Jesus Christ graced Ron with salvation late in his college career at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1974. In entering his first church ministry, a lack of a Biblical material on education led him to the Christian History Movement and the works of R.J. Rushdoony. Since 1980, Ron has studied and taught the Biblically and historically identified applied-faith theology and philosophy outlined in this book.
God gave Ron a voracious appetite for learning about everything. Ron studied math and physics in college, and then pursued professional landscape architecture—design is a central component to his calling. He gained a passion for education after finding that a full-orbed Biblical treatment of education was nowhere to be found in contemporary literature.
Ever since about 1977, Ron devoted his life to understand God’s earthly and eternal purposes for mankind, to help others know them, and to derive and spread a thoroughly Biblical system of education aimed toward God’s ends for His people.
Ron’s success in pioneering day and home schools has long proven the effectiveness of systematic Biblical thinking. His work has been published internationally and translated into Spanish. Gloriously married since 1971, Ron and Christina have five children, five more sons- and daughters-in-law, and eleven grandchildren, all walking with Christ. American Heritage Christian Church ordained Ron in 1984.
Ron’s educational and worldview ministry website is www.getwisdom.us. He’s also on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/GetWisdomMakingChristianHeroesOfOrdinaryPeople.
Q: Thank you for this interview, Ron. Can you tell us what your latest book, Thy Will Be Done: When All Nations Call God Blessed, is all about?
A: Some might consider the book an earth shaking premise. What if the Father answered Jesus’ prayer and mankind obeyed God on earth as all do in heaven? What would we see? We all want to go to heaven, but what if God gave us a substantial glimpse of heaven in our earthly lives, not to replace the eternal goal, but to encourage us by His real grace of blessing?
This is no utopian dream. Thy Will Be Done is an eager, popular speculation on the answer in terms of Scripture, best expressions in history and personal experience. It is a culmination of a lifetime of research and thought upon the potential of life in Christ, in every area of life.
Q: How did you come up with the idea?
A: God planted the seed of this book early in my life. As a new believer interested in child education, I could not believe that God wanted Christians to base their views on evolutionary psychology, which was all I could find in the mainstream literature. Discovering God’s providence in what Verna Hall called the chain of Christianity moving westward, prompted learning from the best examples of history tested in light of the Word of God.
My life’s work has been to share the notion that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is far more comprehensive, exciting and real than accepted. Christian life should be an adventure of faith.
In the end, my publisher suggested this particular expression of those ideas.
Q: What kind of research did you do before and during the writing of your book?
A: The draft of this whole book came as a kind of stream of consciousness writing, though it covers many topics important to us all. We have collected over several decades what I like to call a Biblical body of wisdom.
This effort, then, flowed out of long held, ever refined and corrected understanding, based upon long Biblical and historic research and study, crafted and corrected educational activity, and other personal experience. Jesus says you know a tree by its fruit. We have been quite encouraged by the fruit we have seen.
For some topics, I needed to go back for a bit of new research to fill in gaps. But I tried to stay with a presentation of Biblical ideas in an accessible manner. I tried to avoid overly technical or academic language.
Q: If a reader can come away from reading your book with one valuable message, what would that be? 
A: In the last two hundred years or so, Christianity has suffered increasingly from a severely shriveled vision for this life. We have settled far short of God’s intent, merely holding out for eternity until we die or are raptured. Church leaders have told believers not to get involved in the world except merely to get people saved because it belongs to Satan. We have been very pessimistic regarding the power of God so often revealed in His Word.
On the other hand, the mainstream of the historic faith, reflecting the whole counsel of Scripture, speaks of an optimistic redemption of the world “as far the curse is found!” At the least, the church has been somewhat derelict of the foundations that support the Gospel work, namely a prosperous economy with generosity, and civil justice and liberty. Jesus bought back the world on the cross. While there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, I believe it is time to return to the big view of the Gospel where the government is on His shoulder, and the ministry of the Holy Spirit is successful.
Therefore, I hope the reader will take away a sense of individual purpose and vision for a heroic Gospel life, along with some fundamental educational tools for learning to live it in reality.
Q: Can you give us a short excerpt?
A: From Chapter One:
God gave man an imagination. The imagination provides a faculty for conceiving of things that do not exist or go unseen. Using this imagination, we can envision and design new things as if they already exist in reality. We call this creativity. The fact that the Bible denounces vain imagination (Genesis 8:21)—the selfish, sinful, God-usurping, human one—does not mean that the imagination is solely evil. In fact, the great evangelical, Yale University president Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), claimed that the Bible does not primarily appeal to intellect or emotion, but to the imagination. Consider the lilies…. The Kingdom of God is like….Accordingly, this essay seeks to pique godly imaginations to conceive and formulate a fulfilled Biblical Christianity in the world. We wish to reach every serious Christian, to encourage stirring up every gift, upon obedience, toward the fulfillment of Christ’s instructive prayer.
Q: In your own experience, is it hard to get a nonfiction book published today? How did you do it?
A: Yes, it is very difficult to publish on traditional terms. Jerry Nordskog established Nordskog Publishing to fill a needed niche in Christian thinking at the urging of our mutual friend and my pastor the late Chris Hoops. My dad worked for Jerry Nordskog’s dad from the time I was baby. He is thus a life-long friend, and has long supported my educational ministry work. We share the Christian worldview to a very high degree. For the past six years I have served as Jerry’s theology and manuscript review editor. Jerry actually suggested I write this book. I have worked and am working hard to honor his investment.
Q: What’s a typical day like for you?
A: Oh, you really don’t want to know…
Just kidding. Long work days are the norm. Aside from Nordskog Publishing duties on behalf of other authors’ work, contractual design obligations as a practicing landscape architect—no joke—and sharing the fruit of my labors in Thy Will Be Done, I am working on developing personal missionary support for an incredibly important and far reaching educational work in Uganda.
Q: What’s next for you?
A: I consider the success of this book a most important, however small, contribution to the redeeming of Americans and others to Christ. The reintroduction of the ideas represented in Thy Will Be Done are critical to the restoration of Christian societies and the foundations for the Gospel work worldwide. The Psalmist asks, if the Foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? I have devoted my life to restoring the foundations. I hope to spend considerable time and effort to the book’s success.
For the same reason, I hope to answer the call to the work in Uganda. To expand a little, the work of the Master’s Institute for Education is capable of redeeming the entire country and its culture. It is sponsored primarily by Ugandan Christians themselves. A group there, New Hope Uganda, has used my educational system for the past 25 years. It is catching on because of its success and an increasing number of people, including educators, business people and government officials, wish to reproduce the same good fruit of true Biblical education—relational, character-, faith-, wisdom- and skill-based—and see it become the mainstream in the nation.
Q: Thank you so much for this interview, Ron. We wish you much success!
A: Thank you for the opportunity to share! If I have piqued interest you can read more about Thy Will Be Done online at Nordskog Publishing and at Amazon.com. The book should be in regular bookstore distribution soon. Ask for it! If the message moves you, please share it!
As The Pages Turn 