Christian martyrdom in Colorado

One of the most poignant and heartbreaking stories to come out of the
Columbine High School massacre is that of 17-year-old Cassie Bernall who
had recently pledged to live her life according to Christ’s teachings.
She wrote, “Now I have given up on everything else — I have found it to
be the only way to really know Christ and to experience the mighty power
that brought him back to life again, and to find out what it means to
suffer and to die with him. So, whatever it takes, I will be one who
lives in the fresh newness of life of those who are alive from the
dead.”

Cassie was one of the students in the school library who faced the
killers head on. She had been reading her Bible when one of the killers
confronted her and asked, “Do you believe in God?” She said, “Yes, I
believe in God,” in a voice strong enough so that her fellow students
could hear her. The gunman, in his long black trench coat, laughed.
“Why?” he asked mockingly, and then shot her to death.

Cassie had given her life for Christ. It was a terribly tragic end to
a young promising life that had just been reborn. And yet, in a way, it
sums up the dilemma which many Christians face today in trying to come
to terms with our secular culture. As we all know, biblical religion has
been removed from the public schools where Nazi-like, satanic cults can
flourish with no opposition from anyone. That is why it has become
increasingly dangerous for Christian children to attend public schools.
Not only are they subject to anti-Christian secular humanist ideology,
which pervades the curriculum, but also to the murderous hatred of young
Satanists.

Young Christians were also the target of an attack which occurred in
December of 1977 at Heath High School in Paducah, Ky., where 14-year-old
Michael Carneal opened fire on a student prayer group that met before
classes in the hallway of the school. Three girls were killed, five
wounded, including one girl left paralyzed. Carneal had a history of
heckling the prayer group. He even warned several classmates that
“something big is about to happen” and told one student not to go to the
prayer group.

Was Michael Carneal a Satanist? His hatred of the students in the
prayer group indicated a spiritual disturbance so deep that he could not
even tolerate the sight of a group of Christian students at prayer. We
do not know what kind of a home Carneal came from. But we do know that
biblical religion pervades Kentucky culture. We do not know if Carneal
had ever read the Bible or was influenced by satanic teachings. But what
is obvious is that he had a murderous hatred of those outwardly
Christian students and was motivated to action by that hate.

In October 1997, 16-year-old Luke Woodham killed his mother, his
ex-girlfriend, and wounded seven others at Pearl High School in Pearl,
Miss. According to a Boston Globe account: “A sobbing Luke Woodham said
he remembered getting a butcher knife and seeing his mother’s bloody
body — all the while, his head ringing with instructions from his
satanic mentor, 19-year-old Grant Boyette.” Apparently, Boyette was the
leader of a satanic group plotting to kill students at Pearl High
School. “Woodham said he befriended Boyette in January 1997 after
Boyette cast a spell from a satanic book. ‘We started a satanic group
and through the hate in my heart, I used it to try and get vengeance on
people and do what he told me to do,’ Woodham said.”

Meanwhile, teachers, principals, and politicians have reacted to all
of this violence in predictable ways. Teachers and counselors offer
“conflict resolution” as a means of preventing such killings, as if
Satanists are interested in resolving their conflicts peacefully.
Politicians offer more gun-control legislation, as if the killers hadn’t
already broken every gun law on the books.

But what are Christian leaders telling their flocks about sending
Christian children into dangerous public schools? The only well-known
Christian leader who has been telling parents for decades to abandon the
public schools and put their children in Christian schools or homeschool
them is the Rev. R. J. Rushdoony. His book, “The Messianic Character of
American Education,” first published in 1963, revealed the
irreconcilable conflict between Christianity and secular humanism that
was and still is being waged in the public schools. Rushdoony predicted
that moral chaos in the classroom would in time be the result of that
conflict.

There is also the problem with parents. It is hard to believe that
the parents of Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, did not know
something about what their kids were up to. Last fall the kids had made
a sick, hate-filled video with guns. Where were the gun-law fanatics?
Klebold’s father is known to be a liberal in favor of strong anti-gun
laws. It is even probable that the future killers were doing everything
in their power to get their parents’ attention. For instance, the day
before the massacre, a neighbor heard one of the killers smashing glass
with a baseball bat in the garage. A neighbor could hear it, but the
parents apparently could not. Is it possible that the parents had
already given up on their son and wanted nothing to do with him? Or were
they simply too busy to notice the strange dress, the Nazi symbols, the
guns, the videos?

In any case, it is obvious that all of the remedies being offered by
the establishment are not going to solve the spiritual problems that now
plague the government schools. The homeschool movement has demonstrated
that a growing number of parents have given up on solutions proposed by
politicians and educrats, and have taken matters into their own hands,
protecting their kids, and educating them religiously and academically.
These kids are safe from murderous Satanists, and they are thriving.
Why? Because they are getting what children want most: more time with
their parents, and in homeschooling they get the maximum.