Be still my heart. A public school district has decided to post the Ten Commandments back up on the walls of all its schools:

A southwest Virginia school district has reposted copies of the Bible’s Ten Commandments in all county schools, despite concerns that doing so is unconstitutional.

The Roanoke Times reported that the school district rehung the commandments Friday.

The commandments were up on the walls in Giles County for at least a decade next to framed copies of the U.S. Constitution. But one resident complained, claiming the commandments display violated the Constitution so school officials took them down.

Then several parents and pastors, supported by numerous citizens, told the school board it had a moral obligation to reinforce God’s teachings.

The five-member Giles County School Board voted unanimously to put the framed, 4-foot-tall, biblical texts back up.

“The board, after hearing comments from some members in our community, they felt it was the right thing to do,” said Superintendent Terry Arbogast, who noted that school officials didn’t anticipate the public outcry.

Arbogast said the district will wait to see if a lawsuit is filed.

That this simple act of defiance is so unbelievable shows how far we have fallen. Let’s go back to 1963, when the US Supreme Court banned prayer in public schools across the entire nation. Here’s the twenty-two-word prayer that was found to be so offensive:

“Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.”

Wow. Can’t you just feel the seething religious intolerance and coercion there? At the time, 93% of the nation approved of this innocuous prayer. Indeed, the school board president at the time observed:

“I can only conclude that this suit is a premeditated act to undermine the American heritage. This is not a religious issue. It’s simply a matter of giving our children additional moral and spiritual help and recognition of God.”

The following year the Bible was banned from the schools. Then the Ten Commandments went. The majority opinion against the Ten Commandments actually warns that if the commandments are posted on school walls, the students would read them and might actually follow them, and that would be unacceptable. This stupefying mindset is what the Bible refers to when it says:

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.  Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.  -Rom 1:21-25

There’s a pattern of regression there. When you don’t honor God, you honor something else. When you turn away from God, you turn to something else. Nature abhors a vacuum, and we have to fill our hearts with something. What on earth did these geniuses think would happen if they took away God and handed out condoms? If you read the history of the likes of Sanger and Kinsey, you will see that some of them knew exactly what they were doing. It all happened incrementally, and much of the church was asleep, so the humanists have gotten away with the greatest cultural heritage heist in history.

As if on cue, in 1963-4 every single social indicator took a precipitous turn for the worse. School dropout rates, teen pregnancies, violence in the schools, test scores, etc. And then the dysfunction spread to the general population. At this advanced date, every single one of our societal institutions is coming apart at the seams. The “seven mountains” of society – commerce, education, government, the family, the arts, religion and media – are all wandering blindly, removed from moral foundations that are no longer there.

Scripture warns us:

if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?”  -Ps 11:3.

But then it answers it’s own question. They can repent, which essentially means a change in thinking:

“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.  -Isa 1:18

They can pray according to the promises:

if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. -2Chr 7:14

and they can get enough resolve to act, as this school board in Virginia is doing.

Think of Daniel, who despite the king’s decree that no one could call on God, purposely went to his window, opened it, and prayed aloud to the Lord, as he was accustomed. Imagine if more school boards would say that enough is enough. We’re sick and tired of trying to raise our kids amid cultural filth with our hands tied behind our backs. We’ve had it with a minority humanist agenda driving the nation and dictating the lives of the vast number of believers.

Daniel wound up in the lion’s den for his defiance, and I suspect that this school board is going to find out what happens when one resists the undemocratic elites that have been running this nation, and running it into the ground. But the Lord was faithful to Daniel and preserved him, and in the end He vindicated him. So it often goes for those whom the Lord values highly.

We are in a battle for this nation’s soul. We have lost much ground, and we are starting late in our attempt to recover what has been stolen. But signs abound that a major groundswell of purpose and determination is arising. And it’s true to the form of real revivals that this one is coming not from within our institutions themselves, but predominantly from below. The political establishment, in fact, can barely keep up with the pace of change, and is in continual danger of being steamrolled if it doesn’t press forward.

We need to pray for those in authority, as Paul tells Timothy. Much is at stake and the resistance is strong. I don’t know how this Ten Commandments thing in Virginia works out, but it’s a hopeful sign indeed. Let’s give them the support they deserve.