Puritan Economic Experiments  (by Dr. Gary North)

For almost half a century, the Puritans ran the experiment. They served as willing guineas pigs. Eventually, they learned. Anyway, their children learned. In 1675, the great Indian war broke out - King Philip's War. The politicians tightened controls on the economy, and it began to break down. By the time the war was over a year later, the Puritans had learned their lesson. They abolished economic controls for good, and the economy boomed.

This is a story of nearly half a century of Puritan experiments with government controls, all in the name of Christian ethics, and why those experiments were finally abandoned as a failure. The Puritans learned from experience. Not until the American Revolution broke out a century later did American colonists again attempt to impose a comparable system of economic controls, and the result of those controls was the near-starvation of Washington's army at Valley Forge in 1777. Similar experiment - similar result.

The Case for America's Christian Heritage  (by Gary DeMar)

When our founders appealed to God and Scripture to build this nation, they did so to limit civil government not expand it. They created a document of enumerated powers not an open-ended, one-sided agreement with the people to give unlimited power to the National Government.

One of the ways to combat the denial of America’s Christian history and understand the proper role of civil government is through education. America needs to go back to school. To get you started, I’ve put together an introduction to make The Case of America’s Christian Heritage. There is an introductory chapter that clears up the confusion caused by historical revisionists who only look at a small selected group of founders to make a case for a secularized America based solely on their definition of the Enlightenment. What they fail to reveal is that there is a neglected history of a Christian Enlightenment long before people like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin came on the scene. The secularists play a game of sleight of hand. While they concentrate on a very small minority of so-called “Enlightenment Founders,” they divert attention from the majority of Christians who had a direct impact on the founding of America. It’s a forgotten part of America’s Christian history.

Movies with Worldviews in Mind  (by Gary DeMar)

Movies With Worldviews in Mind is excellent reading, informative and absolutely necessary at this moment in history. People of faith and values are drowning in a tidal wave of entertainment. The mass media of entertainment is the primary teacher of our youth. The critic's role belongs to theology. To understand art's essential characteristics and why and how we appreciate art, we need a theological explanation. Though our tastes for art are unique and personal, we typically think that to understand art we must first explain it. For example, Plato thought he could explain art as an emotional inspiration for people, at best, or, at worse, a distortion of intelligible truths; therefore, according to Plato, art should be dismissed or censored in a society seeking social justice derived from the idea of justice. Aristotle understood art to be the imitation of nature; as an imitation, it needs clarification according to the purposes of nature, and philosophy clarifies these purposes. Gary DeMar understands that art needs to be critiqued by theology. Movies With Worldviews in Mind does just that.”

—Dr.Ted Baehr, Publisher of MOVIE GUIDE®

Movies with Worldviews in Mind is a guide to ten classic films that present an opportunity to extract some biblical worldview principles. Each film includes a brief summary introduction, some trivia notes, and worldview points to ponder. Here is a list of the ten films: 

Cheaper by the Dozen
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Goodbye Mr. Chips
I Remember Mama
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Madame Curie
Sergeant York
Swiss Family Robinson
The Time Machine
War of the Worlds

Doomsday DeJa Vu: How Prophecy "Experts" Have Led People to Question the Authority of the Bible?  (by Gary DeMar)

“Benito Mussolini is the Antichrist!” “Adolf Hitler is the Antichrist!” “Joseph Stalin is the Antichrist!” “The rapture will be in 1988.” “The rapture will take place before the year 2000.” “Jesus is coming back in our generation.” “Jesus is coming back soon.” “Jesus really is coming back  . . . Soon!” That last one is the title of a new book.

I’m sure you have heard claims these before. They accomplish only one thing: They get people to question the integrity of the Bible. I’ve been following the history of date setting for 30 years. Others have followed it before me. Prophecy pot boilers sell in the millions and are then relegated to the dust bin of history or revised when the newspaper headlines change. It’s hard to appeal to the Bible when so many people have done it before claiming that this time they’re right on the timing of prophetic events.

Prophetic Déjà Vu shows that there is nothing new in pronouncing the end is near, but there’s a lot about these pronouncements that most people are not aware of.

There’s so much more I would like to tell you, but you can get this eBook for free and read it for yourself. This beautifully typeset book includes many color images that help tell the story of America’s fascination with the end times. You’ll never read a prophecy book in the same way after reading Prophetic Déjà Vu.

Meaty Tales! Should Talking Vegetables be Used to Teach the Bible?  (by Gary DeMar)

VeggieTalers see the animated vegetables (fruits and legumes not to be excluded) as a way to compete with the gee-whiz graphics found in Nintendo, Game Boy, Play Station 2, Xbox, and razzle-dazzle movie special effects. The stuff is clever and fun to watch. The tunes are catchy and the humor sophisticated. A director of preschool ministry at a large church in Marietta, Georgia, says that “kids today have so much in front of them . . . [that when] they come to church . . . they’re bored. You can’t just open a Bible and start reading to them.” Most children leave these games behind as they get older, and we wonder and worry about the ones who don’t. We shouldn’t be surprised when children decide to outgrow the Bible because of its attachment to juvenile teaching themes. The Bible is an adult book to be taught in an adult way even to children. There is no segregation of children from biblical teaching and preaching (Ezra 10:1; Neh. 12:43). It’s up to parents to make the biblical message understandable to their children, but this does not mean that they or churches should trivialize the content of that message.

In this 28-page illustrated booklet, you will get the full tilt as to why I believe VeggieTales are a problem. Don’t yell at me or throw any tomatoes until you read it!

Historical Revisionism: An Attempt to Re-Write America's Christian History  (by Gary DeMar)

One way to change the direction of a nation is to keep people ignorant. The public schools have done a great job in shifting worldview thinking from theism to humanism right under the noses of parents who extol the virtues of America’s government education system. Consider how textbooks handle the subject of religion in the founding of America. One elementary school social studies book has thirty pages of material “on the Pilgrims,” Paul Vitz writes, “including the first Thanksgiving. But there is not one word (or image) that referred to religion as even a part of the Pilgrims’ life. One mother whose son is in a class using this book wrote . . . that he came home and told her that ‘Thanksgiving was when the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians.’ The mother called the principal of this suburban New York City school to point out that Thanksgiving was when the Pilgrims thanked God. The principal responded by saying ‘that was her opinion’—the schools could only teach what was in the books!” I suspect that the teaching of America’s Christian history has not improved much since Vitz did his study. In fact, it’s gotten worse.

America's 200 Year-Old War with Islamic Terrorism: The Strange Case of the Treaty of Tripoli (by Gary DeMar)

Bibles Destroyed by Our Government to Appease Muslims! Learn the True Story of America’s 200-Year-Old War with Islamic Terrorism

It’s a story that hasn’t gotten much press. Bibles translated into Afghan languages were sent to a U.S. soldier at a base in Afghanistan. The Bibles were later confiscated by chaplains and destroyed to make sure that troops did not violate government rules which bar soldiers from sharing their faith with Afghans. So it’s OK to shoot and kill Afghans, but it’s illegal to share the gospel with them. We have traded bullets for the “gospel of peace” (Eph. 6:15).

America had tried to accommodate Islamic terrorists before. In 1797 a treaty was made with the Islamic leadership of Tripoli that stated that “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” Of course, this was false, but to appease the Barbary pirates and their Muslim protectors, the statement was put in the treaty. Did it work? No! Did the Muslim pirates in Tripoli stop kidnapping Christians from ships that sailed near the coast of northern Africa? No! They saw the accommodation as an act of weakness. Americans were willing to give up their faith—the very thing that created America and gave her moral strength—for peace. By 1805, America had learned its lesson: Compromise would always fail.