Transcript

America's Providential History Podcast explores hand of God in American history

>> Stephen McDowell: Welcome to America's Providential History Podcast, where we talk about the real story of America and explore the hand of God in our history. Now, here's your host, Stephen McDowell. Hello. Glad you're joining us for this edition of America's Providential History Podcast. Today we will be continuing to take a look at the growth of the American Republic and in particular look at the area of the growth of education. Now, we've been examining in the past podcast how God providentially gave birth to America is birthed upon biblical ideas. It was a nation, birthed in liberty and this great Christian liberty that, existed for the individual liberty and religious worship, liberty and economic affairs, liberty and government. All this, provided the atmosphere for great growth to come. These seeds of liberty produced great fruit. And this fruit began to come forth in the first centuries following the birth of America that the founding fathers gave us. And so in the last couple of podcasts, we began to look at the fruit of Christian liberty coming forth in advancements and inventions, technology, scientific discoveries, transportation, communication, medicine, and so many other areas and fields.

Biblical education starts with planting the truth of God's word in individuals

Today. I want to just give, explore a little bit about this idea of growth of education. Education is a, really the Bible defines. Education is like the seed principle. The seed you plant determines the fruit that's produced. And biblical education starts with planting the truth of God's word in the hearts and minds of individuals. And the truth of God's word first produces godly character. It shapes the inward man. And then if the inward man and his thinking is shaped, then it's going to affect how he acts and how he lives. In the free nation of America, there is freedom for individuals to pursue truth and to transmit them that truth. And there are certain individuals who made significant contributions in the area of advancement in education, and none more so than the founding father of American scholarship and education, Noah, Webster. Noah Webster. In future podcasts, I'm going to look much more in detail at his life and we'll explore him because he was one of my heroes of fabulous individual. But Webster's probably best known for the dictionary that bears his name, Webster's Dictionary. In fact, Noah Webster wrote, the first exhaustive English dictionary, and it was published in 1828. He worked, over 25 years on his American dictionary, the English language, during which time he mastered 26 languages. He has about 70,000 entries in his dictionary. There were smaller English dictionaries, maybe with 5,000 words. And not only did he present an exhaustive, number of words, but, he, also did A study of etymology took about 10 years to study the root meaning of words. Where do these words come from that we have in that language? And most importantly, in his dictionary. He defines words biblically and he generously uses scriptural references. you know, today. Well, I'll explore that a little more here in just a minute. But the dictionary is known for that because of his words. But, a book that sold the most copies, probably as many copies as certainly any book in American history besides the Bible, was his famous Blue Back Speller. His Blue Back Speller was first published in 1783. And he wrote it intending to make every American self educated. And so after we became a free nation, people began to move west and settle new lands and territories. Every family carried with them a Bible and Webster's Dictionary. These were primary teaching tools of early America. And so over the next century plus, Webster's famous Blue Back Speller sold over a hundred million copies. Now it was called a Blue Back Speller because when it was published, the outside was covered in blue material that was the color of the hard kind of cardboard cover to his American spelling book. And it began to be referred to not by its official name of the, elementary spelling Book, but by Webster's Blue Back Speller. And this is a thoroughly a biblical Christian work. And it's approached first in the motivation why he wanted to put it out. I want every American to be able to learn for themselves because every American needs to know how to, how to discover truth for themselves. Primary source of truth was the Bible. And this textbook reveals that. So students who got Blueback Speller and most every one of Americans in the 19th century had been exposed to this spelling book. He averaged selling a million every year. That was a lot of books, over a century. But they would read lessons such as this. God will forgive those who repent of their sins and live a holy life. They would read, examine the Scriptures daily and carefully and set an example of good works are those who enjoy the light of the gospel and neglect to observe its precepts are more criminal than the heathen. These are just a few things that they would learn. Just to point out here, Webster's worldview would be reflected in his work and textbooks. Now Webster, he's born in 1858, and he lived in Connecticut. And he, like all Americans, the culture in which he grew up was the culture of Christianity where he went to church, he honored God, he displayed Christian character in his way he acted. But he never really had a personal encounter with the Lord till he was 50 years old in 1808. This was during the phase of the Second Great Awakening that, his wife and a daughter went to a meeting and heard a preacher preach. And they got saved. They gave their life to the Lord and then came home, told their, husband and father, you need to come and listen to these ministers preach. And Webster did. And as a result of that, he got saved, repented of his sins, gave his life to the Lord at the age of 50 to show you something of his diligence that had been developed over his long work with writing textbooks, and dictionaries. That the next morning he woke up and he told his family what had happened to him. And he said, I'm sorry that I failed in neglect. The most important thing is daily devotion. So he started a daily devotion the next morning and did it every single day for the rest of his long, life. And so he had a biblical worldview. He honored God before this. But that 1808, that was when he was just beginning in earnest his work on his American Dictionary of the English Language. And as I told you, he used thousands of scriptural references. And so he give it definition of words. Then he would give an illustration of the use of that word. And so many of those sentences was from the Scripture. And again, the definitions he gave were biblical. See, today modern dictionaries define words humanistically. Americans are indoctrinated in a philosophy of secular humanism many places. But even when they go and look up words, of course, it's not just true of Americans, but people all over the world. But if you were to look at Webster's original dictionary and the definitions he gives, compare it to modern dictionaries and their definitions, you'll see a whole different philosophy of, of life. Just take, for example, the word immoral. Now, modern culture doesn't, use that word immoral, much at all. Because to modern, humanistic, secular man, there's no such thing as immorality. That there's no set standard of what's right and wrong and your moral behavior that it changes. And fallen man always tries to push the envelope to more perverse things to consider that to be, normal. But Noah Webster defines as immoral in his original Dictionary published in 1828 as any action contrary to divine precept. So the standard for immoral behavior to Webster, and this was reflected American culture for the first number of centuries of our history, during colonization and early part of the American Republic, that God is the one who declares what's right and wrong. It's moral or immoral. That's what they understood. That's what they believe. Their laws reflect that. Their words and actions reflect that as well. But today I have a dictionary in my library from the 1960s. On the COVID of it, it says webster's New World Dictionary. But Noah Webster would not recognize it when he looked in there and looked at the definitions, because he would see a whole different philosophy of life, really, a different religion, religion of secular humanism. Because the word immoral is defined as any action that contravenes, accepted norm. And so to modern society, the standard of what's moral or immoral is accepted norm. To the founders, you had absolute standard. The Bible, the word of God, divine precept. God declares what's moral or immoral right and wrong. Today, secular man says, well, whatever we think the majority or just even a group of people that have a loud voice or political influence or educational influence, we're the ones that declare that's right and that's wrong. What's ever accepted that is what is immoral. And so we can see, even defining words.

Noah Webster says the most important part of education is Christian faith

I mean, the educrats, over the generations took over Webster's Dictionary, changed the definitions really, to propagate their religion, their philosophy of life. So it's a great experiment to take words and compare from Webster's original dictionary to modern dictionaries, taking law, education, economics, even potato. You get a different, philosophy of life. And there you can get copies, reprints of Webster's Dictionary. Foundation for American Christian Education, keeps a hard copy of that in print, and you can get copies from them. It's well worth that to have biblical definitions, but also to understand the worldview and mindset of the founders of America. Because these definitions of Webster's reflection, their thinking. Now, Webster wrote on all kinds of topics during his life, wrote many books, textbooks. He wrote about medicine. He wrote a history of deadly pestilences and diseases, which was used for generations and generations in medical schools and, other places. He wrote on topics of government. He was the first person to write a extensive paper or really a pamphlet or booklet on, support of the new constitution that came forth. but in one of his letters that he wrote in 1836, Noah Webster said, in my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children under a free government ought to be instructed. And so he understood that the most important part of educating people that want to live free is the Christian faith. Because Christianity is the only belief system, only religion, if you Will, it's more than a religion that teaches God transforms men. The only God of the Bible that comes and establishes, sets us free from the, bondage of sin, restores our relationship to God, gives us the self government and character that we need to live in liberty. But it also gives us the worldview, an understanding of all of life that enables us to live free as well. And he goes on to say, after saying, in my view, the Christian religion is the most important, one of the first things in which all children under a free government ought to be instructed. No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people. See, that's why government education today, which is not Christian, it's secular, governed by those with a secular world view. This, system of education can never sustain the American nation as a free nation. It cannot sustain or bring advancements, to this nation birthed in liberty. So we won't progress toward liberty with ideas taught in our government schools today, but we will fall away from it. We will spiral downward in what we do. we are just now completing a film called Educated for Liberty. And this film explores this idea of for people to live free, they must be given the character and worldview necessary to live in liberty. It's hard to live free. Freedom is not the default state of fallen, sinful man. Left to himself, man will not advance toward liberty, but he will digress. He will spiral downward. And we've certainly seen that in recent decades and generations in America. And a key component of that downward spiral is education. Contrary to Christ, education not in the Christian religion as Webster said, and as the founders of America understood were necessary. But education in a humanistic, secular, man centered worldview, man centered morality, man centered thinking about the institutions of life, law and family and everything else. So Noah Webster is, one of those great early educators that helped to advance, see that the great liberty that America began continued to advance because he provided biblical education. Another very famous influential man too was William McGuffey. McGuffey is known for his readers. He wrote a volume of readers, ah, I think six different readers, part of a volume began to be published in 1836 and following and over the next hundred years those volumes he printed, over 120 million of these books were printed and used. He was a Presbyterian minister. He taught at the University of Virginia for 25 years. The students loved McGuffey when he led the daily devotions which were required for every student University of Virginia to Go to. They loved listening to him. But McGuffey's readers are thoroughly biblical and Christian, just like Noah Webster's readers. And they teach biblical morality, they teach many scriptural lessons, the Ten Commandments, the, the sermon, on the Mount and so many other things. And so when you, and these books are available today, you can get copies of McGuffey's readers now, they did undergo different versions over the years. Some of the later versions were not so thoroughly orthodox as earlier versions. But get a copy of those earlier versions, begin to read through it and you can see for yourselves the thorough Christian education that was part of early America. So we have a great growth in education. This was essential for growth and liberty because education is a seed that produces good or bad fruit. Noah Webster and his results. Good fruit. William Holmes McGuffey, what he did in his textbooks. Good fruit. We began to see many schools and colleges began to be established as well. We've mentioned in past podcasts how the first schools and colleges were thoroughly Christian. At the time of American independence, there was 12 or 13 colleges in the United States. All of them were Christians. Most started by specific denominations. Others were biblical Christian in general as well. But there began to be many, many more colleges, universities come forth in the generations that followed the founding, such that by around 1860 there was 247 colleges in the United States. All, you know, but maybe 17 of those were founded by or for the Christian faith. They were Christian and their foundation and origin, even, even those that would be state colleges like the University of Virginia, which taught about the Creator, biblical ethics, had to go to, to chapel, every, every day, they were Christian as well. And so you had a great growth in colleges, private schools and began to flourish as well because the founders of America, those early generations recognized that education is key to maintain and transmit a free society. To maintain the great Christian liberty that the founders of America gave us at a great cost, you've got to transmit the character and worldview that produced the founders generation and each generation in order for them to, to maintain and continue to see advancement come because eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, as Jefferson and many others would say. That phrase by the way, is engraved outside of the National Archives, as well. so by and large in the area of education there was a great growth, in education for liberty. But unfortunately we also began to see seeds planted that would bring about the rise of state education. Now these seeds were very small, you know, they were weeds that Began to be planted. And the great bulk of when you looked at education in all the states and in America as the early Christian and biblical. But these seeds started in Massachusetts when in 1838, Horace Mann became the first Secretary of Education of Massachusetts public schools. They began to set up a state department of education that began to promote state education. Now when this occurred, you know, they did not attack Christianity ours man said, now we need to have the Bible in schools, whether they be the private schools or any state schools that we're going to encourage and help build up here in the state of Massachusetts. Even in those government schools, we need the Bible. So he didn't attack the Christian faith, but, lacking a biblical worldview and an understanding of the jurisdiction of who is to educate. Horace Mann m was not influenced by the biblical model of separation of jurisdictions, recognizing God creates individuals in his image and three institutions, family, church and state, and the Bible, revealing the purpose and responsibilities of each of those. And the Bible teaches that the family is primarily responsible for the education of their children, that parents have the right responsibility to govern the education of their children. It's their role, their responsibility. It's not the responsibility of the state. In the Bible, every time we see government education, state education, it's always negative. Whether it be Pharaoh or the Philistines or Babylon, Rome, whoever it may be, the outcome of the state providing education, controlling education, overseeing education is always negative, because it's not the responsibility of the state to provide education. That's the responsibility primarily of the parents and then grandparents, the family and secondarily the church. The church should support the family in fulfilling their mission of bringing up their child in the way they should go. So when he gets old, he won't depart from it, as the proverbs reveals to us. So Horace Mann, instead of looking to the Bible and reasoning from scripture and Christian history, he was influenced by more secular ideas. So when he traveled to Europe and looked in Prussia, he saw that they had state education there. And he thought, hey, this will be great. And he brought that concept back and began to introduce it into Massachusetts where they began to have state controlled, state financed. And then in 1852 state compelled. There's the first compulsory law in Massachusetts passed in 1852 to compel people, kids to go to school. And so over the generations and about the century that followed, other states began to adopt this model of state finance. State controlled, state compelled education, which has led to a great loss of liberty because again, when this first happened, there's no attack on Christianity there. Wasn't saying we need to keep the Bible out or Christianity out of education. No, not at all. Said, no. We want biblical morality, we want the Bible.

The Bible shaped, uh, all areas of life with its philosophy

But what began to happen is that before this, the Bible was the central text. And whatever you learned, that's reflected in the early textbooks, from the New England Premier to Webster's Blue back speller, to McGuffey readers and to so many other textbooks, the Bible was the central text. But now it began to be, well, it's just one of many texts. So yes, you can study the Bible, but that in your religion class, as one religion, you have the Bible, but we don't need the Bible for science. Now Matthew Mori, who is inspired from Scripture to accomplish his purpose, as we looked at in last week's podcast that he discovered there's rivers in the ocean, he was inspired from Scripture, but it was his view of the Creator giving this earth to man and created it in such a way that, it was for his good. That's what enabled him to accomplish his purpose. Same with Isaac Newton, who discovered his laws of motion because he recognized there is a Creator who created all things to operate in an orderly fashion. And, and that we can discover the laws that God has made for his physical universe to function. And as we discover them, we can learn to take dominion, over the physical world and learn how to fly airplanes and do many, so many other things. It was that biblical worldview, biblical philosophy of life that gave rise to the advancements in science in every sphere of life. And so the Bible shaped, all areas of life with its philosophy. But now the Bible first began to be one of many textbooks and then as we get into our time in recent generations, the Bible began to be kicked out of public schools. In the early 1960s, the court ruled, you can't have Bible, you can't have devotions in class in public schools, and you can't have the Bible, you can't use the Bible. And so it began to be kicked out. And so. But the seed of modern government schools, which has extirpated God, began to be planted way back around late 30s, 1840s in Massachusetts and slowly began to grow over the generations. And it was bad seed, it produced bad fruit, it's still producing bad fruit today. And that's, evidenced by the decline of moral and academic excellence that we find in our government schools, today. And as we'll see in future podcasts, these influence of secularism began to be planted first as a real small seed and Then over generations, began to bear bad fruit. So, by and large, what we have in, the, 1800s in America is good seed producing good fruit. But along with that, as Scripture tells us, we have to watch out for the devil. And those who oppose God are going to try to come and plant bad seed, because the devil comes to steal, kill and destroy. And he certainly was at work to see that happen in this free nation of America. This was a bad seed. Rise of state, education, secularism. in the state here during the 1800s, you had great advancements in education and technology and sciences. You also had great advancements in arts, music and literature. Because of biblical ideas of economics, biblical ideas of government, we began to prosper. And there began. And with tools like the, reaper that enabled each farmer to be 10, 20 times more productive, they began to have more wealth and more free time. And with this m. More free time, we could develop the areas of art and music and literature. And so you have the rise of Christian artists in the United States. From Benjamin west to, Austin Peale, Sully, Morse, Trumbull, Lutz. By the way, Samuel FB Morris not only invented the telegraph, but before that, he was a painter, painted a number of very famous paintings. but there were many, many other artists who began to come forth. And these were really Christian artists. And this was typified by a school of artists known as the Hudson River Painters. They were the American landscape painters. Church, Cropsey, Cole, Duran were some of these landscape, painters. And these were Christian men, Biblical men, who wanted to reflect the beauty of the Creator in his creation. And that's why they painted landscapes. Many of them painted landscapes of the Hudson River. That's hence part of their call to Hudson River Painters. But they branched out and painted many other landscapes as well. And. And a lot of these landscape paintings can be seen in museums, a number of them in Washington, D.C. the Museum of Natural History, the American Portrait Gallery. You can go and look at Cole and Cropsey and Duran and Church, see some of their beautiful paintings on the Hudson river and the journey of life and others. And you can see how they used light as a way to illuminate this beautiful creation. Again, they were motivated by their Christian faith. We want to reflect the great Creator and all that he created and tell that story through, creation. We have an article on our website on the Hudson River Painters that give an introduction, to them. I encourage you to go and. And take, a look at that. Read that. We'll have a little booklet out on Them pretty soon, actually, that you can get a copy of of these Hudson river painters. So we began to see advancements in art, music and literature, and I mentioned some of the painters, Hudson river painters and others. But we also see advancements in literature. And you see coming forth people like Washington Irving and Cooper and Holmes and Poe and Longfellow, Emerson, Melville, Thoreau and Wallace. Now, some of these men were individual, Some of these writers were Christians, some were not. But even those that, were not, they still reflected in many ways a biblical view of life. They even, like Melville and some of his writings are that he acknowledged there's evil and that there is good. And that's a biblical concept. And it was very clear what is good and what is evil. And the standard of the behavior and action of was the Bible itself, because the Bible explains what is good. So you can see even in some of their writings which seem to, take on, themes of revenge and others, you can read in some of these non Christian early American writers. Nonetheless, it's still a reflection of the Christian idea of man, that fallen man is evil and sinful. And that that's why you have government, to restrain evil man. That's why you have the church that needs to preach the truth so men's hearts can be changed. That's why you have biblical families that educate their children in godly character and a godly worldview. Because that way you promote evil, you expose evil, promote good and advance good, through this. And with the great rise of prosperity in America, you not only could develop the arts and music and literature, but you had more leisure time before these, inventions and flourishing, people had to work all day long their whole life just to basically meet their needs. They would take a Sabbath rest to honor God. There's no time for leisure to go play games or to go watch people play games or anything like this at all, to go to a concert or go look at paintings from these artists. But with this flourishing, you began to have things develop. Like baseball developed in 1839, has become an American pastime. But it's a reflection of the prosperity that comes from a Christian republic that enables such things, to exist now in the United States Capitol. There is there, I mentioned before, there are many paintings. Excuse me, There are many paintings and there are many statues of heroes, of the states, most of these men and women who we honor in the U.S. capitol as our heroes, most are Christians. and again, those that aren't Christians, their contributions because of the environment of Christian culture now One statue that you can find in the capital is of General Lew Wallace. Now, Wallace, served as a general during the Civil War. And not long after this, he was challenged to, reflect on who Christ was. And so he then began to decide, I'm going to find out who this person, Jesus Christ, whom all of history is revolved around and to write something about him. He began to research in order to reflect on the nature of who Jesus was and to present that in a literature book. And during his research for what became the great Christian classic, Ben Hur, one of the best sellers of all time in all of history. During that research, about Christ, he was converted. He met the author of history, became a believer. And then that's reflected in this book, Ben Hur, which Hollywood made a movie of back in the 50s.

There are challenges to liberty and the need for continual, energetic faith

Charlton Heston played Ben Hur. But, the book reflects so much more the Christian character of that book. But he's honored by a statue in the United States Capitol. So he's an example of, a writer of a book that has impacted literally millions of people, since he wrote that over century, a century and a half ago. So he's another product, another example of the fruit of Christian liberty. Now there are challenges to liberty and the need for continual, energetic faith. See, with increasing liberty comes the need for increasing character and principled citizens to support the liberty. Without this internal support, a free society will quickly become depraved. And so, this support that's necessary for freedom first occurs in man's heart, but quickly will express itself in society. And so this leads to the need for greater external constraints which leads to loss of liberty. And so, these. So liberty increased, but then there became challenge, temptations that this great liberty brought to society. The great prosperity that came about. That's a challenge because now people could have free time and free money to do all kinds of different things. Life becomes easier, and they can. Began to forget God. That's what Cotton Mather wrote in his Magnificent Works of Christ in America, that great book that presents the history of the 1600s in America. And he said that religion begot prosperity, but the daughter hath consumed the mother. He's saying that Christianity produced a great prosperity. But those who have grown up in that grace, great prosperity, have forgotten what produced it in the first place and began to reject that. And so those challenges to liberty that began to creep up during the 1800s with this great flourishing that was occurring, ah, they need an answer. And God mercifully sent answers to that. And one thing that God has recognized in the history of the Christian faith in the last 2000 years is that men, need continual revival. They need an energetic life to come into their hearts. Revival is needed for liberty to grow. God understood that. And throughout history, the history of the Christian faith has sent revival to so that the fire that burned in the heart of many can begin to grow cold in their own life, but the next generation. So God sends revival to flame the fire so that it burns brightly. So on our next podcast, we're going to begin to take a look at how God. As America grew, America prospered. It began to forget God and that internal fire began to go out. But God had an answer to that fire. And we're going to take a look at the answer to that fire and what God did in our next, podcast. So to read more about God's hand in the history of America, invite you to Visit our website, providencefoundation.com we have lots of articles and videos that you can watch. You can pick up copies of our books and read much more about individuals that God used to bring advancement in society. So providencefoundation.com is where you can find a whole lot of that. And you can also go back and listen to earlier podcasts, if you haven't already, to learn more about God's hand in our history. Well, thank you. Thanks for joining us this week. I hope you can be with us next week as we begin to take a look at how God sent revival to keep aflame the hearts of the people so that we might remain this great free land of America. Well, God bless you.