Continuing on in our replay of the series on Discipleship Training that was started back in March 2016–a series of Spiritual Exercisescovering the topics of Salvation, Sanctification, Service, and Spiritual Warfare–here is the second in that series. It deals with the New Birth, and can be found at Salvation: How Do We Get It? | His Truth, My Voice (histruthmyvoice.org).
To try and put into perspective just where we are in our current series of exercises in Spiritual Warfare, let’s take a moment to recap what we accomplished during our last three workout sessions. In…
Getting the Lay of the Land—we began creating a spiritual map of Satan’s kingdom, with a survey of its Celestial, Terrestrial, and Subterranean Divisions—that is, the vertical dimensions of its territory;
Surveying the Earth’s Political and Financial Landscapes—we turned our attention from the kingdom’s vertical dimensions to mapping out its horizontal ones, with an exploration of the Physical Structures used in keeping the residents of planet Earth in material servitude; and,
Evolution and Education—we looked at some of the ways the Educational System has been used to supplant the long-held Biblical Worldview with the godless Secular One needed for the brainwashing of generations of unsuspecting teachers, students, and parents.
Since our last session was the first of two dealing with the Structures making up Satan’s Cultural Landscape, this session, as the second of the two, will deal with the Structure ofMedia; for, it is through this Structure that our emotions are bombarded relentlessly in a devilish crusade to alter the way we feel about ourselves, our relationships, and the things that we value in life. Remember, Satan’s goal in all of this is to get us to think, feel, and act in accordance with his purposes which, as we should know by now, are in direct opposition to those of God. Here is what we have learned about God’s purposes over the course of these exercises…
God’s purpose in creating Man was to provide Himself with a Family to love, both now and throughout eternity.
Before Man could qualify as a member of God’s Family, though, he first had to be like his Father in every important respect. Therefore, when God created Man, He made him in His Image and Likeness, to be a visible reflection of Him and His Character in the World, as well as the Steward or Executor of His Will upon the earth.
Because God is Spirit, He created Man as a Spirit Being which He then placed in the two houses He called Male and Female. As Spirit, Man could relate to God and, in the physical houses of Male and Female, he could (re)produce the Family that God has always desired to have.
Because he was created first, the Man was placed in the Position of Head over God’s Creation; with the Woman being created later, as his Companion and Helper in carrying out the Work of God in the world.
This arrangement, however, did not mean that the Male was superior to the Female–it was simply to provide a system of order and accountability for God’s Kingdom Work on the Earth. For, from the beginning of their history together, Man and Woman were both…
Equal in their standing before God;
Equal in their call to the work of God; and,
Equal in their blessing by God.
In his Position as Head, the Man was to be an Image in the world of the Headship of God the Father; the Woman was to be an Image of the complementary Nature and Work of the Holy Spirit; while the Children produced from their union were to be living testimonies of their Love, as well as Images of the Obedience and Love of Jesus Christ to and for God His Father.
God’s purpose for the Human Family, then, was for it be an Image in the natural of the Family that God was creating for Himself in the supernatural—a Spiritual Family that He wanted every human being to be a part of.
When it came to their relationship to the physical world around them, as the Sons and Daughters of God, Man and Woman were to exercise dominion over their Father’s Creation, Imaging the Righteous Rule of God while administering His Holy Will on the earth, just as it is already being done in heaven.
To summarize, then, God’s Purposes for Man (as male and female) was to provide the world with an…
Image in the flesh of the Triune God; Image in the flesh of God’s SpiritualFamily; and, Image in the flesh of God’s Kingdom Rule.
We Were All Created to Reflect the Image of God to the World
Getting Rid of One Image…
It should be obvious to us by now that God’s Purposes for Man have everything to do with Image; and, that in every aspect of his being—in his Spirit, Soul, and Body— Man has been imprinted with the likeness of his Creator. Just as earthly kings and emperors have, throughout most of human history, placed their images on the coins and stamps that were circulated throughout their domains, the Sovereign King of the Universe placed His Image on every human being who has ever lived, so that as they circulated throughout His Earthly Domain…
…the earth [would] be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14).
In light of this, it should come as no surprise that the destruction of the Image of God in Man—and the replacement of it with his own perverted one—has been Satan’s primary objective from the beginning of time. Since Man’s maintenance of the Image of God required that he maintain…
Righteousness in his Relationship with God;
Love in his Relationships with Others; and,
Authority in his Relationship to the Earth…
…Satan’s strategy for the destruction of that Image required that he find a way to…
Sever Man’s Relationship with God through Disobedience;
Replace Godly Love with Lust in Man’s Relationships; and,
Usurp Man’s Authority over the Earth.
This he accomplished in one fell swoop with his successful temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden—the consequences of which were…
With Man’s disobedience came death—an immediate spiritual death or separation from God, to be followed later by physical death. This spiritual death brought with it an end to Man’s communication with God; depriving him of his ability to receive instruction from the Spirit of God on what he was to do and how he was to live, and leaving him at the mercies of the world, the flesh, and the devil;
Lust entered the world and into human relationships when Eve acted on her craving to have that which was forbidden; and, with this action, the drive to satisfy one’s own selfish desires became more important than doing what it right; and,
When it came to Man’s Authority over the Earth, this priceless gift was forfeited by Adam when he, by succumbing to the Influence Power of his wife, abdicated his Headship and gave up the Position Power that went along with it. Consequently, Man’s Authority was given over to Satan, and God’s Order for Creation was overturned, all because…
A member of the Animal Kingdom had usurped the authority of the Woman;
The Woman had used her Powers of Persuasion to usurp the authority of the Man; and,
The Man had rejected the authority of God and His Word and given up his position of Headship in the process.
…And Replacing It with Another
Knowing now that God’s Purposes for Man have always been about his projection of a Godly Image in and throughout the world; and, given that Satan, as the master counterfeiter, has a Corrupted Image of his own that he wants Man to bear, how can we know what this counterfeit image looks like? Well, all we have to do is invert God’s Image for Man to reveal the one determined for him by Satan…
The Truth Versus the Lie
As for how to go about replacing the Godly Image with his counterfeit one, Satan has that all worked out; for, even now, he is in the process of…
Eliminating human sexual distinctions and making society Gender-Neutral;
Tearing down traditional Authority structures and reducing everyone (except those who are pulling the strings behind the scenes) to the same base level for the purposes of corporate servitude;
Destroying the nuclear Family and replacing it with a Universal Brotherhood of Man, where everyone and everything is tolerated—with the exception of those holding to Biblical values; and,
Demoting Man from his divinely-ordained status of Lord over Creation to that of a mere animal within the Creation (as we discovered in our previous session, this is something that has been achieved through the teaching of Evolution).
To anyone else, such undertaking would certainly have been written off as an impossible mission long ago, however, the Prince of the Power of the Air remains completely undaunted at the prospect of its achievement. That’s because, he has found a way to use the airwaves over which he rules as a weapon—the powerful weapon known to us as the Media.
Media—The What, the Why, and the Who
To be sure that we have the same understanding of the term and the strategic part it plays in Satan’s offensive, we now need to identify…
What Media is; Why it is Satan’s weapon of choice; and, Who is manipulating the messages it conveys.
The What
For our purposes, Media is defined as…
a plural of medium;
(usually used with a plural verb) the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet, that reach or influence people widely.
As for its usage…
Media, like data,is the plural form of a word borrowed directly from Latin. The singular, medium, early developed the meaning ‘an intervening agency, means, or instrument’ and was first applied to newspapers two centuries ago. In the 1920s media began to appear as a singular collective noun, sometimes with the plural medias. This singular use is now common in the fields of mass communication and advertising, but it is not frequently found outside them…[1]
We can understand Media, then, to represent the collective agencies, means, or instruments that a sender uses to communicate a particular message to a specific receiver or group of receivers; with Communication itself being defined as…
…a process involving the sorting, selecting and sharing of symbols in such a way as to help a receiver elicit from his or her own mind a meaning similar to that contained in the mind of the communicator; and…
Mass Communication being defined as…
…a process whereby professional communicators use technological devices to share messages over some distance to influence large audiences.[2]
Since it is this Mass Communication aspect of Media that Satan has commandeered for his own evil purposes, it is essential that we learn why he has chosen it as his weapon of choice.
The Why
There are at least three reasons to account for Media’s effectiveness when used as a weapon…
Throughout much of human history, if someone wanted to convey his thoughts or feelings to someone else, he had to do so in person—within shouting range of that person, at least. Apart from the use of drum beats, smoke signals, homing pigeons, letters, or the use of runners or relays similar to the pony express, there was just no way for people to communicate with other people—especially large numbers of them—over long distances.[3] However, this began to change after the German inventor, Johannes Gutenberg (1398-1468) invented the process of movable type…
Prior to that time, most books were handwritten and very time-consuming to produce. Because of this, reading material was scarce and limited to those in the elite culture—the clergy and nobility…Gutenberg’s invention increased the number of books and made them available for a new emerging middle class.
The development of printing, which led to the spread of literacy for the middle classes, plus the development of trade and commerce caused major cultural changes.[4]
One of these major changes was the Protestant Reformation (c. 1517-1648)…
The Reformation, led by a German monk, Martin Luther, was the first mass movement made possible by mass communication. Print was used to mobilize people of all social classes…
Luther and his followers used mass-produced pamphlets to distribute the new religious thoughts to the masses. They communicated with the illiterate through pictorial prints, much like present day editorial cartoons, which carried propaganda messages against the Catholic Church and the pope.
After mass communication developed, more and more people learned to read and write, especially among the middle classes.[5]
As literacy increased and more information became available to the masses, more and better ways to disseminate it became necessary. This need was eventually met through the development, over time, of books and novels, newspapers, letter-writing and new or improved postal services, the telephone, telegraph, phonograph, photography, radio, films, television, and the internet—and the communications web which is currently encircling the globe. In fact, this web is now so pervasive that even people living in huts in some of the most remote parts of the world, without electricity or indoor plumbing, can somehow reach or be reached by some type of the Media!
The Reasons for the Media’s Effectiveness
It’s Powerful
As a weapon, Media is effective not only because it is pervasive but also because its powerful; In fact, it’s powerful enough to…
Expose people to people, places, ideas, and products that they would never come into contact with or considered otherwise;
Capture the attention and imagination of millions of people with one thirty-second commercial, making millions of dollars for its advertisers in the process;
Unite completely disparate groups of people around a cause by playing upon their fears or emotions;
Build up or tear down huge corporations, illustrious professional careers, and even governments;
Prompt people to re-examine what they believe and convince them to re-evaluate their value systems; and,
Change a society through the promotion of some practices and lifestyles, and the condemnation of others.
What gives Media the power to do all of these things is its ability to manipulate images. As Elizabeth Thoman, in an article for the Center of Media Literacy, explains…
…the consumer culture as we know it could never have emerged without the invention of the camera and the eventual mass-production of media images it made possible.
In 1859 Oliver Wendell Holmes described photography as the most remarkable achievement of his time because it allowed human beings to separate an experience or a texture or an emotion or a likeness from a particular time and place—and still remain real, visible, and permanent. He described it as a ‘conquest over matter’ and predicted it would alter the physics of perception, changing forever the way people would see and understand the world around them. Holmes precisely observed that the emergence of this new technology marked the beginning of a time when the image would become more important than the object itself and would in fact make the object disposable.[6]
Today, we can attest to the accuracy of Holmes’ observation and prediction; for, anyone with a camera phone can quickly and easily record an image which they later, with the aid of computer software, can manipulate in any way that they choose. With this newly created image—of something that never really existed—a photographer can dispose of the original and then replace what was real and true with a fantasy of his own making—which is something that those in the Media do every day.
It’s Personal
Its power, then, along with its pervasiveness, has made it possible for Media to become something that is also extremely personal. Just think about it…
A television set is on for nearly eight hours in the average American home each day, with each occupant viewing something on television for nearly four hours daily. The average American listens to radio over three hours each day. Add video games, Internet browsing, DVD watching, occasional movie attendance, and roadside billboards to this equation, and it is clear that Americans are deluged with mediated messages in every waking moment.
By now, media use (and misuse) is just an accepted aspect of American culture, as people have become protoplasmic blobs being washing over by countless messages that seek to alter your political views, make you buy something, or change your values. These narcotizing messages seek to keep you watching so that your eyeballs can be sold to advertisers.
Media usage has become more than a supplement to our American lifestyle; it has become perhaps the largest aspect of our lifestyle. More productive pursuits like exercise, family interaction, community work, and household duties are over looked in order to keep up with American Idol or catch the big ball game on TV. For most Americans, time spent with the media surpasses time spent at work or at sleep, and certainly surpasses interaction with friends and family.[7]
And, if you’re anything like me, the cell phone is one of the last things—along with the lights—that we turn off at night, as well as one of the first things that we check when we get up in the morning—so, it doesn’t get much more personal than that!
Today’s Media Landscape
The Who
Now that we know a little about the what and the why of Media, it is time for us to learn something about the who behind it. In other words, who are the people or groups whose pockets go deep enough to buy and control this very expensive and highly profitable global communications network, and how are they using this powerful tool to advance Satan’s agenda?
Who owns it?
Throughout much of the twentieth century, Media ownership was regulated by laws enforced by the Federal Communications Commission—laws including…
the 1941 National TV Ownership Rule, which prohibited broadcasters from owning television stations that could reach more 35 percent of the nation’s homes;
the 1970 Radio/TV Cross-Ownership Restriction, which prevented broadcasters from owning a radio and a TV station in the same market; and,
the 1975 Newspaper/Broadcast Cross-Ownership Prohibition, which was designed to limit the ownership of a newspaper and a TV station in the same market.
However, during the Reagan administration, new laws were enacted which dramatically reduced government regulation of the Media and initiated what was soon to become an unprecedented period of consolidation for the large mass-media companies in the United States. Whereas, in 1980, about fifty corporations were controlling nearly all of U.S. Media, today, that control has been consolidated in just a handful of MediaConglomerates[8]–with only recently, two of the largest media mergers ever to take place having been announced—these being, AT&T’s offer to buy Time Warner for $85.4 billion, and the Walt Disney Company’s bid of more than $52 billion to buy out much of 21st Century Fox’s holdings. After this, according to information gathered for National Public Radio, the major owners of digital media, with a sampling of their holdings, will be…
Walt Disney Company—including 21st Century Fox and its properties, ABC, ESPN, Disney Channel, Freeform, Walt Disney Studios, Pixar, Marvel, Touchstone Pictures, Lucasfilm, Disney Digital Network, Polaris, Disneyland, Walt Disney World and other parks and resorts;
21st Century Fox—Fox News, Business, Sports, TV Network, National Geographic Partners, FX, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Fox Searchlight Pictures, Blue Sky Studios;
Time Warner, Inc.—CNN, HBO, Warner Brothers, Cinemax, TBS, TNT, NBA.com, MCAA.com, TMZ.com, Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, DC Comics, Bleacher Report;
AT&T—AT&T, DirecTV, Cricket Wireless, U-verse, YP.com (Yellowpages.com), Sky Brasil, Time Warner and its properties;
Comcast Corporation/NBC Universal—XFINITY, NBC News, Sports, TV Network, MSNBC, CBNC, NBC Entertainment, Telemundo, Bravo, Sprout, USA Network, Syfy, E!, Philadelphia Flyers, Universal Pictures, DreamWorks Animation, Focus Features, Universal Studios and other parks and resorts, Golf Channel, Oxygen;
CBS Corporation—CBS News, TV, Radio, Entertainment, Sports, Showtime, Simon & Schuster, Smithsonian Channel, CNET, ZDNet, TV Guide, Last.fm, Metacritic, Chowhound, Gamespot, Watch! Magazine;
Viacom, Inc.—Paramount Pictures, BET, Comedy Central, MTV, VH!, Nickelodeon, Spike, CMT, Centric, Logo TV, TV Land, Tr3s;
Univision Communications, Inc.—Univision TV, Radio, Digital Networks, Fusion, The Onion, The Root, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Kotaku, Uforia;
com, Inc.—Amazon Prime, Cloud Drive, Web Services, Marketplace, Whole Foods, Echo, Fire TV, Kindle, Audible, Twitch, IMDb, Goodreads, AbeBooks, ComiXology, DPReview, Zappos and other online retailers, The Washington Post;
Alphabet, Inc./Google—YouTube, Android, Chrome, Nexus, Pixel, Google Home, Blogger, Zagat, Nest, Waze, Verily, Google Search, Gmail, Maps, Hangouts and other apps, Project Fi; and,
Some of the companies not included in NPR’s listings are the leaders in the Radio and Print Industries…
Clear Channel—which owns 866 radio stations and Premiere Radio Networks (a national radio network that produces, distributes or represents approximately 90 syndicated radio programs, serves nearly 5,800 radio station affiliates and has over 213 million weekly listeners, and with programs including the Rush Limbaugh Show, Glenn Beck and the Sean Hannity Show); Fox Sports Radio; Fox News Radio; Australian Radio Network;
Bertelsmann—one of the world’s largest media companies, it also owns Random House (with over 200 imprints in 15 countries, including the Ballantine Publishing Group, the Bantam Dell Publishing Group, Broadway, the Crown Publishing Group, the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, Pantheon, Random House U.K.), the Knopf Publishing Group, and Waterbrook Press;
The Hearst Corporation–a media conglomerate that controls or has ownership stakes in newspaper, magazine, television, cable network and Internet properties—including Twenty U.S. magazines (like Car and Driver, Cosmopolitan, Country Living, ELLE, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Marie Claire, O, Popular Mechanics, Redbook, Seventeen andWoman’s Day); King Features (syndicator of newspaper comic strips including Blondie, Beetle Bailey, Hagar the Horrible, Family Circus, Dennis the Menace, Popeye); Black Book; Hearst Business Media (Electronics Products Magazine; Floor Covering Weekly); IDG/Hearst; Hearst Books; Hearst News Service; and,
The Tribune Company—which owns 23 TV stations, one radio station, 12 daily newspapers- including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sunand the Hartford Courant, and numerous magazines and other media properties.[10]
Why is this information so important for us to know? Because these are the companies that are controlling what we read in print, what we hear on the radio, and what we see on television, at the movies, and on the internet every day. These are the groups who, through the Image Culture they are helping to create, are replacing our reality with their fantasy, and reshaping our values and our views on life and of the world. And, without a doubt, these are the organizations which, as they continue to consolidate, will provide the Coming World Ruler with the Communications Monopoly he will need to control the world and the mindset of its entire population.
Going back to our earlier definition of Mass Communication, then, we can now identify these Media Giants as…
…the professional communicators who are using [their] technological devices to share messages over some distance to influence large audiences.
This, of course, begs the following questions…
What kinds of messages are they choosing to share; and
How are they attempting to influence us through these messages?
What Messages are Really Being Communicated
Mediated Messages and Influence Peddling
Although there are millions—perhaps even billions—of messages conveyed through the Media each day, of particular interest to us are those which are designed to…
Separate Us from Our Money; Steal Our Identity; and, Secure Our Support or Sway Our Vote.
Separating Us from Our Money
There can be no question that the most plentiful and the most obvious messages are those whose purpose it is to sell us something. Every day, no matter which way we turn, we are confronted by advertisements of one kind or another. That’s because…
One of the basic ingredients of American popular culture is consumption, and it is the advertising industry that makes mass consumption possible. Advertising sells us sexuality, beauty, youth, fashion, happiness, success, status and luxury. When Calvin Klein, for example, advertises blue jeans, he is selling us sex appeal, not jeans. Polo sells us fashion status and Miller beer offers us macho good times.
Advertising is an important element of our culture because it reflects and attempts to change our life styles. New cultural trends and fashions are first transmitted to the mass culture through advertisements.
It is estimated that, by the time a person raised in the United States reaches the age of 21, he or she has been exposed to 1 million to 2 million advertisements. The cumulative effects of this lifelong exposure plays a significant role in shaping our behavior, social beliefs and values.[11]
And one man who was extremely instrumental in the success of advertising as we know it today was noted psychologist and radical behaviorist, John B. Watson; for it was he who…
…recommended to advertisers that they could make a fortune by manipulating basic human motivations and emotions to their advantage, and often, of course, to the consumer’s disadvantage. One of his basic ideas, used with gusto and impunity by advertisers today, was to convince people that their possessions were inferior and consequently that they needed new possessions. In other words, he helped create the modern consumer mentality…[12]
As a result, day in and day out, consumers are bombarded with messages telling them that they need to buy bigger houses, newer cars, the latest fashions, and the best technological devices—and that, for their overall well-being, they need to take more vacations, eat out more often, and still somehow manage to lose weight. Far from benefiting from this consumer mentality, more Americans than ever are finding themselves over their heads in debt, more overweight, and more stressed out and feeling inadequate than ever before. What has really been sold and bought, then, is the lie that more will make us happy; an exchange that has most often taken place right under our noses, in our very own living rooms. Or, as Kalle Lasn, a co-founder of the Canadian media criticism and environmentalist magazine Adbusters describes it…
…In the privacy of our living rooms we made a devil’s bargain with the advertising industry: Give us an endless flow of free programs and we’ll let you spend 12 minutes of every hour promoting consumption. For a long time, this seemed to work. The ads grated on our nerves but it was a small price to pay for ‘free television.’ What we didn’t realize when we made our pact with the advertisers was that their agenda would eventually become the heart and soul of television. We have allowed the most powerful communications tool ever invented to become the command center of a consumer society defining our lives and culture the way family, community and spiritual values once did.[13]
Sadly, with our eyeballs having been sold to the highest advertising bidder in this way, many of us are ill-equipped to recognize the dangers inherent in the next set of Messages when they come our way.
Eyeballs for Sale
Stealing Our Identity
If advertisements are the most plentiful and most obvious of Media’s Messages, surely the subtlest are those that are designed to steal our identities. Usually, when we hear the term Identity Theft, we think of a person whose financial information has been stolen by some unknown internet hacker, who has made off with his or her social security number, or bank and credit card account numbers. As devastating as this kind of crime can be to an individual’s long-term financial situation and reputation, there is a crime that is far more subtle and insidious being perpetrated upon the numberless recipients of Mass Media’s Messages. This crime is the slow, subconscious, yet systematic theft of each recipient’s God-given Image and Spiritual Identity—a loss of reputation which will have everlasting ramifications.
Through the Media’s programming of television, music and music videos, movies, the internet and social media, and video games, today’s airwaves have been saturated with Images promoting hedonistic and godless lifestyles. By appealing to our flesh—that is, our baser human instincts—they have successfully convinced many of us that what is evil is really good, and what is good is really evil. Routinely, their Images have been and are being used to promote…
Idolatry and a rejection of God; Vulgarity, swearing, and cursing; Disrespect for parents and of one another; Disrespect for authority and for life; Drunkenness and substance abuse; Lying, cheating, stealing; Violence and murder; Greed, covetous, and corruption; Sexual immorality—both heterosexual and homosexual; and, Marital infidelity and divorce.
In case you hadn’t noticed, each of these is a violation of God’s Standard of Righteousness, better known as the Ten Commandments—and is something which God has repeatedly warned will be judged and punished. Not only that but, each time a person buys into the lies embedded within Media’s Messages, that person trades the Image of God that he was designed to bear for the one that Satan has long been trying to imprint upon him. And without the light and salt effects produced by that missing Godly Image, individuals have become devoid of purpose in life, families have fallen apart, and the moral fabric of society has, over time, been eroded.
What We Take in Helps Make Us What We Are–or Shouldn’t Be! Securing Our Support or Swaying Our Vote
Securing Our Support or Swaying Our Vote
No where is this erosion more evident than in the Media Messages whose intent it is to secure our support or sway our vote—with the Media’s coverage of Politics and Public Affairs being a prime example. In my lifetime alone, journalism—both print and television—has gone from being a respected and objective source of information to being a dog-and-pony show, with its blatant liberal bias on display for all to see. Instead of just relaying the facts, today’s reporters have taken to giving their opinions instead, as they attempt to impress and gain a following with their editorialization of the stories they are covering. Instead of real news reporting being the order of the day…
…studies have confirmed that the focus in journalism has shifted over the last two decades from an emphasis on policy, politics, ideas, and analysis to the current agenda of scandal; personality; human interest, entertainment, and spot-news cop-shop stories of crime, wrecks, and fires. In most local television news markets, stories about crime outnumber stories about government and policy by a more than three-to-one margin.[14]
One must question whether the media help or hinder our collective ability to learn what is really happening in the world, and whether television news is trying to dazzle us or inform us.[15]
Further evidence of society’s erosion can be seen as a result of its embrace of all things “gay”—the promotion of which has been one of Mass Media’s most cherished causes. Once again, just over the course of my life, the major Media outlets have gone from producing television programs and films which wouldn’t even show married couples sharing the same bed to shows and movies promoting every kind of sexual deviation as normal and worth experiencing.
The Media Would Have Us Believe that Love Justifies all Behavior–and that It Should Be Accepted
To demonstrate just how successful the Media-promoted Gay/Lesbian movement has been, we need only look at society today and compare it with the proposals contained in the ‘Gay Bill of Rights’ legislation which was introduced in the House of Representatives on January 3, 1985. In that bill, the LGBT agenda was clearly stated to include…
the legalization of homosexuality and lesbianism;
the criminal prosecution of all churches, schools and businesses for refusing to hire homosexuals;
the criminal prosecution of an individual who refuses housing accommodations to homosexual/lesbian couples;
the legitimization of marriage between homosexual/lesbian couples, as well as their adoption of children; and
the requirement that all public schools create sex education courses taught by homosexuals in order to show their lifestyle as a moral, healthy, and normal alternative to heterosexuality.[16]
With each item on this wish list now having been checked off, what we’re left with is a society in a state of confusion because its citizens have lost their sexual bearings. Young children in school no longer know whether they should go into the boys’ or girls’ restrooms, while older ones are in a quandary as they try to decide which sex they should be. Of course, this state of Androgyny, where people…
–are both male and female; hermaphroditic;
–have both masculine and feminine characteristics;
–have an ambiguous sexual identity; and,
–are neither clearly masculine nor clearly feminine in appearance…[17]
… has been Satan’s goal all along. That’s because, once people have lost their sexual identity, the last vestiges of God’s Image will have been removed, and they will be prepared to worship the hermaphroditic image of the Antichrist when he makes his appearance.
Satan’s Plan from the Beginning
Media’s Motive
The final question that we need to answer, then, is this: why would the owners of these MassMediaConglomerates use their messages to help create a society in which its citizens…
are in debt up to their eyeballs, relentlessly chasing unattainable images and lifestyles–like gerbils on a wheel;
have been narcotized by mindless “entertainment” while being left ill-informed about what is actually happening in the world; and,
are so confused about their sexual identity that they are willing to try anything, no matter how outrageous it is, in an attempt to figure out who they are?
It’s because the heads of these organizations are members of the groups we learned about when we surveyed the Earth’s Physical and Financial Landscapes—groups that are dedicated to the creation of a One World Government (which the Bible predicts will happen)—a government with…
One international identity, and one set of universal values;
Centralized control of the people in a society with no middle class, only rulers and servants;
A zero-growth policy designed to eliminate prosperity and facilitate the repression needed to keep society divided;
A state of perpetual imbalance that will keep people physically, mentally, and emotionally confused and exhausted;
Centralized control of education, enabling them to erase and rewrite the history that is taught to students;
Centralized control of all foreign and domestic policies;
Empowerment of the United Nations as the world’s government;
An American Union, a trading bloc similar to the European Union;
Expansion of NATO—with NATO becoming the UN’s world army;
One legal system; and,
One socialist welfare state, where those who cooperate will be rewarded and those who don’t will be eliminated.[18]
As for the Media’s role in all of this, it has been their job to distract us from what is really going on, and to con us, confuse us, and condition us for the coming new regime. In remarks made at the 1991 Bilderberger meeting, David Rockefeller praised the Media for their part in the advancement of the globalist agenda…
We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times,Time magazine and other great publications, whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years…
It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto determination practice in past centuries.[19]
The elite in this case—those who anticipate being the head and not the tail in this coming world government—would be the Media, as well as the members of the other globalist groups, who are helping to usher in the earthly kingdom over which Satan will one day rule. Of course, anyone who is familiar with the book of Revelation knows that for those who are responsible for the promotion of Satan’s Image on the earth, the story does not end well at all!
Phillips Craig & Dean remind of our responsibility to be the image of God to our children…
[6] Elizabeth Thoman, Rise of the Image Culture: Re-Imagining the American Dream, Center for Media Literacy at http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/rise-image-culture.
[8] Mark Crispin Miller, “Media Monopolies are a Serious Problem,” in Mass Media; Opposing Viewpoints, ed. William Dudley (Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2005), 77.
Now that we have a better idea of what Salvation is and why we need it, let’s stretch our spiritual muscles a little further as we learn how to appropriate this wonderful gift for ourselves, through something called the New Birth. Although some may consider the “head” knowledge of Salvation we gained in our previous workout session to be sufficient, that mere intellectual knowledge will prove to be woefully inadequate in providing us with the foundation we will need for our upcoming exercises in practical Christianity. For the purposes of this program, then, we can gain an experiential knowledge of Salvation (if it hasn’t been done already) through an active participation in each of the following four exercises…
Exercise #1—The Mandate for the New Birth
Exercise #2—The Spiritual Dynamics of the New Birth
Exercise #3—The Legalities of the New Birth
Exercise #4—Making the New Birth Personal
Exercise #1—The Mandate for the New Birth
In His encounter with Nicodemus, one of the religious leaders of His day, Jesus made the New Birthmandatory for anyone seeking entrance into the Kingdom of God. This meeting, recorded for us in John 3:1-14, took place one night when Nicodemus sought out Jesus for reasons which were never really made clear. That’s because, before Nicodemus had a chance to reveal the motivation for his visit, Jesus told him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God (V.3).” Thinking like a natural man, Nicodemus tried to figure out how he could go back into his mother’s womb and be born a second time. To this, Jesus responded, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirithe cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said unto you, ‘You must be born again’(vv. 5-7).”
The Mandate for the New Birth
In this statement, Jesus made it clear that there is a fixed gulf existing between our fleshly and spiritual beings; and, although everyone born into the natural world will initially be born into a fleshly or physical state, only those who have been regenerated by the Spirit of God will be born into life in the Spirit. Here, then, we find the mandate, given by Jesus Himself, that anyone who hopes to see God and participate in His kingdom must be born again. However, what we aren’t told here is the reason why this New Birth is necessary, or the way that we go about experiencing it.
Exercise #2—The Spiritual Dynamics of the New Birth…
If we are to understand the reason for Jesus’ mandate, we first need to learn about the dynamics involved in the New Birth; dynamics which have everything to do with regeneration. Since, by definition, regeneration is—the act of bringing something into existence again—that is, to form again, or to be made new—for us…
…Regeneration is the act by which our dead spirits are brought back to life again by the Holy Spirit of God.
But, why is this necessary?
To answer to that question, we must go all the way back to the beginning of human history; back to the time when Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden. That’s when their spirits, as well as those of all of their future descendants, died because their sin caused them to be separated or cut off from God. This meant that every human being who would ever live, with the exception of Jesus Christ, would be born spiritually dead—or, with a spirit cut off from its source of life in God.
In his book, The Spiritual Man, Watchman Nee explains what is meant when we speak about this state of spiritual death…
…when we say the spirit is dead it does not imply there is no more spirit; we simply mean the spirit has lost its sensitivity towards God and thus is dead to Him. The exact situation is that the spirit is incapacitated, unable to communicate with God…it remains in a coma as if non-existent.
Because of this spiritual death, no descendant of Adam has ever been able to have, much less maintain, a relationship with God while remaining in his or her natural or fleshly state. The NewBirth, then, is what occurs when God’s Spirit brings a man’s spirit back to life and restores that man’s lost relationship to God, making it possible for him to communicate with God once again. But—and this is a very BIG BUT—before this can happen, there are certain legalities which must be addressed, legalities involving our repeated violations of God’s laws.
Exercise #3—The Legalities Involved in the New Birth…
As we learned back in Salvation—What It Is and Why We Need It,each of us has, throughout our lives, repeatedly offended God by violating His laws, or His codes of acceptable moral and spiritual conduct; and, in the process of that, we have unwittingly erected a barrier—or a wall of offence—between Him and us, something which makes any relationship between us impossible. Until such a time as we confess our faults—or, until we agree with God about what we have done wrong, and seek His forgiveness—we will continue to be “cut off” from Him; losing whatever opportunities we may have had to get to know Him and to experience His grace. Thus, the elimination of our offenses against God, as well as the removal of the wall which those offenses have created, is what the New Birth is all about.
The Wall of Offense Between God and Us
Unfortunately, because most of us have no concept of what God’s righteous requirements for relationship with Him are, we don’t know what we have done to offend Him. Most of us have lived our lives according to the codes of conduct that we have acquired from our parents, picked up from our friends and associates, or created for ourselves in response to the ever-changing circumstances of life. Unlike God’s immutable standard of holiness, our concepts of what constitutes right and wrong have been derived from very human and fallible sources and, as a result, tend to have very nebulous boundaries. Consequently, the principles by which we live are often adapted to the situations in which we find ourselves at any given moment, with what is true and right in one situation differing from that in another. With backgrounds steeped in such a relativistic system of ethics, how are we to know for sure what God’s requirements are; and, how can we understand what our offenses against Him have been?
The only way we can know how we have missed God’s “mark” for acceptable behavior (with “sin” being defined as “missing the mark” of God) is through the Bible, where God has set forth His standard of righteousness, or right living, in Exodus 20: 1-17—a standard we know today as the Ten Commandments. In these commandments, He makes it clear that, in order for us to have a spiritual relationship with Him, we must meet certain conditions:
We can have no gods other than Him; ours is to be a personal and an exclusive relationship;
We cannot make an idol, or anything in the form of a person, or an object from the natural or spiritual world, which we worship in His place; so, no person, possession, position, pleasure, power or money can be substituted for Him;
We cannot take His name in vain—that is, use His name in a disrespectful or dishonest manner. We are not to use God’s name as a swear word, or to legitimatize or authorize any activity which He has not sanctioned;
We are to remember the Sabbath day, or one day in seven as a day of rest and worship, and keep it holy, or set apart for Him;
We are to honor our parents, respecting them as God’s appointed authorities in our lives;
We are not to murder; or, according to Jesus in an expanded version found in Matthew 5: 22, to even harbor hatred in our hearts toward another person;
We cannot steal—that is, take anything which is not ours, including money, property, an employer’s time, a person’s reputation, or the affection of someone who belongs to another;
We cannot commit adultery, or any sexual sin, either by thinking about it or actually doing it (see Matthew 5: 28 for another amplified rendition);
We cannot bear false witness or lie about anyone else; and,
We are not to covet, or want for our own, anything that belongs to another person; this includes his or her spouse, children, positions, possessions, personalities, looks, or money.
The Laws of God
Since we all have violated these laws at one time or another, how can we, as naturally unrighteous people, meet such rigorous demands for righteousness and enter into a relationship with God? In all honesty, we can’t—at least, not on our own. We must have the help of SomeoneElsewho can meet these demands on our behalf; Someone who can bridge the gap between God’s holiness and our sinful condition, thereby making a relationship between God and us possible.
Exercise #4—Making the New Birth Personal…
Since God is the only One who completely understands the strict demands of His law, as well as man’s total inability to meet those demands, He took it upon Himself to create a plan by whichSomeone named Jesus could bring God and man together. And, for us to understand how this plan works, here is what we need to know:
Our Lifeline to God
First, we need to understand that God is so holy that anyone who comes into His presence must be free from any and all impurities, or else he will die. When God told Adam that if he ate from the forbidden tree he would die, He was making clear to him the principle that “…the wages of sin is death (Romans 3:23)” and that “the person who sins will die (Ezekiel 18:20).”
Since the law of God’s holiness requires that sin’s offenses be paid for by death, the one who has offended Him must die to satisfy the judgment imposed upon him by the law.
However, God in His grace also stipulated in His law that a substitution could be made for the offender—that is, the sinner could avoid paying the penalty for his own violations of God’s law if he could find Someone else who was willing to die in his place. But, in order to qualify as such a substitution, this Someone could not be a person who was himself a sinner—he would have to be a person without guilt in order to satisfy everyone of God’s specific rules for holiness. The only person who has ever lived who could meet these demands was Jesus Christ, God’s Son.
Therefore, God sent Jesus into the world to live a life of sinless perfection; a life which would fulfill all of the righteous demands of the law. Then, Jesus died an agonizing death on the cross—a death which paid sin’s penalty, and one which could be substituted for the death required of each and every sinner who would ever live.
In addition to paying the price for everyone’s sin through His substitutionary death, Jesus also conquered the power of death once and for all when He was raised from the dead to live again forever.
But, even though Jesus’ death paid the price for everyone’s sin, the payment for any individual’s penalty would not automatically be credited to him: – First, he must come humbly before God, acknowledging that he has violated the laws of God and is unable to meet God’s demands for righteousness on his own, in order to receive, by faith, what Christ has done on his behalf; – He can then exchange his sin for the gift of salvation graciously made available to him through Christ’s sacrificial death; and, –With this transaction, the wall of offense separating him from God will come down, his spirit will be Born Again, and God’s Spirit will come to live within him and begin teaching how to live like a son of God.
If you aren’t sure that you have experienced this New Birth, then let me urge you to go to God, acknowledge the offenses which have kept you spiritually dead and alienated from Him, and ask Him, forJesus’sake, to remove them. When you do, the Holy Spirit will come to live within your spirit and you, too, will be born againas a child of God.
“You must be born again.” — John 3:7
The Talley Family shares the story of our Salvation in this moving medley…
Now that everyone is back on board the train, it’s time for us to leave theSalvation Station; the place where we were introduced to God’s wonderful plan for saving sinners from death and destruction while, at the same time, adopting them as His very own children–in the process, giving them a hope in this life as well as a glorious future in the next.
What we didn’t learn here, though, is just how we can appropriate this salvationthat Godhas so graciously provided for us. With that as our immediate goal, let’s make our way to the next stop on our tour, the New Birth Station; where we will not only discover what the New Birth is, but for those who have never been this way before, they will learn how they, too, can participate in the New Birth experience and be “born again.”
While some may consider the “head” knowledge of God’s salvation which we gained at our first stop to be sufficient for any venture into the world of the Word,for the purposes of this journey that mere intellectual knowledge will prove to be woefully inadequate when it comes to providing us with access to all of the places listed on our itinerary. That’s because we will actually be traveling from one land into another, going from the darkened land of the natural where we live every day, into the illumined land of the spiritual where God dwells eternally. Without an experiential knowledge of salvation, should we even make it into the Word, we would be at a loss to understand the language, the laws, and the culture of that land once we had arrived there.
I should also point out that there is a heavily guarded border which separates these two lands, and since it runs right through the New Birth Station, before we can go any farther on our tour, we will have to stop there and make our way through Customs before being allowed to cross the border. The purpose of this processing is to help ensure that all of us will have the “experiential” knowledge of salvation that it will take to make the rest of our trip truly enjoyable and productive. Once that has been done, we will be provided with the Passports that we will need for further travel.
“Anything to Declare?”
Well, what do you know—we’re here at the station already! Quickly, before you leave the train, let me give you some instructions which should help to facilitate your processing through Customs. As soon as you disembark, you will see two signs overhead: one saying, “Something to Declare” and the other saying “Nothing to Declare.” For those who are traveling in Group #1—those who have already experienced the New Birth—please proceed to the “Something to Declare” counter where when asked, you will declare “Salvation by the Blood of the Lamb,” be handed your passport, and then be escorted back to the comfort of the train. However, those who are traveling in Groups #2 and #3 (and possibly some in Group #1 who are not certain you’ve experienced the New Birth), will need to proceed to the “Nothing to Declare” counter where you will begin your processing through Customs in the following order:
First, you will visit Room 1, where you will learn about the mandate for theNew Birth;
Next, you will proceed to Room 2, where you will learn about the spiritual dynamics of theNew Birth;
Then, you will go to Room 3, where you will learn about the legal reasons for theNew Birth; and,
Finally, you will go to Room 4, where you can share in the experience theNew Birth for yourself.
Once you have completed the process, you will be escorted to the “Something to Declare” counter where, when asked, you too will have the opportunity to declare, “Salvation by the Blood of the Lamb,” be handed your passport, and then be escorted back to the comfort of the train.
Room 1–The Mandate for the New Birth
A Nighttime Visit from Nicodemus
Here, you will learn what Jesus had to say about the New Birth, as you witness a scene taking place between Him and one of the religious leaders of His day. This scene, as recorded for us in John 3:1-14, takes place one night as Nicodemus seeks out Jesus for reasons which are never really made clear to us. That’s because, before Nicodemus is able let us in on the motivation for this visit, Jesus, knowing the real need of his heart, tells him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God (V.3).” Thinking like a true natural man, Nicodemus tries to reason how he could go back into his mother’s womb and be born a second time. To this, Jesus responds, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said unto you, ‘You must be born again’ (vv. 5-7).”
During this interchange, Jesus reveals that there is a fixed gulf between our fleshly beings and our spirits, and although everyone born into this world will be initially born into a fleshly or physical state, only those who have been regenerated by the Spirit of Godwill be born into life in the Spirit. This, then, is the mandate given by Jesus Himself, stating that anyone who hopes to see God and participate in His kingdom must be born again. However, what isn’t made clear here are the answers to the questions of why is this necessary and how does one go about making this happen. So, in pursuit of those answers, you will go on to…
Room 2–The Spiritual Dynamics of the New Birth
The dynamics involved in the New Birth have everything to do with regeneration. Since our DOT for regeneration is—the act of bringing something into existence again, or to form again or to be made new—for us, regeneration is the act by which our dead spirits are brought back to life again by the Holy Spirit of God. You may be wondering, though, just why is this necessary?
It Only Takes One Sin to Separate Us from a Holy God
To answer that question, we will need to go back to the beginning of human history, back to the time when Adam and Eve first disobeyed God; the time when their spirits, as well as those of all of their future descendants, died because sin caused them to be separated or cut off from God. What this means is that every human being who has been born since then, with the exception of Jesus Christ,has been born spiritually dead—or, with a spirit that has been cut off from its source of life inGod.
As Watchman Nee explains in his book, The Spiritual Man…
…when we say the spirit is dead it does not imply there is no more spirit; we simply mean the spirit has lost its sensitivity towards God and thus is dead to Him. The exact situation is that the spirit is incapacitated, unable to communicate with God…it remains in a coma as if non-existent.” And, as a result of this death, no descendant of Adam has ever been able to have a relationship with God while remaining in his or her natural or fleshly state.
The NewBirth, then, is what occurs when God’s Spirit brings a man’s spirit back to life, restoring that man’s lost relationship to God, and making it possible for him to communicate with God once again. But—and this is a very BIG BUT—before this can happen, certain legalities will have to be taken care of.
Room 3–The Legal Reasons for the New Birth
As we learned back at the Salvation Station, each of us has, throughout our lives, offended Godby violating His laws, or His codes of acceptable moral and spiritual conduct. In the process, we have unwittingly erected a barrier between Him and us, a wall of offense which makes any relationship between us impossible. Until such a time as we confess our faults—that is, we agree with God about what we have done wrong and seek His forgiveness—we will continue to be “cut off” from Him, losing whatever opportunities we may have had to get to know Him and to become part of His family. Thus, the elimination of our offenses against God, along with the removal of the wall which those offenses created, is what the New Birth is all about.
Unfortunately, because most of us have no concept of what God’s righteous requirementsfor relationship with Him are, we don’t know what we have done to offend Him. Most of us have lived our lives according to the codes of conduct that we acquired from our parents, picked up from our friends and associates, or created for ourselves in response to the ever-changing circumstances of life. Unlike God’s immutable standard of holiness, our concepts of what constitutes right and wrong have been derived from very human and fallible sources and, as a result, tend to have very nebulous boundaries. Consequently, the principles by which we live are often adapted to the situations in which we find ourselves at any given moment, with what is true and right in one situation differing from that in another. With backgrounds steeped in such a relativistic system of ethics, how are we to know for sure what God’s requirements are; how can we understand what our offenses against Him have been?
The only way we can know how we have missed God’s “mark” for acceptable behavior (and sin is defined as “missing the mark” of God) is through His Word, where God has set forth His standard of righteousness, or right living, in Exodus 20: 1-17; a standard we know today as the Ten Commandments. There, He makes clear that in order for us to have a spiritual relationship with Him, we must meet certain conditions:
We can have no gods other than Him; ours is to be a personal and an exclusive relationship;
We cannot make an idol, or anything in the form of a person or an object from the natural or spiritual world, which we worship in His place; so, no person, possession, position, pleasure, power or money can be substituted for Him;
We cannot take His name in vain—that is, use His name in a disrespectful or dishonest manner. We are not to use God’s name as a swear word, or to legitimatize or authorize any activity which He has not sanctioned;
We are to remember the Sabbath day, or one day in seven as a day of rest and worship and keep it holy, or set apart for Him;
We are to honor our parents, respecting them as God’s appointed authorities in our lives;
We are not to murder or, according to Jesus in an expanded version found in Matthew 5: 22, to even harbor hatred in our hearts toward another person;
We cannot steal—that is, take anything which is not ours, including money, property, an employer’s time, a person’s reputation, or the affection of someone who belongs to another;
We cannot commit adultery or any sexual sin, either by thinking about it or actually doing it (see Matthew 5: 28 for another amplified rendition);
We cannot bear false witness or lie about anyone else; and,
We are not to covet, or want for our own, anything that belongs to another person; this includes his or her spouse, children, positions, possessions, personalities, looks, or money.
Of course, we have all violated these laws at one time or another so, how is it possible for us, as naturally unrighteous people, to meet God’s demands for righteousness, and enter into a relationship with Him? In all honesty, we can’t—at least, not on our own. We must have the help of Someonewho can meet these demands on our behalf; Someone who can bridge the gap between God’s holiness and our sinful condition, thereby making a relationship between God and us possible–Someoneyou will learn more about in…
The Cross is Man’s Only Bridge to God
Room 4–The Experience of the New Birth
Since God is the only One who completely understands the strict demands of His law, as well as man’s total inability to meet those demands, He took it upon Himself to create a plan by which Someone, namely Jesus, could bring God and man together. In order to understand how His plan works, here is what we need to know:
First, we need to understand that God is so holy that anyone who comes into His presence must be free from any and all impurities, or else he will die. When God told Adam that if he ate from the forbidden tree he would die, He was revealing to him the principle that “…the wages of sin is death (Romans 3:23)” and that “the person who sins will die (Ezekiel 18:20).”
Since the law of God’s holiness requires that sin’s offenses be paid for by death, this means that the one who has offended must die to satisfy the judgment imposed upon him by the law.
However, God in His grace also stipulated in His law that a substitution could be made for the offender—that is, the sinner could avoid paying the penalty for his own violations of God’s law if he could find Someone else who was willing to die in his place.
But in order to qualify as such a substitution, this Someone could not be a person who was himself a sinner—he would have to be Someone without guilt in order to satisfy everyone of God’s specific rules for holiness. The only Person who has ever lived who could meet these demands was Jesus Christ, God’s Son.
Therefore, Godsent Jesus into the world to live a life of sinless perfection, a life which would fulfill all of the righteous demands of the law. Then Jesus died an agonizing death on the cross—a death which paid sin’s penalty, and one which could be substituted for the death required of each and every sinner who would ever live.
In addition to paying the price for everyone’s sin through His substitutionary death, Jesus also conquered the power of death once and for all when He was raised from the dead to live again forever.
Although Jesus’ death paid the price for everyone’s sin, the payment for any individual’s penalty will not automatically be credited to him. – First, he must come humbly before God, acknowledging that he has violated the laws of God and is unable to meet God’s demands for righteousnesson his own, in order to receive by faith what Christ has done on his behalf.
– He can then exchange his sin for the gift of salvation that God has graciously made available to him through Christ’s sacrificial death.
– It is with this transaction that his spirit becomes “born again”; and it is at this time that God’s Spiritcomes to live within him and begins teaching how to live like a child of God.
…For Making a Way for Us to God
This, then, is God’s glorious plan for providing us with a New Birth. If you aren’t sure if you have ever experienced it, then let me urge you to go to God, acknowledging the offenses which have kept you spiritually dead and alienated from Him, and ask Him, for Jesus’ sake, to remove them. When you do, the Holy Spirit will come to live within your spirit, and you will be “born again!”
Take as much time as you need at this station, and I will meet you back at the train whenever you are ready to travel again.
You can rejoice along with Third Day because you are “Born Again”…