Sermon: Are You Being Brainwashed? (Part 4)

Public Opinion, Desensitization, Folly and Wisdom
#812
Martin G. Collins
Given 03-Feb-07; 73 minutes

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I am going to begin this sermon by reading a quote to you, and then I will let you know who said it:

The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious. The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly...it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.

The author of that was Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister.

For a long time, leaders of countries have been able to recognize how to manipulate people. Long before there was television, images were placed for "playback" in America's memory banks. First we had the print media, then radio, and then, starting early in the twentieth century with the first of the real mass media, the movies.

Hollywood is a component of a media cartel, a point made more obvious by the creation of "entertainment conglomerates" through mergers and acquisitions. In this way, a mere handful of companies, with interlocking boards composed of people within elite groups, control all of what we see in theaters, on television, in the print media, and, more lately, on the internet.

As movies were becoming a truly mass-media phenomenon, commentator Walter Lippmann described their power, along with the power of media generally, in shaping "public opinion." In his 1921 "handbook" on the mass manipulation of the public mind, called Public Opinion, Lippmann, writes in his introductory chapter, "The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads":

Public opinion deals with indirect, unseen, and puzzling facts, and there is nothing obvious about them.... The pictures inside the heads of these human beings, the pictures of themselves, of others, of their needs, purposes and relationships, are their opinions. Those pictures, acted on by groups of people, or by individuals acting in the name of groups, are Public Opinion with capital letters.... The picture inside [the head] so often misleads men in their dealings with the world outside.

Proverbs 14:12; 16:25 There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.

We certainly see that in this society today. Not only are minds being manipulated, but people are willingly going down the path of that deception. Human reasoning has led mankind astray enough times to show that even "the foolishness of God is wiser than men."Many people look to psychiatrists and psychologists for insights and solutions to life's problems, but God inspired the apostle Paul to write,

I Corinthians 1:20 "Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?"

That certainly is a true and pointed statement that some of the information that comes from the world and that is poured by funnel into the heads of the children in the public schools is useless information. In reality, public opinion is synonymous with foolishness. There is something called the "Six-Step Attitudinal Change Plan," which gives Globalist planners the ability to silently—almost invisibly—change the attitudes and values of the entire population of the world. They must achieve this goal before they stage the appearance of their messiah. Their plan goes on no matter what.

Nothing seems so insidious to most people as the idea that some force is silently, invisibly, and covertly manipulating and changing their lives. Nobody likes being manipulated, and it is more dangerous if they do not know that it is happening to them. Today, people are being secretly and invisibly bombarded with propaganda through social debates in the media. Often the public is "set-up" with deliberately created or triggered situations, specifically designed to change our values and attitudes on a grand scale unlike any seen before in the history of mankind.

The media are some of the main tools used to brainwash the masses. We are all being brutally molested by television, movies, and the print media. This molestation is not sexual; it is mental, emotional, and, above all, spiritual. There is a conscious, organized effort to deceive us in every area of life. More specifically than that, there is an organized plan to subtly push us into the Global Communitarian World. This process is called the Attitudinal Change Plan.

We have all noticed bits and pieces of the propaganda process over the years, but the extent to which we are being manipulated has not been very clear until recently. None of us wants to admit that we have been had. Several watchmen have warned of this attitudinal brainwashing plan over the years, but not until recently has it become so vividly obvious in everything in the media.

Recently, David Bay of The Cutting Edge mapped out the Six-Step Attitudinal Change Plan. This plan is being used in all areas of society to transform this world into fully accepting the satanic Globalist Communitarian way of life. It is used to brainwash the masses into accepting the perverted desires of the Globalists. This includes the rejection of biblically-based Christianity and constitutional freedoms. It also includes the acceptance of wars, slavery, sexual perversions, murder of innocents, homosexuality, pedophilia, and euthanasia, to name just a few.

Here is the Six-Step Attitudinal Change Plan that is being used to change our thinking to conform to the pop culture of Satan's one-world philosophy:

Step 1 - Introduction of a perverted practice so offensive that it can scarcely be discussed in public is advocated by a respected expert in a respected forum.

Step 2 - At first, the public is shocked, then outraged, but the subject is openly talked about.

Step 3 - The very fact that such a thing could be publicly debated becomes the subject of the debate.

Homosexuality comes to mind. Everyone was appalled when it hit the public scene, shocked and outraged and openly talked about it. Then, as it says in Step 3, "The very fact that such a thing could be publicly debated becomes the subject of the debate." The discussion was not the debate of whether homosexuality should be done or not; the discussion in the media was how we discuss it and whether we should discuss it in the media. It was not the sin itself.

Step 4 - In the process, sheer repetition of the shocking subject under discussion has a gradual dulling effect.

We can certainly see that, even in the church, where we have become so numb to hearing about homosexuality and many other sins.

Step 5 - People are eventually no longer shocked by the subject.

We can say that about many things in the media today, such as homosexuality, pedophilia, euthanasia, and so on.

Step 6 - No longer outraged, people begin to argue for positions to moderate the extreme, or they accept the premise, challenging instead the means to achieve it.

This happened with homosexuality, as you will remember. People shot right on by whether it was a sin or not and began to discuss how it could be accepted in society by the average person.

Public opinion works to find a way to make it acceptable to the majority of the public. That is what we are seeing happen with so many major overt sins that were disgusting and sickening and almost made us throw up back in the '50s and '60s and before.

This insidious method of changing the deeply held-attitudes of people is being successfully directed toward the American population as a whole. For the United Nations, it is even being directed at the world as a whole. The United Nations is passing laws to force these things to be acceptable. Millions of people are experiencing attitudinal changes today on a wide variety of issues—some of which I have already mentioned—but the number is unlimited. Anything perverted, anything against the Ten Commandments is being debated today.

Let us analyze some of the ways in which this plan is being used to brainwash the values of people around the world, especially here in the United States. This is a good indication of how close we are to the end of this age and that we must be prepared to resist the daily brainwashing targeting us. We are being systematically manipulated. Our children are particularly at risk, because the fresh mind of a child is so easily conformed to popular opinion. We know that a few years ago there was debate in the news about "Johnny has two Mommies" or "Johnny has two Daddies." This was being introduced into first grade reading.

The Globalist planners face the same difficulty Hitler faced when he was preparing to begin his slaughter of eighteen million people, including six million Jews. He needed enough young German men who would be willing to pull the trigger. If German young men and women had not been willing to actively participate in the Holocaust, Hitler would have been powerless to carry it out. Thus, we see the value of public opinion and how it removes the sense of personal responsibility.

The same propaganda that happened in World War II, that enabled the Germans to destroy so many people so brutally, is happening today in the programming of the American people and the rest of the world. Opportunely for Hitler, enough young men had been desensitized and emotionally-hardened through various elements in German society prior to his ascension into power that he had little trouble gathering his required manpower to molest and kill groups of the populace deemed undesirable by the State. He had his trigger pullers.

God has provided memorably powerful principles with which to combat such public pressure. For example:

Proverbs 1:10 My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent.

I Corinthians 15:33 Do not be deceived: "Evil company corrupts good habits."

This is another reason why we should put up our defenses toward the world and keep it at arm's length. The needs of Globalist planners are identical in nature but enormously greater in scope. Whereas Hitler needed the manpower to kill his eighteen million victims, Globalist planners need the manpower to kill four billion people.

What could possibly be used to brainwash this society to the point that the minds of individuals are so hardened and the emotions are so out of control that they would participate in the murdering of four billion people? That, by the way, is the number of people that the Globalist environmentalists say must die to make the earth sustainable of animal and human life. In their world, the protection of the animals is their first priority, and human beings are a distant second. Throughout much of this brainwashing by the Globalist, we see Satan's goal to destroy human beings. If God did not intervene, we would wipe ourselves off the face of the earth.

The mass media—television, radio, magazines, newspapers, and computers, to name a few—are some of the primary tools used in hardening our children, desensitizing them in their attitudes toward the value of human life. Let us look at some of these.

The first one is television. The fact that television is a source not actively or critically attended to was made dramatically evident in the late 1960s by an experiment that rocked the world of political and product advertising and forever changed the ways in which the television medium would be used. The results of the experiment still reverberate through the industry, long after its somewhat primitive methods have been perfected. I am going to excerpt from Joyce Nelson's book, The Perfect Machine (New Society Publishers, 1992), a fairly long but very important quotation, because we need to be forewarned about television and its effect.

In November 1969, a researcher named Herbert Krugman, who later became manager of public-opinion research at General Electric headquarters in Connecticut, decided to try to discover what goes on physiologically in the brain of a person watching television. He elicited the co-operation of a twenty-two-year-old secretary and taped a single electrode to the back of her head. The wire from this electrode connected to a Grass Model 7 Polygraph, which in turn interfaced with a Honeywell 7600 computer and a CAT 400B computer.

Flicking on the television, Krugman began monitoring the brainwaves of the subject. What he found through repeated trials was that within about thirty seconds, the brainwaves switched from predominantly beta waves, indicating alert and conscious attention, to predominantly alpha waves, indicating an unfocused, receptive lack of attention: the state of aimless fantasy and daydreaming below the threshold of consciousness. When Krugman's subject turned to reading a magazine, beta waves reappeared, indicating that conscious and alert attentiveness had replaced the daydreaming state.

What surprised Krugman, who had set out to test some McLuhanesque hypotheses about the nature of television-viewing, was how rapidly the alpha-state emerged. Further research revealed that the brain's left hemisphere, which processes information logically and analytically, tunes out while the person is watching television. This tuning-out allows the right hemisphere of the brain, which processes information emotionally and non-critically, to function unimpeded.

"It appears,"wrote Krugman in a report of his findings, "that the mode of response to television is more or less constant and very different from the response to print. That is, the basic electrical response of the brain is clearly to the medium and not to content difference.... [Television is] a communication medium that effortlessly transmits huge quantities of information not thought about at the time of exposure."

What he is saying is that when you are watching television, you have no defense against what is going into your mind and what is being registered there.

Soon, dozens of agencies were engaged in their own research into the television-brain phenomenon and its implications. The findings led to a complete overhaul in the theories, techniques, and practices that had structured the advertising industry and, to an extent, the entire television industry. The key phrase in Krugman's findings was that television transmits "information not thought about at the time of exposure."

As Herbert Krugman noted in the research that transformed the industry, we do not consciously or rationally attend to the material resonating with our unconscious depths at the time of transmission. Later, however, when we encounter a store display, or a real-life situation like one in an AD, or a name on a ballot that conjures up our television experience of the candidate, a wealth of associations is triggered. Schwartz explains: "The function of a display in the store is to recall the consumer's experience of the product in the commercial.... You don't ask for a product: The product asks for you!"

Just interjecting here, Erma Bombeck made a humorously commented that her children would not eat any food for which there was not a commercial. Sadly, that is a true statement.

That is, a person's recall of a commercial is evoked by the product itself, visible on a shelf or island display, interacting with the stored data in his brain. Our internalized media echoes are triggered by products, props, or situations in the environment.

As real-life experience is increasingly replaced by the mediated "experience" of television-viewing, it becomes easy for politicians and market-researchers of all sorts to rely on a base of mediated mass experience that can be evoked by appropriate triggers. The television "world" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: the mass mind takes shape, its participants acting according to media-derived impulses and believing them to be their own personal volition arising out of their own desires and needs. In such a situation, whoever controls the screen controls the future, the past, and the present.

A few weeks ago, when ex-President Ford died, they showed pictures of him, one of which was of him being in a religious service, perhaps after 9/11. He was sitting maybe two rows back, and Hilary was right in front of him. What you saw was Hilary's face, in the middle of the screen, and President Ford's face behind her. The story was about him, but all you could see was her, in the center of the screen. That was on Fox News, which is supposed to be fair and balanced. This is just an indication of how those things are put into our minds, and the American people are being brainwashed to do what the people behind the scenes want them to do.

I want to give you another quotation that feels very important about women. Maybe you can find some comfort if you know this and can resist this brainwashing here. According to Media Sexploitation, by Key, 1976:

Women are carefully trained by media to view themselves as inadequate. They are taught that other women—through the purchases of clothes, cosmetics, food, vocations, avocations, education, etc.—are more desirable and feminine than themselves. Her need to constantly reverify her sexual adequacy through the purchase of merchandise becomes an overwhelming preoccupation, profitable for the merchandisers, but potentially disastrous for the individual.

North American society has a vested interest in reinforcing an individual's failure to achieve sexual maturity. By exploiting unconscious fears, forcing them to repress sexual taboos, the media guarantees blind repressed seeking for value substitutes through commercial products and consumption. Sexual repression, as reinforced by the media, is a most viable marketing technology.

Even for men today, we seem to see every other commercial as being for Viagra or some other similar product.

Cartoons are probably the most violent of all children's programming. They desensitize children, who are too young to be able to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Children who have been fed a steady diet of cartoons are known to have a higher rate of acting violently toward other children. Violent shows that feature "action" violence, gratuitous violence, and violence simply for the sake of violence, brainwash both children and adults into solving their problems with verbal abuse or violent actions. The public school system is having an awful time dealing with these children. A case in point is the recent group beatings of a thirteen-year-old-girl by other teenage girls. There have been two more cases in the last week alone.

In this day and age, it is difficult enough for parents to keep their sons pure without allowing them to drink in through television shows and movies this kind of filth that is seen in the innuendos in just about every production. In many instances, always unbeknownst to you parents, children rather quickly gravitate from sexual innuendo in television shows to soft pornography and then to hard-core pornography. It is proven by no end of surveys and reports and experiments. The young men of this society are developing a harsh "user's mentality" toward women as a result of this influence. There is a great deal of foolishness being promoted among both men and women in this society. Often, the sexes are pitted against each other.

Proverbs 13:16 Every prudent man acts with knowledge, but a fool lays open his folly.

We are certainly seeing that happen to the youth of this nation.

Proverbs 15:21 Folly is joy to him who is destitute of discernment, but a man of understanding walks uprightly.

The apostle Paul warns us about falling into the public opinion trap. He gives us in a very succinct statement a very simple contrast of ways to walk through life:

Ephesians 5:15 See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise...

That is a tremendously profound and powerful statement, as I will show as we go through the sermon.

Ephesians 5:16 ...redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

These are the days that we live in. Evil is being done continuously, and it is being crammed into our minds. Paul says that to take heed, to beware, and to be careful is tremendously important at the end time. We have to make certain that we do heed this. We must give this our undivided attention. It is a command that pulls us up out of the doldrums that television places us in.

To what must we pay attention? We are to take heed with respect to this walk of ours, this godly way of life—to see that we walk circumspectly. The word walk is, of course, a characteristic New Testament word, used often for the way that we live our lives. It refers to the whole of our conduct, behavior, and demeanor. It is an inclusive term, of which there are many in the New Testament that refer to this very thing. What the apostle Paul is concerned about is that we live in such a way that we will always be acting in the light, both in our personal conduct and behavior and in our effect on others.

How are we to walk in this world? Even as Jesus Christ did. We are called to follow in His steps, to function as He did when He was here in this world. The first thing that Paul tells us is this: We do it by not being fools, by not being unwise, but by being wise, by manifesting and exercising wisdom. It appears that Paul divides what he has to say here into three main sections.

First, what is wisdom? We cannot behave as wise people if we do not know what wisdom is. Secondly, he tells us that we can be addressed as somebody who is wise. "Walk," he says, "not as fools but as wise; because you are wise, act as wise people." Thirdly, he tells us how this wisdom which is in us manifests itself; or we could say, we see the results to which this wisdom leads. It means that we have vision and can see the end result of our actions.

The Bible fundamentally says that the man who is not a child of God and who is not a Christian is ultimately a fool. "The fool has said in his heart that there is no God." The Christian life is the only sane life, according to the inspired written word of God. Thus, insanity pleas for crimes of murder, stealing, and such just do not hold any water, because anyone who is ungodly is insane.

The whole trouble with the unbeliever and non-Christian is that he is a fool, lacking in wisdom and understanding. We find exactly the same thing everywhere in the New Testament. Elsewhere, Paul says that the whole trouble with unbelievers is that they have their understanding darkened. They are alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in them.

Let us take a look at what wisdom is not in order to define what wisdom is. Wisdom is not merely knowledge, ability, intelligence, or even genius. We can have all of those and still not have wisdom. It is not even goodness. We must not think of wisdom as being merely the possession of knowledge. We must not think of it as merely meaning man has great ability, natural powers, or special talents. A person may even be highly intelligent to the point of being a genius and yet not have wisdom.

If wisdom is not synonymous with intelligence and ability, or even with genius and goodness, then what is it? It is the power and the ability to apply all of those things. It is the faculty for making use of our intelligence and knowledge, bringing it into relationship with the ordinary practical daily things of life. It is the right application of knowledge.

Wisdom is very similar to judgment. We are familiar with the difference between the mere possession of knowledge and judgment; they are not the same thing at all. There are people who know a great deal, who have wonderful memories and remember all sorts and kinds of facts—but they have no judgment. Consequently, the unbeliever cannot harness his knowledge, cannot apply it, cannot bring it to bear upon particular problems. He is like a tape recording: He can repeat information, but he cannot apply that information without God's Holy Spirit, which helps us to apply wisdom in the things that we understand.

Think of this in various areas of life, in order to see the difference. In the area of music, there are people who are quite good technicians—good performers in the sense that they are accurate, never make any mistakes, and so on. However, they may not be good musicians. They may not be good critics. They may lack the facility of really getting at the soul of what they are playing. They are mechanics, in a sense—mechanically correct, which is both good and essential. They may have the dexterity and agility that is necessary to play the music and may be able to play the notes perfectly, without any mistakes—but they lack the final thing, the thing that ultimately counts. It is the difference between them and the person who seems to have this wholeness of view, this depth of understanding, this ability to take all that he is and all that he knows and has and bring it to play upon a given situation.

This is tremendously important in every area of life, but it is supremely important with respect to a godly way of life. Thus, we begin to see why Paul told the Ephesian church, "See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise."

The harshest influence in radio and other audio channels is popular music. Beethoven was thought of as a music radical in his day. Traditionally in the church, many have thought that country music is God's music. However, can lyrics such as, "He left me fer another," and "To all the girls I've loved before," really be God's music? The world is full of many styles of music. Every culture has its own type of music. Every country has its own national anthem. Individually, we tend to like the type of music we grew up listening to in our teen and young adult years; and as we mature, we begin to like more mature music.

Some people like to listen to "Christian" music—but is a song that promotes false doctrines, like being an angel in heaven or going to church on the day of the sun, better to listen to than a song with a secular theme? The great thing about music, the really powerful thing, is that the very act of listening is accepting an invitation to moral sympathy, to agree with the words. In this way, listening to a song is no different from reading a novel. In both cases, the audience, whether listener or reader, is invited to put himself in the position of the person telling the story. We find ourselves, as we listen to the radio, singing along with certain words because they are repeated over and over again. Remember, that repetition was one of the ways of the attitudinal change.

Since every storyteller has his own point of view and characteristic values, to put oneself in his position is, however briefly, to allow oneself to share his perspective. With time, this perspective can rub off on the audience. We see that in things like "American Idol" and the people who become very famous for their vocal and musical talents. We find people dressing, looking, and sounding like them. When novels or songs serve to affirm the values of a truly moral life, that is a good thing. However, it can be a bad thing, too, if—as is so often the case today—the music or literature in question is in the service of a set of values which are perverse or anti-social.

Like lyrics, the characteristic sounds that make up a musical style also tell a story. Take, for example, rap. Even if you could remove all the singing from a rap album, a characteristic sound would still remain; and in the case of rap, this characteristic sound is the sound of scorn, resentment, and violence. It is a pattern of rhythms that comes very close to the sound of crude physical threat. When considering the morality of music, the total product—performance, lyrics, style, and author—must be taken into account.

All music is a form of worship, because every song is amplifying the value of something. Music leads us on a journey that we take with our time, our desire, our commitment, and our money. That journey takes us to a throne, and whatever is on that throne we worship. The problem is that many of us have very bad gods. I hope it is not true in God's church, but it certainly is in society at large. It is only when we actually understand this that we see the true force of music as a vehicle of morality or perversion.

Ephesians 2:1-3 And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

We should be assured in our own minds that we are not walking as those in the world, because Satan is the prince of the power of the air. He certainly has control of the radio waves.

Although virtually all biblical references to music are positive, there is also a theme of music as a symbol of the human mind in disease. Amos denounces a culture for which the music of religious ritual has become a substitute for the exercise of justice and righteousness.

Amos 5:23-24 Take away from Me the noise of your songs, for I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments. But let justice run down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Amos also paints a picture of a decadent society whose music is part of an indulgent lifestyle that ignores social oppression.

Amos 6:4-6 Who lie on beds of ivory, stretch out on your couches, eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall; who sing idly to the sound of stringed instruments, and invent for yourselves musical instruments like David; who drink wine from bowls, and anoint yourselves with the best ointments, but are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph.

The affliction of Joseph was certainly idolatry, Sabbath-breaking, and the breaking of all of the rest of the commandments. In contrast, the Psalms illustrate the vibrancy of the pictures of music as the expression of heartfelt devotion to God. I just wanted to show you that music is very closely associated with worship.

Now let us get back to the idea of wisdom and folly. If we have right knowledge, we have light. No one can be a Christian without Christ illuminating him. Christ gives us this knowledge, this understanding—but we must also exercise and display wisdom. We are called to this. We cannot behave as lights, we cannot be true representatives of Jesus Christ unless we possess this wisdom and are manifesting it.

We can arrive at a positive definition of wisdom by contrasting it with folly. Keep in mind that we are applying this to the brainwashing that is happening to us through television, radio, music, and the rest of what society has to offer. Back in Ephesians 5:15, we read that Paul wrote, "See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise." Paul expects us to take this up, analyze it, and think very carefully about it. It is such a short statement that quite often we just gloss over it. How are we to know what a wise man is like? How are we to behave in a wise manner? Do not be a fool, he says; do not behave as a foolish man behaves. Thus, we can arrive at a positive definition of wisdom by contrasting it with folly.

What then are the characteristics of the man who is described in the Bible as "the fool," a foolish person, an unwise person? Here are some of his characteristics. These are the things that we have to fight constantly, in order to behave as wise people:

The first characteristic of the foolish person is that he or she is generally governed by feelings. Everything is estimated in terms of feelings instead of reason. Fools cannot give you reasons. Let me give you an obvious example: It is the kind of person who votes for a politician just because they feel he is nice looking or likes the way he sounds or maybe roots for the same race car driver. There is no real reason at all, but he is handsome. What a shallow approach that is! However, it works when television keeps plastering the faces on the screen.

This same thing applies all the way through life. There are so many people who are ruled entirely by their feelings and do not want to use their brains. Even in religious service, they just want happiness and enjoyment. They are there to be entertained, to have a good time. We especially see this in mainstream Christianity. They do not want to be made to think. Life is hard enough as it is, and they do not want to have to struggle with thinking about something serious. They run on feelings only. Those are foolish people, according to Scripture.

Another characteristic of a foolish person is that he is always governed by desire. This type of person must have what he likes, and only whatever he likes is right. He is happy only with things that appeal to him, and he must have it now; he does not have patience. Reason does not enter his thoughts, nor does understanding—only desire. It is easy to see this in the world. The great problem with the world today is that society is being driven by desire. As a result, we see the breakdown of marriage and everything else. People are being directed and determined solely by the innate desires that are in all of us. The foolish person is the one who is governed by these desires at the expense of everything else.

Look at the foolish person from a different angle. The foolish person is always the person who acts and is ruled by impulses and instincts. It is interesting to notice that he generally prides himself on this very thing.

Proverbs 14:29 He who is slow to wrath has great understanding, but he who is impulsive exalts folly.

That verse gives a partial definition of foolishness, shown in the impulsive person. You never know what he is going to do next. An idea will come; he acts on the impulse; and he is almost always sorry that he did.

The Six-Step Attitudinal Change Plan is used to convince people to change their lifestyle dramatically. The reason the change plan works is that it appeals to the feelings of people, stirs their emotions, and steers them away from the facts. Have you noticed that in the past few decades, virtually everything we enjoyed doing has been declared, at one time or another, to be unhealthy for us—from drinking coffee, to eating meat, to eating fish, to exercising, to not exercising; our environment, global warming; and so on and so forth? Everything that we in the American society enjoy doing is declared to be killing us!

If even a fraction of these fear claims were true, Americans would be dying like flies. Instead, our life expectancy continues to climb! In order for corrupt leaders to maintain control over their subjects, they have found that they must sustain a certain level of fear at all times among the populace regarding various issues. Issues such as war, terrorism, environmental destruction, religious upheaval, personal illnesses, and economic crises are just a few of the major ones. This is not to say that there are not wrong things being done by people in the world in these areas. What I am saying is that they have sensationalized and blown them way out of proportion in order to keep people under control and continue to pass laws that restrict our freedoms. They will eventually ban God Himself from the face of the earth. Of course, they cannot actually do this, but they will certainly try.

Their goal is to persuade a significant portion of us, through deceit, that this current industrial economy lifestyle is killing us and that the planet cannot sustain us very much longer. People are encouraged and prodded to voluntarily give up their lifestyle for a counterculture one in which a drastically-reduced population maintains a very basic standard of living, as seen in most polluted communist countries. There are several specific lifestyles that are being forced upon us, and all aid in destroying human life while at one and the same time promoting animal rights. Let us take a brief look at a few lifestyle changes that are well underway, lifestyle changes that are being forced upon us.

1. We are being strongly encouraged to submit to extreme environmentalism. Exaggerated environmental issues such as ozone depletion, global warming, deforestation, over-fishing, and water and air pollution are being used to create an atmosphere of fear. The protection of animals is promoted while our children are murdered by the thousands on a daily basis by abortion. What hypocrisy! The folly driving the environmental movement is seen in this very recent recommendation from the United States government in response to the United Nations report:

The U.S. government has officially recommended that scientists research ways to block out the sun's light as a way to halt global warming without reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. "The level of environmental insanity among US policymakers reaches new heights with this proposal," charged Mike Adams, a consumer health advocate and coauthor of The Real Safety Guide to Protecting Your Environment. "Blocking the sun would devastate global ecosystems, reduce solar power efficiency, harm crops and disrupt the global food supply. It's an idea so insane it could have only come from politicians, not genuine scientists." "The suggestion came in the government's official response to a draft report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC report, written by climate experts from around the world, will form the foundation for the next round of international climate negotiations. The draft was submitted to world governments for comment in 2006.

It is a method to pass more laws that restrict the population of the earth. It is all about power and control.

Ancient Judah had a problem idolizing the environment, and God condemned them for it because of the religious motivation behind the movement. In order to show the gravity of Judah's spiritual condition, Jeremiah compares it with that of exiled Israel, the faithless, backsliding northern kingdom.

Jeremiah 3:6 The LORD said also to me in the days of Josiah the king: "Have you seen what backsliding Israel has done? She has gone up on every high mountain and under every green tree, and there played the harlot."

Keep in mind that this is spiritual harlotry, as is seen in religion.

Jeremiah 3:7-10 "And I said, after she had done all these things, 'Return to Me.' But she did not return. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it. Then I saw that for all the causes for which backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a certificate of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but went and played the harlot also. So it came to pass, through her casual harlotry, that she defiled the land and committed adultery with stones and trees. And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah has not turned to Me with her whole heart, but in pretense," says the LORD.

Idolatry and immorality seemed trivial to Judah. She gave herself to idols of stone and wood, with all their basic fertility and sexual rites. Sacred prostitution was practiced widely. Judah's immorality was obvious to God but went unnoticed by Judah herself.

2. We are being strongly conditioned to accept legalization of crimes like murder as a long-term effect of legalized abortion. New Age doctrine teaches that there is no such thing as murder. According to this false teaching, when someone is killed, his or her spirit is "released into the Reincarnation Cycle," relieving him from the sufferings of this life. They look at it as a positive thing. This belief originated with Satan, who is against God's laws. By promoting this false teaching, Satan is able to again encourage the destruction of mankind. His doctrines are doctrines of death. Especially at the time of the end, human beings willingly and willfully agree with demonic influences to destroy God's Law.

Daniel 7:25 He shall speak pompous words against the Most High, shall persecute the saints of the Most High, and shall intend to change times and law. Then the saints shall be given into his hand for a time and times and half a time.

The context in this section in Daniel is the end of the age under the rulership of the Beast power. This end-time prophecy says that he will think to change the laws. He changes the immutable laws of God, or at least tries to, by passing his own laws. In fact, all of the Ten Commandments are being changed now, either by outright laws or by practice. For example, we see today that God's name is being taken in vain very commonly in everyday speech today. There is no actual law against it, but common cultural bias against it historically kept profanity at a much lower level than we see today. Even the strongest of atheists are using God's name in vain.

The same is true for the commandment to honor our fathers and mothers. We see a tremendous increase in sheer disrespect for parents, and we see laws being passed which pit the children against their parents. For example, a parent can no longer forbid his or her child from having an abortion, because the State has stepped in between them. Some states have legalized that and some have not. More bluntly stated, in many states parents can no longer forbid their children from murdering their illegitimate babies through abortion.

Lying is promoted in television shows and commercial advertisements. Liars are made to look wise, while honest people are made to look like fools. We can go through each commandment and give examples of the flagrant breaking of God's laws in today's society.

Psalm 52:1 Why do you boast in evil, O mighty man? The goodness of God endures continually.

Even though man seeks to make laws that outlaw God's laws, God endures continually, as do His goodness and His laws.

Psalm 52:2-5 Your tongue devises destruction, like a sharp razor, working deceitfully. You love evil more than good, lying rather than speaking righteousness. Selah. You love all devouring words, you deceitful tongue. God shall likewise destroy you forever; He shall take you away, and pluck you out of your dwelling place, and uproot you from the land of the living. Selah.

3. We are being strongly conditioned to accept prostitution. Murder is immoral, as is stealing and lying; therefore, laws have been created to prohibit this kind of behavior. All of the Ten Commandments are being annulled, including the annulment of God's commandment against adultery in Exodus 20:14. Prostitution is the breaking of this commandment, which is defined as including any sex outside of marriage. It is cheating on one's present or future spouse, and it includes pornography.

Matthew 5:27-28 "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

Producers of television shows, movies, and songs, have worked for a long time to convince people it is not wrong by creating such movies as Pretty Woman, which casts a prostitute in one of the lead roles and shows her to appear "normal," even moral. Proverbs 7:1-27 shows how negatively God views prostitution and the fool who pursues it. The last verse is very strongly stated, "Her house is the way to hell, descending to the chambers of death." That is pretty pointed and a plain and powerful statement. The Attitudinal Change Plan has been used to condition us to accept immoral behavior as normal. Once again, it is another of Satan's ways to destroy families.

4. We are being strongly conditioned to accept homosexuality.

I Corinthians 6:9-10 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

I do not know how these churches accept homosexuality within their ranks and claim that they are Christians and that they follow the Bible. Obviously, they do not; they are following the traditions of men. I do want to read this quote to you, having to do with this:

For instance, the CDC data indicated that the median age of death among homosexual

men dying of AIDS in 2000 was 42 years. A figure in harmony with the earlier research

based on obituaries in the gay press in 2002, which calculated a median age of 42 for

homosexual men dying in that year.

They go on to say that it is proven to be true, all the way through the nineties, that such is the average lifespan of the homosexual man. It is a sin unto death; it is a sin that kills and shortens the lifespan. This is not what we are hearing in the argument and debate in the discussion in the media. They are always portrayed on "Home and Garden" television as couples looking for houses or redesigning their homes, as if they are even more normal than the average heterosexual male or female. That is enough of that, and it just shows early death for sin.

The first step in deprogramming yourself from mass-media brainwashing, to freeing yourself from its evil clutches, is to recognize that you are, indeed, brainwashed. Once we realize that, it becomes much easier to resist, and things begin to get much clearer. Since God was well aware of the struggles and temptations His people would face, He gave us scriptures through Paul's writings that both warn and equip us. Here are two that are worth remembering:

Colossians 2:8 Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.

Christ's teachings and way of life are recognized for their true goodness by the wise.

II Corinthians 11:13-14 For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.

Satan's deceitful way of life appears good to the fool. Thus, we see the popular opinion and the populace in general flocking to Satan's way of life and to the perversions of this society. For the past nearly two thousand years, Christians have faced beatings, humiliations, torture, and death for choosing to follow God rather than man. Through it all, they were conformed, not to human crowds, but to the life and death of Jesus Christ. They knew that their Lord and Savior Himself was put to death through the consensus of a crowd driven to murderous hatred by the religious establishment:

Mark 15:6-14 Now at the feast he was accustomed to releasing one prisoner to them, whomever they requested. And there was one named Barabbas, who was chained with his fellow rebels; they had committed murder in the rebellion. Then the multitude, crying aloud, began to ask him to do just as he had always done for them. But Pilate answered them, saying, "Do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?" For he knew that the chief priests had handed Him over because of envy. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd, so that he should rather release Barabbas to them. Pilate answered and said to them again, "What then do you want me to do with Him whom you call the King of the Jews?" So they cried out again, "Crucify Him!" Then Pilate said to them, "Why, what evil has He done?" But they cried out all the more, "Crucify Him!"

You can just imagine the crowd stirred up to a frenzy. We see this quite often, when we see pictures of the Islamists chanting mindlessly, "Death to the America! Death to America! Death to Bush." You can see just how easily a crowd is stirred up with such hatred.

Mark 15: 15 So Pilate, wanting to gratify the crowd, released Barabbas to them; and he delivered Jesus, after he had scourged Him, to be crucified

Did you notice the irrational responses from a crowd that spoke as one, stirred to anger by clever leaders? That is the collective mind, driven by negative synergy that makes ordinary human beings set aside their weak moral standards to attack God-loving people. The natural enmity toward God always carries over to His followers. The apostle James warns us that "friendship with the world is enmity with God[.] Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God." This is a profoundly pointed statement of truth. If we deceive ourselves into believing that we are just fine the way we are, we willfully allow ourselves to be brainwashed by the world, because she becomes our friend. Since our friends have a great deal of influence on us, choose your friends very carefully.

The apostle Paul tells us why this is true: "The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be." Enmity against God is, at the very least, foolish. Once again, God's unchanging word shows that wisdom is the opposite way of the ungodly. Not only must we not take the advice of the ungodly, but we also must enjoy studying God's word and actively meditate on what it says in order to properly apply the laws and principles of God in our lives.

Psalm 1:1-6 Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper. The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.

The descriptive term ungodly is synonymous with foolish. What all of this amounts to is this: the foolish person is one who does not think adequately. He does not think rightly about a subject; in particular, he does not think ahead. He is concerned about only the moment at hand.

What, then, is wisdom? Positively, the wise person is the person who always thinks. He considers the end. He does not act merely on the basis of instinct, impulse, or desire; he is the person who insists on thought, reason, and meditation. He is the person who thoroughly examines every proposition by which he is confronted or every situation into which he is lead. He is a person who, first and foremost, listens to all the evidence. He holds himself back and listens to the evidence on both sides. He gives the argument a fair hearing from every conceivable angle, and he does so with great patience.

Having weighed the evidence, the wise man relates it all to fundamental principles of God. Even having taken his time, having been patient, having gathered all his facts and collected all the evidence, having looked at it completely, sifted it, analyzed it, and collated it—even then he does not arrive at his decision by himself and immediately. He then takes it and examines it in the light of certain fundamental, eternal, biblical principles. The secret of wisdom is to be impartial in our judgments and loyal to the will of God.

We read earlier that the apostle Paul spelled it all out:

Ephesians 5:15-17 See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

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