School Prayer
Why have our schools become so violent? All across our nation people who are fed up with school violence are demonstrating in behalf of gun control.

But guns are not the basic problem. I graduated from high school in Waco, Texas in 1956. There were 450 in my graduating class, and on any given day there would be two or three dozen pickup trucks in the school parking lot equipped with gun racks. Many of those racks would contain three guns — a deer rifle, a .22 rifle and a shotgun. Yet, no one worried about some student shooting up the school.

One of my best friends who is my age grew up in Amarillo, Texas. When he was 14 years old, he rode his bike into town and purchased a rifle. No questions were asked. No background checks were made. The boy wanted a gun, and the store sold it to him.

A Radical Cultural Shift

So, what has changed in the 60 years since 1956? There is a poem circulating on the Internet that points to the answer. It has been around since the 1980’s, and the author is unknown. It has been edited many times over the years. The latest edition is produced below.

 The New School Prayer

Now I sit me down in school,
Where praying is against the rule.
For this great nation under God,
Finds mention of Him very odd.

If Scripture now the class recites,
It violates the Bill of Rights.
And anytime my head I bow
Becomes a Federal matter now.

Our hair can be purple, orange or green,
That’s no offense; it’s a freedom scene.
The law is specific, the law is precise.
Prayers spoken aloud are a serious vice.

For praying in a public hall
Might offend someone with no faith at all.
In silence alone we must meditate,
God’s name is prohibited by the state.

We’re allowed to cuss and dress like freaks,
And pierce our noses, tongues and cheeks.
They’ve outlawed guns, but FIRST the Bible.
To quote the Good Book makes me liable.

We can elect a pregnant Senior Queen,
And the “unwed daddy,” our Senior King.
It’s “inappropriate” to teach right from wrong,
We’re taught that such “judgments” do not belong.

We can get our condoms and birth controls,
Study witchcraft, vampires and totem poles.
But the Ten Commandments are not allowed,
No word of God must reach this crowd.

It’s scary here I must confess,
When chaos reigns the school’s a mess.
So, Lord, this silent plea I make:
Should I be shot; My soul please take!

Amen

As this poem clearly indicates, the reason for school violence is not guns. The reason is that we have kicked God out of our schools.

I started public school in 1944, and until I graduated in 1956, we had a daily Bible reading and prayer. We had Easter plays and Christmas pageants. We were taught Christian morals. In fact, one of my English readers in high school consisted of Bible stories with a moral clearly stated at the end of each story. When I graduated from high school, we had what was called a baccalaureate service the day before our graduation ceremony. It consisted of a worship service and a sermon by a local pastor.

Since that time, our Supreme Court has outlawed Bible reading and prayer in the public schools. It has even declared it to be unconstitutional for the Ten Commandments to be displayed. The Court has also stopped the teaching of Creationism as an alternative to Evolution. In this regard, in the words of Romans 1:18, we as a nation are guilty of “suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.”

Reaping What We’ve Sown

When we banned God from our schools and proceeded to teach children that they are descended from apes, why are we surprised when they start acting like wild animals? When we saturate them with violent movies, TV shows and video games, why are we surprised when they resort to violence?

This nation is raising a whole generation of moral pygmies, and all the gun control imaginable is not going to stop the violence.

We are reaping what we have sown. Theologians refer to the result as “abandonment wrath” — the kind of wrath exhibited by God when He turns His back on a rebellious person or society, allowing self-destruction.

We have thumbed our nose at God. We have barred Him from our schools. We have made a mockery of His Word. And He has responded by stepping back, lowering His hedge of protection and allowing evil to run its course.

Thank you, Mr. President, for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital.

I’m homesick for Jerusalem. It is my spiritual home, and I have not been able to go there for the past four years because of my wife’s illness.

Between 1979 and 2014, I visited Jerusalem 45 times — either leading pilgrimage groups, directing video crews or speaking at special events.

I will never forget my first visit in the summer of 1979. My first morning in Jerusalem, I was so excited to be there that I got up at 4am and took a taxi to the top of the Mount of Olives. I sat down on the mount looking east over the Kidron Valley toward the Old City, the Temple Mount and the Eastern Gate. I took the glorious sight into my soul as I watched the first rays of sunlight come up behind me and illuminate the old walled city, reflecting off the gold dome of the Muslim shrine called The Dome of the Rock.

I listened to the sounds of an ancient city awakening. It seemed like there were roosters crowing everywhere, accented at times by the braying of donkeys. Horse drawn carts began passing in the streets.

The scenes, the smells and the sounds of those moments are etched into my memory.

But the most significant thing I experienced was spiritual. I sensed in my spirit that I was sitting at the center of the earth and the focal point of all history — where God became flesh and where He taught, healed, died and rose from the dead.

In fact, it occurred to me that I was sitting at the very site where Christ ascended into Heaven, and I was reminded of His promise to return to that very place on the Mount of Olives.

As I contemplated these things, I was suddenly struck with how fortunate I was to be living in the season of the Lord’s return — a time when I could witness end time prophecies being fulfilled before my very eyes. I’m referring to things like the regathering of the Jewish people from the four corners of the earth, the re-establishment of their nation and the re-occupation of their ancient capital.

Jesus Himself told His disciples that in the end times when the Jewish people returned to their homeland and re-occupied their capital, He would be at the very gate of Heaven ready to return (Luke 21:24-28).

“Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, in the city of our God, His holy mountain. Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth… the city of the great King.” (Psalm 48:1-2)

Recognizing Israel’s Capital

“It will come about in that day that I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples; all who lift it will be severely injured. And all the nations of the earth will be gathered against it.” (Zechariah 12:3)

• Presidential candidate Bill Clinton promised to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to that city.
• Presidential candidate George W. Bush promised to do the same.
• Presidential candidate Barack Obama refrained from making any promise of recognition.
• Presidential candidate Donald Trump renewed the promise.

The promises of Clinton and Bush proved to be insincere, meaningless hot air. Obama’s unwillingness to take a stand signaled that he would become the most anti-Israel president in American history. President Trump has kept his promise, and he is to be commended for doing so.

He made his proclamation on December 6, 2017. In it he stated, “This [recognition] is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It’s something that has to be done.”

The Jewish Tie to Jerusalem

Jerusalem became the capital city of the Jewish people 3,000 years ago when David conquered the city from the Jebusites (2 Samuel 5:6-7). During the 1,878 years that the Jewish people were evicted from the land (70 AD to 1948), Jerusalem never served as the capital of any Arab or Muslim nation.

It should also be kept in mind that when God gave the land of Canaan to the Jewish people, He gave them an eternal title to it (Psalm 105:8-11). He warned them that if they were not faithful to Him, they would be evicted from the land (Deuteronomy 28:64-67). But He made it clear in His Word that if they were ejected, they would retain their title to the land, and one day they would be regathered to it (Ezekiel 11:14-17).

During the period of their dispersion from the land, it became a barren wasteland, with malaria-infested swamps along the Mediterranean coast and in the Upper Galilee. It was a land that no one coveted except the Jewish people.

Each year, at the end of their Passover meals, Jews worldwide would pray, “Next year in Jerusalem.” And when they built their synagogues anywhere in the world, they made sure that they faced in the direction of Jerusalem.

The Return of the Jews to Their Homeland

The land of Palestine, as it was renamed by the Romans, remained sparsely populated. It was owned mainly by absentee landlords, and it was under the domain of the Ottoman Empire whose capital was Constantinople (modern day Istanbul). The people living in Palestine considered themselves to be Syrians.

When the Jewish people began to return to their homeland in the 1890s, they bought the land that God had already given them in perpetuity, and they paid inflated prices for it. The Arabs laughed all the way to the bank over the foolish Jews who were willing to purchase such worthless land.

The Arabs were unaware of a prophecy contained in Ezekiel 36:35 where God promised that when the day came for the Jews to return to their land, it would become “like the Garden of Eden.”

And that is exactly what has happened since 1948 when the Jewish state was re-established. Today, the land of Israel is the bread basket of the whole Middle East, and the Arabs now want it back.

Resources

To finish this article and learn whether there’s any validity to the Arab’s claim to the land of Israel, download the Lamplighter magazine.