Ghosts That Haunt Us

Known for his unique ability to simplify profound truth so that it can be applied to everyday life, Adrian Rogers was one of the most effective preachers, respected Bible teachers, and Christian leaders of our time. Thanks for joining us for this message. Here's Adrian Rogers. Title of the message Ghosts That Haunt Us. In this century, We're being haunted by some philosophical ghosts.

That came into being in the 19th century. And we're going to talk to you about that because the need for the hour. is for Christians to have a Christian world view That is based on truth.

Now there is a difference between knowledge And truth. For example, knowledge Will dub And triple. But genuine truth does not. And when young people go to school, they study facts. But there's a difference between facts And truth.

Facts are like a recipe. Truth. It's like the meal. Digest the truth. And it will change your life.

God wants us to have truth. Why did God give us the Bible? Jesus said in John chapter 17, Thy word is truth. Why did God send us the Holy Spirit? He's called in the Bible the Spirit of Truth.

Why did the Messiah come, the Lord Jesus? He said, I am the truth. Why do we have churches? Churches are the pillar and the ground of the truth. What is the greatest desire for every Christian parent.

They echo the words of the Apostle John. I have no greater joy than to know that my children walk in the truth. It's truth that we need today. Truth is to your spirit. what food is to your body, what light is to your eyes, and what sound is to your ears.

You only have one short life to live. And in this life, You ought to make it your desire, your aim, your burning ambition. to discover, to know, and to practice truth. To know truth? is to know God.

And to know God. is to know Peace.

Now secular education is not enough. Our young people have to have a Christian World View. And we have a Christian worldview. You're going to find out that all of these facts intersect. and truth.

And that it's all related. You don't just niche out your church life and put it over here and think none of the rest of these things matter. And the marks of a good education is That it is so interwoven inextricably with truth. that all things began to intersect. and cohere together.

And there is a famine in the world for truth. We need truth. We need devotional truth. to feed our hearts.

Now, you don't eat The cookbook. Thank God for the facts, but you eat the meal. That is, we need to feed on devotional truth. We need doctrinal truth. Defeat our minds.

We need to know what we believe and why we believe it. We need practical truth to send us out to build churches, to go to mission fields, to build Christian homes and families. And we need truth that will move us. Not just truth that warms our hearts. I'm glad for love and all that, but it needs to go beyond sloppy agape.

We need to have a truth. that has concrete and steel in it. that causes us to stand. We need A Christian World View.

Now Job was in Perplexity. He was sick, he was in difficulty. And he had some visitors to come see him. They were called comforters, but they were more tormentors than comforters. And one of them was a man named Bildad.

And this was the advice that Bildad gave to Job. It's found in Job chapter 8, verse 8. For inquire, I pray thee, of the former age. and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers. For we are but of yesterday and know nothing.

Because our days upon the earth are a shadow. Shall not they teach thee, and tell thee, and utter words? out of their heart.

Now, what um Bildad said to old Job, was this Job? You need some answers. And what you need to do, Job, is to go to the library. and blow the dust off of some of those ancient volumes. and begin to study.

Study the ancients. Study the philosophers. and study their fathers and they will tell you. What the answer is.

Now this was not an appeal to divine revelation. was not an appeal to the word of God. but was an appeal to the human mind. To substitute, thus saith the mind of man, For thus saith the word of God. This is an ancient appeal to humanism.

Humanism, like New Ageism, is not new. It's one of the dustiest, mustiest things. Around. And so we have come to a very serious matter in America, and let me just describe that for a moment. And then I'll tell you how we got there.

Many of you have heard the famous prayer now that a pastor prayed in the Kansas House of Representatives. He was called on to pray. They were expecting the normal platitudes and pious phrases that so many times the clergy pour out when they're called on, honored, they think, to pray in one of these enclaves. And here was the prayer he prayed. I want you to listen to it because you talk about a prayer that sounded like a rock thrown into a hornet's nest.

Here was the prayer. He said, Heavenly Father. We come before you today to ask your forgiveness. and to seek your direction and guidance. We know that your word says, woe unto those that call evil good.

But that's exactly what we've done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and inverted our values. We confess that we have ridiculed the absolute truth of your word. and called it Moral pluralism. We have worshipped other gods.

and called it multiculturalism. We have endorsed perversion. and called it an alternative lifestyle. We have exploited the poor. and called it the lottery.

We have neglected the needy. and called it Self-preservation. We have rewarded laziness. and called it welfare. We have killed our unborn.

and called it choice. We have shot abortionists. and called it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our children. and called it building a steam.

We have abused power and called it political savvy. We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition. We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. Search us, O God, and know our hearts today, and try us and see if there be some wicked way in us.

Cleanse us from every sin and set us free. Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent here by the people of Kansas and who have been ordained by you to govern this great state. Grant them your wisdom to rule, and may their decisions direct us to the center of your will. I ask it in the name of your Son, the living Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

I'd say it's a good prayer, wouldn't you?

Well, they didn't think it was a good prayer. I want you to know, folks, that it upset them so much. One just sat down in the middle of the prayer, refused to stand anymore. Another one turned and walked out, and they began to buzz and to talk. And one man said, I've never heard in 10 years as divisive, sanctimonious, self-serving, overbearing prayer as I heard this morning.

That was a representative.

Well, I'm glad he prayed that kind of a prayer. But what is wrong in America? Did you know, folks, that we are in a crisis no longer in America? Do we believe? and absolute truth.

And if you go back to a period that began in 1962, through 1982, you will find out that the courts In 20 years, Reversed The principle of one nation under God. That had been the principle of American history. In 1962, in a court case, Engel versus Vitale. The Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black ruled. That voluntary prayer in public schools was unconstitutional.

That's 1962. Right hard upon that, in 1963, the Schemp decision. And Justice Thomas Clark set in motion the dismantling of classroom Bible reading. Then came 1980. And the posting of the Ten Commandments was declared unconstitutional.

Then came 1982. and the courts prohibited the teaching. of creationism that men, boys and girls were created by Almighty God. 20 years it took them to expel God from the public schools and tell him not. to come back.

Now, what has been the result of that?

Well Presently children Need parental permission. To have any medication given to them, even an aspirin in many schools. But aided by high school counselors, they may have an abortion without parental notification. a high school student. can be aided by high school teachers.

to have an abortion and to kill a baby. We're in a serious problems in America and serious times. God has been so systematically excluded from so many of our public schools, a study by the United States Department of Education headed by Dr. Paul C. Witz.

That's spelled V-I-T-Z. He was professor of psychology at New York University, was released. to the American public. And this study by Dr. Witz was a study centered on elementary textbooks.

used by millions Of boys and girls across America in the elementary schools. Dr. Witz and his colleagues after the study concluded this, and I'm going to read a portion of their report. After studying these textbooks, he says this. Those responsible for these books appear to have a deep-seated fear.

of any form of active Contemporary Christianity. especially serious committed Protestantism. This fear has led the authors to deny and repress the importance of this kind of religion in American life. The nature of the bias is clear. Religion?

Traditional family values and conservative political and economic positions. have been reliably excluded. from children's textbooks. The exclusion is particularly disturbing because it is found in a system paid for by taxpayers. and one that claims moreover to be committed to impartial knowledge and accuracy.

Textbooks are so written as to present a systematic denial of the history. Heritage, beliefs, and values of a very large segment of the American people.

Now, he's not a preacher saying that. That is a report by a professor of psychology at New York University and a study funded by the United States Department of Education. What they're saying is there has been a systematic move. To exclude those things that you and I hold dear and that we believe are the foundation of this nation. And as a result, We see values clarification being put in schools.

We see value neutral sex education put into schools. We see the dispensing of birth control devices and condoms in public schools. We see abortion counseling without parental notification. Our approval? We see homosexuality being introduced in textbooks as an acceptable lifestyle.

How did all of this happen? What has happened to America? How have we lost The Christian worldview that we once had.

Well, there's a man named Roger Friend. Roger Friend. is a quite a scholar. And he has given us an overview. And I'm going to try to...

Encapsulate it and squeeze it down to a little bit. And remember what Job was told by Bildad? He says, I pray thee, inquire of the former age, and prepare thyself to the search of their Fathers. It was to get Job to appeal to the philosophers. of yesterday.

Who are some of the philosophers of yesterday? that have so skewed the American thinking today. It's an amazing thing if you find out what happened in the 1800s, in the 19th century. You're going to find out that there are five men. Who have basically shaped and molded what is going on in America today.

Now, don't check me out, even though these names sound strange. You need to know this. And your children need to know it. And if your children are grown, your grandchildren need to know it. The first was a man named George Frederick Hegel, H-E-G-E-L.

He lived in the 1820s. And he was a philosopher.

Now for 1500 years. People had accepted without question The fact of moral absolutes. That right was right. And wrong was wrong. Universally.

Everywhere murder was thought to be wrong. Everywhere adultery was thought to be wrong. And if it were not thought to be wrong, it was only an aberration. The consensus was there's a fixed standard of right and wrong. But Hegel came along.

And he rejected Moral absolutes. He had what he called a dialectic Theory. And dialecticism is just simply an argument. He had a reasoned argument, a dialectic theory. And what was his dialectic theory?

You've heard it, I suppose, if you have studied philosophy, and I'm going to give it to you in shorthand. But he said all history is made up of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Thesis is an idea, a proposition that people believe to be true. And they hold that idea until somebody comes along with an opposing idea, an antithesis or an antithesis. And so these get into a battle, a thesis and an antithesis.

And they begin to battle back and forth until both of them give a little and they meet somewhere in the middle, or one or the other wins, and you come to a synthesis, which is a thesis, antithesis, coming together, and that synthesis. becomes the new thesis. That becomes the new accepted model for truth. And Hegel said, therefore there are no moral absolutes.

Now he's not talking about biological evolution, he's talking about philosophical and social evolution, that society is always in a flux, it's always moving, and there is no flux. fixed standard of right And wrong.

Now, folks. If you were to ask in our high schools today, how many of you students believe that there is a fixed standard of right and wrong, you would be shocked. If you were to ask in our colleges how many believe that, you would be shocked. Do you know what people say in America today?

Well, what is right for you may not be right for me. You will hear that over and over again. And so, what Hegel said was: ideas come under the heading of the survival of the strongest. The strongest idea wins, and therefore, history is evolutionary, and there can be no Absolutes. One professor was teaching this.

He said there's nothing that you can say is absolute. A student lifted his hand and said, Professor, are you sure about that? He said, Absolutely.

Now, after Hegel In the 1820s, there came along another man in the 1830s. This man's name was Ludwig Fearbach. He was another German philosopher. And you see, one of these things begins to build upon another. Feuerbach said, if there are no absolutes, If Hegel is right.

And he accepted that Hegel was right. then there can be no God. Because if there is a God, then that God would have absolute truth. And so he said, there can be no God. And he said, man creates the idea of God.

That man is not made in the image of God, but God is in the imagination of man. That all of this moral flux, this no absolutes, causes a deep insecurity in the heart and mind of man.

So Feuerbach said that God is created in the imagination of man, that man just simply invents God. I want to quote from him and I want you to hear what he pompously stated. He said, Quote Christianity has in fact long vanished. Not only from reason, but from the life of mankind, it is nothing more than a fixed idea.

Now are we haunted by that ghost today? Absolutely. That's called humanism.

Now humanism sounds so much like humanitarianism. But there is a vast difference between humanism and humanitarianism. Humanitarianism means we love one another, we care for one another, and we love the human species that God has made. Man. But humanism makes man the center and the circumference, the sum total of everything, has no room for God.

It is a fine-sounding name. But it is atheism just simply wearing another coat. But you have first of all You have Hegel and his Hegelian hogwash. And then right after that, you have Furbach. who builds on that.

And you're going to see how these philosophers, one will build upon another. And so the third person. that we're being haunted today by is Karl Marx.

Now Karl Marx built on the work of Hegel and he built on the work of Fuhrbach. And he said, now if this is true. If there are no absolutes, And therefore, there is no God. Then what is the future? and the purpose of mankind.

Where are we going? As a result of that, Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848. And he took Hegel's dialectic argument and he called it dialectical. Materialism. Another word for communism.

And so what he believed was that capitalism The right to own property. and the right to be productive. For yourself. What's wrong? That, he said, is the thesis.

The antithesis is the desire for equity and fairness in the hearts and minds of the working people. And he said, if you take that thesis and that antithesis, you will come to a synthesis which will be socialism or communism. That's Marxism. That's Hegelian philosophy and the ideas of Fuhrbach. put together because Communism is godless.

It's not just another form of economy. It is unspeakably immoral. because it does not recognize the worth, the dignity of the individual. The individual is nothing. And so uh Mark said that the way to sell all this about is a revolution.

And he said it doesn't matter if there's suffering. He believed that there must be violent change. He said that we must be like a foreign body. within the existing system. That will accelerate its death.

And so millions and millions and millions were put to death under godless Communism, 40 to 50 million were executed. Why? Because There's no God. If there's no God, there's no fixed standard of right and wrong. And therefore, we as human beings, all we have is materialism, and what we've got to do is to somehow.

Bring in a humanist, godless. Utopia. And revolution was necessary, and here's what Marx said. the suffering and sacrifice of violent change. Constitutes the price that mankind has to pay to have any essential progress at all.

So he said, we won't change. And we want it violently. And don't think communism is dead. It's not dead in Cuba. It's dying there, but it's not dead there.

It's not dead in Red China. But you know where it has the most life? Come up close and I'll tell you in the universities of America Today. And if the Russians want to get rid of their old textbooks, we have plenty of universities over here, I believe, that would buy them. That is Marxism, Leninism, that is infecting and affecting American life today.

Now, here's the fourth of these men. that has skewed the world view. His name is Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin, who wrote The Origin of the Species in 1859. and the descent of man in 1871.

He came to the conclusion that man is the product of evolution. If there is no God, There can be no fixed standard of right and wrong. And if there is no God, then how do we get here? How do we explain our existence?

Well, evolution is not a science, it is a philosophy. It is the next best guess of the mind that cannot accept divine creation. And so what he did though, he went on to write that we ourselves are the product of mere chance. that we as human beings cannot escape the evolutionary web. And so another philosopher a little later on described What Darwin taught us.

Quote. with this single argument. The mystery of the universe is explained. The deity is annulled. And a new era of infinite knowledge is ushered in.

And from that time on, man has been endeavoring to make a monkey of himself. Thanks to Charles Darwin and those who believe him.

Now, the fifth of these five men that haunt us today is a man named Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud lived from 1856 to this century, 1939. He was the one who put the final bow on the whole thing. Put the final touches. to the evolutionary model.

Now, Fierbach said that we created the idea of God. Because of the insecurities that Hegel brought about by saying there are no absolutes. But Freud said Where do we get the idea of God? What kind of a God do we conjure up? He said, We get the idea, our idea of God comes to us from our childhood father.

And we conceive of God like we would conceive of our childhood father when we were children. And so he was the father of psychoanalysis. He taught that mankind is motivated chiefly By pleasure, Specifically, By sexual pleasure, Eroticism To Freud, almost everything begins and ends. with sex. And so he felt that if mankind is repressed, By society, in his erotic or her erotic urges, or their erotic urges.

If people have failed to be allowed to fulfill their sexual and erotic desires. they may get a neurosis.

So that's the reason to see what we see the perversion. The filth. The debauchery that we see in society today roots back to the extreme permissiveness. that came out of Freudian psychology. And you see it in raising children.

We're told today not to repress children. I mean, after all, you don't want a war. The little thing.

Well, my dad warped me. You don't want to warp him. And if Throckmorton wants to cut the leg off the dining room table, you keep the saw sharp so it won't frustrate the little deer. And that is the idea that we have today in Freudian psychology.

Now, what happened when these five men brought these philosophies in the 19th century? It took less than 100 years for them to come in fruition in this century. In 1924, a man who was a student of Hegel Fearbach? A man who was a student of Karl Marx. Had a name.

Adolf Hitler. He thought that he had a better idea, however, than Marx. His idea was Nazism, and so he wrote Mein Kampf. Let me quote what Adolf Hitler had to say. No more than nature desires the mating of weaker with stronger individuals.

There you see the survival of the fittest. We're talking about Darwin there. No more than nature desires the mating of the weaker with stronger individuals, even less does she desire the blending of a higher and a lower race. Hitler was the original racist, you need to know that. Since if she did, her whole work of higher breeding over perhaps hundreds of thousands of years might be ruined with one blow.

All great cultures of the past perished. Only because the originally created race died from blood poisoning That is intermarrying. The man who creates the culture must be preserved. Preservation is bound up with the rigid law of necessity in the right to victory of the best and the strongest in this world. That's just another way of saying the survival of the fittest.

Then Hitler said, those who want to live Let them fight. And those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live. Even if this is hard, this. is how it is. And that led to the gas ovens.

Now you say, well, the gas ovens were terrible. What about the abortion business in America today? What about the grisly business today of taking little babies? who are the weakest of all creatures. And because they're weak.

Because they cannot defend themselves, they can be liquidated. Do you know what Hitler's argument for the extermination of Jews was? He reclassified them as non-persons. Do you know what we're doing to the little babies today? We are reclassifying them.

as non-persons. Can you imagine a Nazi saying, well, or somebody saying about the Nazis?

Well, I personally am against the Cremation. of human beings. But what one does in his own personal Gas chambers, his business. I'm for choice.

Now. This is the idea of the survival of the strongest. But it's only a little step now. To the doctors, I believe, a new generation of doctors. who will put little babies to death in the womb.

will and be paid for it. will with a needle and a syringe. Help some of us. to get out of the way. in this crowded world.

Because there's just what we call the survival. of the fittest. These ideas, folks, have been around for a long time.

Now actually they were born in the pit of hell. But there was a resurgence of these kinds of ideas in the last century, and now we've sown the wind and we are reaping. The whirlwind.

Now folks. Am I discouraged? No, and I'll tell you why. The Bible says the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.

And God has given us kingdom authority. Jesus said, Behold, I give you authority over all the power of the enemy. Do you know the one thing that they do not have? is truth. I want to tell you the other thing they don't have, they don't have the Holy Spirit.

And so, what we need to do is to take the word of truth and the spirit of truth. and hold up the Christ of truth and we need to get out of the boat with both feet. The days are short. We need to know who we are, what we believe, and why we believe it. And I tell you, friend, that we don't have to be ashamed of what we believe.

There are good answers. to these things and the Bible says we are to be ready always. to give an answer. To those who ask us of these things. And I am convinced there's not a lot wrong in America that could not be changed radically and quickly.

If we had a generation of preachers across this land who would stand in the pulpits of God, anointed with the Holy Spirit and a heart full of love from a pure life, who would preach and teach, thus saith the Lord. And let it start in my heart. Let it start in your heart. Let it start in church and let's stand up and speak up. while God gives us a voice.

Amen? Let's pray. Father, I pray now that you will help us. Lord, not to be discouraged, not to be alarmed. But on the other hand, dear Lord.

to be sensitized and awakened. And Lord energized. Help us, Lord, not to go just off half-cocked. but help us to know what we believe and why we believe it. and then to teach it in the anointing and the power of the Holy Ghost.

Our eyes are upon you to make a way for us and for our little ones. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen. If you would like to learn more about how you can know Jesus or deepen your relationship with him, simply click the Discover Jesus link on our website, lwf.org. For a copy of this message or additional resources, visit our online store at lwf.org.

or call 1-800-274-5683. Thank you.