 What has happened to the morals of our country? Is this all something that has happened overnight? Or is it possible we have adopted some of the same practices as the Greeks and the Romans? Join us as we examine our own history as well as the history of the Israelite people. In this episode, we'll shine the light on how to teach your children a biblical worldview. Coming up on today's edition of Origins, Atheism Attacks Part 2 with Dr. Brad Harib. Welcome to Origins. I'm Ray Hypole. It's an honor to be your host today. During this program, we showcase interesting guests who present evidence from science, along with other important facts, validating the truth of creation and the accuracy of the Bible. Today's guest, Dr. Brad Harib, holds a degree in biology and a doctorate degree in anatomy and neurobiology from the College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee. Currently, he serves as the executive director of Focus Press and co-editor of THINK Magazine. Dr. Harib travels the world speaking on Christian evidences, fortifying the family, and cultural apologetics. Welcome to the program, Brad. Hey, Ray, it's good to be here today. I'm so glad that you're back because that first episode that we had, Part 1, Atheism Attacks, was just wow. The information that you brought, and so I'm really excited about this show. Well, we're going to see if we can add to it in this particular one. If you stop and think about it, for the first 150 years or so, in our nation, basically it was friendly towards Christianity, and yet for the last 50 years or so, Christianity has almost had a bull's eye on its back as far as a target, because the forces of humanism, atheism, all the different things that we see in our culture have been very aggressive on their assault on Christianity. And so where I want us to start today is ultimately, how did we get here? You know, our grandparents, they were in America that was very friendly towards God, Christ. Today, just bringing up Jesus sometimes will get you in trouble. And so I want to talk about how we got here. Believe it or not, I'm going to take you back long before our nation even started, because I think the origins really go back that far. Think about the Romans, the Greeks who ultimately influenced a lot of where we are today. On the screen you see the area in peach right there. That is the area that the Greeks ultimately kind of took over. The Romans would follow in their footsteps, but the Greek influence was massive. And, you know, as you know probably from high school history, they did all kinds of things from language to the arts. The New Testament was written in Koine Greek. So we know that there was definitely massive influence. We also notice their art. Sadly, a lot of the Greek art, kind of a homoerotic art that is not something you want in your living room today. But they didn't just stop with things like art. They also brought in entertainment or the games. That's where the Olympics was started. Sadly, the very first Olympics was done in the nude. We'll talk more on that in just a minute. But the fact is, these are people who really brought entertaining the masses to a favored pitch. This is a group of people who embraced pagan worship, Greek gods. They also influenced our architecture. When you look at things like the Parthenon, my wife and I were over in Greece just this past fall. Got to walk around up there, Nashville, Tennessee, my hometown. We actually have a replica of the Parthenon. But interestingly, I think the architecture of that building, and you asked the question, hey, has that influenced any of our buildings today? Like, oh, I don't know, say the Capitol and many church buildings even. There was a gentleman by the name of Tertullian who lived just after the apostles. He asked a question that I kind of want to pose for us today, and that is what indeed has nothing to do with Jerusalem. I'm going to sum it up in my own words. He basically was saying this. What do they have to offer our family, our little Hebrew family? Because ultimately, when they came in, they started quite literally changing the culture. And that's part of what we're seeing today. Henry Van Til in the 20th century, he made the statement, he said, culture is religion externalized, meaning culture is the outward manifestation of the real faith assumptions of the people. That's interesting because we throw that word out there, culture all the time, and you can't separate culture from religion or from belief or from philosophy, worldview, whatever. That's what drives culture. You know what does a culture believe? Just ask some questions. What is your daily life like? Or what is your art like? The lyrics in your songs, things like, what's your family life or your priorities like? That's ultimately going to tell you a great deal about the culture. So the question then is, okay, why in the world have so many Christians today embraced a Greek or a secular worldview? We see how they came in and they ravaged these places, turned them upside down, had them worshiping pagans and now we fast forward to today and guess what? We're doing the same thing. I think a lot of Christians don't even realize it that they're buying into paganism where I like to speak of it because we have the world, the flesh and the devil, the three enemies of the Christian and you see Israel and Judah always wanting to be like the world. And what it did to them, they left God when they wanted to be like the world. Absolutely. We've got to ask the question, which one is filling our children's minds more? Is it man is the measure of all things or are we really teaching them that God is the measure of all things? When you look at the Greeks, when you look at the Romans, there were some practices, some things that they did that I think we're following along behind today. Let me give you a couple of them real quickly. The Greeks were really big into worshiping the body. I mentioned they started the Olympics in the nude. The Greek people loved, they very fit, masculine bodies. As a result, they ended up worshiping that. Same thing with the youth. They really, really put a lot of favor in younger, whether it be teenage type youth, whether it be even younger than that. They worshiped superheroes. They obviously had their Greek gods. Moral perversion began. In fact, if you know anything about the Greeks and the Romans, they really weren't beaten from enemies without. They really imploded and a lot of that had to do with moral perversion. They also worshiped individuals. When I mention names like Plato, Socrates, and so just imagine if you will for a minute, let's say that you had a little Hebrew family in Jerusalem, the Greeks come in and you notice your neighbors got statues out front that maybe you don't want your kids looking at. They start trying to teach your kids you know, worshiping the body, worshiping youth, and your kid runs off to school. They're learning Plato, Aristotle, not just that, they also were proud of being Greek. They worshiped the state. The last one, obviously, deification of athletes. So one of the things that the Greeks would do, as soon as they took over an area, like Jerusalem, for instance, they would build a structure called a gymnasium which actually comes from the Greek gymnos, which Ray actually means to be naked. I'll give you a totally different way of thinking about going to the gym, but basically what they would do is they would take young boys, usually 13 to 16. This was done oftentimes in the nude and they would train them in the gymnasium to be soldiers, philosophers, or athletes. Wow, so they would take the other countries to the West and make them good Romans or good Greeks. Absolutely. Bible and Deuteronomy chapter 8 talks about the fact that they were supposed to be fearing God following His commandments. If you remember, Book of Deuteronomy is basically a second reading of the law to that second generation. And Moses tells him, he says beware that you do not forget the Lord your God and not keeping His commandments. And so at the end of the Book of Deuteronomy what we find is Moses dies, leadership is handed off to Joshua, Joshua leads him across into the promised land and you remember God gave them judges, but they didn't want judges. What did they want? They wanted a king. They wanted to be like other nations. And if you look, they had roughly, well first we had Saul, we had David, we had Solomon, then we had one of Solomon's children Rehoboam and it was really under Rehoboam that the 12 tribes split. Ten of them went north, they formed the nation of Israel. They had 19 kings in succession. Basically every single one of which we would call evil today. And that's why God sent men like Elijah, Isaiah prophets to try to call them back and yet what we know is that in 722 B.C. they were given over to the Assyrians. The remaining two tribes, Benjamin and Judah, they formed the nation of Judah. They also had roughly 19 kings most of which we would say were evil today. They did have one or two good guys in there. But again, God sent men prophets to try to call them back Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, but in 606 B.C. we know they were given over to the Babylonians. Now you ask, okay, what's the big deal, what's the history lesson? Well, it took roughly 213 years for God's chosen people in His chosen nation of Israel to be given over to the Assyrians 349 for Judah. When you look at these two dates the one question you need to ask yourself is how old is the United States of America? We fall literally right between these two dates. So we go home, we ask the question, what is it that really determines the course of a nation? If you turn on the evening news they're going to tell you things like health care, the economy, gun control, all these different hot button issues and yet here's what we know. If Jesus comes back tomorrow none of these matter. In fact, if you really want to know what determines the course of a nation it is ultimately our reverence and our obedience to God. In fact, take a look, Proverbs 14 verse 34 says, righteousness exalts a nation but sin is a reproach to any people. In Surrey we ask the question, what happened to these two cultures, these two nations? And ultimately we pick up in, for instance, Second Kings chapter 17 and we read, they didn't depart from their evil ways and the text says, nevertheless they would not hear but they stiffened their necks like the necks of their fathers. Notice this, who did not believe in the Lord their God. At the end of the day they had atheists back then who were teaching that belief system to their children and as a result, God got angry. Second Kings 23 verse 26 says, nevertheless God did not turn from the fierceness of his great wrath with which his anger was aroused against Judah. Second Kings 24 verse 20 says, for because of the anger of the Lord this happened in Jerusalem and Judah he finally cast them out of his presence. So one of the questions that we have to think about is why would God do that and I think we find a little bit of the answer in Second Chronicles 28 and 19 where the text says the Lord brought Judah low because of he has the king of Israel. Notice this, for he encouraged moral decline. Now Ray if I were to ask you are we encouraging moral decline today in America? Absolutely just about every institution. You think about Hollywood for just a moment. Pixar, Disney promoting pushing the trends, LGBT agenda. You think about the fact that we've added gender neutral bathrooms to many of our schools locker rooms today are gender neutral. You've got California submitting a bill that would view pedophilia not as a crime but as a sexual orientation. Which if you stop and think about it means they could drive school buses work in daycare centers teach in the classroom add to that you've got preachers who are now getting arrested simply if they refuse to do a same-sex wedding ceremony. All of this behind this idea of encouraging moral decline. This is a toddler book titled Oh The Things Mommies Do What Could Be Better Than Having Two There have actually been quite literally dozens and dozens of these books sent free of charge to our public elementary schools promoting these agendas. In fact I want to read to you just a little bit out of this one I'm not going to read the whole book but I want you to imagine your child grandchild having library time my mommy and daddy got a divorce last year now there's somebody new at daddy's house daddy and his roommate frank lived together sleep together mommy says daddy and frank are gay first I didn't know what that meant so she explained it being gay is just one more kind of love and love is the best kind of happiness daddy and his roommate are very happy together and I'm happy too that is that's not the message that God intends our children to hear. That's so awful and that they pray upon children like that. Absolutely all of this being promoted ultimately by those who don't believe in God. Psalm chapter 14 1 the fullest set in his heart there is no God they are corrupt they have done abominable works there's none who does good Brad I have to stop you right there we need to take a break stay with us we'll return right after this we hope you're enjoying Origins TV it all started at cornerstone television in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania we've been producing new episodes for over 37 years now we praise God for the success of the program and are excited to introduce you to Origins and to us if you're interested in watching more episodes of Origins you can find them on our YouTube page simply go to YouTube and search cornerstone television network click the like and subscribe button then you'll find the best episodes of Origins in our playlist you can also visit our website at ctvn.org slash Origins one more way you can stay connected with us is to subscribe to our free monthly hope today newsletter which you can do from our website and if you have any questions call us here at cornerstone television at 888-665-4483 we'd love to connect with you thank you for watching welcome back to Origins we're talking to Dr. Brad Herob who's been sharing about atheism attacks Brad once again we're seeing some fascinating stuff where do we go next so if you stop and think about it even the average Christian has been what I call evolutionized you know you look at these two books for instance if your grandchild your child ran up to you and said hey can you read these to me how many of us would think about the fact that the very first word in both titles is the word prehistoric it's an evolutionary term kind of meaning a time before man we don't think about that in fact if I were to take you back to 1766 before we declared our independence dictionary you ask a question where's the word prehistoric it's not there in fact here after Charles Darwin pinned his book on the origin of the species there was a better book written by a guy named Noel Webster Webster's dictionary fame you ask the question where's that word prehistoric again it's not there because it's really only been within the last 50 to 75 years that people are embracing this idea of a vast old million billion year old that's so subtle too when you think about it right I mean a word like prehistoric you won't even think anything of it but the word doesn't make sense or it presupposes that man was not made by God a little over 6000 years ago and has been there since day 6 you know there were ages before man if you think about writing a book that's quote prehistoric well according to this I guess you could do it right prehistoric day 5 what I want to do is I want to give the viewers 6 bible verses that I hope they will write down in fact I encourage to maybe write them in a bible put them in your phone 6 bible verses that to me really lay a concrete foundation about a young earth a biblical foundation if I can interrupt you real quick Brad this is where we're going to give the viewer something they can do to fight this attack this is something that you can teach your children your grandchildren to make sure they're not evolutionized so verse number one very obvious very clear Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth I have told quite literally thousands of people if you can't trust the first verse of that book why would you read anything to follow and somebody says okay that sounds good at all but exactly when was the beginning it's not like Genesis 1 has a date beside it so we keep reading we look at for instance Colossians chapter 1 verse 16 where Paul wrote for by him were all things created that are in heaven that are in the earth Paul here letting us know that it's a creation event and that ultimately God created everything in heaven and on earth the next verse is Matthew chapter 19 verse 4 he answered and he said unto them have you not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female now in most Bibles that text is going to be in red which indicates what it's the words of Jesus it's the words of Jesus Christ and so Jesus here telling them we've been here at the beginning at the beginning in fact look at how he phrases it in Mark chapter 10 verse 6 when he says but from the beginning of creation God made them male and female and that's speaking specifically to mankind if you look back in Genesis even though there were male and female animals God says that about man absolutely this is about he's saying we've been here which the big bang theory says this earth is 4.6 to 4.7 billion years old supposedly man's only been here for roughly 3 million years well both can't be true that's not the beginning exactly first Corinthians 15 verse 45 where Paul is talking about the first man Adam and then he goes on to talk about the last Adam was made a quickening spirit so Paul is actually referring to both of these as real and historic the first man being Adam of Adam and Eve by the way the last Adam is Jesus Christ the sixth verse that I give you Genesis chapter 3 verse 20 Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living telling us all the lineage of humanity is coming through ultimately Eve which means she had to be a literal person absolutely with those six Bible verses in hand Ray here's what you can do you can open your Bible to your favorite chapter which I know for you you got to be Genesis 5 all the genealogies so and so we got so and so when I teach this always use a timeline because it's very very visual and so we read for instance in Genesis chapter 5 verse 3 Adam lived 130 years but got a son called his name Seth so on my timeline right here I drop 130 because that's how old Adam was when Seth came into the picture we then continue reading Seth lived 105 years he got Enish we had 105 to that we're now going to be up to 235 and we keep reading Enish lived 90 years he got Canon and suddenly what you realize is you can actually build a timeline that is telling you the age of the earth some of the viewers might say wait how did you make that jump well think about it in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth it was a creation event there were males and females there from the beginning of creation first male's name was Adam and I'm just giving you his lineage in fact let me drop on the screen a vertical line right here do you realize everybody to the left of that could have had a face to face conversation with Adam because they were living at the same time which means ultimately Lamech Noah's dad could have talked to Adam and said what was it like in the garden the one that's even more impressive to me I keep the timeline going so we got Noah here at the top everybody to the left of that red arrow could have had a face to face conversation with Noah's son Shem about what it was like in the pre-flood world when you use the chronology that is given to you in the Bible you realize Adam to Abraham is about 2,000 years Jesus to us today about 2,000 years when you bridge the middle and you use books like Luke for instance chapter 3 you have the genealogy all the way from Adam to Christ you begin to realize hey this earth is not that old and to me this lays the foundation ultimately for what our kids need to know about their past Brad I want to thank you for being on the program and I want to thank you for joining us we were looking today at atheism attacks part 2 American institutions for decades have been actively promoting paganism while attacking and rejecting Christianity that's not the way our nation began but the results have been catastrophic in violent crime sexual perversion and injustice however if Christians would turn back to God in prayer and in Scripture they can be more than conquerors against this evil for greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world and we gave you some of those verses to know and it just goes to show you once again that we know what the Bible says is true and the proof is all around you if you enjoy origins we sure could use your help to keep this program on the air your support both prayerfully and financially make a big impact so let's work together to reveal how awesome our creator truly is and we'll see you next time on origins 5148 this presentation was made possible by the faithful prayers and financial support of you our cornerstone family