Noebel was educated at the Milwaukee Bible College (now
Grace Christian University),
Hope College (
Holland, Michigan, B.A.), and the
University of Tulsa (M.A.). He studied philosophy in graduate school at the
University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was ordained a minister in 1961. In 1965, Noebel wrote a pamphlet, "Communism, Hypnotism and The Beatles." It was followed in 1966 by
Rhythm, Riots, and Revolution, which added to the debate about the presence of Communism in music, especially
folk and
folk rock. He saw contemporary popular music as a
Soviet plot to brainwash American youth. Unlike some other religious critics of popular music, he defended his analysis with references outside the Bible, using scholarly footnotes and quotations. His work was widely adopted by later critics of rock music. From 1971–1977, Noebel served as vice-president and president, as well as professor of Biblical Studies at American Christian College, founded by the evangelist
Billy James Hargis in
Tulsa, Oklahoma. He also joined the
American Philosophical Association and the Southwestern Philosophical Society. He joined the
John Birch Society in the 1960s, but left in 1986. Over the next several years, Noebel wrote about the dangers he saw in popular music,
homosexuality and
AIDS. Christian Crusade Recordings of Tulsa released a
spoken word album,
The Marxist Minstrels (1973). Its back cover promotes the book by the same name. Published in 1973, it expanded on Noebel's theories about Communist intentions in rock music. He later co-authored
AIDS: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome: A Special Report (1986), and contributed frequent articles against homosexuality to
The Journal. In 1991, he wrote
Understanding the Times: The Religious Worldviews of Our Day and the Search for Truth, a textbook interpreting current intellectual movements, including biblical Christianity, secular humanism, Marxism–Leninism, the New Age Movement, Islam, and postmodernism. It is widely used among Protestant schools, churches and colleges, either in its unabridged or abridged formats.
Ministry Watch described it as his most notable book. In 2000, Noebel co-authored
Mind Siege: The Battle for Truth in the New Millennium with
Timothy LaHaye, a generalized attack on secular humanism. Paul Kurtz, editor-in-chief of
Free Inquiry, noted that the authors claim that [T]he secular humanist ideology dominates the major institutions of American life-including the
American Civil Liberties Union, the
National Organization for Women, the
National Endowment for the Arts, the National Association of Biology Teachers, the major television networks, the major foundations (Ford, Rockefeller, etc.), the
National Council of Churches, the liberal wing of the
Democratic Party, the
United Nations,
UNESCO,
Harvard,
Yale, and two thousand other colleges and universities! Noebel has also created numerous educational materials, including textbooks (with teacher's guides) and video curricula. ==Works==