The family is under attack as never before in history. Abortion takes the lives of millions of innocent unborn children before they can even draw their first breath. Divorce shatters families in the millions. And millions more people live together before marriage, not realizing that their lack of commitment before marriage increases the odds that their relationship will fail even if they decide to marry later.

The latest attack comes in the form of redefining or abolishing traditional male and female roles. It isn't enough that gay-marriage advocates push to redefine marriage and that movies, music and TV glorify promiscuity and ridicule traditional roles. Now these roles are being abolished altogether.

Courtesy of the federal government, "father" and "mother" are on the way out, being replaced with the new politically correct terms "parent one" and "parent two."

The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) has announced that it will replace the gender-specific terms "mother" and "father" in the 2014-15 federal student aid application form with "parent one" and "parent two." The new language is aimed at accommodating students who have grown up in households headed by homosexual couples, according to a statement released by the DOE.

Political correctness vs. the Bible

How low has a country sunk when even the words "mother" and "father" are no longer correct terms to use? To be politically correct, do we also change what God said in Exodus 20:12 from "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you" (New International Version) to "Honor your 'parent one' and your 'parent two'"?

And how do we decide who is parent one and who is parent two? If parent one and parent two split up, who becomes the new parent one and parent two?

This is clearly against the intentions of our Creator, who inspired this passage in Proverbs 1:8: "Listen, my son, to your father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching" (NIV). Perhaps to be politically correct this proverb should read, "Listen, my son, to your parent one's instruction, and do not forsake your parent two's teaching."

Who's really behind anti-family movements?

The question that comes to mind is who is really behind all of this political correctness, and why? There's plenty of blame to go around—the gay rights movement's efforts to redefine marriage, liberal judges who allow women to kill their own unborn babies through abortion, purveyors of perversion who systematically undermine long-held values. Yet the fact is, in effect they're all just puppets in someone else's hands. But whose? Who hates the family so much to wage a war against it?

In the pages of The Good News we're not afraid to point the finger at exactly who it is who's ultimately leading efforts to destroy the family. The guilty party is Satan the devil, the arch-deceiver of old.

Satan hates the institutions of marriage and family so much that he has declared war on them, attacking relentlessly with the many tools at his disposal. This unseen being isn't a fairy tale, as some think. He is all too real (read the online Bible study aid Is There Really a Devil?).

Ephesians 6:12 shows the power Satan and his demonic accomplices can have over us: "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood [other human beings], but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (NIV, emphasis added throughout).

Consider some of Satan's accomplishments over recent decades. So far he has managed to take God out of schools and removed mention of Him from many arenas of public life, legalized gay marriages in far too many states, and accomplished the abortion of tens of millions of unborn babies.

Further, he is increasingly managing to take away parents' rights over their children. As a case in point, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced May 1, 2013, that the "morning after" pill known as Plan B (which induces spontaneous abortion) should be available without a prescription for teenagers starting at age 15. The teens do not have to get parental permission.

All-out warfare is under way to destroy the family, which God ordained at the beginning of creation.

Our Creator God established the family

The Bible shows that God established the family back in the Garden of Eden. The first two chapters of Genesis present God's awesome work as Creator. He formed and fashioned our planet, filled the oceans, created mountains and planted forests with an exquisite variety of life. His variety of creatures such as hummingbirds, whales and wallabies shows the vastness of His mind.

And He created all of that for His ultimate physical creation, a man and woman united as husband and wife in a loving family, to live in and take care of (Genesis 1:27-28; Genesis 2:18, Genesis 2:20-24).

God created the family, which comprises both marriage and parenthood. These two elements reveal God's character and His perfect plan for mankind. The love between a husband and wife provides a glimpse of Christ's passionate devotion to us as His Bride, the Church (to learn more, be sure to read "The Ultimate Purpose of Marriage").

In Matthew 19:4-6 Jesus Christ said: "Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."

God is our ultimate Parent, and we are His human offspring. Human parents experiencing the ups and downs of parenthood provide an example to us of God's tenderness and patience toward us as His children.

Families are close to God's heart. When God created man, He said, "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him" (Genesis 2:18). After creating this first man and woman, "God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth'" (Genesis 1:28).

Our human families exist to teach us about the family of God and His plan for mankind —that we must be born into His family.

And Satan knew this. So Satan, in his first attempt to destroy God's plan by destroying the family, presented himself to Eve in the Garden of Eden. Satan was able to deceive Eve. We too can fall prey to Satan if we aren't careful, as mentioned in 2 Corinthians 11:3: "But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."

Who will win the war over you and your family?

We are in an epic spiritual war. In this war it is critically important that we know Satan's tactics. To be ignorant of his schemes and plans of attack is to give him the advantage in your life.

In Ephesians 4:27 we are commanded to "not make room for the devil" (NRSV). When you make room for the enemy by living in sin, whether by omission or commission, you have exposed yourself to Satan. And in most cases he will take that opportunity to rush in and crush you and your family! The apostle Paul described what happens when people do "make room for the devil" and let him deceive them (often unwittingly) into accepting his perverted values and twisted thinking.

Notice what Paul wrote in Romans 1:18-32 (NIV): "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

"For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

"Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

"Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

"Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.

"Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them."

Notice some of the terms that Paul, writing under divine inspiration, used: depravity (homosexual marriage, anyone?), murder (what about abortions in the millions?) deceit (such as "parent one" and "parent two"). Yes, there is indeed a war on the family—one foretold in Scripture 2,000 years ago. It's the natural outgrowth of people rejecting God and having the arrogance to think we know better.

A promise of hope

But there is hope. God's promise from 2 Chronicles 7:14 holds true today: "If My people who are called by My name will 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."

We must not get caught up in this world's ungodly values and be swayed by the popular music, TV, movies and anything else bent on destroying the family unit and God's truth. We must teach our children about God and the Bible, because the schools certainly will not. We must work hard to preserve the family unit as God intended.

In spite of what government says, there is no "parent one" and "parent two," which is a biological fiction on its face. Instead, there is a mother and father as God intended it. He is our Father and not parent one, and His Church nourishes us as a mother, not parent two.

That is what the human family represents. God has a beautiful plan for all of mankind, and it starts with the family unit, what is known as the traditional family. Satan, though he is trying, will not succeed in destroying the family. For God's family will prevail!