We’re the “Joshua Generation.” Or at least that’s what many of us have heard preached in sermons and heralded in high praise throughout Pentecostal and Charismatic churches. The Joshua Generation is a bold group of spiritual reformers aiming to turn the world upside down for Christ. It’s the group that goes in to possess the land. We’re the ones who vowed that our household would serve the Lord. But what happens after the so-called Joshua Generation? Let’s look at the account of Joshua’s days. The Bible says after the Joshua generation died there arose another generation; a generation that did not follow God.

The Prophet Samuel wrote, “and the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served Baalim. And they forsook the Lord God of their fathers which brought them out of the land of Egypt and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the Lord to anger. And they forsook the Lord and served Baal and Ashtaroth. And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel and he delivered them into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them and he sold them into the hands of their enemies round about so that they could not any longer stand before their enemies” (Judges 2:10-14). This Scripture is intriguing and leads to many questions such as: Could this be prophetic for us today? Are our children and grandchildren in grave danger? Who were these “gods of the people” that enslaved the children of the greatest warriors in history? Have spoilers begun to mount their dappled horses already? Should someone sound the alarm and blow the trumpet in Zion?

Just as The United States’ Amber Alert System notifies the public when police confirm a child abduction, the Church needs to notify the next generation of the dangers that lie in wait. And not only notify them, but teach them how to remain steadfast for God, like Joshua did. After all Scripture teaches us to “Train up a child in the way they should go and when they are old they shall not depart” (Proverbs 22:6). Who is training our children today? Who are the wise guides of the next generation? Are they pastors, church leaders, moms and dads, aunts and uncles, or grandmas and grandpas? Where do our children get their values? Who provides the moral compass that directs their way? Who climates their educational atmosphere? Who are their mentors? Who influences them? Are there “other gods,” strangers, fostering the children of the next generation?

The future leaders of our nations will come from our children. Is that a positive or negative thought? Have you taken a close look at the youngsters of this generation? They are very different from our generation. Some have problems concentrating, seem indifferent, have no sense of urgency, are mistrustful of intimacy, are easily distracted, materialistic, can’t reason, are not logical, are abstract thinkers with limited problem solving skills, are immature, can’t think, are drugged, violent and cruel, can’t finish what they start, rarely learn from mistakes, financially illiterates, and separated emotionally from parents and family. Jesus said sound judgment looks at the fruit a tree produces (Matthew 7:20). Could it be that these children are the socially engineered products of “the gods of the people?” Have they been mentored by strangers?

This question was asked in a poll in 1998: “Do you believe in God?” 93 percent answered “yes” and 7 percent answered “no.” The yes votes broke down like this: Of those serving in the military 90 percent said yes; of business owners 70 percent said yes; politicians 50 percent said yes; in the entertainment industry 3percent said yes and those in media only 2 percent said yes. Of this short list, which ones have the most influence with our children? If you answered entertainment and media, you answered correctly. This is startling and reveals of those industries that influence our children the most, 97 percent of them do not believe in God. So where do our children get their virtues and values? Who are the mentors of the next generation? The answer is the godless.

When young people are asked who their heroes are, many answer sports figures, rappers and hip-hop artists. They spend their time watching them on TV, listening to them on iPods and otherwise sharing their messages with friends. So, I ask you, if time equals influence, then who has the most influence on our children? The answer is found in how children spend their time. Here is an annual estimate of how the average U.S. kid spends their time: 1,500 hours in public school, 600 hours watching television, listening to music or playing video games and 35 hours spent in quality family time.

So who are the greatest influencers of the next generation? Unfortunately, it seems the answer is godless strangers, the “gods of the people.” Let’s look at music, video games and the public school system, three of the most influential mentors of today’s kids.

Moral Mentors

This generation is addicted to music. Nothing seems to excite them more. Music is the moral mentor of this generation. How often do you see children wearing those hi-tech noise reduction headphones latched to each ear? What are they listening to? Have you seen black-windowed cars, rolling woofers that shake, quiver and throb every vehicle within a stone’s throw, blasting the current hip-hop tunes? Can thought, reason, contemplation and reflection coexist within that blare?

The practice of teenagers downloading pirated music from the Internet is out of control. Illegally copied music has seriously damaged the music industry. Statistics report that 70 percent of pirated music is downloaded by kids age 9-14. It’s not uncommon for teens to have over 500 songs, 33 hours of nonstop sounds digitized on their iPods. Music is not neutral. It contains a message and is almost always accompanied with an activity. Today’s lyrics are full of hate, lawlessness and drugs. The words are vulgar and demean women. The themes are violent, sensual, sexual and full of flesh, flesh and more flesh. Plato taught in “The Republic” that you could gage a society by “marking the music.” Never in history has any art form been so directed toward children. Plato also said music could be debased further by adding dance. Music videos confirm his philosophy by glorifying illicit dances that simulate sexual intercourse. Little is left to the imagination. The more adulterated the more accepted the music.

Charles De Secondat Montesquieu, 18th century political philosopher and author of “The Spirit of the Laws” said, “It is not young people who degenerate, they are ruined only when grown men have already been corrupted.” Children and teenagers are not the founders of the music industry, “grown men” have already paved the way. Our children stop watching “Thomas the Tank,” “Barney and Friends” and “Sesame Street,” and graduate to “MTV.”

MTV promotes a faux image of success and fame without virtue. It is Viacom’s flagship station for developing youth culture in North America and around the world. Episodes of the popular “MTV Cribs,” for example, visit the homes of hip-hop heroes displaying giant walk-in closets filled with hundreds of pairs of expensive Nike tennis shoes, designer clothing, jewelry, home entertainment theater rooms and private recording studios.

Miami artist Rick Ross is a typical example of MTV’s guests. He exhibited his spoils on MTV’s 15th season. The show opened with Ross showing off his black 2008 Mercedes-Benz CL65 V12 biturbo 612 hp engine. Ross is a hip-hop artist. His album “Port of Miami” hit Number 1 on Billboard in its first week, selling over 160,000 copies. The album is full of songs that portray Ross as a proud cocaine dealing thug. His single, “Hustlin,” contains references to the former Panamanian drug running dictator, General Manuel Noriega, who owes him “a hundred favors,” along with Pablo Escobar, the brutal Columbian murderer of 30 judges, 457 policemen and hundreds of innocent people. Ross then shows his custom motorcycle and tricked out white Cadillac Escalade before escorting viewers into his Miami mansion complete with marble floors, home theater, and South Florida tropical views. On the tour Ross takes a moment to point out framed photos of his young children.

Virtual Terminals

Competing for influence with our children are the ever-popular video game mentors. These are virtual terminals training our children to kill with precision. The video game industry is hot, hot, hot. As a multi-billion dollar industry it is another stranger molding the next generation. “Death Race” became the first controversial video game back in 1976. In that game, players drove a car that simulated vehicular homicide by running down pedestrians to score points. Today’s games are way beyond that with mind-blowing graphics and off-the-hook sound effects. Through these games, players get to act out violent crimes like carjacking in “Grand Thief Auto” and evading cops in “Need for Speed.”

The American Psychological Association issued a report that reveals, “violent video games can increase children’s aggression.” Surely parents should have known that already, but the knowledge hasn’t slowed sales. Lt. Col. David Grossman is a former West Point psychology professor who has written several books on the issue of violence in the media, including “On Killing” and “Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill.” He describes first-person shooter games as ‘murder simulators’ and argues that video game publishers are actually training children to use weapons. If that’s not bad enough, he also asserts that these murder simulators are hardening their emotions to murderous acts by simulating the killing of hundreds or even thousands of opponents in a single video game.

Dumbing Us Down

Next on our list of next-generation mentors is the public school system. Again, the public school system has your children for over 1,500 hours a year. Do you know your children’s teachers and the content of their text books or are they strangers? Thirty-year award winning teacher in New York City’s public school system John Taylor Gatto is the author of “Dumbing Us Down.” He believes that the public school system is flawed. He writes, “Over the years of wrestling with the obstacles that stand between child and education I have come to believe that government monopoly schools are structurally unreformable. They cannot function if their central myths are exposed and abandoned. Over the years I have come to see that whatever I thought I was doing as a teacher, most of what I actually was doing was teaching an invisible curriculum that reinforced the myths of the school institution and those of an economy based on caste.”

We are all proud of the thousands of good school teachers that are doing their best to educate our children, but let’s face the facts: The God of the Bible was removed from our public schools when the United States Supreme Court removed prayer June 25th, 1962. C. S. Lewis said, “Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.” Today’s public school has been overshadowed by progressive secular humanists, the social engineers of the next generation. Gatto is quick to remind us that good teachers within the public school system are not the problem, the system itself is marred.

Look at the majority of the leaders of commerce, industry and government in our nation. From what schools did they receive their education? Do you think they will send their children to pubic schools or private Ivy League type schools like Harvard, Yale, Brown or Princeton? As already said, the public school system has our children over 1,500 hours a year and now many regions are introducing year-round school. It seems the responsibility of parents is only to finance their children’s care, mind their safety, purchase their food and clothing – but have little part nor time allotted in mentoring them.

The public school system was never designed to teach the necessary skills required for leadership. It was designed to educate the poor with enough basic skills to get a job, teach them to be good citizens and unthinking indebted consumers. Pulitzer Prize Award-winner for literature Will Durant, author of “The Story of Civilization” said, “In class societies the middle class have tended toward the professions while the aristocracy received leadership education. That left the lower classes. So many nations established public schools to educate the poor.” Throughout history the public school was never intended to raise the next generation of leaders. It was an institution designed for the poor because the ruling classes educated their children in private schools.

Founder of George Wythe college, Dr. Oliver Van DeMille, author of “A Thomas Jefferson Education” describes three different types of education and I paraphrase: The first is the “conveyor belt education,” which tries to prepare everyone for a job, any job, by teaching them what to think. Second the “professional education,” from apprenticeship and trade schools to law, medical and MBA programs, which creates specialists by teaching them when to think. Thirdly, “leadership education” that teaches students how to think and prepares them to be leaders in their homes and communities, entrepreneurs in business and statesmen in government. His book makes it clear that our nation needs world class leadership education guided by inspiring mentors, not professors, who direct children how to think. He says that “greatness is the first rule of leadership education” and that “greatness is fostered by coming face-to-face with greatness.”

All of this only confirms the fruit of the strangers, “gods of the people” who are mentoring the next generation of students that can’t seem to think. As we move closer to Socialism within the United States we will see more and more government involvement and experimental social engineering of our children and a caste society becoming more apparent.

Montesquieu wrote, “The history of despotic rulers educating the subjects was dangerous.” In order to control their subjects they would provide little education and “take everything away in order to give something and begin by making a bad subject in order to make a good slave.” He continued, “Extreme obedience assumes ignorance in the one who obeys; it assumes ignorance even in the one who commands; he does not have to deliberate, to doubt, or to reason; he has only to want.” These are the weapons of the secular progressive God-haters. They are socialists bent on engineering unthinking consumers who are addicted to debt.

Road to Serfdom

Our future is dependant on the godly leadership abilities of the next generation. A leader is one that has a passion to serve others, make the world a better place and knows how to think. It’s that virtuous thinking ability that leads toward liberty and justice for all. Take that power away and you get serfdom.

We all know the future leaders of our nation must come from our young people. Who will be our leaders and from what mentors will they come? What shall we as parents, grandparents and Christian leaders do?

I think Jacob’s wisdom will inspire and encourage. He said to his household, “Put away the strange gods that are among you and be clean and change your garments: And let us arise, and go up to Bethel and I will make there an altar unto God who answered me in the day of my distress and was with me in the way which I went. And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand and all their earings which were in their ears and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem. And they journeyed and the terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob” (Genesis 35:2-5). This is sage advice for all our families, “put away the strange gods.” Who will hear what the Spirit of God is saying to our nation?

The Kingdom of God is under attack but Jesus said, “I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” The Kingdom is represented by its citizens, their culture, virtues, honor, morality, shared values and, most importantly, their God. Let’s heed the lessons of history and not surrender our nation’s children to strange mentors, “the gods of the people.” When we as adults, believers in Christ’s Word, His moral excellence and standards, take a stand for righteousness and resist State patrimony, and secular humanistic social engineering, we will see this nation turned around.

The principles of Godly education and righteous mentorship will not be found with strangers but from Christ, the family, and His Church. Just as the nobles of old thought it necessary to bring up their children with moral excellence, manners, culture, honor, virtue, and shared Christian values we will do the same.