Also in my companion story, I note that these two sermons, by Olive Branch Community Church teaching pastor Greg Harris, are not necessarily characteristic of the weekly Sunday sermon fare at Olive Branch; much of the ideological and political indoctrination of Olive Branch members occurs via a parallel institution headed by several Olive Branch members, the Truth and Liberty Covenant Coalition, whose website promotes state succession and declares, "We assert that God's Law, as recorded in the Holy Scriptures, is supreme in our land."

In the second transcript, pastor Greg Harris attacks evolution and promotes the creationist Discovery Institute, then claims the existence of a vast, all-pervasive conspiracy by "secular humanism", the agenda and doctrines of which, Harris suggests, are disseminated by a wide range of vehicles - from Pepsi Cola billboards to the Berenstain Bear children's books. The vast conspiracy, alleges Harris, has spawned the sexual revolution and driven prayer out of schools, and is now promoting the "viewpoints of homosexuality" within schools, as part of a master plan to implement totalitarian government.

Pastor Greg Harris, Olive Branch Community Church, "Election Sunday 2012", 10-28-2012 ( http://www.olive-branch.org/media/message-archive/ )

[29:00] "...obviously, we need to be a people of the Word. You need to know the Ten Commandments. And, I mean, know `em. Because God's Law points out, very specifically, the natural law. God's Law makes natural law brilliantly clear because natural law is just God's Law - it's just not been clarified, in words, for us.

Natural law exists in a sense that we know we shouldn't kill people, we know we shouldn't steal from people, we know we shouldn't act in certain ways, in certain scenarios. If you want - Some people say, `Oh, that's all your culture.' It's not true. Every culture has laws against murder. Every culture has laws against theft. Every culture has laws against lying. Every culture, regardless of the culture - that's natural law. We have been granted and given, by God, the beauty of those laws written down, and principles for us, in the word of God.

And some of you guys are going, `You sound like you're saying every law should be from the Bible - like, you know, that one where teenage kids, you know, when they tell their parents off they should be killed.' Some of you are agreeing with that law. Um [laughter from audience], no, I'm not saying that.

I'm saying, the principles of the law are true. The principles of the law are true. That principle, in that law, is true. You say, `Well, what do you mean ?'  The government of the time period when that law was written were [sic] the parents. And a `child' was not a baby or a little kid, it was considered, from that, upwards of twenty to thirty years of age.

And so, when you have a twenty of thirty year old unwilling to listen to his parents - who are the government - it's talking about, literally, rebelling against your institutions, in a wrong manner. That's why it receives capital punishment. They're being the Benedict Arnolds of their time period."

Pastor Greg Harris, Olive Branch Community Church, "Secular Humanism", September 30, 2012 ( http://www.olive-branch.org/media/message-archive/ )

[13:45] "We've been infected by secular humanism in ways we don't even realize. It begins to build when we realize - I want to give you a little bit of help though, because it's a powerful concept but it doesn't seem to help a whole lot in certain categories. Let me give you a very good example:

They have four "big bangs" that they can't get past - and we call this, this - they don't have a solution to four "big bangs". Now I understand, I'm not advocating Big Bang vs. Creation, all that kind of stuff, I get that. Let;'s just say, on their own front they believe that the beginning was a Big Bang - a big BANG! And then it all came about. And so, we'll just call it that.

There's four big BANGS! that happened. The Big Bangs began with the creation. You've got the beginning, the Big Bang of the universe. Where did all this come from ? How did it all fall into place ? How did it all get together ? How does dis-organization become organized ? And they really don't have a solution to that. They can keep pressing back, and  back, and back, and they start discovering all these laws and all this stuff, and as science has advanced, it's getting more and more difficult to ignore that there's some purpose and reason behind everything.

Now, I don't have time to get into all that. I'll point you guys to check oiut the Discovery Institute and all kinds of interesting groups that are out there that talk about the scientific aspects, and how design and the creation come together.

But really, when you get down to it, secular humanists have no knowledge of how to answer this question, of the origin of the Universe.

The second one they really don't have a question to is the origin of life. Used to be, `Hey, there's this puddle of goo, and out came this thing, and we would talk about Francis and Crick and all these - the discoverers of DNA - and then `Aww, look - they found out this, and this other experiment here, where they put their molecules together and it created life' - No, it didn't. It created an amino acids that were, that countered themselves, it couldn't survive outside of its own created environment.

They have never been able to  solve where life comes from non-life. It's become an impossibility in our minds, to them it's just a riddle that's driving them crazy.

In the movie "Expelled", when Dawkins was asked where life came from - and Richard Dawkins is one of the famous atheists right now who's very strong with the humanist men, humanist movement - was asked, `Well, if there's not a design creator, where did all the life come from ?' He says, `Well, it came from aliens. They seeded it, they had to have come, that's the best hypothesis we have right now - they had to bring it here and start it up. Because there's not enough time,' he said, `there's not enough time for evolution to occur, on this planet. So it must have started somewhere else and they brought it here.'

To me, that's just pushing the problem off - `Well, we don't have to discuss that, because it happened somewhere else. We don't have to deal with that.' It's not a `God in the gaps' theory, it's an "alien in the gaps' theory.

[...]  

[22:45] We think in terms of morals and values - but they [secular humanists] can't. You can't if God - if man is the measure of all things, ethics are just feelings. You do what you feel. And this is where we begin to see where their ideas infected us the most.

Do we make decisions based on values ? Based on truths and based on the realities of the presence of God ? Who - God is the moral giver, and says `I will punish you and I will hold you to these things', or do we just go off and do what we feel ? Do we run off, `Oh, I just feel like doing this today. OH! - I have the impulse to do this, so I do it. You know, I find myself acting in a manner that I don't want to act because I just wind up running after my own flesh. Now, the danger is, if Christianity is true, and we believe it is, then you end up running after your flesh more than you end up running after the virtue. You end up running after what you desire more than you end uo running after what God longs for us to be like.

And when that happens, you have a vastly dangerous situation occur - Galatians Chapter 6, verse 5, puts it this way - `The one who sows to hus own flesh from his flesh will reap corruption. But the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life.'

And so if we are free, thrown off - with no God to hold us to a moral value system, with no God to challenge us, with no God to keep us there, if we are the measure of all things, and we're just animals, guys - who gives a rip if I kill you all right all now, with gas, and I'll walk out of the room.

Because you're just machines, you're just as equal to the dirt on the floor. So what, you're randomly put together, a little bit more complex. Who says Hitler was a bad guy ?! Give me the moral value system that declares that and I'll give you theirs, which says, `Well, in his culture he was a hero, at the time. It's just, whoever wins makes history. It's whatever has the most power in the end, gets to declare what's right and what was wrong.' - These are the things you hear today. These are the things that are taught at RCC. I had them, had those things taught to me at RCC.

These are the declarations, that if a child is in the womb, three inches away, it's OK to kill it. But if it's in a - on the other side of a wall, then, `Oh, now it's a life." Who made that up ? Except whim. Desire.

What is marriage ? It's what we want it to be. Whim. Desire. Not morals. Not values. Whim.

Which gets really odd that you can't teach anything you want in schools. Isn't it odd ? This is actually - not that you teachers who are in the room do this - I don't believe you do, I know you don't, I've talked to  many of you, I know you.

But this is the only mandated religion allowed to be taught in the schools. Every other religion is not allowed to pray. Secular humanism gets its way - it's in every textbook. I have my  textbooks at home still, I read them, I open them up - and they say that it's in Berenstain Bear's books.

You don't think it's everywhere ? Picked up one day, a few years ago, from a bunch of books we'd grabbed - it's called "Berenstain Bears' Guide To Nature". We had it in our house, I pulled it out, was reading it, and it's like, and asked this question - `What's nature ?' First page. Flip it over, there's this big spread with a bear pointing at you like this, goin' - and he goes, `Nature is all there is, all there was, and all there ever will be. Nature is you and nature is me.' That's how I always read the Berenstain Bear books [laughter, from audience].

That's secular humanism. That's Carl Sagan's statement from the movie "Cosmos' - which is the primary tool that they've used, for years, to tell people about what Astronomy really is. And it's secular humanist in nature. On purpose.

Carl Sagan helped sign the humanist manifesto too.

Guys, this is everywhere.

Right now, if you'll drive down the 91 Freeway on your way to go to Berean's, you'll pass a very powerful Pepsi sign that says, `Live for now'.

That's secular humanism. It's everywhere. And, it's infected us. Because it can't but help infect us.

There are two major vehicles - that they claim that the Humanist Manifest, to drive forth their religious perspective, was, number one, education, they believe was the salvation for all human beings. They believe if they could educate and indoctrinate the people they'd win, that the old religions would die off.

Humanist Manifesto II was written because they were so frustrated the religions hadn't died yet. And the conversation on humanism became virulent and has birthed the books that we hear now, from Harris, and from Dawkins and these guys, what are called the "new atheists" - an intentional movement built out of the secular humanist movement - guys, this stuff is on, they're doing this on purpose, it's a religion. It's not an idea.

They call themselves religious. The United States Supreme Court declared them a religion. This is a religious perspective. And so, when they have wonderful terms like this, `Don't you dare push you morality on me,' you can now simply say, `Hold on a second - we've both got a morality here. Which one's pushing what ?'  

Because there's one truth they also knew - that if chaos begins to grow in human beings, there's a natural reaction that must occur. And that's called `government'. And they intentionally, at the beginning., said, `Wherever we find human beings being restricted by government we want to release it.'

And so they began with the sexual revolution, to begin to release these things, fighting them off. They started with school prayer, they moved on to remove religion out of there, they started pushin' into the other environments, and on purpose they began to move things forward so that what happened was, eventually, it just secularized the society.

And that's the intention, from Humanist Manifesto I, also seen in Humanist Manifesto II, has really led us to a lot of the odd things that we're dealing with today.

And Francis Schaeffer, in 1970, said, before there was any real crazy conversations about homosexuality, said, `the biggest things you're going to have face after abortion will be homosexuality, polygamy and, um, the drug culture and these other things.' He laid out our world we live in today. It is odd, how exact he was.

He understood humanism so well, he said it's mathematical - in one of the messages I watched him give in 1982, two years before he died. And he laid out everything we fight in the culture wars today.

Because if human beings are left to themselves, to be the ethic they want to be, what will happen next ? - he said - is that the culture rises and it gets more chaotic, the government will clamp down.

Why don't you have chimneys in your houses anymore ? `Cause you're not smart enough to know not to burn bad things in your chimneys.

The totalitarian laws of our state are existing because people live on whim. And we're not trusted any more. That's why we wrestle with - at the same time it's so maddening to us - that's why the viewpoints of homosexuality are being pressed into all the teachers in this room are being frustrated with the fact they have to teach it, they can't say anything against it.

They can't even ignore it. It's in the curriculum !

This is secular humanism.

Now, this is not to make you angry..." [30:28]