Stand Firm

This week I heard a radio interview with Roy Masters, a former hypnotist and current radio host and author.  His current book, "The Hypnotic States of Americans", apparently talks about how leaders and politicians can create social mores, and how those social mores affect the way a society behaves and believes.   The radio host was Sean Hannity, so he tried to keep the topic on politics and especially on the President and the Democratic Party, but Mr. Masters said some interesting things from his own perspective.

You can see a demonstration (of hypnosis) before a group of 500 people of me showing exactly in minutes how you can convert a perfectly normal person into a person that will defend everything that's wrong and everything I've said to that person he will do--he will change his shoes around--and no matter how much I tell him, "Well, I made you do it.  Remember I told you to do it before you came up?" He says "Yes". And I ask him, "Well, why did you do it?" "It's because, well, they felt uncomfortable."

See what power the spoken word has in people's lives?  What he was describing can be equally true about a carnival side show, or a political movement, or even a spiritual cult.  If a strong personality, like Oprah Winfrey or Barack Obama, make a public statement, many in society will take that statement as fact, even if it goes against everything those people were taught.  Even if the public pronouncement goes against common sense.

Masters touched on this in his radio interview:

God gives you common sense. But common sense is wordless.  The trouble is you are born into a "word world", where Authority speaks to you as little children, and makes you doubt what you know is right in your heart.

This is why it is important to guard your hearts, to meditate on Scripture, and to question what you hear people say, and measure it against what the Bible says.  Again, from Masters' radio interview:

Once a person gets reversed, once a person doubts--this is Original Sin stuff--once a person doubts what he knows is right by the power of the spoken word, he believes the lie instead of the truth and he tends to build an identity from that lie. And the more he lives in the environment where lies are truth and truth are lies, and is rewarded for it (like in government), to that degree, his life is built upon it, and he has power to hurt other people, and he becomes so intractable that when you talk to that person who is lost in his head with reason, he will defend that reason.  Everybody who ever makes an excuse is really proof that some other force is acting through you, but you believe those truths to be your own ideas.

 Now, I have never heard of Roy Masters before, and I am not plugging his book or even his radio program--apparently he is some kind of spiritualist, and much of his writings and musings on his own radio show are about his own spiritual journey, from growing up in Nazi Germany to whatever New Age beliefs he now holds.  But the portion of the radio interview that I quoted above gave me pause.

Exodus 24.9-11 says, "Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under His feet was something like a pavement made of Sapphire, clear as the sky itself.  But God did not raise His hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank."  Yet 40 days later, the people under these leaders staged a counter-revolution.  "When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, 'Come, make us gods who will go before us.  As for this fellow Moses who brought us out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him.'(Exodus 32.1)"  And Aaron made them a golden calf image to worship.

This same Aaron was among those who got to witness God in His heaven.  The description given is much like the vision of John in the book of Revelation--God walked with them on pavement appearing to be like precious jewels, God fellowshiped with them directly, eating and drinking with them.  Yet in six short weeks, Aaron was convinced by others in the camp, who had not seen God, to give them an idol to worship. And to add insult to injury, the worship of that idol devolved into a sexual orgy.

In the first chapter of Romans, Paul said this:

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 men 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 mortal man 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. (Romans 1.20-25)

According to Masters, a former hypnotist and current author and lecturer, it is relatively easy to manipulate people.  People want peace in their hearts and minds, so they will go along to get along, and will follow whatever teaching is put before them by outgoing, charismatic personalities.  Not heeding the Word of God, they listen to the words of celebrities and follow after them.

That is why it is vitally important, Brothers and Sisters, to constantly be in the Word of God.  "So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter." (2 Thessalonians 2.16).  "How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to Your word.  I seek You with all my heart; do not let me stray from Your commands.  I have hidden Your word in my heart that I might not sin against You." (Psalm 119.9-11).

The words of God must be written on our hearts, or we, too, will be swept away by every wind of teaching.  And we must share the Good News of Christ to all, so that others may know and believe.  There are competing messages everywhere around us, and we have a lot of noise to overcome.  God has the power to shout louder than all the other voices being broadcast out there, but He chooses to use a still, small voice.  That voice could be mine. It could be yours.  But it underscores the fact that people are won over to God's message one person at a time.

A day will come when all the other voices will be silenced, and God's big booming Voice will be heard by all; that will be the day of Judgment.   Until then, "May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer."