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DIR Return to: From The Desk of Bernard Pyron
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#Post#: 10989--------------------------------------------------
The Christian Celebrity System
DIR By: bernardpyron
Date: March 12, 2020, 5:31 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
The Christian Celebrity System
Bernard Pyron
This essay is about ten years old, at least.
We are living in an age of deception, un âge de tromperie. In
our age of deception many Church Christians are being deceived
by false teachers who have good images - who serve the
appearances - and teach false doctrines, which the Church people
will accept. They are now being deceived by false prophets, and
its hard to find Church Christians who have not accepted some
form of false doctrine, which they received from celebrities.
But those who follow the lamb wherever he goes, and have his
mind in them, will not be deceived by Christian celebrities with
their lies.
In II Corinthians 10: 7 Paul asks "Do ye look on things after
the outward appearance? " After the outward appearance is from
kata prospopon, according to appearance. Prospoon can mean the
face, visage, surface, external form, or appearance (Moulton,
Harold K. The Analytical Greek Lexicon revised, 1978, p 353).
Prosorolerteo means to pay regard to external appearance
(Moulton, p.353). A prosopoleptes is a "respecter of persons" in
Acts 10: 34).
Christ says in John 7: 24 "Judge not according to the
appearance, but judge righteous judgment."
In our culture of the last twenty or thirty years, image is
everything. Some years ago,a TV commercial on NBC for Canon
cameras told us that "Image is everything." In Norman Spinrad's
science fiction novel, Bug Jack Barron (1969) Morris, head of
the Republican Party, tells Jack, "You're a marketable
commodity...an image behind which we can unite...Image, Barron,
image is what counts...not the man...never mind what the real
man behind the image is like."
In the image culture success has become more and more a matter
of giving An appearance of being successful and attractive. And
the main game in the worldly culture is to win image and success
for oneself. An artist is successful when he attains to much
image.
Network television is responsible for making the the image
culture, created earlier by Hollywood movies, much more a
dominating part of popular culture. Most viewers of network TV -
before the age of the Internet - were seduced by a medium that
was so deceptive that viewers did not know they were bring
hoodwinked by the dumb show. Network TV weakened the cognitive
abilities of many viewers and also reduced their capability of
detecting deception on TV and in real life.
When network TV began in 1948, the fairly good storytelling
heard on radio was continued in TV Westerns, detective shows and
adventure dramas. But by the sixties the narrative quality of
network TV began to decline and continued its decline into the
nineties. Of course, by the first decade of the new century,
network TV was beginning to be left behind by the Internet.
Almost all formula Westerns on early network TV had clear cause
and effect sequences of actions. In other words they were mostly
coherent. By the sixties and later the major coherence problem
of network TV drama was over-cutting. Scenes were broken up by
too frequent cutting. In his 1977 study of network TV Tamer
found that cuts made up 94.7 percent of all shot changes. He
found that, on the average, a sudden cut from one scene to
another happened on network TV every 3.3 seconds, and he did not
include commercials.
Network TV leaves out many actions and verbalizations necessary
for understanding a story.
In addition, to the coherence problem of jump cutting, network
TV fell into a habit of using poor story grammar.
Cognitive psychology has contributed to the study of story
grammar, and part of this comes out of Noam Chomsky's version of
Cartesian linguistics. Interestingly, Cartesian linguistics
makes a distinction between
the outward verbatim form of a sentence and the representation
of the meaning of that sentence held by the reader in his mind.
Chomsky called these two surface structure - the literal words
of a sentence - and deep structure - the meaning of the
sentence. Usually the verbatim surface form of a sentence is
not represented in the mind word for word. Rather, the gist of
the sentence is abstracted and that gist meaning is stored in
memory. Meaning is in the gist representations in short term and
long term memory. It is not efficient for the mind to memorize
the exact words of a sentence. So the mind represents a sentence
by a kind of short-hand, by a "map," just as a map in abstract
form contains the features of an environment.
This use of Cartesian linguistics by Chomsky influenced American
Cognitive Psychology, so much that some say Chomsky's version of
Cartesian Linguistics is a major part of cognitive psychology.
Cognitive psychology has helped discredit the totalitarian
nature of behaviorism.
So, if the stories presented on network TV are so incoherent due
to poor story grammar and jump cutting that the viewer cannot
create in his mind gist representations of the actions and
dialogue, then the story is essentially meaningless to him. He
may though enjoy the actions, landscapes and the actors images.
A theory could have been created from all this which predicts
that poor story grammar and jump cutting on TV results not only
in a momentary loss of the viewer's ability to create gist
meanings from TV, but that the more he views TV the more he
will develop a cognitive deficiency in his ability to generate
accurate gist meanings in his mind of real life events. In other
words, network TV was a dumbing down medium. There were a few
studies I found in the nineties when I was interested in the
negative cognitive effects of network TV viewing. For example,
Emery and Emery (1976) found that viewing network TV hindered
the viewers ability to pay close attention to stimuli. Kubey and
Csikszentmihalyi (1990) found that viewers reported that their
mental concentration was lower while watching TV, but their
concentration, they said, increased when they were doing
reading. Studies of brain waves while viewing TV show that the
mental state during viewing is one of low alertness and a low
level of focus.
The human mind is greatly influenced by almost any kind of of
much repeated experiences - be it reading grammatically well
formed stories that are coherent, or by watching disconnected
images on TV. Ability to focus attention is very important a
leader of other cognitive abilities. The list of cognitive
abilities that may become impaired by watching TV or years
include (l) the ability to tell the difference between what is
important and what is not important, (2) the ability to create
accurate gist meaning representations (3) the ability to think
in cause and effect ways, (4) clarity of perception of space and
of time, (5) the ability to perceptually isolate and pay
attention to an item embedded in a complex visual field or
context, (6) the ability to remember information from long term
memory at the right time, (7) the ability to hold more than one
item of information in short term memory at a time, and (8) the
ability to combine into possible combinations and to see new
connections. In addition reading skills are probably impaired by
years of watching TV.
A person who has been dumbed down by network TV - and by other
means and through other media - is more likely to fall for the
messages of secular and Christian celebrities, than a person who
has greater cognitive abilities to discern lies and truths
behind images.
We are living in an increasingly age of cognitive dimness. And
spiritual darkness follows cognitive dimness and deception with
its dumbess regarding truth, especially among Church Christians,
and increasing moral insensibility. Often contemporary people
cannot tell the difference between truth and lies - in Christian
doctrines and elsewhere. This is also true in the sciences,
though some basics are agreed upon as working truth.
II Thessalonians 2: 3 says "Let no man deceive you by any means:
for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away
first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition."
The false teachers and their followers do not believe their
theology is a big part of this falling away, and so they are
deceived. Matthew 24: 11 tells us that "And many false prophets
shall rise, and shall deceive many."
Both of these scriptures warning of deception zero in on the
time of the end. II Thessalonians 2: 7-10 says that during the
very end time the man of sin, who in this context of the falling
away, looks like the Second Beast of Revelation 13: 11-18, which
is the Church in the falling away, will operate with deception.
He will mislead Church Christians and some others perhaps
"...with all deceivableness of unrighteousness.
In the age of deception at its height, the urge to deceive
people, which will be a desire of most, grows out of an evil
urge. Though John's description of the Anti-Christ in I John 2:
18-19 and I John 4: 3 does not predict one single super
Anti-Christ, the spirit of Anti-Christ will increase during
these end times and will manifest in many Anti-Christs all of
whom will be deceptive.
#Post#: 10998--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Christian Celebrity System
DIR By: bernardpyron
Date: March 13, 2020, 7:21 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Mon, Dec 27, 2010: The Christian Celebrity System: Part Two
Bernard Pyron
There are a large number of Christian celebrities of our time,
many of whom are still living, such as Billy Graham, Oral
Roberts, Jerry Falwell,
Pat Robertson, Kenneth Copeland, Tim LaHaye, Grant Jeffrey, John
Hagee, Rick Warren,Robert Schuller, Jimmy Swaggart, and Hal
Lindsey.
So the Christian celebrity system is to a great extent
responsible for
the present day widespread teaching of doctrines which disagree
with parts of the New Testament.
And - there are a few well known Christian teachers
who do not fit in with the celebrities listed above. For
example,
Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984) and especially the Dutch
missionary
Corrie Ten Boom (1892-1983) are famous but should not be
classified as
celebrities because they apparently did not try to cultivate
their images. Both
wrote a great many Christian books.
Schaeffer is interesting because he belonged to the Reformed
pre-millenialist camp, but was not into dispensationalism,
though he did not systematically criticize it.
Corrie emphasized forgiveness,which is not stressed in the
contemporary Churches. Schaeffer's smaller Calvinist group
believed that following the tribulation, Christ would appear the
second time, and after that he would bring in his thousand year
reign on earth. They did not believe in the
pre-trib rapture or that God has two different peoples. Corrie
Ten Boom in
her later years opposed dispensationalism, and pointed out that
the
doctrine of the pre-trib rapture left the Christian Church
ill-prepared in times of great persecution, such as in China
under
Mao.
Celebrities are the most successful people in the image culture
of
television, movies, radio, magazines and newspapers. Many people
who
are not celebrities imitate celebrities in presenting surface
appearances of attractiveness and success. Almost everyone takes
part in the
celebrity system - including Church Christians - by allowing
celebrities on TV, in movies, on the radio and in other media to
influence them in what they think and in the way they act.
Celebrities not only
entertain Americans and those in most other parts of the world,
but they also tell us what to believe and how to behave.
National political celebrities are able
to lead people to the extent that the politicians can sell
people on
the basis of their images. In our age of deception, it is the
celebrities of entertainment, politics and religion who do much
of the
deceiving; and they are able to deceive people because the
people are
impressed by their surface appearances. It is very important for
believers to understand the celebrity system - both secular and
Christian - because many Christian celebrities deceive Church
Christians into accepting false theologies which they promote.
Preachers also tend to follow Christian celebrities and
themselves often try to present good images in order to better
influence their congregations.
Before the secular celebrity system spread to politics, sports,
the
arts, the military, education, business and to Christianity, it
was confined to Hollywood film stars.
Richard Schickel in his book, Intimate Strangers: The Culture of
Celebrity, 1985, says the celebrity system began in the period
of
1895 to 1920 with early Hollywood movie stars. Some of these
early
celebrities of film were Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas
Fairbanks and William S. Hart.
Like Narcissus, the Hollywood celebrity fell in love with his or
her
own image. In Greek, narke, or narcotic, means stupor, a state
of not
being very sharp cognitively. In The Christian Celebrity System
Part
One I briefly described how very frequent jump cutting and poor
story
construction on network TV can cause not only a momentary type
of
stupor or suspension of cognitive clarity, but may lead to long
term
cognitive deficiencies. The presentation of a glamourous image
by
Hollywood celebrities produces narke, a magic spell, a
bewitchment and enchantment. People who are put into a state of
some stupor by a celebrity - and this includes Christian
celebrities - are made more gullible to whatever
message the celebrity is teaching because their critical
discernment
has been shut down to some degree.
In presenting their nonverbal appearances, celebrities have
learned to
simplify their personality presentation. In the image culture
the perception of another's personality is reduced down to his
or her surface appearance. Celebrities pick out one or two
verbal expressions to emphasize to others as "themselves."
Farrah Fawcett's wind-blown hair look, big smile, and in the
late sixties and seventies the bra-less image made up a large
part of her appearance. Fidel Castro, though not an entertainer
celebrity, presented a simplified image with is beard, carefully
pressed military fatigues, and cigar.
Many people tend to be disturbed by other people who show too
many different appearances and a complex personality. Most
people use only a very
few dimensions to picture in their minds the the personalities
of
others. This may be why celebrities try to simplify their
images.
People are not disturbed when they are able to make sense out of
the behavior of another by use of a very small number of
dimensions. By dimensions I mean bi-polar opposites like
conventional-unconventional, successful-unsuccessful,
strong-weak, or
good-bad.
Celebrities sometimes pay a price for their over-simplification
of
their images to fit this tendency of people to become confused
or
disturbed by complexity of personality presentation. Richard
Schickel
says that "Forced to live within some early role, stars become
restive,
even self-destructive, as a result of living up to the lie off
screen." But if a celebrities were to project complex
personality
images to their audiences, most in the audiences would not be
able to
form an impression of them, and would not like them. Social
psychology
says that when a person is complex, others have difficulty in
forming
accurate impressions of him or her; some may assume the other is
like
themselves, while other perceivers may think the other is the
opposite
of themselves. I published a report on an experiment dealing
with these topics
in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1965,
called "Accuracy of
Interpersonal Perception As A Function of Consistency of
Information."
Church Christians tend to be influenced by the teachings of
Christian
celebrities and may even copy the verbal expressions of the
celebrities. George Comstock, a TV effects researcher, says that
"It is pretty well established that film models can be as
effective as live behavior models...One impressive
study is that of Bandura and Ritter in which film models were
successful in the desensitization of phobias over snakes."
Christian celebrities acting as role models for other Christians
may not often appear in Hollywood movies, but they do appear on
television, on the radio, in books and now on the Internet.
A celebrity role model can teach Church Christians sound
doctrine
from Scripture, and such a celebrity role model can teach man
made
theologies which do not agree with Scripture.
In the image culture, it is the image of the writer, or
broadcaster in
audio or on TV, which determines, to a great extent, whether his
audience will think he has spoken the truth or not.
When a person using one of the media says something which is
unfamiliar to the audience, they rarely investigate to see if
that
statement is true. Rather, they more often look to the person's
image
- his or her image of attractiveness and success. If he or she
has a
good image and is considered a celebrity, his or her statement
is more
likely to be accepted as the truth than such an unfamiliar
statement
coming from someone not considered to have a good image.
Daniel J. Boorstein in The Image: Guide to Pseudo-Events in
America,
1965, says we now live in a world "...where the image has more
dignity
than its original...We have become eager accessories to the
great hoaxes of the age." In the image culture of movies, TV,
newspapers, magazines and the Internet, the image is more real
that what it is supposed to represent. The mass media, and its
celebrities, create our illusions that we live by. Boorstein
writes about the "thicket of unreality" in the American image
culture.
Isaiah 28: 15 predicts "...when the
overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto
us: for
we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid
ourselves." .
When I was interested in Christian book publishing about twenty
years ago,
Christian book editors appeared to follow certain
formulas which they thought would lead to the books they
accepted
becoming best sellers and making a lot of money. One of the
formulas
for success was prosperity doctrines. And at about this time a
new
formula was introduced into Christian book publishing, the
promotion
of the self psychology of Carl Rogers and A.H. Maslow. These
ideas on
self-esteem, self love and self-actualization undermined the
Biblical
doctrines saying we should not have pride and that we should
dislike
our sin and repent from it. In 1970 Zondervan published what was
perhaps the first in a long series of Christianized self
psychology
books, Love Is Now, by Peter E. Gillquist. A number of other
Christian book houses put out books on Christian self
psychology,
including Harvest House, Eerdmans, InterVarsity, and by 1982
Word,
Inc of Waco, Texas got into the Christian self love act by
publishing
Self-Esteem: The New Reformation, by Robert Schuller, certainly
a
Christian celebrity.
Bringing in self love, self-esteem and self-actualization into
Christianity amounted to introducing a new more blatant form of
pride
and worship of the flesh. But the Christian buyers of books had
itching ears and wanted to read this kind of stuff.
It was very hard to get the Christian editors to publish on new
topics
then, and this rigidity is probably just as bad today.
I wrote a manuscript on the counterculture at that time, and in
a few
letters I exchanged then with Francis Schaeffer, we discussed
this
manuscript. Schaeffer write me that he knew what I "was
wrestling with" at that time. I sent a version of the
manuscript to one of the Christian book houses that tended to
publish
more conservative books. The editor did write a response back to
me.
saying the Church was not concerned with the counterculture. At
that
time the counterculture was not a topic included in the formula
for
success in Christian book publishing. But even then the
counterculture
was spreading into the broader American middle class culture
with its
Hippie and drug movement anti-Christian messages, which soon led
to
some drop in church membership among college educated young
people and
perhaps to further departure from the Gospel of Christ by the
Churches.
Authorial image is what sells books, Christian book editors
believe.
And so they will accept very few books by writers who do not -
for the
editors - have good images of success and attractiveness. And
the
editors also followed their lists of formula topics for success
in
publishing.
Over the years the Christian book publishers have helped to
teach
Church Christians that image is all important in Christian
leaders.
This is a development which helps prevent them from discerning
truth from
false doctrines. Being led by Christian celebrities who
cultivate
their images does not teach Church Christians to love the truth,
as II
Thessalonians 2: 10-11 says, "And with all deceivableness of
unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not
the
love of the truth, that they might be saved.
11. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that
they
should believe a lie:"
The Christian book houses have helped to teach Church Christians
that
good image - image of success and attractiveness of one's person
- is
somehow truth, and that what a Christian celebrity says on TV,
on the
radio or in writing can never be false doctrine coming from
man's own
version of the Gospel of Christ. This is the central danger of
the
Christian Celebrity system.
The false prophets that Christ warned would appear in the end
times
are found in the ranks of the Christian Celebrities, because
they can
get their messages out in the secular and Christian media. The
image
culture makes it possible for them to deceive Church Christians
into
believing their messages. "And many false prophets shall rise,
and
shall deceive many." (Matthew 24: 11). False prophets can more
easily
deceive Christians in an age of deception.
"That this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that
will
not hear the law of the LORD:
10. Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets,
Prophesy
not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy
deceits:" Isaiah 30: 9-10
"For the time will come when they will not endure sound
doctrine; but
after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers,
having
itching ears" II Timothy 4: 3
In II Peter 2: 14 the false prophets or false prophet Christian
celebrities belonging to the Second Beast of Revelation 13:11-18
are
described as "...having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot
cease
from sin." Many of the false prophet celebrities are carnal, and
love
money and sex.
Paul writes "Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because
of
these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of
disobedience." Ephesians 5:6. "Vain words" are empty words,
words
that sound good and are well delivered by attractive men - and
sometimes by attractive women preachers - but which are futile
because the words are not true to Scripture.
Titus 1: 10 says "For there are many unruly and vain talkers and
deceivers, specially they of the circumcision:" Unruly and vain
talkers and deceivers is from anupotaktoi mataiologoi
kai phrenapatai, or lawless and empty mind deceivers. The
deceiving
false prophet Christian celebrities use impressive sounding
words, but
which are really empty of spiritual meaning. And they promote a
mingling of the Gospel of Christ with man's religion, a false
copy of
the true Gospel.
#Post#: 11003--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Christian Celebrity System
DIR By: bernardpyron
Date: March 13, 2020, 8:20 am
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: bernardpyron link ---
>
> The Christian Celebrity System
> Bernard Pyron
>
> This essay is about ten years old, at least.
>
> We are living in an age of deception, un âge de tromperie.
In our age of deception many Church Christians are being
deceived by false teachers who have good images - who serve the
appearances - and teach false doctrines, which the Church people
will accept. They are now being deceived by false prophets, and
its hard to find Church Christians who have not accepted some
form of false doctrine, which they received from celebrities.
But those who follow the lamb wherever he goes, and have his
mind in them, will not be deceived by Christian celebrities with
their lies.
>
> In II Corinthians 10: 7 Paul asks "Do ye look on things after
the outward appearance? " After the outward appearance is from
kata prospopon, according to appearance. Prospoon can mean the
face, visage, surface, external form, or appearance (Moulton,
Harold K. The Analytical Greek Lexicon revised, 1978, p 353).
Prosorolerteo means to pay regard to external appearance
(Moulton, p.353). A prosopoleptes is a "respecter of persons" in
Acts 10: 34).
>
> Christ says in John 7: 24 "Judge not according to the
appearance, but judge righteous judgment."
>
> In our culture of the last twenty or thirty years, image is
everything. Some years ago,a TV commercial on NBC for Canon
cameras told us that "Image is everything." In Norman Spinrad's
science fiction novel, Bug Jack Barron (1969) Morris, head of
the Republican Party, tells Jack, "You're a marketable
commodity...an image behind which we can unite...Image, Barron,
image is what counts...not the man...never mind what the real
man behind the image is like."
>
> In the image culture success has become more and more a matter
of giving An appearance of being successful and attractive. And
the main game in the worldly culture is to win image and success
for oneself. An artist is successful when he attains to much
image.
>
> Network television is responsible for making the the image
culture, created earlier by Hollywood movies, much more a
dominating part of popular culture. Most viewers of network TV -
before the age of the Internet - were seduced by a medium that
was so deceptive that viewers did not know they were bring
hoodwinked by the dumb show. Network TV weakened the cognitive
abilities of many viewers and also reduced their capability of
detecting deception on TV and in real life.
>
> When network TV began in 1948, the fairly good storytelling
heard on radio was continued in TV Westerns, detective shows and
adventure dramas. But by the sixties the narrative quality of
network TV began to decline and continued its decline into the
nineties. Of course, by the first decade of the new century,
network TV was beginning to be left behind by the Internet.
>
> Almost all formula Westerns on early network TV had clear
cause and effect sequences of actions. In other words they were
mostly coherent. By the sixties and later the major coherence
problem of network TV drama was over-cutting. Scenes were broken
up by too frequent cutting. In his 1977 study of network TV
Tamer found that cuts made up 94.7 percent of all shot changes.
He found that, on the average, a sudden cut from one scene to
another happened on network TV every 3.3 seconds, and he did not
include commercials.
>
> Network TV leaves out many actions and verbalizations
necessary for understanding a story.
>
> In addition, to the coherence problem of jump cutting, network
TV fell into a habit of using poor story grammar.
>
> Cognitive psychology has contributed to the study of story
grammar, and part of this comes out of Noam Chomsky's version of
Cartesian linguistics. Interestingly, Cartesian linguistics
makes a distinction between
> the outward verbatim form of a sentence and the representation
of the meaning of that sentence held by the reader in his mind.
Chomsky called these two surface structure - the literal words
of a sentence - and deep structure - the meaning of the
sentence. Usually the verbatim surface form of a sentence is
not represented in the mind word for word. Rather, the gist of
the sentence is abstracted and that gist meaning is stored in
memory. Meaning is in the gist representations in short term and
long term memory. It is not efficient for the mind to memorize
the exact words of a sentence. So the mind represents a sentence
by a kind of short-hand, by a "map," just as a map in abstract
form contains the features of an environment.
>
> This use of Cartesian linguistics by Chomsky influenced
American Cognitive Psychology, so much that some say Chomsky's
version of Cartesian Linguistics is a major part of cognitive
psychology. Cognitive psychology has helped discredit the
totalitarian nature of behaviorism.
>
> So, if the stories presented on network TV are so incoherent
due to poor story grammar and jump cutting that the viewer
cannot create in his mind gist representations of the actions
and dialogue, then the story is essentially meaningless to him.
He may though enjoy the actions, landscapes and the actors
images.
>
> A theory could have been created from all this which predicts
that poor story grammar and jump cutting on TV results not only
in a momentary loss of the viewer's ability to create gist
meanings from TV, but that the more he views TV the more he
will develop a cognitive deficiency in his ability to generate
accurate gist meanings in his mind of real life events. In other
words, network TV was a dumbing down medium. There were a few
studies I found in the nineties when I was interested in the
negative cognitive effects of network TV viewing. For example,
Emery and Emery (1976) found that viewing network TV hindered
the viewers ability to pay close attention to stimuli. Kubey and
Csikszentmihalyi (1990) found that viewers reported that their
mental concentration was lower while watching TV, but their
concentration, they said, increased when they were doing
reading. Studies of brain waves while viewing TV show that the
mental state during viewing is one of low alertness and a low
level of focus.
>
> The human mind is greatly influenced by almost any kind of
much repeated experiences - be it reading grammatically well
formed stories that are coherent, or by watching disconnected
images on TV. Ability to focus attention is very important a
leader of other cognitive abilities. The list of cognitive
abilities that may become impaired by watching TV or years
include (l) the ability to tell the difference between what is
important and what is not important, (2) the ability to create
accurate gist meaning representations (3) the ability to think
in cause and effect ways, (4) clarity of perception of space and
of time, (5) the ability to perceptually isolate and pay
attention to an item embedded in a complex visual field or
context, (6) the ability to remember information from long term
memory at the right time, (7) the ability to hold more than one
item of information in short term memory at a time, and (8) the
ability to combine into possible combinations and to see new
connections. In addition reading skills are probably impaired by
years of watching TV.
>
> A person who has been dumbed down by network TV - and by other
means and through other media - is more likely to fall for the
messages of secular and Christian celebrities, than a person who
has greater cognitive abilities to discern lies and truths
behind images.
>
> We are living in an increasingly age of cognitive dimness. And
spiritual darkness follows cognitive dimness and deception with
its dumbess regarding truth, especially among Church Christians,
and increasing moral insensibility. Often contemporary people
cannot tell the difference between truth and lies - in Christian
doctrines and elsewhere. This is also true in the sciences,
though some basics are agreed upon as working truth.
>
> II Thessalonians 2: 3 says "Let no man deceive you by any
means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling
away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of
perdition." The false teachers and their followers do not
believe their theology is a big part of this falling away, and
so they are deceived. Matthew 24: 11 tells us that "And many
false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many."
>
> Both of these scriptures warning of deception zero in on the
time of the end. II Thessalonians 2: 7-10 says that during the
very end time the man of sin, who in this context of the falling
away, looks like the Second Beast of Revelation 13: 11-18, which
is the Church in the falling away, will operate with deception.
He will mislead Church Christians and some others perhaps
"...with all deceivableness of unrighteousness.
>
> In the age of deception at its height, the urge to deceive
people, which will be a desire of most, grows out of an evil
urge. Though John's description of the Anti-Christ in I John 2:
18-19 and I John 4: 3 does not predict one single super
Anti-Christ, the spirit of Anti-Christ will increase during
these end times and will manifest in many Anti-Christs all of
whom will be deceptive.
>
>
--- End Quote ---
#Post#: 19755--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Christian Celebrity System
DIR By: patrick jane
Date: October 29, 2020, 1:32 pm
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Toy Soldiers
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