Topic category:  Religion & Philosophy in the News

A popular truism holds that those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

On the surface, that insightful observation might apply to those that know the factual details of history but refuse to embrace that field of study's numerous object lessons.

However, for the aspiring tyrants, oligarchs, and elites eager to exert their control over a targeted population, it can be just as easy to censor and oppress those examples most likely to arouse suspicions those advocating nefarious agendas might otherwise prefer remain dormant.

Through the horrors of the Holocaust, the lives destroyed or ruined as a result of the Second World War, and the nightmarish curtailment of civil liberties that took place in Germany under the auspices of the Nazi Party's, mere utterance of the name “Adolf Hitler” stops the discerning and reflective in their tracks to take stock of what is being said so that life and liberty might be preserved.

For what happened under the oversight of this particular dictator saw one of Europe's most advanced nation's transformed into one of the most brutal regimes this world has ever known.

Given the scope of the atrocities perpetrated during the Nazi era, the average person often concludes that this organization must have must have stormed into office with only the most brutal and violent of tactics that only the most courageous were willing to withstand.

And while these were always the stock and trade of the most diehard of Nazis, the movement was also able to warp for its own purposes those aspirations of the human heart towards which nearly all have a desire.

Some of the dicta propagated sounded disturbingly similar to the public service announcements of our own day.

In the attempt to draw attention to the subtle spiritual war waged at the worldview level, Life Savers Ministries sponsored an Alabama billboard that consisted of a picture of a group of children and two contrasting quotes.

One attributed to Adolf Hitler read, “He alone who owns the youth gains the future.”

The second from Proverbs 22:6 admonished, “Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

Put up on a Friday in June 2014, the billboard was taken down by the following Tuesday as a result of the ensuing hullabaloo.

The ministry's founder was quoted in an account appearing in the Columbia Ledger Enquirer as responding, “We are pulling the billboard and actually never intended to cause confusion...Herbert Hoover would have been a far better one to quote when he said, 'Children are our most valuable resource'. We are a children's organization and had honorable intentions and nothing else.”

Granted, it is easy to cave when tolerancemongers are eager to rip out one's throat (possibly even literally with the threats of violence such fanatics often make in the name of peace, understanding, and inclusion).

However, what this pastor or evangelist should have done is to use this incident as what President Obama would call a “teaching moment” when the Chief Executive desires to lecture the American people in an exceedingly condescending manner.

Glenn Beck's yeoman's efforts to the contrary in struggling to educate the population as to the dangers of 20th century Progressivism, but why doesn't anyone get all exercised over this Herbert Hoover quote?

For shouldn't those seeing this alternative quote get jacked out of shape over children being dehumanized to the level of a resource like coal or, in this era of mass legalization, industrial hemp?

A resource, after all, has no will of its own and little to no rights.

The purpose of a resource is to be shaped, utilized, and discarded by those to whom in belongs once the owner or those holding title to it see fit for their own benefit.

Perhaps failure to notice that is an indicator of just how conditioned many of us have become to the statist mindset. Such a concern is similar to that unsettled by how dangerously close our world in general and our country in particular are on the verge of mirroring the early days of Nazism.

Of course, at this point, we are not close to placing the assorted undesirables onto boxcars.

But there are signs all around that such a worst case scenario is not beyond the realm of plausibility.

Government agencies whose sole distasteful purpose is to simply and dispassionately collect revenue are use to suppress speech prevailing elites find distasteful.

Millions of the unborn are snuffed out as an inconvenience by those who apparently didn't find it inconvenient to find the time for the carnal pursuit through which new life is brought into existence.

Thousands concerned over the revolutions in morality and lifestyle remain silent for fear of an act as innocent as a donation to a perfectly legal organization could one day be used against them as grounds for terminating employment.

Swarms of supposedly “youthful” foreigners are detained for who knows how long in government warehouses because a militarized or enclosed border is supposedly less humane.

By contrasting the rhetorical similarities between the Book of Proverbs (a source of world religion's most profound wisdom) and Adolf Hitler (a personification of fallen man in his most unredeemed states), one is forced to confront the two basic paths a child can be led down as they make their way towards their eternal destination.

Parenting is not a spectator sport.

Like it or not, the soul of each child will end up in the hands of one of the two great forces waging war for the ultimate allegiance of mankind.

Without a doubt, once in Satan's grasp, though not an impossibility to be freed by the infinite compassion of the works of Christ's death upon the cross and His resurrection from the dead, it becomes all the more harder and complex for the individual to accept this free gift of salvation there for the asking.

By Frederick Meekins

Frederick Meekins
Issachar Bible Church & Apologetics Research Institute

Biography - Frederick Meekins

Frederick Meekins is an independent theologian and social critic. Frederick holds a BS in Political Science/History, a MA in Apologetics/Christian Philosophy from Trinity Theological Seminary, and a PhD. in Christian Apologetics from Newburgh Theological Seminary.