True Freedom - Pt. 1

Ron Weinland

December 15, 2012

In the past two sermons in the series entitled, 'The Season of Enticing', meaning that series is complete as of last Sabbath, we've been focusing on the very base selfish nature of man and how that just as this time of year portrays the ease in which Satan has enticed mankind into observing this Christmas season, he easily, as far as his power being exerted and so forth, has been enticing mankind in a similar fashion for the past 6,000 years.  And certainly our nature yields itself to such enticing in a very easy manner.  So today we're continuing by building upon that two part sermon series with a new sermon entitled True Freedom.  This is a follow-up, this is where we have been heading with this sermon series that we had before this but I wanted to give this a different title today because of the particular material we're going to go into here and separate a little bit.  But again, this one is entitled 'True Freedom'.

I'm going to be doing quite a bit of reading so give me a little bit of time here to catch up to where we need to be before I can get into some of the scriptures, I want to make sure I cover all this.  This is a little bit harder of a sermon to give in some respects because of what we're discussing, because God has been bringing us along ever since we've come into this day with a lot of material that one day you're going to look back upon and be dumbfounded by because He just continues to give us more and more and more in a refining process with understanding and  a lot of the things we've been going into have to do with some of the primary highlights of things God wants us to focus upon for the end and where we're going and what we're being prepared for.

So it's kind of like a crash course, if you will, this period of time that we're in, and far more has been given to us on a spiritual plane, and one day we'll understand that in a far deeper way.  We've been given a lot through time but especially this time we've really been given a crash course on a spiritual plane in a far greater way than ever before, and this sermon here has a great deal to do with preparing for where we're going, to begin thinking along various lines and terms of understanding that there are a lot of changes that have to be made in this world.

We've always understood that.  We've always understood there are a lot of changes that have to be made in the world the way it is, obviously, with Satan being removed, with so many things coming to an end, but there really is a lot more that we're going to have to be a part of, that we will be a part of, that we need to begin thinking about, contemplating now and learning from - because God's giving us that opportunity to have a large part in what's coming in the future.  But we are very unique in the sense that we have lived in a time of technology that others have never experienced, obviously, through time, and so we have opportunities of dealing with some things of a change.  And as you begin to grasp some of this too, in a deeper way, because of technology, because of everything that mankind has been brought to in this age, in the 21st Century, there are things to do with the mind and human reasoning and thinking that we're going to grasp because of the use of technology that causes us to, or should bring us to a point, of really analyzing and looking at these things in a far deeper way, to grasp and comprehend things of why God has led us as He has in the past 6,000 years and why we've been brought to such a point.  It really is an awesome thing to understand as we go along.

So this 6,000 year long season of enticing from Satan is about to end for mankind as God ushers in a new age, the Millennial age that's nearly upon us, with the reign of His Son here on earth.  So the question now being asked after this two part series we've gone through is:  What are some of the kinds of things that must be changed once God's Government is established over mankind?  The use of technology has really brought a lot of this to the forefront.  Satan has misused technology.  Everything that we have out here has been misused, but as human beings we have become accustomed to it, we've become accustomed to having a telephone with us 24 hours a day no matter where we are in the world.  I don't care where you are in the world, you can't get away from people calling you on a telephone and having your life interrupted on a regular basis.  Now you think, well maybe I shouldn't make any telephone calls then - that's not the point!  The point being is that we are prisoners to it; in a sense, we're prisoners to technology.  God does not intend for us to be prisoners to technology.

It's like what young people today as they grow up... this is their world, they're in a world of texting, this is their world, to text.  Their world is one of fast communication, their world is one of a use of technology that some of us have gotten to a point where we don't even care to use it anymore, that's the reality.  There are things that people of an older generation... candidly, I don't care to have texting. I don't want it. I never wanted to learn it in the beginning.  If I'm going to have a conversation with someone I'd rather talk to them on the phone, even if it's for a minute or whatever to get my message across, so I can have some feedback.  But anyway, the point being is we have become, as it were, prisoners to it.  But the sad thing about it is, people think this is normal.

The point being is that we are prisoners to technology and we don't understand that;  youth, let alone adults who've been around for a long, long time, don't grasp that.  What is normal in your world doesn't mean it's right!  ...doesn't mean it's good!  And so there are changes that need to be made in things.  And that doesn't mean we're taking cell phones away, please understand - someone said last week, "Now we're going to go back to horse and buggy?"  as a kind of a joke - no, we aren't.  Technology is an awesome thing, but as never before with mankind we have to learn how to use it properly.  It's such a good thing that technology wasn't in the world long before, even with some of the types of inventions and so forth that have nothing to do with weaponry and so forth.  If we took all that out of the picture there are still massive things of technology that have so hurt mankind, so imprisoned mankind far more than mankind has ever been imprisoned, or held in bondage.  Satan has a stronger grip on mankind today because of technology than he ever has!  And we need to understand that.  And it's because of our base nature that there are things of technology that we can be pulled into and misuse in a powerful way... and we're at a point in time where God says, in essence, enough is enough.  He gave us enough to experience some of this so we can learn from it and so that as we go into a new age technology can be used in a proper way.

Thankfully the mind of mankind is going to be geared totally differently so things can be used in a better way.  It was never meant that we should have 500 stations to choose from on TV!  It's not meant that man should live by this!  It isn't meant that young people or adults should be in front of a TV set hours upon hours upon hours on end playing games!  That isn't life, to get imprisoned to something!  There are young people who have grown up where that's all they know.  There are adults that that's all they know, they can't even work in the world today because they are in bondage to being in front of a TV playing games!  I know people like this!  It's a horrible thing!  It's a horrible thing to be so imprisoned to something that you can't function in the world!  And some people just can't even function in the world today, they can't communicate, they're uncomfortable in communicating with other people, they are uncomfortable in getting together with other people, family even.  I know of people like that, that are uncomfortable because it's too much of a stress!  They would rather be in a cyber world, if you can call it that - I don't know what you can call it - a world on the internet where life isn't real, and God doesn't intend for life to be like that.

And so we need to begin to grasp how these things have made bondage stronger, in the sense of being in Egypt, than they ever have been and the need to begin to exercise more control.  So the reality is, between now and the time of Christ's return - whenever that is, whenever Christ returns - between now and that period of time, which I believe with all my being is still May 19, 2013 - no matter when it is the point is you need to use the time you have right now to begin making these changes in your life, because unless you do you're not going to understand this.  Because there are things in all of our lives we need to begin thinking about - the use of things around us in the world - and to understand there is a need to have stronger control so we can learn from it now.  Because it's akin to a reality of life that there are things we can't understand until you live it.

That's why God says, "Prove Me now, herewith.  You know what that means?  It has to do with the example I've given so many times of on a farm, going back in the time of an agrarian society and that's why the example is given there, someone who has been tilling the earth by hand, by tools, all of a sudden is able to purchase an ox to help him till the earth. And this is an awesome change from having to do something by hand to being able to have an animal to help you that is so powerful and so strong, to till far more of the earth, to be far more productive, and so he goes out and proves them. He goes out and proves them; that's what the word means, to prove them, to see what they can accomplish.  And a person is so excited to be able to do something like that!  This is an awesome event for them, and that's why the example that Christ gave is there, to prove, that God gave about proving Him and His way of life and so forth - that until you do it you can't understand it.

There are things in life, like tithing.  God says, "Try me now, herewith," prove Me!  And we learn from that process!  And then there are people who struggle with that all their life, and because they rob from God they don't grasp they can never learn the true blessings of life, what it's all about.  Because until you prove God's way of life to yourself so that God can bless you and work with you, especially in the mind, that's what's awesome!  This is where God want to work with us, with the mind, and until we live His way of life and begin to experience it...  It's one thing to have something by knowledge and to think we believe God.  Sometimes people think they believe God already just because of knowledge, because the knowledge is so different.  "I believe in Passover and I believe in the Feast of Tabernacles.  I believe in Pentecost and I no longer believe in Christmas and Easter."  And so we think that by that knowledge that somehow we are in agreement with God on these matters and that isn't how it works, that's the beginning.  Knowledge is just the beginning, the living of it gives you understanding.  The living of it begins to give you wisdom if you yield to it, as you yield to it to where you become more at one with God.

And so in the things we're talking about today there are things we must begin to work at in a stronger way in the time we have remaining, weeks, months, whatever it is right now before us, to begin making certain changes in our own personal lives, or to at least be praying to God about some of these things and thinking upon some of these things so that we can better grasp what God is showing us...to understand that there are mighty changes that must be made in the future but we need to begin to understand more deeply the principles now.  This is difficult sometimes for people because we don't think that we're in bondage to technology, but you are.  There is some bondage out here with things of technology that are being misused that have to do with society and the control it has over your life and the control you let it have over your life that we need to learn to exercise in a stronger and a better way.

And generally when we do this, when God has us focus on a certain thing...  I remember this one individual, an evangelist, has told me at different times about what one minister used to say, that the only time we're really going straight down the center of the road is when we're careening from one ditch to the other; just that moment when all of a sudden we're passing the center line there, but then we're careening from one....  because we're learning.  We go from one side to the other learning about God's way of life but at least we're not going past the ditches, as a whole, hopefully, and hopefully we're able to get back on the road and we still move forward.  But that's what it feels like sometimes because balance, soundness of mind, which a lot of this is about, doesn't come natural for us as human beings.  It's something that with God's spirit we begin to learn.  True soundness, true balance of life comes from God.  Another way of expressing it is 'wisdom'; that kind of mind comes from God. Man's wisdom isn't too wise, what people look up to as man's wisdom.  It's messed up.

So, there is only one true way of life and true wisdom... and the same way of freedom, there is only one thing that is true when it comes to freedom, and that's a part of what this is all about.

So again, one of the questions is: What are some of the kinds of things that must be changed once God's Government is established over mankind?  To know how to work with some of these things that are going to come to pass.

So the purpose for this question being asked, again, is the very reason we have covered all the material we previously covered in the previous two sermons here to this point.  Much of Satan's purpose for being allowed to entice mankind for the past 6,000 years has been to magnify the reality of the basic weaknesses of natural carnal human nature - because that's what he does - he magnifies something that's already in us, it's there.  That's why we don't have to live that long on the earth.  That's why we don't have to live for hundreds of years.  That's why God could give us three score and ten, 70 years to live life and have all the experiences we really need, so that whether we're called in this age or in the age to come, in the Great White Throne, we have enough experience of life, as a whole (because there are going to be some who obviously are babies or whatever), but as a whole for the majority of mankind to be able to be resurrected again and to have learned this enough and for others to learn from that from others it's sufficient, it suffices as far as God's way is concerned.

But again, Satan has only magnified the basic natural carnal human weaknesses that we have of selfishness in a very intense and very powerful way.  So in many respects, again, Satan's job has not been a difficult one when it comes to deceiving mankind, of enticing mankind.  So it is from this that we must come to address a reality that there are supposed 'freedoms' and 'liberties' - sometimes things that people use as definitions without thinking too much about it - that are not truly free, nor are they liberty, and therefore cannot be allowed in the Millennium, and we need to grasp what makes for true liberty, for what makes for true freedom, if you will.

So what have we covered already?  In Jeremiah 17:9, very basic things, we read where, 'The human heart is deceitful above all things and 'desperately wicked'.'  So again, that word is a very powerful word because if you don't understand what God is showing, 'desperately wicked'?  Oh, there is a capacity of things about 'good' to a degree, it's man's good, but this isn't what it's really talking about. It's a word that means in the Hebrew 'weak', 'sickly, as it were, incurable'.  That's the human mind!  Without God's spirit, without God's intervention in our life we are weak, our minds, they're sickly.  And that's why we see in the world today a sick world!  Look at the world around us and look at what technology has magnified, if you will, as far as man's ability to do evil, to promote evil, to live in evil, to turn inward, to turn inward in a far worse way than in previous centuries.

And so what's taking place is horrible, what we're experiencing.  That's why a lot of us, we've been bombarded, and especially because of a spirit world around us and because of all that's here, we've been bombarded with things in a way that no other generations have been - truly!  We live in a unique age, primarily because of this use of technology, and so we are bombarded in ways that  a hundred years ago people weren't bombarded like this, in society.  There are times in society some have been awfully bad, terribly wicked obviously, that's not what we're talking about.  It's not about different times in life in history where human beings have treated each other in horrible, miserable ways.  I'm talking about the stresses, the pressures, the evil that hit people, that pull at people, that entice mankind.

In Mark 7:20-21 we read where Christ explained how that it's from within, 'out of the heart of mankind', meaning out of the mind and the heart, in the deepest recesses of our being, of how we think and what makes us tick and the way we respond to various things around us in life.  So again, 'out of the heart of mankind is what defiles a person and makes people unclean.  Because what comes out of the heart of people are evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts...these are the things that human nature is drawn to.  These are the things that entice and pull at people on a spiritual plane so that, like we talked about, 'the lust of the eyes', what comes into the mind and begins to work in the mind eventually comes as a matter of 'the lust of the flesh' and it's done, it's lived to whatever degree.  That's why we live in a world... that's why in this country and in others... you know, there are some countries now where people don't even bother to get married because they have seen what happens in society and in this age of technology especially and all that's out here...and there is a strong tie-in with technology and divorce.  There is a strong tie-in with what's happening in society, because of the use of technology and because of what's happened, and because of the change of society that's taken place over the last few decades, and this matter of family and what has happened to the core family of life, as a whole.

So again, we have experienced some incredible things in the last few generations and it just gets worse and worse and worse.  Thank God we're at the end and we don't have to go any farther!

So again, out of the heart/out of the mind come fornications, murders, (22) thefts, covetousness; thefts, people taking advantage of others for the sake of money, so we can have more, so that others have less.  It doesn't mean you go right out and rob them like a person goes out and robs a bank or something, we're not talking about that.  We're talking about how people cheat each other, how people cheat each other in the world!  It's just a way of life almost as it were, in societies of mankind, of how people cheat each other.  It goes back in history.  It's like the little gold things and how they'd shave off a little bit and it gets passed along and they shave off a little bit more and after a time if you go through enough money and you're a money changer you've got a lot more gold than what you had from what you received legally because you keep flaking it off.  And after a while it's very obvious, "This isn't what you say it is!  This doesn't weigh..."  They have to weigh everything.  And it's just the nature of man.

...deceitful, deceitful, that's the way we are as human beings, we're deceitful and sometimes we don't recognize that.  If it comes to protecting self or protecting something that has to do with self human nature can be very deceitful to get what it wants.

...lustful, lustful desire, envy, slander, pride, foolishness, all the things.  And so we learn that that's the way we are, that is our base nature, and the only way that changes is when God calls us and begins to give us of His holy spirit.  We may not think we're that way.  We may think we don't have these proclivities, "I'm not like that.  I don't have those things in my life."  Yes, we do.  It's in your nature.  It is your nature.  It is the heart that is apart from God, that is of yourself... that this is where the battle lies.  And when God calls us then He works with us and helps us to begin conquering these things and we begin making these changes from the time we're called to the time it all ends for us in life.  And it's ever there, it's always there.  It's just like the example we went through concerning what Paul had to say, that there is this battle inside, the inner man, that which we receive by the knowledge, the truth of God, and then our nature, the heart of man that's sick and weak, and we fight against it.  It's back and forth.  We have to make choices all along the way.

That's what's so beautiful about repentance; every time we repent we're acknowledging God is right and we're wrong.  That's acknowledging your own nature, that you're wrong, you need God, that you need God's spirit, you want that, you want that kind of a mind, you don't want this anymore.  And there is a contrast and there are the decisions that are made day by day by day, when it comes to repentance we want change.

In 1 John 2 we read, again, I just mentioned this, 'Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life' which is the opposite of the ways of God the Father!  Opposite the ways of God Almighty!  Totally opposite of the way of God...and yet that's the way He made us, to be this way, to be drawn to these things.  That's why we're made carnal in the sense of just physical flesh alone so that He can work with the mind and create something in the mind that can be created in no-other-way.  Awesome!

Then we went on in Proverbs 5 and Romans 7 and 8 and Galatians 5 to see how great this weakness is in mankind and the battle that follows once God begins to share with us of His spirit and the battle that ensues and the battle we must be in day by day by day.  And that's why God says 'put on the whole armour' and fight this fight, because most of its inside of us!  We're called to change, and this is where change in the world begins - it begins with those who have been called through time, 144,000, and then all that are being called now to continue on as well in a new age. The change begins with us first; that's how change takes place on the earth, and God's getting ready to call everyone so that everyone can begin to change and we can have a Millennial period that we've dreamed of and desired ever since we first understood and began to understand the truth.

But with all this as matter of understanding, hopefully we'll begin to grasp more clearly why there are many things that much change in how the world is established, of things that are able to be established in society and norms of life that will be different from the way they are now, with the use of technology to make the world better for the sake of mankind, for the benefit of mankind to have better life - but they must be used in a right way from the get-go, learned how to be used in a right way from the get-go, because nothing, as a whole, has been used right, obviously, to this point in time, instead we've been made in bondage to it in a greater way.

So one of the main factors in determining things that will be allowed and things that will not be allowed has to do with understanding that man is flawed by nature, we just read it - weak and sickly - that's a flaw.  We're not made complete and whole, we're made incomplete, we're lacking, the very mind is lacking, we're lacking God, we're lacking the mind of God - that's where we're lacking - and we're able to develop a different mind until God draws us.  We have an independent mind, a pride-filled mind, we have different thinking until God calls us.  So the reality is that there are things that cannot be allowed as a way of life, as a part of life because mankind cannot handle it.  There are things that man can't handle - so we're going to address a little bit of that as we go along today as well - and other things that need to be refined and made better as time goes long, but God's just giving us a bit of a taste now to begin looking at our own lives more deeply so that we can begin  making certain changes even now in our lives so we can come to understand it in a better way.

So, mankind as a whole cannot deal with unrestraint.  Not a pretty way of saying it, maybe, in the English language.

Definition of unrestraint: "The want of or freedom from restraint."

We can't live life like that, human beings can't.  We must learn restraint, we must learn to exercise certain things of restraint in life.  Again, we'll cover some of this as we go along.  But some of this, when it comes to the thinking of human beings, there are things we need to grasp, that we can't deal with what sometimes people classify as 'freedom's' by definition in our English language or whatever language you have on this earth.  But as a whole some of the definitions out here are tainted by Satan in a very powerful way to hurt, to deceive, to bring into captivity, into bondage.

So Satan has foisted a great lie on mankind concerning 'freedom' indeed, as 'freedom of choice' or 'freedom of speech'.  There is no such thing!  It's a lie!  Freedom of speech?  What does that mean?  ...when we acknowledge by laws that you're restricted in certain things in speech?  So again, these concepts sometimes hurt the mind, they distort thinking and keep us away from grasping and comprehending things about God and what God wants us to grasp and to see and to embrace.  So even when people speak of such things there is the recognition that all choices are not free to be made in life.

I just want to take some time here in going through some things about some of the definitions out here that you can find in a dictionary about the word 'freedom' that has to do with 'liberty' or 'freedom' here, just to show you some of the concepts of things that aren't true.  It's just that little twist, Satan just puts a little twist, a little hook into it to bring into bondage, to hurt.  Anyway, one definition here:

"...the condition of being free of restraints"

I just mentioned, we can't be free from restraints!  That's not healthy for human beings.  Children have to be taught early in life that there are things that you cannot do, there are restraints of life, there are things that are not allowed in life.  So where do we learn about what is... you want to talk about true freedom?  It comes from God, we understand that.  To understand true freedom is to understand what comes from God.  God shows us what true freedom is for human life, what is the best of freedom for human life and yet we cannot ever attain it in human life, at least we can begin to exercise it, learn it, and desire that from God, because it has to do...  There are laws that mankind must live by.

In the God Family, in essence, there really are no laws.  Do you grasp that?  We're not going to have 10 Commandments written up, because we're the mind of God. Once you have the mind of God that's the way of life you live, it is a way of life.  But human beings have to have law to tell you, so we can learn from in Galatians, if we have some time maybe in the next couple of weeks here, whatever, we may go through some of that where it talks about the law like a schoolmaster and what that means and how we learn.  God has to show us right from wrong as far as His way of life; that which hurts the spirit, the mind, that which hurts relationships, that which hurts the family, and there is that which builds, magnifies family and makes it stronger.

So much that's in the world today even in definitions of words are an absolute lie.

Another definition here:

"...the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action..."

No, there is no such thing as far as man is concerned, as far as our own desires are concerned.  Again, it comes back to what does God say, because that is what determines right choice and right action in life.

Another definition:

"...as in liberation from restraint or liberation of power of another, hence independence..."

Concepts of independence and what it is to be independent in this world is a lie, as a whole.  I'm not going to take time to go into that one there, but again, just throwing out some things here to think about, to pray about so we can come to understand more deeply.  What does it means to be independent and how... and especially with man's definition?

In the God Family, God gives the example even of the Church, like a Body - we're not independent of each other.  So independence and it's concept, if it isn't a right context it can be very misleading.  So even there there are restraints and things that govern a concept of independence, but it's not what the world has as a whole.  We're a Body, and the example that Paul gave is it's like a human body - how can the eye say to the foot, I don't need you, or the blood... whatever, say I don't need you.  We need each other in our body to be healthy.  God has made it perfectly balanced.  As a whole, it's perfectly balanced, that's the way He created it; now, we mess it up in all the chemicals we have and all other kinds of things in the world and we really mess up the mind, but God blesses us mightily with understanding of these things, of things that He's given us in life, but we so mess it up.

Another definition:

"...a capacity to exercise choice - free will..."

Now, that's a really tall one, that's what Satan would like everyone to believe, that we all have free will.  There is no such thing!  What do you mean 'free will'?  Yeah, we do in the sense of choice, but that doesn't mean it's free.  Most of what we consider 'free will' is what makes us in greater bondage, stronger in Egypt, in that respect, and the greater hold that Satan has upon us, because the problem is God is not considered in these things as a whole.  There is one will!  I love that example there when Jesus Christ came and made His comments and statement there about how He came to do God's will.  That's what He came to show, how that we're to keep God's will.  There is only one will, that's the 'free will', and once you've embraced that will, the will of God, the mind of God, the way of God, then we experience what freedom truly is.

Another definition:

"...lack of modesty or reserve; as in the new freedom (this is the dictionary thing) in movies and novels..."

Well, we see where that's gotten us, freedom in these things.  It's not free!  It brings people into greater bondage because of what they think they have the right to do.  You go back in time and you look at some of the westerns and thing that... certain words that they would never allow to be done, certain scenes that would never even conceive of allowing to be seen by adults let alone children, and the world has changed so much now that for people to go back and see something like that, to so many it's not even entertaining because they want the other, they want the other that goes with it.  How sick can that be?  But our minds are so far gone in some of those things as human beings in the world that to have that abrupt change would bring a hardship upon the mind of too many people...but it's coming so that hardship is going to be a good thing for a time when people realize we need to clean up this world.  Look what it does to people's lives.

You know, I  have counselled so many people through time - I think of in marriages, husbands and wives, and I think especially in new marriages so often.  I just see a bunch of people now going through my mind thinking about this, think about different ones I've seen and worked with who this problem, because of society, they have this concept of what marriage is like.  And you know where a lot of people get it as a whole?  It's by society, it's by TV - and marriage isn't like TV, marriage isn't like the movies.  So many of those things are damnable lies about what life is like and expectations then that people have of each other; they're not real...  they're... you can call it entertainment?  So much of it is just what it is, it's a story, it's make-belief, it's not real, it isn't the way life is - and if people don't grasp that then it can hurt them.  And the reality is, so much of counselling has had so much to do with concepts that people have, a man toward a woman or a woman toward a man and various things and some of the things they begin to think is a norm isn't a norm at all, it's distortion of thinking.

Our minds, especially in this age of technology, have really been screwed up, messed with by a being who has influenced these things.  Thank God we're about to change all this in the world, because until you experience it you don't know what it's like!  Until you experience obedience to God's way of life you don't know what it's fully like!  Until everyone participates in it!  It's like marriage, unless both people participate in it you can't fully understand what God made it to be like in how you think toward each other, if you haven't lived it!  If just one lives it that's not enough because then you really haven't experienced it!  You can maybe, and prayerfully, begin to learn yourself and want and desire that for others, of things you begin to learn from your own nature and the changes you have to make in your own life, but to really grasp it and see it and be able to teach it to others?  That's what I'm talking about!  It's not something that's simple in life!  And so there are things that until they're lived we really don't fully, fully understand it all.  We can begin to grow in that and begin to grasp it more deeply as we grow... but that's just one example of many.

Another definition here:

"...a right or the power to engage in certain actions without control or interference..."

I'm not even going to go into that because it's that thing of restraint almost again here.

Another one here under the concept of 'liberty' when speaking of 'freedom':

"...the condition of being free from restriction or control..."

So again, all these are just kind of repeating themselves in a different way, stating it a different way.

"...or the right and power to act, believe, or express one's self in a matter of one's own choosing."

Again, that kind of goes back to 'free will'.  No, it's not of your own choosing.  In the world tomorrow, in God's time that's coming, in a Millennial period here, there is going to be one Government, there is going to be one Church.  There aren't going to be choices of other churches!  There is no 'right' to go out here and start some other belief, to make oneself a minister of some other ideas and beliefs and people to follow it.  God isn't going to allow that!  That is not going to be allowed in the future!  There will be laws!  There will be things that will be enforced.  I don't know fully how they're going to be but God is going to enforce His Government, His way of life on the earth!  That's awesome!  And then as people begin to live it they'll begin to be blessed by it, they'll begin to grasp and understand things that as a whole only a few through time have been able to grasp and comprehend some of the depths of the beauty of living God's way of life.

Let's turn over to John 8; very basic scripture here.  Only God can show what true freedom is for His creation.  He created us!  He is the one that shows us the way of life to be lived, what will bring us happiness, what will bring peace of mind, what will bring peace, what will bring enjoyment to human life as well once it's lived, as we live it.  It's just like food we eat, that's a very physical thing; God has shown us what things are harmful to the human body and what things are good for it, in the sense of functioning properly, in the sense of living properly, in a healthy manner.  He's told us there are those things in life that we aren't to have that will hurt us because our bodies weren't created to function on them.  That's just a physical thing to teach us something even greater on a spiritual plane of a way of life, that there are those things that show this is good, you'll have good results from this, you live this and it's going to hurt you, it's going to make you sicker, your mind sicker.

So everything else brings into bondage, it brings into hurt and to pain and to suffering and every evil result when we don't live God's way of life.

So again, our thinking that's carnal, selfish, needs to be healed.  That's why God speaks of healing so much in the Bible; we need to be healed.  Not physical healing He's talking about - there are things we can learn from that lead us to understanding this in a deeper way - but the healing is of the mind, it's in the way we think, and that's a lot to do with true freedom, what it's about.

John 8:31 - very basic thing again that we've all heard so many times - Then said Jesus to those Jews who believed on Him, If you continue in My word, 'continue in', that word that we have come to understand in a deeper way that's translated as 'abide in', for God to 'abide in', to 'dwell in' us and we in Him.  This word here, 'to continue in' - same word.  ...to continue in/to abide in/to remain; all the ways it's translated in English and it all fits, what God is showing us, to continue in/to abide in/to dwell in/to live in/to remain in My word; the more that we are in God's word and live by it then are you My disciples indeed; and you shall know the truth, here is the result of that then, here is the product, here is the fruit of that, of dwelling in the truth, of dwelling in His word; and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. What an awesome thing, something that though we read about it and though we believe what it says, the understanding of it, the appreciation of it is something you grow in more and more and more through time in God's Church.

Galatians 5:1 - Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and do not become entangled again with the yolk of bondage.  This is what we're being shown!  Carnal nature, yielding to carnal nature, 'lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life' is what brings us into bondage, and today because of technology there is a greater power to pull people into bondage.  That's why it's so expedient when we've been brought to a point in time before we go into greater technology - we're just scratching the surface!  By the end of a thousand years, to see what God is going to do on this earth, by those things that once mankind learns to work together, not in competition, not in the way corporations work today, but when knowledge is shared, when truth is shared about things of science and so forth - we're just scratching the surface!  Look at how far everything has come!  Look at the computer!  Look at the speed in which it's grown and become such a powerful tool in this world for mankind!  You know, lightweight, the ability to have something so small compared to something that used to have to be extremely large and didn't even begin to come close to running with the speed they do today and the power.  And we're just scratching the surface...but it's at a critical time in life because man misuses everything, misuses everything in technology, misuses everything in science - primarily for wars and killing and fighting and destruction and greed, etc...etc...  But we're just at that point where far greater things are going to be accomplished!

I think of transportation alone, where technology, the desire, the work is going to be done to make things many, many times safer than what they are today, and to put the effort into it and the cooperation into it to....  When you think of nearly 40,000 people a year being killed on our highways right here in this country alone, is that just going to continue on into the future worldwide, that people are dying in mass like this year by year?  And that's just kind of put aside, "Well, that's just the price of technology, and what are you going to do about it?"  And so people wink an eye.  Hypocrisy, greed, everything that's out there.  Anyway... things are going to be changed mightily!  Awesome where we are!

I want to read it again:  Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and do not become entangled again with the yolk of bondage.  So, we're at a point in time where God is showing us in a greater way, yes, changes are coming, and we've thought about many of those things but there are a lot of changes coming...everything, everything in the way we're doing it, as a whole, has to be changed, because it's geared in wrong ways, and candidly, there is a lot of that that we just think is okay - even in government, even in things of society that people can tend to begin to think, or do think oftentimes, "Well, this is okay."  No, everything is messed up!  Everything has to be re-evaluated and redone and thank God He's going to show us how to do it, because candidly, we're so deep in bondage to it that it's going to take some time and thankfully a lot of education, but it's going to be there to help us to begin to address these things early on even as we're starting to do a little bit right now.

Romans 6:12... I'm excited just about the big change of getting rid of that spirit being that pulls us more deeply into it, Satan, and the demonic world, just by them being put away there are going to be such great changes right there.  But that doesn't deal with the basic nature we have of being able to be enticed by and become in bondage to things of technology - which has happened, and it's happened in God's Church, okay?  And we have experienced those things in our lives, it's happened throughout the Church, things that we need to look at and address so that we realize these things must be addressed quickly and change because there is a basic nature in mankind that if technology isn't used properly and certain things changed about it immediately we wouldn't need Satan around, okay.  We have to learn to use things properly.

Romans 6:12 - Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey it and the lusts thereof. And so this is very basic and this is where the change begins to take place in life, we begin to address such things, because not living God's way or living by true liberty, the true freedom that God gives to us.  If we take it upon ourselves to live a different way, do other things, justify other things in our life, then we make ourselves in bondage indeed and sin reigns in our mortal body.  We think we control our lives.  We think we're in full control of our lives.  No, we're not.  If you were in full control of your life you would never sin, you would never have to repent!  But you're not in full control yet and you can't be until you're changed.  But that doesn't justify sin!  That doesn't justify any of the error and the wrong choices we make in life; on the contrary, that's why God tells us we're to be at battle, we're to be at war against these things, but we have to recognize where some of these things come from and how to deal with them, and some things that have to be changed because the reality is man can't deal with certain kinds of supposed 'freedoms', even with technology.  There are going to have to be restrictions.  There are going to have to be things where it says, "No, this cannot ever be allowed as a part of the use of this technology - never, NEVER!" There are some things that just have to... just like in the Commandments God gives, because it's not God's way, to where there are certain things of technology where the answer is just flat fully restricted.

And so we're going to learn some of those things and they're going to be taught, and they're going to be able to be taught to children so we can use greater power, because technology has to do with power, and that kind of power can be highly misused to cripple a society, to cripple families, to cripple people's minds, and that's the kind of world we live in today, where young people are so in bondage to technology that the expression 'Get a Life' takes on new meaning.  You just can't have it all the time!  You can't live it all the time!  So there are going to be changes that are coming and we have to start thinking about them now and understand why.

Verse 13 - Neither yield your members, so any part of a physical body including what comes out of your mouth, out of your heart, out of your mind.  Neither yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, so there is always that choice, as long as we're in human bodies we have to make those choices, and the more we grasp and comprehend what God's way is all about and we see it around us... what an awesome world when we don't have the kind of garbage around us today, when we're just able to get rid of a lot of things or have the control that needs to be there so that people can experience the Church, what we have as a Church many times over, so that we in the Church can experience a better life as well.

...but yield yourselves unto God as those who are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. And so as we go through these verses today, to think about it in the terms of technology and the use of greater power.  That's nothing compared to what it's going to be like when you're Elohim, okay?  What an awesome thing to begin to learn how to use things of power, technology, that is so great that we can come to grasp in time in a greater way the awesomeness of what it means to become a part of the God Family, to be tried in in the sense of learning to exercise right thinking and a sounder mind as we go through the Millennium toward technology so that we can better grasp, in essence, what it's going to be like to be a part of Elohim, because the testing ground, the opportunity to learn during that time period is going to be profound compared to what it has been for the previous 6,000 years; the opportunity to teach, the opportunity to learn that.

How much more have we learned....  I think of 'progressive revelation' that God has given to us.  I think of when Mr. Armstrong came to grasp in a deeper way and began to teach it within the Church.  I remember when he wrote the book, the period of time anyway, I was just starting at college over in Bricketwood at the time and I think it was orange covered or whatever, but 'The Incredible Human Potential'.  What an awesome book!  When he came to understand that there is a spirit essence in the human mind, and some of that thinking, the ability to understand that was coming from science at that time but with the truth of what God had given to him of that which was spiritual, and seeing things that man was learning more about the human mind and God was showing something to Mr. Armstrong about the spirit, that there is a spirit essence that gives the ability to think and reason, unlike the animal kingdom, and he began to teach that.  He didn't teach that in the 50's and the 60's.  That understanding began to be given toward the late 60's, '69-'70-'71, started coming out a little bit as he was writing some of these things, but profound what God was showing him, and a lot of this had to do even with understanding with how Satan communicates with us then, with human beings.  Through the air!

To understand what it means, 'the prince of the power of the air'.  What did that mean to the apostles in the beginning?  How could you grasp that in a greater way as far as understanding of something that works in a spirit realm by something that you begin to understand physical?  Radio stations, broadcasting.  That's what He started showing, that there are things about broadcasting.  And then things about the mind and computers that began to come along and things we begin to learn and the ability to record and how God began to show that there are things of the essence of the mind that once we die it's like a recording.  Well, you couldn't give that to people during the time of Christ. John, Paul, Peter, they couldn't talk about that, a recording, they didn't have such things.  But to understand that there is this essence in our mind that's like a recording and everything that we are is in that, and then once we die it says it returns to God - not something that's alive, something that's without life but it's spirit in the sense of what God has recorded and given, what is there, everything that was ever lived, it's in that spirit, that once we're dead and there is no life it's like a tape recording you put in a machine.  That's probably not even a good example today because you can't even get tapes anymore.  We had to stop the tape program because it's so hard to get tapes, we've had to show people how to use these little round disc things,   ...and even those are kind of becoming obsolete.  Things are moving so fast!

But what an awesome thing to understand, that that returns to God.  Well, we understand that in a deeper way than what people did in the 50's or the 40's or the 30's, going farther back when there wasn't anything to even compare that to, and this is the way of technology as well.  There are things we're going to learn and grow in in a far greater way in the future. It's exciting, where we are, why God chose this period of time, why He gave us as much technology as He has and what's in the future for us to learn from.  Power!  Power of things that He has created that will make life better for mankind; it's awesome, it truly is.  But they must be used properly just as much as God isn't going to allow anyone to be Elohim until He knows them...until He knows them, until we have been tried, until He knows that spirit in us to the degree...like He told Abraham, "Now, I know you."  When He's molded and fashioned us to that point, whatever that is, that He can change us, knowing what we will be from then on, it is awesome!  Incredible!  Nearly impossible to understand, but enough that we grasp  it and embrace it and are excited by it.

So again here, verse 14 - For sin shall not have dominion over you: for you are not under the law, which means under the penalty of, that's what he's talking about, he's not talking about that we aren't under law, that we don't have to live by the laws of God, it's talking about the penalties of it.  ...sin shall not have dominion over you; because of sin man is under the penalty of death and so that has dominion over us, power over us until God begins to bring us out of that through the forgiveness of sin through the Passover.  And that's what's being discussed here.  For you are not under the penalty of the law, in essence is the context, but under grace, the ability to be forgiven.  Before that, we can't be forgiven of sin and so we're under the dominion of...  that's why the world is in such bondage.  We're coming out of it but they're not coming out of it yet.  We're coming out of bondage but we're still in it.

Verse 15 - What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law, the penalty of it? That can be a battle!  ...but we're under grace? As we grow, as we learn there can be a battle in the human mind through those things and we can learn from this and understand, because a part of human tendency would be, "Well, if I'm under grace and God forgives me, then every time I go repent, then I know He forgives me."  And it's almost like... Paul had to address that too, like license to sin.  No, it's not licence to sin, it's not justification for sin!  It's like, "Well, God knows my weaknesses...so I can continue smoking," like some do out there.  "I can continue doing this, I can continue doing that..."  You know, it's a small thing, it's not small for those who are addicted to it though, who are in bondage to it.  If you've never done it in your life, which I probably had enough in my lifetime that would make up one full cigarette, maybe two, and thankfully God just gave me the mind this is stupid.  It's stupid to puff in hot smoke into your lungs.

Matter of fact, one time - I'll just tell you this one part of the story - I was probably about eleven and my dad had a cigar on his desk in the back room there and I went in there and just took a puff on it, just to see what it was like.  I mean, you see your parents smoking, what's it going to lead to?  Your children smoking.  So people end up with all kinds of problems in life.  Some get by with it - who was the guy that was up in his 90's and he still smoking every day?  George Burns - yeah - some people get by with it and they don't pay a penalty; other people pay a penalty.  There are people who ruin their lungs, like my dad, he got emphysema from smoking and he died from it, ten long years of suffering with a horrible, horrible situation in his life.  It should teach everyone how bad things are in life.

When I was in Sydney, when I had my operation, when my appendix burst, there was huge rooms and they had curtains in between but they would open them up during the daytime and so I met three other men in there.  Every one of them had their throats taken out, basically, parts of their throat because of smoking.  Every one of them!  So they were being taken care of because the nurses were able to deal with them and I'm not sure why with the situation I was in there, but anyway one was just starting to learn to communicate again.  He had to learn how to breathe and his voice box wasn't fully there, and every one was going through the same thing.  One man was able to visit before he went in for his operation, he came back out and he wasn't able to visit anymore because most of its gone, his ability, his throat, his breathing had changed.  And you think, what horrible penalties in life to pay that the rest of your life you're barely going to be able to be heard and it's going to be a strenuous thing for people to listen to what you have to say.  So some people get by with it and some don't.  And that's part of the deception of Satan's way of life as well.

Anyway, going back to that, my father caught me so he shut me in the room and said, "Finish it!"  Thankfully there wasn't a whole lot left but I remembered that and maybe that's why, maybe because he did that to me, he saw the wrong in it, how it maybe hurt his life, I don't know, maybe... so whatever it was, it helped me in a great way because from that point on I really thought smoking was stupid, because I got sick.  I thought, "What's the big deal?  This is stupid!  This is nuts."  And that was my attitude from then on.  But you know what?  There are people who never learn that in life and so they grow up and they start doing what others do by peer pressure and so forth.  And society, movies, what is it made to look like? It's a glamorous thing.  That's the way it's portrayed in movies as a whole, it's a glamorous thing to smoke, it's like it's a cool think, like Fonzie or whatever, you know, sitting around - I don't know if he did on TV or not but that's the kind of thing I think of - he was cool, he was looked up to and everybody wanted to be like Fonzie.  Some are wondering, "Who is this Fonzie?"  That takes me back in time, that takes everybody back.  But anyway, to put a cigarette in there, cigarette companies and different ones, way's of promoting things that aren't good for human beings.  And anyway, what a sick, sick world!

And so somebody who's in bondage to that, and those of you who are doing it out there, you bring shame upon yourselves because I smell it on you!  I'm not talking about here, but when I have visited different areas it's, as a whole, people who are newer and coming along and they are fighting this fight.  But if you don't nip that in the bud quickly and do everything within your power and crying out to God and fighting against it, and even starting a regimen of cutting it in half and then cutting that half in half, you know, it can be done in time.  You may have battles there but you also need to understand that there are things that God says just aren't good for us, so if the Church let's you know, if you have to be told, if you can't learn it yourself, if death around you and you've never been around people with emphysema or lung disease or throat problems and operations where they've had everything cut out.  If we can't learn that way that it's just not a healthy thing for your body, then maybe if the Church of God tells you you shouldn't do it, then maybe you shouldn't... maybe it's coming from God and maybe you just ought to quit doing it!  Okay?  I guess the reason I'm saying this is because I've heard of some people out there still doing it, but you know what, the individual...somebody gave a report on, one of the elders did, about one situation in their area and how you can smell it on their clothes.

I used to wonder...  I had a place where I lived for a short period of time going to junior college and it was my (I don't know if it was my great-aunt...?) I think it was a great-aunt, anyway, I lived in the basement and helped take care of some things around there, she let me stay there for free so I latched onto that.  Anyway, she could smell when I came in from being with a group of people, because of the smoke on my clothes, and she said, "Are you smoking?"  I don't think she ever believed me because she didn't know how I thought about smoke.  But just being around people that smoke you can get it on your clothes, and I always wondered, "How in the world could she know?"  Because I was in that environment I couldn't tell the difference, but when you're out of that environment and you clean up your life more and you don't have to be around that kind of thing, you can smell it.

So anyway, most of you who think you're getting by with it out there, you never do because... and you think, "Well, I was with a lot of people who were smoking..."  I doubt it very much because today's society is even different in those areas, you were just locked up in your car or wherever.  Stop doing it!

Why in the world did I get off on smoking?  I guess a few needed a boost.

Again, license to sin, people can make excuses why it's okay.  Sometimes I've heard things like that, "Well, God understand what I'm like.  He understands my weaknesses." ...and maybe not really convicted that it's really wrong or that it's bad for you and it's not love toward neighbour and so forth.

Verse 16 - Don't you know not that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, isn't that amazing?  That's why I remember giving sermons - I don't think I've done in recent time - but it's like even with cigarettes, to me it's puny compared to bigger things of life, but it's like taking...maybe if you could go out and buy a two foot tall cigarette and have it on some kind of pedestal and light it and it starts smoking, and then you back up about two feet and just start bowing, "Oooooh..."  That's basically what we do, it's raising it up, it's idolatry, it's something you're allowing yourself, justifying yourself that you can do that God has told you through the Church, through the ministry, "No, you shouldn't do it, it's bad for your health."  You might as well just go out and start feasting on pig, the only thing is, you don't get addicted to pig but you do get addicted to nicotine and it's a battle for people.  But it also affects the mind.  There are things that affect the mind that sometimes we don't grasp and don't comprehend - certain kind of habits in life that also affect the mind and the thinking.

So don't you know that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, in other words, you're like a servant and it's like a god, or your master.  That's what God is saying here, that's what God is showing through Paul.  He's saying it's like it's your master, it's got control of you, you don't have control of it.  It's controlling you, you are obeying it and the lusts of it, the desire for it. What an incredible thing that the human spirit, the human mind can make itself servant to physical objects of life like that, and that's what we do.  ...his servants are to whom/to whatever you obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? So either we're obeying God or we're obeying and being servants to something else, some other pull, some other thing we haven't conquered in life, every time we sin!  But thank God that though you were the servants of sin yet have you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered unto you.  And so he's saying in us there is to be a difference and we're able to grow and begin to conquer and overcome because we yield to a process of change and repentance and being made free from these things, not just through the forgiveness of sin but of conquering and overcoming and our minds even being healed in the process.

Verse 18 - Being made free; Now, this is freedom, this is the kind of freedom that God says mankind can have - free from sin, we're coming out of Egypt.  All the effort, all the work that's gone into just 6,000 to bring us to this point in time where God can begin to bring mankind in a greater way out of bondage is awesome!  To true freedom, what true freedom is all about, because living God's way of life is where true freedom and peace and everything that's good, true liberty, is all about.  So being made free from sin you have become the servants of righteousness, of right life, of a right way to live.

Verse 19 - I speak after the manner of men because of 'the infirmity', see that word, 'the weakness', 'the sickness' of your flesh: that's what we read about earlier, the heart, the desperately 'wicked'; that doesn't mean that, it just means 'weak' and 'sickly, incurable of and by itself', and so this is what he's showing here, Paul is, that's what he's talking about.  ...because of the infirmity of your flesh, for as you have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; in other words it's sin unto sin, it just magnifies and keeps growing, man becomes worse not better, more proficient in sin, not better in life the older you get, until God calls us and begins to call us out of it and give us freedom.

For when you were the servants of sin, you were made free from righteousness. That's Satan's concept of freedom, bondage.  Amazing!

Verse 21 - Then what fruit did you have in those things whereof you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. And so God shows us what gives life and what gives true freedom. But now being made free from sin, and become the servants of God, you have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.  So Satan has done a great job in helping to -in everything in society, in everything in the world as a whole - the great lies that he has foisted upon mankind, in essence and led and enticed mankind to embrace is the very thing that gives mankind the death penalty, death for all eternity.  God's way gives life everlasting and that's what it boils down to.

Romans 8:1 - reading this again because we read this in the previous series, just the first three verses here, because again, this has to do with freedom, but we didn't look at those in that context like we are today.  There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk after the flesh but after the spirit. So we have to fight against the things where we see sin in our life and not continue in them but to make changes and cry out to God for the help in changing, and some things in life you'll fight forever, they'll pop back up in your life, but to gain greater control - yes! ...to grow closer to God?  Yes!

Verse 2 - For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. That's true freedom!  Awesome! For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through/because of the flesh; in other words man can't live by God's law, that's why Pentecost, it shows the importance of the ability to keep the law that was given on Pentecost, the ability to give it was shown later on through the power of God's spirit.  That's the only way we can live God's way of life.  We have to have help!  We can't do it!  We're in bondage!  Only God can bring us out.

For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through/because of the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned it in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.  So we start, we make changes in our life, and we're at a point where we're going to begin to be able to make great changes in the world.  We're going to be a part of that and God's giving us the opportunity to understand more fully what's ahead of us and where we're going and why but also to focus on the need to change in our own life as well.

There is still a lot of changes God's Church needs to make, and we have a short time remaining to continue to do it, but we must work on that - and especially in the context of what God is giving to us.

So again, What are some of the kinds of things that must be changed once God's Government is established over mankind?  Now, some changes are obvious and I'm going to probably mention some of those, but we're going to build up here to a certain point to learn how to judge, because judgment isn't always easy.  It's like careening from one ditch to the other, because that's just the way we are with human nature, because it's happened in times past.  Sometimes if we're not careful we'll start talking about certain things we think is going to be this way...

It's like sermons that used to be given in the past.  We had a minister in this area, one of the stupidest things I ever heard him talk about as far as the Millennium was concerned had to do with trees.  And he talked about these trees that have these growths on them that are gnarled up or twisted; he said that's not going to be in the Millennium.  And every time my wife and I have ever been in a botanical garden or somewhere else and we've seen these awesome trees and different kinds of things that God has made in nature and we (I almost slipped with the name), I've always said, we've got to keep 'so and so' out of this area in the Millennium because he's going to be cutting them down.

Sometimes we get these goofy ideas!  That's why I think about things of conversations I've heard in times past where we think we're going to have horse and buggy and we're going to get rid of all technology because all technology is bad and man shouldn't have lights, we should be behind horses and do a lot of clean up.  And can you imagine the streets in the cities and the smells?  Anyway, it's like technology is all bad.  No, it isn’t.  No, it isn't.  It's how mankind uses it!  It's like this stupid thing of gun control again; you know, it pops back up, and then they talk about Switzerland, how they're easily attained over there and there is another nation (I can't think where it was) and they don't have the problem like we have in the States.  It's human beings and what we use and what we're trained and what we're taught in in life.  But anyway, there is so much sickness in the world and so much sickness of the human mind and we need a lot of healing in a lot of ways.

So again, some of the changes are obvious.  As a whole there are drugs that hurt every facet of society, such as narcotics, stimulants, depressants (sedatives, in other words), hallucinogens, cannabis (marijuana).  There are some people in God's Church who believe that marijuana is okay.  No, it isn't!  ...and it hurts the mind!  And some say, "Oh, no, no, no, no, and it doesn't lead you to drugs and other things and so forth."  I have known of too many people called out of the world into God's Church who by smoking the weed have marred their mind, have messed up their mind and can't deal with life! Now, maybe some people get by with that, okay, just as like before I was called into God's Church I drank excessively at parties and so forth, to a point where I didn't know what I was doing - okay?!  ...didn't know any better!  But I never got hooked on alcohol.  But I have grown up with others at that time who did, they couldn't deal with it, but when I was called into the Church it wasn't a big thing for me to say, "No, I don't care for it, I don't have to have it."  But there are other people that because of certain genes, whatever it is, certain ways their metabolism is made, whatever it is, they become alcoholics.  I've known of a lot of young people that I went to college with that became alcoholics after that kind of a short lifestyle in college; they couldn't change, they became hooked on it, they became in great bondage to it.

So, it's the same way with some of this stuff, and I've known of too many people who smoked that particular weed who's minds are messed up.  Their ability even to deal with things of timing is not what it could be, could have been, in some cases they've hurt their bodies for life and they can't deal with some things as well, never will be able to.  They've done permanent damage to their minds, and that's something that they will be an example of and they will learn from and they'll be able to teach others, "Don't... these things aren't right. I'm proof of that. I have had battles in dealing with certain things in my life."  That's what they'll be able to teach and tell, witness of those things.  And so they're going to have witness of all kinds of things.

So when I'm talking about various kinds of drugs, those that are prescribed are going to be changed mightily as well because people have things of prescription as well that... and there are things in this day and age and so forth that have given people certain kinds of relief and ability to deal with some things.  But that's going to change too, you know, because we're going to being to learn...  I look forward to this in such a great way, to clean up this earth, to clean up agriculture, to clean up everything we have in society that hurts mankind.  We're not going to have cans on the shelf that have chemicals you've never heard of and you don't know what they do, just in order to prolong their shelf-life, greed and so forth of mankind.  The chemicals we've pumped into our bodies have hurt our bodies and hurt our minds, and there are things of cancer we're going to learn about one day that have so much to do with things that are man-made, chemicals, petroleum, of petroleum origin in many cases that are pumped into the system that God never intended man to have.  If we can't have pork in our system there are other things that we definitely shouldn't have.

So we try to do the best we can in today's world, and we should do that, but nothing is pure and even that which purports to be pure has its own problems.  But what an awesome thing to where slowly but surely we're going to be able to have a society and a world that isn't dependent upon hospitals being filled up and everything under the sun being prescribed to people, to where our lives are going to be healthier, where there is going to be personal intervention from God on different kinds of things as well, but that's a personal thing... not massive healings, but on a personal plane because of your relationship with God.  Just as it is today except that God is going to grant that in a far greater way because of a personal relationship that people have.  I mentioned that at a Feast one time and some misunderstood what I was saying.  The point being is God isn't going to come down here and just clean everything up in life.  We're going to learn, because we're an example of what the world has come to and we're going to work to come out of that and God is going to show us how to clean up the earth, how to clean up life.  It's not going to happen overnight, but as a whole we're going to begin having healthier lives, and the dependency and the use of some of these things, there aren't going to be large pharmaceutical companies like there are today; they're not going to be there.

So again, things that help human life, things that help the human body, things that help in healing technology, yes, they'll be there, we're going to grow in that in awesome ways and we're right at the brink, but mankind, because of the way he is is going in the wrong directions with a lot of that, things that he's trying to grow of human body parts.  It's a crazy world!  Technology that's going to be used in right ways because it's geared in the right way.  But there are a lot of problems because of things like this today, and it's a tough, tough world we live in, but what an awesome thing to know that we're going to have healthier lives.

Closely associated with the misuse of drugs - because today... I was thinking about this the other day, what an awesome thing when we're not going to have tons of trafficking coming out of Afghanistan into Europe, because we help their drug traffic, and tons of drugs coming out of South American and Central America into the United States.  You know, they ship things in by the ton...tons!  They confiscate things in the tons!  Because why?  Because this country is in bondage to drugs in every facet of society, bankers, people on Wall Street, it's throughout society.  It's not just what you see in a particular area in a downtown area where people have been hooked on drugs and they can't afford it and they go steal and so forth, there are wealthy people who are hooked on drugs and can't get off.  It's a way of life with a lot of people, they have their own little parties, they have their own little get togethers and it's not unusual to have large amounts of stashes of drugs that people take and they're hooked on it.  What a horrible society and world!  Just the crime alone in cartels - no more cartels, no more of this garbage in the world!  What a sick cesspool, and we think it's okay, this world? Man! I know we don't in the Church but you think of people who think it's okay?  They're asleep and they don't understand what's all around them and how sick and depraved mankind has truly become.  People talk about Sodom and Gomorrah?  What a sick world we live in, sick society!

Anyway, those are big changes that are going to come to pass thankfully.

I think of different things that are going to be changed for opportunities in social gatherings and where people meet - not like they do today in bars, and I don't even know what they call it today when they come together in these dances and loud music and the drugs and the alcohol that's in a lot of them, but a lot of young people today are drawn to that because that's what others do so they do too.  And they don't understand!  I did when I was young, that's where I went.  That was my life until God gave me a jarring, thank God, at a young age.

I think of alcohol and driving, how people are in bondage to alcohol.  We have people in God's Church who are in bondage to alcohol.  We have people in God's Church... now, they don't understand that fully but there are some who think you have to have it at almost every social gathering.  No, you don't!  Alcohol doesn't have to be there!  Is it wrong to have?  No.  But in moderation, sometimes not to have it at all, and sometimes... and then it can tend to be misused, see, so I've had conversations with different ones, some in the ministry have had conversations with different ones who are being called out of the world because that's what they're used to in the world, and to realize no, it shouldn't be abused and misused, you don't have to have it at a gathering.  Some people need to not have it at a gathering because you've become so accustomed to having too much of it when you do have it at a gathering that you don't use it properly.  And then, if you go get in a vehicle and drive afterwards, you know, you ought to have your rear-end kicked up around your shoulder blades, candidly, for the stupidity and ignorance of doing such a thing, you know, and to flirt with evil that can come upon you for something like that, that you could pay a penalty for for the rest of your life because of stupidity and something you could cause, the death of someone else because of ignorance on your part?  Shameful!  It's beyond shameful, really!

So there are things that when we come into God's Church we change, and we should change quickly and we should strive to be in unity and harmony with the right way of life.

Anyway, there are addictions that people have, things that draw, that are drawn to it.  Some people get by with it and some people can't, some people have to battle with it all their life, but indeed, battle with it we should, whatever your weaknesses are as a human being.  For some it's what comes out of the mouth and what's said and how you talk, for some it's what you put in the mouth and... whatever.

People are going to have to learn definitions of moderation and what it means versus excess, and we do start learning that as a whole in God's Church and through time, obviously, the vast majority learn those things and live those things, but in the beginning when you're first called out of the world, sometimes that can be a battle and sometimes there are certain battles you will carry with you for a long time to come.

There are norms for music, literature, entertainment, movies, TV, they're going to be changed dramatically.  There is some music that a lot of you listen to that you like that's not going to be around anymore.  You know why?  Because it hurts your mind.  And you think it's okay but you don't realize that it hurts the thinking. The mind is a precious thing and we don't grasp really how precious it is until we grow, until we come to a point in time where we begin to grasp that this is what God is working with, and it's the mind that's going to be put into Elohim in a different body.  It's what's in the mind that counts, it's in the thinking, it's in the spirit, and you can damage the way you think.  Sin damages the way you think.  Yielding yourself to sin damages your very thinking to where it hurts your soundness of mind as far as God's way of life is concerned.  So God calls us to change in all those things.

But I think of the power in the tools of technology that enhances that, the little ear buds you can put in your ears and have a thousand songs on your hip.  They make it easier to have it all the time.  You can have it all the time out there listening to whatever.  That doesn't mean that music is wrong or that music is bad, but to have a constant diet of it isn't a healthy thing.  And  you say, "Well, why is that?"  Well, sometimes because of the kind of music it is, sometimes it's because of the words, and we don't realize what's pumped into the mind, because it has to do with thoughts of thinking, of ways of life.  You think, "Well, that doesn't bother me and I know what those words mean..." and so forth.  If you constantly pump it in your mind it's like eating out of a garbage pail, it's going to be in your mind and you don't have the control of that.  You think you control it all?  You don't!

And so it is with entertainment, various things we call entertainment and so forth.

You think of things that have to be changed.  We understand there are tons of things that are going to be changed out here and... anyway, a lot of it has to just flat be cleaned up.  Country and Western is going to have a big hit.  Talk about playing the record backward, you get your dog back, your cat back, your wife back, your whatever, your job back... cause they lost it all and that's what the song is about.  That'll lift you up.  Do you really want to listen to that on a regular basis if that's what it's about, if that's the message?  Is Country and Western wrong?  No.  Is Rock wrong?  ...well, it just depends, there is some of it that's fine.

But again, we have become accustomed to things we think, "I can't live without and the world shouldn't be without those things."  Yes, the world... there are some things the world should be without, okay.

Let's turn over to Ezekiel.  We're going to consider some of those things that are more in tune with the sermon series concerning how easy it is for mankind to be enticed by his own nature to sin.  And for this reason there are some things that cannot be allowed as freedoms because they're not truly freedoms, they entice, they pull people into sin, just as there is wrong kind of entertainment that can pull you into sin.  Because you know what?  Your mind gravitates to it.  There are things that your mind wants carnally that are not good and those are the things we have to learn to judge and to battle against.  There are things that are...  because that's why we went through the first series, the first two sermons.  There are things that entice, there are things that pull at us because of our base human nature that is selfish, and there are things that pull at us just like a magnet, it pulls, and there are those things that pull so much that we don't have the power to control them, that's why they have to be where God just says, no, they will not be in the Millennium.  There are some things that cannot be allowed because our nature, as a whole, for society, can't deal with them, can't handle them.

There is a balance and a beauty that will come from all of this through time.  But again, sometimes people are going to have to go from one side of the ditch to the other as they try to find that, and that's fine, but we will... God will show us, especially when Jesus Christ is here.

And so again, for this reason there are some things that just cannot be allowed as 'freedoms' per se for they are not environments or conditions that work toward freedom when you understand what God offers us, but to bondage, to sin.  They draw to sin, that's what they pull toward.

So again here, this example of what God said to Satan when he turned away from God and toward self, determining for himself what was right and wrong.  You remember what it said in Genesis, that 'this man has made himself as us, to know good and evil'; man did the same thing from the very beginning of time, to decide for himself - not God as the authority but man became the authority.  We have our own opinion of what we think is right and wrong.  Sometimes even in the Church we have to fight against that, we have to learn from that.  But Satan did this from the beginning and that's why we must learn it as human beings, to realize we can't be this way.

This is what Satan did.  Ezekiel 28:17 - Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty, that's what selfishness is about.  It's in love with ourselves to the degree we will justify, to the degree we...  In other words, it's not just in how one appears, it has to do with what we think, it's by lifting up our own thinking in how we...  You know, our opinion, in essence it's like we bow down to it, we're so in love with ourselves as human beings we don't realize how much we are sometimes and we don't realize by our opinion of things how haughty that can be at times and...  but we all have these things in life, as a part of life.

But he says, because of this, because you have lifted... your heart was lifted up because of your beauty, the way you saw self; it's kind of like what happened to Laodicea, you know.  God says you failed to see yourself the way you are, you lifted yourself up, you're rich and increased in goods.  That's what Satan did!  ...'rich and increased with goods and didn't see that you're miserable, naked, blind, and poor'...and so forth.  Without God, that's the way we are.

Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty because you have corrupted; this is something to understand about the mind, the precious mind that God has given to us.  That's why it's so bad to get hooked on any kind of narcotics, that's why it's so bad to mess with things like marijuana, that's why it's so wrong to have addictions to things like alcohol, because you don't have control, you have less control of your mind in times like that and you're able to be easier led into other sin because of such things.  God wants us to be in control of our mind, to have the ability to fight battles, but if we are dulled in thinking...  You know, candidly, there are a lot of demonic things that happen because people lose control in the world.  The less control that people actually have in life, a lot of times is a playground for a spirit world.  That's just a reality.  That's where they go.  That's what they... because it's easier for them in such environments.  And so again, something to be feared, to be fearful of, to recognize, "I don't want that in my life!"

So again here, this thing that Satan did...Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty, you have 'corrupted'; the word means 'destroyed, marred, ruined'.  I love the part where it gives in Hebrew here, 'marred', just like marring your mind, ruining a part of your mind.  Just like with those that have been affected, those who the drug, whatever it is in there, affects the thinking, slows down people's reactions, slows down their speech in life because they've had so much of the weed that they're a different person than they were before.  I grew up with a person that I saw this change take place in them, and after a while got to where they didn't even make a lot of sense.  I saw this young man change in a short length of time, over a period of about two or three years, and his father (he was the only son) was hoping he would grow up to take over the dealership, well known dealership in the Midwest, and he couldn't, he couldn't function, he couldn't hardly use a broom when it was all said and done.  You say, "Is that just marijuana?"  Well...  Anyway, some people get by with things in life and some people don't.  Sad what people do to the mind; it's a precious thing.

And so some people have to be, candidly, healed, in a new body, in a new age so they can start afresh in a Great White Throne judgment.  What a merciful beautiful thing, to be able to start anew with a brand new body, a brand new mind, still everything there about who you were, what you were, everything that you'd ever thought and so forth, but now you can start fresh.  It's a beautiful, beautiful time that God has granted mankind, because - I was thinking this morning here - with all the suffering we go through in human life, you know, when it talks about...  I've come to understand that in a deeper way in the last year than I ever have when it talks about mankind being in travail; it's not just talking about the end-time.  There are scriptures that talk about travail, in other words, labour pain like a woman giving birth, but it talks about the whole time of mankind, 6,000 years man has been in travail, like in labour pain because this life was never meant to be easy and it's not easy.  It is hard.  It's filled with sorrow and pain and hurt - human life is.

Just death itself, what a horrible tragedy of life - that's why death is called an enemy, it's a horrible thing to experience, death of loved ones, but it's a part of life, it's a part of what we go through in order to learn the greater things of life from.

Anyway, so you can hurt your mind, mar, ruin, destroy parts of your thinking, and we don't recognize how precious this mind can be, especially when having the opportunity of being impregnated with God's spirit so that we can be healed more and more and more, and to want that and to fight for it, never give up the fight for it.

I don't need to read the rest of what it says there but to point that out, that that's what he did from the beginning and that's what happens in human life, people hurt their minds and don't realize it. Even in God's Church you can hurt your mind, and that's why to conquer and fight things quickly is so important, and not to give up the battle, not to give up the fight.  And that's been the history of so many in the Church, they just quit the fight, they give up.  You know what they give up to?  'Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life'.  Happens over and over and over again in life, whatever it is, something that God says we shouldn't have that we want to have in life.

I'd say the vast majority that I've ever known through time, you know what they wanted?  A sexual relationship that they weren't allowed to have.  Sex is a very powerful pull to the human mind, wrong sexual practices.  The vast majority of people I've known who have left, that has been one of the primary things of, in some way or another in their life, that's affected their thinking.  It's a powerful pull and we need to understand that, okay?  That's why there are certain things on the internet that must be changed.  We have too many people in God's Church today who are addicted to internet pornography.  I know that's true.  Okay?  Some have come for advice and help and council in some things, and it's a shameful thing that happens when it takes place.  I've known of young people, people that have expressed outside, well I guess outside the Church, of knowing of young teenagers...  When I grew up... You know, I think of how people have given examples of decade after decade of how changes take place in society and people always talk about the other generation, that young people today have to go through - and they do, people go through much worse today than what they used to.

When I grew up the worst thing - don't even know what was out there - probably a Playboy type of thing, whatever.  It wasn't in movies.  I guess there was stuff out there even at that time as far as things that people could... I don't know what you could get back then at that point in time, 60's, but it wasn't until I think video stores and that began to come along where people could actually have more access. I suppose there were places - because video technology actually enabled people to be able to do things in a beginning of drawn and addicted to wrong sexual pulls and so forth in life, videos have done that.  Then TV came along where you could do it 'privately in your own home', supposedly, and I don't know at what stage that began to happen, probably with things like HBO more than anything and things like that and what are some of these others that are out there - ShowTime.  In some of our travels at times there are some TV stations because of hotels that are just free, and so you can be flipping through the dial and all of a sudden, if it's late at night, there is just outright sexual acts of everything under the sun that are being done.

In Europe, same thing is true.  Over there it's far worse because it's even in commercials over there a lot, a lot more than in the United States. There are certain things banned over here, obviously, but there are things allowed on TV.  I think of young people that grow up with that in the world.  I'll just tell you, candidly, a young man can't fight that, it's a powerful thing.  Now girls are made differently; God has created something in men that is different, as a whole, than in women.  Now, there are different things in different pulls and different things that happen, but it's far more predominant in the male mind than it is in the female mind.

There are things even in marriage that people don't understand and things about men that I look forward to the time - I've wanted to give sermons on this in times past because it's out there and because of technology these things have been made much, much worse today, they truly have.  That's why it's expedient for parents, if you have something besides cable, to make sure that there is not an ability to buy certain kinds of things on TV, which I think children would be more afraid to do, but there are certain things that if you need to, to dial in, to work on - parental controls that you can put on your TV to make sure that certain kinds of things can't be watched.  Because the reality is you can't be around  your children 24 hours a day as they're growing up, you can't be there all the time and there are pulls that are just a part of life, and a curiosity that sometimes is in the human mind, especially in the early teenage years or even before.  It's a reality.  I feel that sometimes people don't grasp that reality or parents don't acknowledge that reality or understand it's a real thing.

I find it hard to talk about because I don't know how far can you discuss something in a sermon?  I feel like there would be a good place for classes for adults to be in, for parents to be in - one day hopefully we'll be able to have that to teach some things and we're going to be able to have some of those kinds of things in the future.  There was a time in Church where we started to have more things having to do with marriage and times that people could have private things of discussion in marriages and so forth - we started doing that in the Church and then things blew up and all that went by the wayside.  But we were just getting to a point where we were starting to address some things that needed to be addressed.  We need that.  We're going to need that in the world.

That's why Mr. Armstrong wrote the book, 'The Missing Dimension in Sex', because he recognized through things of the Church and so forth and counseling, candidly, and on and on it goes, that there was something missing and not being taught in the world, not being taught in society, and so he began to address it.  And that was a little difficult in some respects because there were things that came from a type of Victorian, puritan type of past that didn’t allow for a lot of maybe more balance in certain things in life in relationships and things in marriage.  But there's a balance in that.  It's like this careening from one ditch to another again, and we've gone through that in the Church, we've gone through that in society and people trying to find what is... basically it comes back to, what does God say?  What does it say in here?  And I'm so thankful we're at a point in time where God is going to be able to show us more directly.  Once Jesus Christ is here, once the God Family is set up here, it's going to be so much better.

So I made a pretty bold statement a while ago where I said I know this is a problem in the Church.  It's such a problem in society I know, because of 'freedoms' people think they have just by this machine alone - a computer - the pull on people's lives is far greater.  There are things that are sent through the mail as attachments, especially in Window type products more than they are in a Mac.  Thankfully they haven't attacked Macs in the same way.  But people open up an email and it supposedly has an attachment or there is some kind of an advertisement there and to click on it - and there is nothing but nudity on there, or whatever it might be!

I don't think I've had that happen in the same way on Macs, but before, I think of years ago especially, you get this kind of stuff in emails all the time.  We've gotten smarter, you realize there are some things you don't open anymore because people get viruses and so forth.  If you get certain messages you just don't open them.

But again, a young mind, especially, let alone an adult.  When there are things there people can be drawn to it.  It's a base part of human nature.  So you think of certain things in the world that have to be changed - the use of the internet, the 'freedom', it needs to be controlled.  There are so many things that need to be changed, and that's going to be a great change when it comes, because that tool more than any other has caused people to have greater bondage to some of those things than anything else in modern times - the free reign of computers.  Anyway, on and on it goes...

So again, a lot of great changes that need to be made, because you know what those things do?  They hurt the mind.  They hurt the mind in how people think about each other.  Men who yield  themselves to do such things, when those things enter into the mind, you know what they do?  They hurt your mind toward women.  Now, I don't know how much it is with women, how much that is out there, how much curiosity has sometimes caused women to go in and search out things, but I'm sure it exists.  But it's a very powerful pull for men, for young boys on up.  It's just a natural, normal... and so if the technology enables it it's easy for human nature, without Satan and demons being around, to be drawn to it, it truly is.  And parents, you need to understand that.

So for those of you who are battling such things?  You better battle a whole lot harder.  You better seek to have greater control, whatever it takes to have the control, whether it be someone to put in the codes for you...  We just recently got a dish network thing - hundreds of channels!  That's just what we need in the world!  And there is so much of it that's just not good, and there are some things you can put in there and certain controls, but you know what, if you know the number you can take the number out - so there must be more things in there that can be done.  And I don’t know what can be done but I feel for some families and so forth, of how some of those things are done and how they're regulated but you need to work now at those things in your life, because I know these things exist in the Church.  They have to!

We have certain numbers on a TV upstairs we put in.  Now, if I want to, I can go in and undo the numbers, because I know what the numbers are, so if I had a battle in that area, what would I do, because I know the numbers?  So there is a weakness in the system there.  So maybe  you better have a friend or someone else put the numbers in.  But the point was the other night I was just going through the dial, going through channels on another TV - dumbfounding what's on anymore!  Just what mankind needs, more that draws you to sin.  It's a sick-sick-sick world we live in, it truly is.

So again, a need for a lot of changes.

I've got an article here.  I mentioned Facebook last Sabbath... I was hoping to get all this in one sermon, we may have to have another sermon on this because we haven't even gotten to the... some of the things that are really an area to begin helping us make judgments of some things that cannot even be allowed in the future.  But I want to read this, we'll go ahead and finish this and there will be another sermon - somehow I know God's going to give it because there is more we have to go into.  And maybe some of these other things as well we can go into as we go along here, but there are battles of life that have to be acknowledged and admitted and lived up to between you and God.  God knows everything that goes on in your human life, and the sad thing about things like this, the computer and TV, making that even worse today, but I think even the computer is the greater culprit in a lot of those things, that it's easy to misuse.  Human nature can easily misuse things that are on the computer and I know they exist because I know human nature, and so there are battles that people have to fight and wage and recognize there are things that must change in your life and that you have a greater desire to come into greater unity and oneness with God and fight against the wrong use of technology that makes people in bondage to it.

Anyway, there is one example we're going to focus upon that should help in judging matters of this nature that we'll get to in the next sermon, but I wanted to mention this first, like I mentioned last Sabbath, about the internet and its current state today with such things as Facebook. I thought this was interesting and I want to read this to you.  I asked people a long time ago to get off of Facebook.  You know what?  Some people had such a battle with that!  Some people got upset!  Angry!  Angry at me, that I would say such a thing.  You know what, anybody that experienced that, that's a good lesson to learn from, because what you actually did was that you got angry with God, you didn't get angry with me.  It's not about me, see, I know where it came from.  I know God inspired it to be said, "Get off Facebook!"  Even primarily for the protection of the Church, for the protection of your own identity and so forth, of things that could come to pass, of things that can still come to pass in this world - that everything is out there and there is not a lot of protection.  That's what's come out, a lot of information out there and so forth, and now certain things about how it affects people, the mind and so forth as well, and I just want to read a little bit about this.

This article here says about some of this... it talks about 'The anti-social network'.

The Anti-Social Network[1]

By helping other people look happy, Facebook is making us sad.

By Libby Copeland|Posted Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2011

There are countless ways to make yourself feel lousy. Here's one more, according to research out of Stanford: Assume you're alone in your unhappiness.

"Misery Has More Company Than People Think," a paper in the January issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, draws on a series of studies examining how college students evaluate moods, both their own and those of their peers. Led by [name removed], who at the time was a Ph.D. student in Stanford's psychology department, the researchers found that their subjects consistently underestimated how dejected others were–and likely wound up feeling more dejected as a result. 'Jordan' got the idea for the inquiry after observing his friends' reactions to Facebook: He noticed that they seemed to feel particularly crummy about themselves after logging onto the site and scrolling through others' attractive photos, accomplished bios, and chipper status updates. "They were convinced that everyone else was leading a perfect life," he told me.

It goes on to say a little bit farther in some of the studies here.  It says:

....

By showcasing the most witty, joyful, bullet-pointed versions of people's lives, and inviting constant comparisons in which we tend to see ourselves as the losers, Facebook appears to exploit an Achilles' heel of human nature. And women—an especially unhappy bunch of late—may be especially vulnerable to keeping up with what they imagine is the happiness of the Joneses.

It's talking about basic human nature and young people especially, because of the comparisons that people make with each other.  A lot of social problems of various natures happen... like high schools, especially as people are developing in life, and the sense of belonging and who your friends are, and that's what Facebook has magnified many, many times over.  It hasn't helped things in society and how people think about themselves, these examples of some of these studies go on and on showing how it's actually made the problems worse and multiplied them many times over because of the internet and all the information out there.

It goes on to say:

Facebook is, after all, characterized by the very public curation of one's assets in the form of friends, photos, biographical data...

It just magnified this thing of what already happens in high schools where there are a lot of nasty things that sometimes people do to each other and the way they treat each other that come out on a continual basis, things about how people are bullied...but people want to belong.  There is this thing of human nature, we want to belong, we want to be friends with others, we want to be with the 'in-crowd'.

...accomplishments, pithy observations, even the books we say we like.  Look, we have baked beautiful cookies. We are playing with a new puppy. We are smiling in pictures (or, if we are moody, we are artfully moody.) Blandness will not do, and with some exceptions, sad stuff doesn't make the cut, either. The site's very design—the presence of a "Like" button, without a corresponding "Hate" button...

In other words, I guess, there is a 'like' button on Facebook and I don't know how it's used because I've never gone on, I don't know what it is, but evidently there are certain things  you can go to and people - I don’t know if they put on different things there, some of you may know, I don't.  Anyway....

—reinforces a kind of upbeat spin doctoring.

In other words, when people put stuff out there they're not putting the real part of their life out there, they're putting out the most glamourous part of it, the best, to attract others to it, the best side of life and they know that they're not living to those conditions.  Some of the stuff that's put out there... and some people have a knack of how they word various things - the better you are at some of that, that's what it's showing here, that others who can't do the same thing feel badly then about themselves because they see and read these other things that others are doing and it makes them feel worse about themselves!  That's just all we need, more and more people feeling worse about themselves in life, young people especially who are trying to adjust to so many of the things in society anyway; all we need is another tool on the internet to make life worse and more miserable.  That's what we're talking about here!  Anyway, going on it says here....

(No one will "Like" your update that the new puppy died, but they may "Like" your report that the little guy was brave up until the end.)

Anyway, they're just kind of playing around here showing some things about how people respond to various things in life.

Any parent who has posted photos and videos of her child on Facebook is keenly aware of the resulting disconnect from reality, the way chronicling parenthood this way creates a story line of delightfully misspoken words, adorably worn hats, dancing, blown kisses. Tearful falls and tantrums are rarely recorded, nor are the stretches of pure, mind-blowing tedium. We protect ourselves...

Isn't that amazing how human nature does that?  We tend to protect ourselves, we put up the best front.  Look at what a media like that has done.  Can we grasp how that's made things so much more hurtful and painful in people's lives?  That's what we're talking about.  It says....

We protect ourselves and our kids, this way; happiness is impersonal in a way that pain is not. But in the process, we wind up contributing to the illusion that kids are all joy, no effort.

Parents do this by what they post!  In other words, the true reality of what life is really like.  It's like what I mentioned earlier about TV - I have counselled with numerous people in marriage where you come to understand their concept of marriage has not come from other examples of reality in life, of people's real lives, it's come from TV, movies and books, about what is portrayed as romantic and life and how it's lived.  And so much of that is just a bunch of garbage and lies and swill, and it's not the reality of life and how you deal with problems, how you deal with differences.  Those things aren't, as a whole, taught through movies!  Who wants to watch that?  That's not what people really want, is it, so that's not what's produced.

That's why I think of today; you think of today's society, you turn on the TV to a comedian... I don't watch that garbage, the filth...and some who started out clean!  I think of this one who had these little Muppet things or whatever little things he talked through, ventriloquist, and in the beginning clean, funny, and then it gets to a point where you have these innuendos, sexual things that come across in relationships between men and women that are distorted and perverted and it's like that's what people want and they laugh at it.  You think, what's wrong with their minds that they laugh at such garbage?

Anyway, I want to go on with this Facebook thing and finish this.

Facebook is "like being in a play.

Yeah, like TV, movies; not real.

You make a character," one teenager tells MIT professor Sherry Turkle in her new book on technology, 'Alone Together'. Turkle writes about the exhaustion felt by teenagers as they constantly tweak their Facebook profiles for maximum cool. She calls this "presentation anxiety," and suggests that the site's element of constant performance makes people feel alienated from themselves. (The book's broader theory is that technology, despite its promises of social connectivity, actually makes us lonelier by preventing true intimacy.)

And that's what we've been talking about.  I'm not even going to go on and talk about the other studies that are out there. That's the point, we live in a society today, I think that most of us can grasp and comprehend, where it's a disconnect with reality, there is a disconnect with people being able to interact with each other, to where young people today have a very difficult time as they grow up in society to communicate effectively compared to a generation ago.  It's harder, it's getting harder and harder for people, young people, to communicate.

Anyway, we'll stop there today, but just think about it, think about some of those things as you go through some of the prayers you have this week here about looking into the future and what God's getting ready to do to the world, and understand there are things of technology that have to be changed dramatically.  We get to be a part of sharing in that.  But the point of all this being, we must start it now.

You must start exercising these things more in your life today because there are still things in the lives of those in the Church that we need to clean up and make better, and whatever those are, focus upon those, ask God for help to make changes, because there are problems that have entered into God's Church as a result of technology and we need to fight those in a far greater way.  Because as you do that you come to understand more perfectly, more fully, what needs to be changed and literally how your part is going to be a part of it as well.

~~~end

1. The Anti-Social Network

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