There's a verse here that will
serve us well when we read verses 1 through 8. Colossians chapter
2. For I would that ye knew what
great conflict I have for you, for them at Laodicea, for as
many as have not seen my face in the flesh. that their hearts
might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all
riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement
of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ. in whom are hid all the treasures
of wisdom and knowledge. And this I say, lest any man
should beguile you with enticing words, for though I be absent
in the flesh, Yet am I with you in spirit, joying and beholding
your order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ. As you have therefore received
the Lord Jesus Christ, so walk in Him. Watch verse 7 and 8. Rooted and built up in Him, and
established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding
therein with thanksgiving. And especially, verse 8, beware
lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after
the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not
after Christ. Now, what we're doing this morning
is looking at a contemporary issue and seeing how it relates,
or if it relates at all, to our Christian faith and our Christian
belief. Now the true gospel never changes
from age to age. It never will change. It never
has. It never will alter itself in
order that it might fit in to the current time. It never will
adapt itself to the depraved thinking of this present world. But in every age, And every society,
there are always those perversions and those challenges to the Gospel
that pose a danger to believers and those that hold the Scripture,
to be on their guard. Because, you see, there are two
ways are two devices that are used against Christianity and
its glorious gospel. Almost all of them can be summed
up under one or the other of these headings. Number one is
to pervert the Word of God, to weaken it, and to dilute the
truth as it is in Christ Jesus, sometimes doing that by mixing
the leaven of false teaching in with that truth of the Word
of God, and sometimes even bringing paganism and mixing that with
Christianity. Now the second way is to seek
to exterminate the Gospel and Christianity, or crush it and
crush it out altogether. You notice that in our text,
Paul exhorts the believers in Colossae to be content with Christ,
that they find everything they have need of in the Lord Jesus
Christ. Because in verse 3, in him are
hid all the treasures of wisdom, and acknowledge that in the 10th
verse the believer is complete in Jesus Christ. He hath need
of nothing beyond the Son of God as to his salvation and deliverance. That verse 7, They are rooted,
established, built up in the faith of Christ. And then in
the eighth verse, to be on their guard against all that is not
after or according to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, to get in
our subject of the day, let's see if we can agree upon something
or upon a point. And that is that everyone, whoever
they might be, whatever walk of life or social status or whatever,
has what we might call or has been called a worldview. Everyone has a worldview. Everyone has some kind of philosophy
of life, a worldview that greatly influences them more than anything
else that we might imagine. In other words, I'll say it this
way, that each one has a set of fundamental beliefs by which
they live. And these guide their life and
direct their way. Beliefs that affect the way that
they live. that determine their value system. Thus what has ever been true
is that it is always a battle for the heart and the mind of
men and of women. For you see, if one can control
the mind or control the thinking of an individual, then they control
that individual. that if one can control the thinking
of a person, they control that person. Even as Solomon wrote,
Proverbs 23 and verse 7, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Whatever he thinks in his heart
is him. Proverbs 4 and 23, out of the
heart are the issues of life. even as Paul said in Romans 7
and verse 25, with my mind I serve the law of God. Now, coming to
this contemporary issue, which is having an effect upon our
society and also upon individuals. Political correctness is the
name that it answers to in our society. And I should like to
begin by asking you, what do you think about political correctness? To paraphrase the words of our
Lord, what think ye of political correctness? And then I should
like for you to consider, What is it about? What is its aim? What is its purpose? What influence
is it having upon our society? Some, no doubt, will answer.
As some answered, Paul, in Acts chapter 19, why, we have not
even heard whether there be such a thing as political correctness. What is this? Is this some new
thing? What is it? Others there are. We mostly fell in this category
for a while. Others may think that it's funny,
that it is simply a joke, a laughing matter, fodder for the comedians
and not to be taken seriously and to be written off as some
foolishness, that someone has come up with. Still others will
see it as only another fad that has come that will in time pass
away and something else will come in its place. As with some,
they will say, I think that it is a Good thing. It promotes
civility and tolerance and diversity. And so some will say, I think
that it has been good. But then there are a few who
will see it for what it actually is. strip it down, take off its
clothes, and see it for what it actually is, and that is what
I call cultural communism. It is nothing more than communism
dressed up in new clothes and come a-calling upon us again. To those who don't know what
it is, It behooves you to get acquainted with it because, for
the simple fact, it will impact you sooner or later. Sooner or later, it will have
an effect on you. How do I learn about this, you
say? Well, I've learned that there is much information through
Google. There's much information about
it. Ask Jeeves on that website. American thinker. Sovereignindependent.com
is loaded. Sovereignindependent.com has
much information. American Free Congress has done
much work and written and lectured upon this very subject. Now,
to those who think that it is a big joke, it ain't funny anymore. The promoters are as serious
as a case of shingles, let me assure you. To those who view
it as a passing fad, here today and gone tomorrow, Then I want
to remind you of something, and that is that it has been written
into law and enshrined in government regulations in America. It's got a foothold in government. It rules in the media. It has
control now of the educational system. It is even found in the
justice system and in the courts. And even is gaining traction
in many of the apostate churches in our present day. And then
to those who said, Well, political correctness is a good thing because
it encourages and promotes civility and diversity and tolerance one
of another. I will say, political correctness
not only encourages those things, it actually forces those things,
and in many cases, by law. Then are the people, there are
rather people, who have been arrested, who have been fined,
who have been put in jail, and who have been sent to prison
for violating political correctness in our present world. Not for
what they did, not for any act that they committed, but for
what they said or for what they wrote And let me assure you that
there are people who have spent time in prison for this offense
against political correctness. I'll say more about it later
and have more proof later. But first, let me bore you. or
maybe enlighten you, whichever the case may be, with a history
of this movement that we come to know as political correctness. Where did it come from? How did
it get here? Who is the father of it? Who has brought this upon us? Well, I tell you, it's not new. It wasn't born in our generation. are in our lifetime. Soon it
will celebrate its 100th birthday. It is nigh unto its 100th birthday. But being nearly a hundred, it
is not sick, it is not ill, it is not upon its deathbed. In
fact, it is growing stronger and stronger with age. Nor was it born in this country
of ours. It had its beginning. It got
up on its legs, so to speak, about 1919. through 1921 in that
area. And remember, if you will, the
name. This name is important to political correctness. The
Frankfurt School. F-R-A-N-K-F-U-R-T School. And that school was in Germany. And that school was founded in
1923 by a group of Marxist men. One of the founders was a man
by the name of George Lucas, L-U-K-A-C-S. And the School of Frankfurt,
at its inception, was dedicated to answering the question, who
shall save us from Western civilization? They could not understand why
communism was not spreading over into Western civilization as
they desired it to. And some others prominent in
that movement were men by the name of Herbert Marcuse, M-A-R-C-U-S-E,
Theodore Adorno, Felix Wheel, Max Horkheimer. Those are some of the high priests
of the movement. Now, some of the founders of
the Frankfurt School wanted to call it the Institute for Marxism. That was the first choice. That
was the name that they wanted to give unto it. Its purpose,
therefore, was the promotion of Marxism. and to impose that
Marxism upon Western civilization, which resisted it and was under
the influence of Christianity, so that the people might not
recognize it for what it was. so that the people would not
know the deviousness that was behind it, so that they would
not know that it was Marxism. They gave it a name to disguise
its true nature. They always do this. They named
it the, quote, Institute for Social Research, unquote. Now that sounds innocent, that
sounds harmless, might sound beneficial. What's there to fear
or to worry about? The Institute for Social Research. Let me stop here and say, this
is a common ploy of the elite in our modern society. Every time, they will give a
dangerous, freedom-robbing legislation an innocent-sounding name. And you know what? It fools the
people every time. It works every time. They'll
give it some kind of a name. You won't think there's anything
devious about it, and we don't recognize it then for what it
is, or what it stands for, or what it is promoting until it
is too late. As an example of that point,
there is an ideology today, and it's taken root fairly deep in
our society, that is called progressive. People refer to themselves as
being progressive. Those that espouse it call it
progressive. Well, you might say, isn't progress
good? Isn't it good that we progress
along in our way? But then we take a hose off,
we strip it down to what it is, and find that it is cultural
Marxism under another name. They dare not call it what it
is because the people would rise up against it and reject it. Well anyway, back to the Frankfurt
School in Germany. It left there in the 1930s. because
of National Socialism having taken over in Germany, and they
were thrown out of Germany, as it were, one step ahead of the
German Gestapo, they left out of Germany. Well, was that the
end of it? Did the movement die? Not at
all. Some of the high priests of this
movement, Marxists they were, came to the United States of
America and they set up the Institute for Social Research in New York
City with the aid of Columbia University. And then Some of
these guys were hired as teachers in the colleges in the United
States of America. And some of these are the ones
that fanned the flames in the 1960s, the student radicalism,
the so-called dropout generation, the free love hippie, if it feels
good, do it generation. Those opposed to the establishment
who wanted to bring it down. Thus it is that born over yonder,
Germany came over this country, the seeds were planted in America,
and they have borne and are bearing their bitter fruit to this day.
The leaven was injected and now the whole lump is about to be
leavened. Have you ever heard the saying,
someone said this, a lie gets halfway around the world before
the truth can get its britches on. Someone said that a long
time ago. Now the following quote I took
from a man named William Lind, L-I-N-D. This man has for many
years now studied extensively the political correct movement.
He's researched it, he's studied it, he's written on it, and has
lectured on it many times. I've seen him on TV now and again. He said this, Quote, political
correctness looms over America like a colossus. It has taken
over both political parties. It dominates both public and
higher education. It has even captured the higher
clergy in many Christian churches, unquote. Again, the same man
said, anyone in the establishment who departs from the dictates
of political correctness is no longer a member of the establishment. Another writer said, political
correctness has rightly been called the scourge of our times,
unquote, because it is cultural communism. It is Marxism in the
fullest sense of the word. And its aim is to the loss of
expression and thought and mind control, to suppress any opposition
that might rise up against it, to suppress free speech, and
to impose an ideology upon our society. And not just to gain
a voluntary compliance, but to enshrine it in the law of our
land, that political incorrectness might not go unpunished. As for example, in the corporate
world, if you work for a big company, you know what I'm fixing
to say is true. that many people in large companies
have been forced to submit to sensitivity training in the classroom,
to toe the politically correct line, or to be fired. Now, often this sensitivity involves
the acceptance of homosexuality. That's one thing that'll get
you fired faster than anything else. Not just being quiet about
it and abstaining from open criticism, but actually accepting it and
affirming it as a good way of life. Even being encouraged to
embrace it as a legitimate lifestyle. Thus, you can be terminated in
some of these large companies for using a word like pervert. or sodomite, or queer, or unnatural. You would be called in and given
the road. Nor would it be tolerated for
a Christian to insist that Christianity is the only true religion in
the world. That would not be tolerated.
Pardon an example. But Brother Mike, you put me
on to this. Some years ago, I made a note of it, kept it, and it
was useful in this particular study. Brother Mike put me on
to this. A few years ago, the EEOC, The Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission considered this. They considered making Christian
witnessing in the workplace a form of harassment. that if you lay
a Bible in the open view of your next-desk neighbor, or you quoted
Scripture, or you tried to convince them to become a Christian, or
you said you're going to hell without and apart from Jesus
Christ, that was going to be considered harassment under the
guidelines of the EEOC. Well, Brother Mike gave me the
address of the acting director at that time, and I wrote him
a letter and asked, is everyone at the EEOC an idiot? And then I asked this, look,
Here sits a Christian. If that guy over there uses profanity,
cusses, tells filthy stories, takes God's name in vain all
day long, will that be a form of harassment under the Christian? Of course it would not be. Political
correctness is a one-way street. It is cultural communism, and
we ignore it at our peril. Its first aim was the destruction
of Western culture. That's when it took its feet.
This they do by trying to control thought and restricting free
speech. History will teach us that Lenin
came to power, and when he did, he outlawed certain words from
being spoken. Study you history and find that
to be true. Many of you, or rather, you've
heard of George Orwell, but whether you've read him or not, I don't
know. But Orwell, a committed socialist,
wrote in his book of a, quote, Newspeak, unquote. In that book,
I think he wrote it about 1948. Then you look at history and
you find out that President Teddy Roosevelt was a progressive and
that he wanted to install Newspeak and outlaw certain words in our
country. Now, I agree with something in
an article I read, and it can be summed up in a few words.
That what we in the United States have, are witnessing, is now
the planned destruction of Western civilization. And that one of
the main targets of political correctness and don't lose sight
of this. One main target of this what
somebody called cultural Bolshevism, is Christianity. The Christian
church, Christianity. It is the last barrier against
PC taking over. It is that last great defense
against this kind of thinking permeating our society. Now, perhaps someone hearing
this would say, if this is true, why have I not heard about it?
If all of this is true, this sounds preposterous and over
the hill to me. If all of this is true, why is
it that I never have heard about it? Let me make a simple suggestion. That is, if you get your information
from the mainstream media, then they are in on the plot and are
some of the strongest supporters of political correctness. Now
another might say, this can't happen in America. No, sir, not
in our America. We have the Constitution that
guarantees us the freedom of speech. And I would answer you
by saying, look how many ways our Constitution has been violated
by the politician. P.C. would rip it apart, rip
it to shreds. May I remind you that the Supreme
Court justice who wrote the majority opinion making abortion the legal
law of the land, tucked it away in that privacy clause in the
Constitution. That he used that privacy clause
to justify the legalization of abortion. PC is global. Global. Do you remember a certain
presidential candidate a few terms ago constantly? Every time he spoke and opened
his mouth, spoke of a new world order. We are going to establish
a new world order. And finally somebody said, you
need to stop that. The people don't like it, and
so he did. But a new world order. Did you know that Germany is
one of 14 countries where you can be arrested and sent to prison
for denying or questioning the Holocaust? Fourteen countries,
Germany is probably the worst. There are some who have served
time in prison in Germany for passing out literature regarding
and questioning the Holy Cause. I remember one man got five years
in prison in Germany for that. Then we notice in our country,
or we had better notice that Muslims are now using PC to advance
their cause and protection. I read in a college in Spain,
the country of Spain, a Muslim student sitting in the class
heard the professor use the word ham. Ham has on a pig. Yes, he just used it in passing. He said something like, our climate
is good for the drying of hams. That Muslim student's ears perked
up. He complained to the college
professor about it. He told his parents. They filed
a suit against the professor, accusing him of using, are you
ready, quote, xenophobic motivations, unquote, in Spain. You see, xenophobic
is the fear of something foreign or a foreign person. In Austria,
a bastion of socialism. A man was mowing his yard, and
while he mowed his yard, he yodeled. He mowed his yard just yodeling
away in the hearing of his next door Muslim neighbor. That Muslim neighbor took that
yodeling to be a mockery of some of these screeches that the Muslims
do in their worship services and reported him, and that man
was fined, fined some money because he yodeled in the hearing of
his Muslim neighbor. In America, in many places, in
many schools, Anything Christmas, anything Ten Commandments, anything
Christian is banned in many of the public schools of our day.
But while that's true, a public school in San Luis Obispo, California
had its students pretending to be warriors for Islam in a public
school. Near Oakland, California, seventh
grade students were encouraged to dress in Muslim garb during
a three-week course on Islam. Now just imagine, in the face
of that, if a student had worn a shirt with an American flag
on it. Or if a student had had Jesus
is Lord on a t-shirt, I guarantee you he would have been sent home
as a distraction. It's happened again and again
and again. I read some college students
that were in ROTC. They don't wear their ROTC uniform
into the classroom of the college because the teacher, the instructor,
will mark down their grades. You see, political correctness,
progressive, actually hate the military. At the University of
Massachusetts, professors are evaluated this way, quote, what
contribution they have made to multiculturalism, unquote. because these cultural Marxists
worship multi-ethnicity and diversity and they see it as a way to dilute
Anglo-Saxon culture and by extension dilute Christianity along with
it. Did you hear in December 2010
that the ACLU in our country, in the state
of Tennessee, the ACLU threatened some school district not to say
Merry Christmas or to put up Christmas trees. Did you hear
a woman on TV, on a program that's called The View, It comes on
in the morning. And one of those women said on
national TV that right-wing Christianity is more dangerous than Al-Qaeda,
unquote. Not only is Christianity a main
target of the politically correct cultural communism movement,
but at present there are two very convenient allies at hand
to use in their fight against Christianity. Two battering rams
to break down the door, two fiery arrows to shoot at Christianity
and the Gospel. Number one, and you pay close
attention here, Number one is the practice and the sin of homosexuality. Now, according to the Christian
Scripture, according to our Bible, what we believe, homosexuality
is a vile, heinous sin by the authority of the Scripture. But now, it is becoming a government-protected
sin. It is enshrined in law. It is given a special status.
It is protected by the so-called hate crime laws. And when you
hear that word hate crime on the news, you ought to perk up
your ear. Did you know that you get a harsher
punishment? for a crime against a homosexual
than for that same crime against a heterosexual or a Christian. And to criticize homosexuality
might qualify and does qualify as hate speech. So political
correctness is using homosexuality to attack the Christian culture,
and it's something that they can rub in our face as if there's
nothing we can do about it. There is a disease that has been
invented for all of those who oppose homosexuality. It is homophobia. If you don't
like it, if you criticize it, you might be homophobia. The PC crowd calls them gay,
but we call them according to the word of the Lord. But secondly,
the PCers have another convenient tool against Christianity that
is in the influx of a great number of Muslims into the country. Because Muslims are the natural
enemy of Christianity. And the peace-seers, when it
comes down to one side or the other, the peace-seers favor
Islam over Christianity. They even refer to it as a peaceful,
tolerant religion. They're bringing lawsuits against
our standard customs in this country, one after another. They're bringing lawsuits against
things that are Christian, and they are winning in the courts. when they get significant numbers
in an area, then they start pushing to be allowed to have Sharia
law, that they deal by their Sharia law, not by the law of
our land. And I predict, brother and sister,
Area by area and city by city, maybe state by state. It will
come when Sharia law will be used by Muslims instead of our
law. Are you aware that the state
of Oklahoma just a few weeks ago in the big election put the
issue on the ballot? The people voted to allow Sharia
law or not to allow Sharia law, and not to allow Sharia law in
Oklahoma won by a big margin. It was to have no part in their
courts. It was not to be allowed in court
trials whatsoever. Muslims filed suit. They filed
suit against that vote, and a liberal black woman judge put the issue
on hold, what Oklahoma had voted for. Islam and the cultural communists
have a club, both against Western culture and against Christianity,
and they frequently wheel that club against us. First came hate
crime laws. Well, that didn't do all they
wanted. They brought in hate crime speech. And now you watch
for hate crime thought. Can it be far behind? A friend
of mine in Mississippi emailed me the other day. We were discussing
this. And he made the statement. He
said, you know, the time may come when our government may
put us in jail for our beliefs. We need to think about that.
We must understand. Political correctness carried
to its end is a battle for the mind to control people by controlling
how they think, and though it may sound extreme, and unrealistic
now, political correctness will give the state control of speech
if it enshrines itself fully. So let's consider Christianity,
the Bible, preaching, the doctrine of salvation, in the light of
all of this political correctness, which has criminalized certain
Christian beliefs already. Now let me repeat that. Political
correctness has already criminalized certain Christian beliefs. You say, which one? Well, homosexual
for one, objection to abortion and belief in the sanctity of
life, opposition to what they absurdly call gay marriage, which
they're legalizing state by state and moving across our country. Was the prophet Habakkuk 2 and
18, the apostle Paul 1 Corinthians 12 and verse 2, were they being
politically incorrect when referring to the heathens' objects of worship
as dumb idols? I couldn't say something like
that today. How about the Lord calling the Jewish Pharisees,
hypocrites, fools, blind, guides, whited supplicant, generation
of vipers? Oh, that might be hate speech
if it were measured in our time today. I tell you again, my brother
and sister, that its intent is to suppress the truth so it can
get its to suppress the truth before it can get its britches
on while the lie circles the globe, while we're trying to
put britches on. PC, I call it cultural communism,
murders the truth while giving aid and comfort unto a lie. It is sad but true fact that
most movements Most movements that are way out and overboard
sooner or later find a welcome in the churches. It happened
with the hippies, it happened with feminism, it happened with
homosexuality, and it's happening now with political correctness. Apostate churches espouse all
of these movements. and bring them in and support
them. In Acts 4.18, the apostles were
commanded, don't you speak again in the name of this man Jesus. We command you not to teach or
to preach anymore in the name of Jesus. What was their reply? Acts 4.20, they said they were
bound to speak what they knew to be the truth of God. even if it crossed the drip of
main thinking. Now, Legion, more examples that
I could give you this morning, present unto you, but this is
all that we have time for. Suffice it to say, you better
watch it. You ought to be acquainted with
it. You ought to listen closely. Study it out. And study it out
not just from somebody who's for it, but study the other side
as well. Because I believe that its main
enemy is Christianity, how they hate it. Now they walk arm in
arm with liberal apostate left religionists, they support them,
but true biblical Christianity that stands upon the scripture
as the word of God and the truth of God, they do not like it and
they have taken aim against it and are shutting down many public
Christian things across our country, in schools and in government
as well. How long till they attack the
churches, who knows? But we need to understand what
it is, the nature of it, its purpose and its aim, and the
danger that it poses to God's people and the church. Think
about it. Consider it. Study it more.