Welcome to the For the Gospel podcast, where we're all about sound doctrine for everyday people. I'm your host, Kosty Hinn, and I recently got the chance to sit down with Heidi St. John at the ARK Encounter in Kentucky. And what you are about to watch or listen to is our interview as we sit down, and she absolutely unloads incredible truth about education, our children, and the parents' responsibility to make disciples in their home. This is going to challenge you. It's also going to bless you. Let's jump right into my conversation with Heidi St. John. Well, Heidi, I wanted to sit down with you and have a conversation because you are incredibly controversial. You're very fired up about a lot of things. Just kidding. You're awesome on a number of issues.
SPEAKER_00I was like, you're not wrong. That's right, Drew.
SPEAKER_02You're not shy about things that matter a great deal in today's culture. And we have a number of people in our audience that for the gospel, a great number that are younger, young families, young moms, young dads, and you have spoken widely and strongly on education. And while you get flack for certain things, I think you've done it in a pretty balanced way, in a very biblical way. But kind of give us some runway about what you do, what's your passion, and then why have you been so vocal about the way parents are training their children and education?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I think my passion is my children. I'm a mother of seven. I have four grandchildren now. My husband and I are coming up on our 34th wedding anniversary. So not our first trip around the sun. Uh, but I am passionate about this, the next generation of young people. And as we've watched, you're watching, I'm observing, right, generations now of the church not taking a stand on education. We've been telling audiences, my my husband was a pastor for 20 years. We've been telling audiences from the pulpit now for decades that education is neutral. And if you just uh tell your kids about Jesus, then you can send them anywhere you want to. And it's actually not true. Uh Jesus said in Luke 6.40 that when a student is fully trained, he'll be like his teacher. And what we're seeing happen in the culture right now is a direct attack against the next generation. And it's actually been playing out now for decades, and we're seeing the bloom uh now start to come into full bloom on the flower that has been sort of germinating in the culture. And it's devastating. It's a stink ray, it's a stink rag, right? So we're we're seeing now the effects of uh the approach that Christians have taken towards education. Education is not neutral. You're either for God or you're against God, and the public school system is against God. And so parents send their kids every year, and I think this is what I want parents to understand. Education is the front line of the spiritual battle that's being waged in our country right now. It's absolutely the front line. Uh the leftists, the progressives, the uh the anti-God, the hedonistic mindset that's in our culture has really been birthed in our universities and now has bled down into our secondary education. It's absolutely in our high schools, it's in kindergarten classes now. The National Educators Association, one of the most demonic unions in the entire nation, pushing out an agenda. And I've been before state legislatures testifying as to what this comprehensive sex education, what it entails. It's not the sex ed that you and I might remember from school. They're teaching our children that there's 400 genders. They could be a narwhal whale on Friday if they want to be. And the Bible teaches us that our children come to us impressionable and young. You know, the Bible says that it'd be better for us to have a millstone hung around our neck and be thrown into the sea than to allow even one of God's little ones to be led astray. And we're seeing it now in the rise of the transgender movement. And so I want to tell parents, every single day, hundreds of thousands of Christian parents put their kids on a little yellow school bus, they pack them a sack lunch, they pat them on the head, and they send them to the front lines of the culture war. We would never send our children to the front lines of any war. And uh we we know now what would happen if we thought there was a virus with a 99.9% survival rate in our schools, we'd close the schools. Well, I'm trying to warn parents there is a virus with a 99.9% spiritual mortality rate that's in our schools right now. Why in heaven's name are we not pulling our children out of this institution that has set itself against the ways of God? We can send our kids to a public institution where they're going to be indoctrinated, told that they're they're a relative of an ape, that you're descended from an animal, and that your parents should not be the primary influence in your life and that there is no God. We send them to this institution for uh 12 years of their life, right in a row. We send them to Rome to be educated, and then we're shocked that they come out Romans. And so education's not neutral. And so I've been talking to audiences about this now for 15 years or more, and uh we've reached a crisis point. I was on with Jack Hibbs the other day, and I said to his audience, I declare a state of emergency for Christian parents. Wake up. You know, and I'm not suggesting that Christians, this is important a caveat. I'm not suggesting that Christians abandon the public schools. I'm saying Christian children should abandon the public schools, and Christian adults should become teachers and administrators, and uh men and women who review the curricula that's being pushed out to our children. Because we need to remember that these children are tomorrow's lawmakers, they're tomorrow's judges, these are tomorrow's teachers and doctors, and they're being educated in the ways of the world, and it's having a devastating impact, and education is the front line.
SPEAKER_02I have so many questions for you. I'll try to stick to just a few. I love what you just said. Okay, you brought up a key point. I'll start there and then I want to reverse engineer. So, first and foremost, speak briefly to uh so parents who are listening right now and they're going, okay, you know, I'm a public school teacher, or I'm I'm an administration, or you're telling me that I you just said it. They are, would you view them as essentially missionaries?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02They're on the front lines.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Oh, yeah. I mean, there they're as much missionaries as Jim Elliott was going to the Atkins, right? Uh we're talking about a spiritual battle of epic proportions. We are normalizing pedophilia in this country.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00We are normalizing the sexuation of children as young as three years old, and we're pumping into this, into their young minds. I mean, the Bible, you, you know, you anybody who's got children knows. Our kids come to us, their minds are like wet cement, right? And we make an impression on their minds, and there comes a point in which that cement hardens. And this is the goal of the education system, right? They're long past teaching, reading, writing, and arithmetic. You know, our kids are not coming out. If you look at the statistics, American children especially are failing in reading, writing, and arithmetic in Oregon, in the state of Oregon. I'm from Oregon. I was born and raised in Portland. Uh, our students in Oregon now are being told they do not need to be proficient in math, reading, or language in order to graduate from any Oregon high school. But if you go into the public schools in Oregon, you know what you'll find in the boys' restrooms? You'll find uh menstrual products, you'll find machines that are distributing tampons to young boys. It's very confusing. And why we think as parents that our children are gonna come out of this system unscathed is beyond me. The point is to damage them. The point is to injure their hearts and their minds, and it's working.
SPEAKER_02So, question on that. Speak to the parent, maybe, who says, Hey, I I grew up, I went to public school. Come on, relax, Heidi. Cost me, relax. I went to public school, I turned out fine. You know, I'm gonna send my kids to public school because they're gonna go be light in this dark world. And don't forget, Heidi, you're forgetting something very important. Look, I'm the primary disciple maker. I got my theological framework intact, I got my biblical worldview on the home intact. I'm the primary disciple maker. I'm preparing them for the world. So I'm sending them out. Speak to the parent that thinks they're really in control as they send their child into war for eight hours.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think the parents who have that worldview and that and share that opinion don't understand the nature of the war that their kids are in. So I have a 31-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old daughter. And I am raising my 12-year-old in a world that is vastly different.
SPEAKER_02So it's changed.
SPEAKER_00Then, oh, absolutely, it's on its head. I mean, what was starting to sort of ramp up when my 31-year-old daughter was 12 is absolutely in full gear now. They used to hide it. They're not hiding their agenda anymore. And parents need to wake up and understand that the assault that was subversive is now absolutely mainstream. It's being accepted in the government, accepted by mainstream Christianity, even we see it in our churches, right? The love is love campaigns, the transgender flag that flies out of half the churches in Portland, Oregon right now. Uh, parents need to understand that you can no longer, once you see this stuff, you can't unsee it. And to believe that we could send our kids out to be salt and light in a battle that they neither understand nor are prepared for, you would never send your child to the front lines of a physical battle had they not had years and years and years of training. Can they not wield that weapon with absolute precision and confidence? You would never send them to the front lines of an actual physical battle. And the battle that's being waged against their hearts and their minds is ten times more damaging. We're talking about the souls of our children here. And so parents who don't understand that are misunderstanding the attack and the angle that the adversary is taking to this generation.
SPEAKER_02If they make it out, let's say I send and you send your young children to public school, and they, by the mercy and unmerited favor of God, make it through with a with a profession of faith and tact. Do you think that with how poisonous and how demonic the public school system has become, where Satan is directly using it to assault minds, do you think that it's still a slippery slope and not even in a way that goes, well, you know, six degrees from now, this do you think their worldview has still been eroded? Oh, there's no question.
SPEAKER_00There's no question. And in fact, I was interviewing Ken Ham on my podcast, and that show aired today, and he made a really good point because we were talking about a very well-known Bible teacher who went onto a very well-known Christian platform recently and basically gave an apologetic and why it was okay for Christian parents and even uh maybe a good idea for Christian parents to send their kids to the public school. And she said, Listen, my kids came out okay. And Ken said, you know, it's a miracle, it's the grace of God, as you were just saying, the unmerited favor of God, that our kids could come out of an education system that is hellbent literally on turning our children from God, come out with their faith intact. But he said, I guarantee you those kids have been secularized. So there's no way that even though they they came out with a profession of faith, that their worldview has not been tainted. This is why you see a generation of young people who say, well, it doesn't really matter. Gay marriage, straight marriage, it doesn't matter. You know, millions of years, thousands of years, it doesn't matter. They've been secularized. They've been secularized already. And it's very hard to unsecularize that worldview. So even though they may say, I have a profession of faith, I believe in Christ as my savior, the way that they see the world is not through the lens most often, not through a biblical lens, but through a secularized worldly lens.
SPEAKER_02What I love about the way that you talk and the way that you propose this is that don't get the sense from you that it's fear-based, like you're just scared, you know, stay in the holy huddle. Don't let your kids anywhere, you know, lest they become poisoned by the world. There's this confidence and drivenness from a worldview. Could you speak to the parent that may be thinking, okay, I uh have my kids in sports and we have our like we're in the world, Heidi. What do you prefer? We're just gonna, yeah, we're what do you you're you're painting a difference between indoctrination from the education system, which has our children for and a ton of power from like the good old-fashioned days? Like I had coaches that were foul mouthed, and I had kids growing up in sports. I had friends that were different. And you're saying there's a difference between the two where where our kids go in sports. How would you encourage parents to be still preparing their children to be in the world while not of the world?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think it's there's a very bit, you know, we've homeschooled our children. Our daughter, our oldest daughter, who I told you is in her 30s, was in the public school system. And I was a very, I was an anti-homeschooler, which most people don't know about me. I was the woman who was like, listen, what woman in her right mind, right, when a little yellow bus come, take your kids away for free for eight hours every day, you can have a break, go get yourself a cup of coffee, you actually keep your house clean. Uh, what woman in her right mind would do that? And the Lord began to open my eyes to the to the fact that the responsibility of educating children does not belong to the state. It does not belong to pastors, it belongs to parents. This is a responsibility that God has given parents. And I want to take uh every parent that ever has the chance to listen to me speak back to Jesus' own worlds. When a child is fully trained, he'll be like his teacher. Now, I don't know about you, but that sends a shiver down my spine. That tells me I need to walk with the Lord. If I want to give my children the best chance of walking with God, I can't pass on what I don't possess. So then why in heaven's name would I believe that I could send my child to be educated in a system that is absolutely uh against God? You're either for God or you're against him, right? This is what the Bible teaches. And the schools are against God. And so why do we as Christian parents believe that we are so much more authority and so much more power that we can undo eight hours every day, five days a week, for nine months out of the year, and that somehow when our kids come home and they're exhausted and we and over spaghetti dinner, we pray with them when they go to bed at night, that's gonna undo it. It's foolishness to believe that that's going to undo it. And you know, there there are no guarantees, right? I mean, I'm sure you could do this. I could sit here for hours and tell you stories about parents who homeschooled their kids and their kids walked away from the Lord. We're not talking about a guarantee, but the Bible says that when we train up a child in the way he should go, when he's old, he won't depart from it. Not a promise, it's a proverb. It's a generalization. And as a mother myself, and now as a grandmother, I want to give my kids every opportunity to follow the Lord.
SPEAKER_01Amen.
SPEAKER_00Knowing that they will reach an age. Most of my kids now are out in the world. Uh one of my sons, uh, my son-in-law is a senior pastor. I've got another young son who's working for Amazon and a son who's a computer programmer. These kids are out into the world. This idea that we need to thrust them into the front lines of this cultural war when they're not ready to fight it, their minds are not ready, their hearts are not ready, they haven't learned to wield the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. That training happens at home. And let's be clear, and in the culture now, for generations, parents have been abdicating their role. We do this on Sunday morning. So rather than teach our children ourselves in the word of God, we give that to the youth pastor or to the Sunday school teacher. Get my kid to heaven. That's right. I'm not anti-sunning school, so I don't want people to be like, Heidi hate Sunday school. That's not true. What I'm saying is it doesn't stop there. That's right. Your responsibility is not just to take your children to church. Your responsibility is to disciple your children in the ways of the Lord when you rise up and when you sit down, when you walk along the road. The battle doesn't stop. The battle does not stop. And parents need to recognize that our responsibility is to know who's teaching our children, what are they teaching them. And if you can't be aware of what that is, then you need to teach them yourself. And it's a, it's a I think for mothers like me, especially 25 years ago, it was a bitter pill to swallow, right? Because I was like, first of all, I was told I could never do that. Think of a public school system that's cranking out kids, right? So by the time I graduate from school, I don't feel confident to teach a five-year-old to read. What what's wrong with that? You don't have a teaching certificate, so therefore you can't teach a five-year-old to read. Listen, if I graduate from high school and I can't go back and teach my five five-year-old to read, something's wrong with my graduation from high school, right? But we've been lied to by the world. And when I I taught my my second daughter to read, so the first child was educated in the school system through uh up through second grade, but the rest of our kids have all been homeschooled. And when I taught my daughter Sierra to read, uh, she's now 30 years old, a you know, beautiful young married woman herself, this light bulb went on inside my heart and I thought, I have been lied to. I have been lied to. I've been made to believe that I'm not adequate enough, that I can't teach my children, that somebody else is smarter than me and more professional. But the reality is God gave those children to me. And if he gave them to me, he'll equip me. And moms need to know that you're equipped already. If God gave you the children, he's given you the means to educate them. And there's something empowering about that, recognizing that the strength doesn't need to come from inside of me. It comes from the Lord of Heaven's armies through me who said, You can do all things through Christ who gives you strength, even homeschool your kids. Uh people can do it, they need to know.
SPEAKER_02Amen. I praise God for you and for your passion and for that zeal. I pray that so many moms hear that and dads and they go, Yes, we can do it. Let's do it. Be faithful. Where can people, and and certainly a lot of ladies I know already use your material, but where can they go to listen to you go off like this more and more?
SPEAKER_00Well, I have a podcast that airs five days a week. It's called Off the Bench with Heidi St. John. It's anywhere that that podcasts are available. And I do a women's Bible study. Uh, it's open to women of all ages, and that is called Faith That Speaks. It comes out of Psalm 107, let the redeemed of the Lord say so. God has called us to speak. Our faith should be a faith that speaks. And I like to ask women, if your faith found its voice, what would it say?
SPEAKER_01Amen.
SPEAKER_00What would it say? And so uh I write new Bible studies, they release every month over there for the month of April, May. I've written a study called Supernatural, Having a Creator Changes Everything, and we'll be taking uh the members of that organization through Genesis 1 to 11 and getting back to the foundations. We've covered uh uh five traits of false teachers, trying to help uncover the false doctrine that's leading so many people astray in the culture right now and centering them on the never-changing, anchoring word of God. Amen.
SPEAKER_02Grateful for you, Heidi. Keep it up.
SPEAKER_00Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for listening and watching for loads of free resources or to learn more about our ministry here for the gospel and to partner with us with either a one-time or a recurring gift. You can go to forthegospel.org and all of the information about our ministry is there. As well, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel where all of our resources are available for free. And be sure to follow us on all social media channels. I will be back next Monday with another episode. For now, keep on living for the gospel.