COMMITTED to train men and women
to have minds for the Lord Jesus,
hearts for the truth, and
hands that are skilled to the task.

10.19.2022 – Lesson 6 | SELL IT AS A NOBLE CAUSE

Genesis 3:1-7
2 Timothy 3:1-5

Erwin Lutzer “We will not be silenced”
“Sell it as equality, justice, civil rights, and love, the Propaganda of today becomes the ‘truth’ of tomorrow. In Eden, the devil sold slavery to Adam and Eve, but called it independence; he sold them wisdom, but it turned out to be mental darkness, he put forth a beautiful vision of who they could become, but his offer was sweetly poisoned. He promised them fulfillment and gave them guilt. He appealed to their pride and gave them despair and an empty life. He promised like a god but paid them like the devil he was.”
“People don’t realize that love can be sinful; it can be evil. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, they did not stop loving. Rather, they just stopped loving God, turning to love other things. They became lovers of themselves.”

Dr. Naomi Wolf “The Bodies of Others”
“The Bodies of Others is about how we came to the harrowing civilizational crossroads at which we find ourselves – engaged in a war against vast impersonal forces with limitless power over our lives and which threaten the freedoms we have always taken for granted.
In her most provocative book yet, Dr. Naomi Wolf shows how these forces — from Big Tech and Big Pharma to the CCP and our oligarchical elites — seized upon two years of COVID-19 panic in sinister new ways, to not only undermine our Republic but to fundamentally reorient human relations. Their target is humanity itself. Their end goal is to ensure that our pre-March 2020 world is gone forever. Irretrievable. To be replaced with a world in which all human endeavor-all human joy, all human fellowship, all human advancement, all human culture, all human song, all human drama, all worship, all surprise, all flirtation, all celebration-is behind a digital paywall. A world in which we will all have to ask technology’s permission to be human.”
Erwin Lutzer
“Propaganda can change the direction of a nation……The withdrawal of individual freedoms was sold to the population as a plus. Slavery to the state was presented as the gateway to freedom and prosperity. Conquest was sold as liberation. Everything done was always for ‘the good of the people.’ The purpose of propaganda is to change people’s perception of reality so that despite compelling counterevidence, people will not change their minds. The goal is to make people impervious to facts, scientific proof, and common sense. Of course, sometimes facts and scientific proof can be subject to interpretation. But often obvious arguments are set aside because people believe what they want to believe even in the face of mounting contrary evidence. Someone has said that the ultimate goal of propaganda is that we behave like a child with a finger in each ear, shouting ‘I don’t hear you!’
Edward Bernays “Crystallizing Public Opinion” (2022)
In writing this book I have tried to set down the broad principles that govern the profession of public relations. It is certain that the power of public opinion is constantly increasing and will keep on increasing. It is equally certain that it is more and more being influenced, changed, stirred by impulses from below. The danger which this development contains for a progressive ennobling of human society and a progressive heightening of human culture is apparent. The duty of the higher strata of society-the cultivated, the learned, the expert, the intellectual-is therefore clear. They must inject moral and spiritual motives into public opinion. Public opinion must become public conscience.”

Edward Bernays “Propaganda”
In this book Bernays defends the use of propaganda and the need for the ‘intelligent manipulation’ of the masses. He explains, ‘those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds, molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggest, largely by men we have never heard of…..It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.’
This is the write-up of this man that published the book in 1928
A seminal and controversial figure in the history of political thought and public relations, Edward Bernays (1891–1995), pioneered the scientific technique of shaping and manipulating public opinion, which he famously dubbed “engineering of consent.” During World War I, he was an integral part of the U.S. Committee on Public Information (CPI), a powerful propaganda apparatus that was mobilized to package, advertise and sell the war to the American people as one that would “Make the World Safe for Democracy.” The CPI would become the blueprint in which marketing strategies for future wars would be based upon.
Bernays applied the techniques he had learned in the CPI and, incorporating some of the ideas of Walter Lipmann, as well as his uncle, Sigmund Freud, became an outspoken proponent of propaganda as a tool for democratic and corporate manipulation of the population. His 1928 bombshell Propaganda lays out his eerily prescient vision for using propaganda to regiment the collective mind in a variety of areas, including government, politics, art, science and education. To read this book today is to frightfully comprehend what our contemporary institutions of government and business have become in regards to organized manipulation of the masses. The transformation of schooling from a twelve-year jail sentence to freedom to learn.
John Taylor Gatto’s “Weapons of Mass Instruction”,
“In this book he focuses on mechanisms of traditional education which cripple imagination, discourage critical thinking, and create a false view of learning as a byproduct of rote-memorization drills. Gatto’s earlier book, Dumbing Us Down , introduced the now-famous expression of the title into the common vernacular. Weapons of Mass Instruction adds another chilling metaphor to the brief against conventional schooling. Gatto demonstrates that the harm school inflicts is rational and deliberate. The real function of pedagogy, he argues, is to render the common population manageable. To that end, young people must be conditioned to rely upon experts, to remain divided from natural alliances and to accept disconnections from their own lived experiences. They must at all costs be discouraged from developing self-reliance and independence. Escaping this trap requires a strategy Gatto calls “open source learning” which imposes no artificial divisions between learning and life. Through this alternative approach our children can avoid being indoctrinated-only then can they achieve self-knowledge, good judgment, and courage.”

Here are the facts:
On September 29th, the National School Boards Association sent a letter to President Biden asking for help from federal law enforcement against concerned parents who are getting involved at local school board meetings. That letter compared parents to domestic terrorists. It even suggested the PATRIOT Act should be used against them.

On October 4th, Attorney General Garland put out a memo telling the FBI and other parts of DOJ to work with local governments on a supposed spike in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against local school boards.

The National Security Division is included too, apparently because they deal with domestic terrorists and the PATRIOT Act.

Attorney General Garland has since testified that he gave the Department of Justice this instruction because of what he read in the National School Boards Association letter to President Biden from just five days earlier. This is an extraordinary deployment of federal law enforcement, when we have problems like a historic murder surge and an open southern border.

What have we learned since then?
First, we learned the White House helped write the original letter from the National School Boards Association to the White House.
Next, we learned that state school board associations had nothing to do with putting together that letter. Over 20 of them have publicly disavowed it.
Think about that.
The White House helped write a letter to itself comparing parents who love their kids to domestic terrorists—but the actual members of the National School Boards Association had nothing to do with it.
On October 22nd, the National School Boards Association apologized for its original letter that started this whole mess and was never even authorized by its own board.
Erwin Lutzer “No Reason to Hide”
“Dr. Lius R. Marcos, a psychiatrist, wrote the following: There is a silent tragedy that is growing today in our homes, and it is about our most beautiful jewelry; our children. Our children are in a devastating emotional state! Over the past 15 years, researchers have given us increasingly alarming stats on a steady and acute increase in childhood mental illness now reaching epidemic proportions:
Stat’s don’t lie;
1 in 5 children have mental health issues
A 43% increase was seen in ADHD
A 37% increase in adolescent depression has been observed
A 200% increase in the suicide rate among children ages 10-14 has been observed.
Dr. Marcos goes on to say that today’s children are being deprived of the foundations of a healthy childhood, which includes parents who are available, healthy boundaries, responsibilities, and opportunities for social interaction and being outdoors. Instead, today’s cultural norms have led to parents who are digitally preoccupied and who permissively let their children be the ones who set the rules in the home. Kids are also being raised on a steady diet of digital stimulation and instant gratification. What is to be done? Here’s my brief response; Parents must return to being parents, offering their children a sense of security, value, emotional connection, and discipline. Parents also need to model a spiritual commitment that is real and infectious. I don’t know who said it first, but rules without relationship equals rebellion; rules with love and consistency produce healthy children who are emotionally secure.
For the most part, Christian parents want good kids – kids who won’t do drugs and won’t have sex before marriage, and who won’t get in trouble with the law. But few parents are truly committed to rearing GODLY KIDS who love Christ and have hearts that are open ‘on the Godward side.’ To pray quick prayers is not enough; to spend an hour in church on Sunday is not enough; to have the children memorize verses of Scripture is not enough. We must not only win the minds of our children, but also their hearts.
To whom do children belong?
All children belong to God. The unborn child who is killed in their mother’s womb belongs to Him; the child born into poverty and abuse belongs to Him; the child who is deceptively misled in a public school belongs to Him. Children are not OWNED BY US; rather the are LOANED to us. God says, in effect, ‘This is My Child. Raise him or her for Me. And I will hold you accountable.’