The Foundations of American Education – Quotes from the Founders of Our Earliest Colleges

The motto of Harvard in its beginning was, “For Christ and the Church.” Yale’s founder said, “Every student shall consider that the main end of his study is to know God through Jesus Christ.” Princeton’s motto was, “Under God’s power, she flourishes.” Did you know that Jonathan Edwards was the third President of Princeton? I’m talking about the preacher who preached the famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. He was one of the primary leaders of the first Great Awakening. Did you know he was one of the Presidents of Princeton? The first President of Princeton, Jonathan Dickenson, said this, “Cursed be all learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ.” That’s the way education in America started.

“Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser; teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning.” (Proverbs 9:9 ESV)

Give Him 15 minutes in prayer:

• Call the colleges and universities founded as seminaries or as centers of Christian education back to their roots!
• Intercede for prayer groups to get started on college campuses to prime the pump for revival!
• Look at private universities in your city or state and find out how they were founded. What is their motto? If it honors God, decree it over the campus! If it dishonors Him, decree the scriptural opposite!
• Pray over all the schools in your neighborhood, asking God to move on the students and families represented there. Prayer walk them, if you can.

A prayer you can pray:

Father, I call for prayer groups to rise up on college campuses nationwide. I pray that those colleges and universities that were established to glorify Christ and train young men and women of God in His ways for their careers would glorify Him once again! Lord, let our nation’s schools of higher learning be filled with the sound of revival! Send another Jesus movement to this generation! Let the instructors who are filled with the Holy Spirit become the Christian mentors they were placed there by You to be. Show me if there are any private colleges or universities near me or in my state that need to be called back to their roots. Grace to the mountain of education, Jesus! Grace, grace, grace. Amen

Today’s decree:

I decree that every American student shall come to a point in their college years where they shall consider that the main end of their study is to know God through Jesus Christ!