled in our history.
Is that what it will take to wake us from our ignorance and blindness? Must we experience this blackest of all nightmares before we awaken? We could avoid the Great Tribulation if only we would heed God’s warning.
When the unparalleled tragedy strikes, people will suffer until they are humbled.
This very message you are reading reveals God’s love and His desire to avoid that towering disaster.
Many religions have accepted the theory of evolution. At the same time they’ve grossly compromised God’s Word—the Bible. Now Satan inspires many in education and science to keep religion on the run. The onslaught is intensifying!
Jesus Christ said we must live by “every word of God” (Matthew 4:4)—that includes His instruction about creation.
A Christian is supposed to be one who follows Christ. But more and more, religion is doing the opposite.
Satan is the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4). That means he rules the “real world.” He has deceived the whole world (Revelation 12:9). That includes education, science and religion!
Do we really believe God?
It is time we wake up to what is happening to fatherhood, the family and our society.
Now, let’s take a closer look at why the teaching of evolution destroys the family—and fatherhood.
Did Christ believe in the Genesis creation? (Perhaps it is good to remind you once again that a Christian is one who follows Christ.)
“The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female” (Matthew 19:3-4). Verse 4 is a quote from Genesis 1:27. This is where God first records the creation of male and female—not after the animal kind, but after the God kind! We are now in the “likeness” of God, that is, in shape, or form. But we are to be made in the “image,” or character, of God.
God’s purpose is to expand His Family. “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). We are to become perfect, not like angels or animals, but like our Father.
Family is a God-plane relationship—not an animal- or even an angel-plane relationship.
Are men too self-willed and ignorant to even want to see their illustrious potential?
“And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?” (Matthew 19:4-5).
God created us male and female. We didn’t evolve from an ape or any other animal kind. We are of the God kind! It is “for this cause” that God instructs the young man and woman to leave their parents and build their own family.
They are to become “one flesh”—physically and spiritually. That is a deep closeness and unity. That means marriage, with God’s government, produces that oneness. God commands the man to be the leader (Ephesians 5:23). The father is the head of the family.
The whole feminist movement has rebelled against any man ruling the family—God’s way. These feminists want to build the family their way. They refuse to be Christians—Christ’s way. If they ever expect to get beyond this life, they must repent.
Verse 5 of Matthew 19 is a quote from Genesis 2:24. Does Christ believe in the Genesis creation? He certainly should, since the Father created all things through Him! (Ephesians 3:9). How can anyone who claims to be a Christian reject the Genesis account of creation?
Most educators and scientists don’t know when marriage began. That is because they reject God as the Creator of man as stated in Genesis. That is the record of when marriage and family began. Many of these scholars only see “human evolutionary history.” They contemptuously and arrogantly include the word “evolutionary.” They assume they know more than the great God! They close their minds to God’s view. They have never known God, and probably never will until God plunges them into the worst suffering ever. Then most of them will be humble enough to heed God’s Word and repent.
The May-June 1970 issue of Tomorrow’s World magazine stated: “It has been the devil’s plan to pervert even the meaning of the word ‘father.’ Today people use that term about God—yet become very offended when told the plain truth of God’s divine purpose. They cannot believe that humans are destined to literally become born sons of God—just like God—as our children are like us. So in Jesus’s day the Jews refused to hear Jesus’s words about the Father.
“If the devil could get a society and make it the way he wanted it, what would it be like?
“Do you know there was once a society completely ruled by the devil? He had instituted his thoughts and his morality. This society was completely destroyed from the face of the Earth—and the lesson of it should be a perpetual witness to all generations. The society was Sodom and Gomorrah!
“The final end of any society run by the devil is the complete destruction of fatherhood! The devil himself cannot reproduce. Angels cannot reproduce nor marry (Matthew 22:30). But God can reproduce Himself. God is in the process of reproducing Himself in us—His begotten children (1 John 3:1-2). Thus the devil wants to destroy fatherhood—for in so doing he hopes to destroy God’s true religion.
“How does the devil go about the destruction of fatherhood?
“God Almighty reveals Himself as a Father, even in the writings of the Old Testament. Read Psalm 89:26, Isaiah 63:16, 64:8 and Hosea 1:10. These are a few of the scriptures revealing God’s fatherhood.
“When Jesus came to the Earth He plainly revealed the fatherhood of God. Those who heard Him speak should have received His message with joy and understanding, since they had been prepared by the writings of the Old Testament. However, they refused to believe Jesus’s words and accused Him of blasphemy.
“It was at the feast of dedication in Jerusalem one winter when Jesus told the Jews, ‘My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. I and my Father are one’ (John 10:29-30).”
Christ said, “[M]y Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). He came to declare the Father (John 1:18). That is WHY He came to this Earth—not to declare Himself, as most religions teach!
The human father pictures God the Father. The husband’s job is to declare our spiritual Father as Christ did. We must look up to God and stop looking down at the dumb animals as our origin.
How dumb can we be?
“Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands” (Hebrews 2:7). In the first part of this verse, the Greek reads not “a little lower than the angels,” but “a little while inferior to the angels.” Inferior to angels today, but only for a little while. Our potential is far greater! That is what your Bible says. Can we grasp it?
The angels were never called sons (Hebrews 1:4-5).
“Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him” (Hebrews 2:8). The Moffatt translation reads “the whole universe.” God is going to give us the whole universe if we build His character so we won’t destroy it as Satan did. (For more information, request a free copy of The Incredible Human Potential by Herbert W. Armstrong.)
What kind of character must we have to finish and beautify the universe? “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings” (verses 9-10).
God is bringing many sons to glory. We must become born sons of God. We will then have God’s own character to rule over the Earth and the universe.
The family of man pictures the God Family! God created the human family to get us into His Family! The teaching about evolution is a vile insult to our awesome origin and potential!
Why does man refuse to see his magnificent future? The simple answer is, he doesn’t want to be corrected and changed.
The Tomorrow’s World article continued: “This vicious and subtle attack on fatherhood is really aimed at God Almighty. Its aim is to warp people to the point where they cannot have a right relationship with their heavenly Father.
“If you have never known a proper relationship with a physical father, it will be more difficult for you to have a right relationship with your spiritual Father. You will have to learn now the things you should have learned in your relationship to a physical father. …
“‘And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they [our physical fathers] verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness’ (Hebrews 12:5-10).
“Notice that we learn vital lessons from correction by our physical fathers. Their correction teaches us to give them ‘reverence.’ We learn to yield to their authority and to be more loving and respectful to them.
“We must transfer this same wonderful feeling of reverence to our heavenly Father! Can you do it?
“Do you have a hard time looking to God as your Father? Do you just pray to God as a great being—distant, ominous and powerful? Or do you know God intimately as a Father?”
Do you know why Jesus Christ was crucified? For teaching His message about fatherhood! Most of His prophets and apostles were killed too. Why? Because Satan rules this world.
Satan hates God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. The devil hates the God Family and is conspiring to destroy you physically and spiritually. He never had an opportunity to be in God’s Family. That knowledge only intensifies his hatred.
“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” (Revelation 12:12). Satan knows his time is short. Whether you believe in him or not, his rage and destruction are worse now than ever before on this Earth!
People who fight and war against fatherhood are little more than puppets of the devil, and they use Satan’s tactics in their warfare. He is behind the conspiracy to destroy fatherhood.
Our time before the Great Tribulation is also short. Passivists will not survive Satan’s onslaught. If ever there was a time to take a stand for God, now is that time. Soon Christ will be here and the whole world will become a part of our spiritual Father’s Family. The sad part is how much man must suffer before he learns that lesson.