No More Hacking, Part 7

Heart of the Matter ESPRESSO!

Live from Salt Lake City, Utah, this is Heart of the Matter ESPRESSO! where we do all we can to worship God in Spirit and in Truth. I’m Shawn McCraney, your host.

Show 9 538
No More Hacking Part VII
February 21st 2017
Prayer

The Concept of Espresso

What is meant by espresso? I used to have trouble fitting everything we had going on in an hour but as we’ve stepped away from attacking the Mormons and have tried to focus more on teaching biblical concepts the on-air interaction has waned. This is expected. When there is a volatile subject there is plenty of fodder for discussion. But when the topics are more for consideration, there is going to be a shift in the dynamism of the show. So I sort of see HOTM today as 1/3 less long but 1/3rd more to the point. So instead of a 16 oz coffee, HOTM has become more like a shot of Espresso. Everything will be more integrated, faster, and to the point.

Universal Priesthood of Believers

Received an email from long-time viewer Curtis regarding my comment about there not being any priests in the New Testament. He provided some scripture including 1st Peter 2:5 Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Then he says: “Shawn, I am a priest. You are a priest. The Holy Spirit lives within us. We are a church. We have direct daily connections with God. The Old Covenant's priesthood was weak and useless. It never made anything perfect. Now we have a better hope (Heb 7:18). Jesus, our High Priest lives forever to intercede with God on our behalf (Heb 7:25). Now Shawn, we can boldly enter heaven's most holy place because of the blood of the Cross (Heb 10:19-20). Isn't being a priest a wonderful thing? Curtis makes a fantastic point which I failed to mention in making my point against an Aaronic priesthood being in effect in the New Testament and beyond – we are all, by faith on Him, priests! In other words, there is a universal priesthood of believers and we are priests in it. I failed to articulate this and am grateful for brothers and sisters like Curtis to take the time to shine a light and keep us in harmony with biblical truth.

And with that, how about a minute to talk about if I had kids today.

Raising Children in Faith

Last week we learned how the Trilateral Commission (founded by David Rockefeller in 1973) stated in their report called, “The Crisis in Democracy”) that part of the increasing democratization (which they are against) was due to a “failure on the part of the schools, the Universities, the CHURCHES” which they reported are “the institutions responsible for the indoctrination of the young” which was “their phrase,” Chomsky says, “not his.” I want to talk seriously about this concept, “the indoctrination of the young.”

In Proverbs 6 we read the words, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Christians – in fact, every facet I have ever known that orbits around the Christian faith – Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses – all of them – LOVE LOVE LOVE this passage – and not only take it literally they almost always apply it to how to raise children up religiously. Without question, this passage is true – when it comes to principles relative to this world AND! AND! AND as long as the training is done in love. But you show me someone who trains up a child in anger and hate to eat his spinach and I’ll guarantee a rebellion later on in life.

But let’s talk about this passage relative to raising children in the faith, in the dispensation of Grace. Under the Law, I could not think of words more important for a culture and community – and to the parents within them. In summary, the passage is an approval of religious indoctrination – and because it is in the Bible most parents believe it is the way to raise children today. But perhaps we forget that the Proverb was given under the dispensation of a people living under the law, and not in the age of Grace, and that the Law killeth. Yes, it IS in the Bible. But is it as applicable in raising up children today as it was to the Nation of Israel?

Indoctrination and Its Impact on Faith

Means to teach. And its original definition and use was not sinister by any means. However, as words tend to do, Indoctrination has come to mean (in its broadest and most general sense) to brainwash – the process to get a person to accept things uncritically. When a people are living by the Law, and must “conform or be cast out or risk death, indoctrination was key. But Jesus came, and He introduced a New Testament – a New Covenant, a covenant of Grace.

If I had kids today I would of course agree with the passage from Proverbs – when it came to homework, and social decorum, and traffic laws – train them up the way they should go. But when it comes to teaching them about a relationship with God through His Son I strongly, strongly suggest that the days of indoctrination ought to end. There is just too much information out there available to our children to believe that we can use propaganda and indoctrinational techniques to keep them in line. In fact, in our day the very word “indoctrination” makes most people recoil. Why? Because good parents want their children to be thinkers, to be free, to wonder and question and doubt and to learn to investigate, and challenge on their own – to give them as much democracy as possible as a parent, never forgetting the importance of direction, discipline and love along the way. Indoctrinating kids is the lazy, fearful, cheap way of raising them.

The Role of Parents in Religious Education

And if I had kids today I would do all I could to run from all practices of religious indoctrination, but would instead present everything in terms of principles, concepts, options – all the while including my personal views on things like salvation, sin, and Jesus. I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat it – I look around at multiple dozens of families lead by “parents of ardent faith.” Dozens. And without exception I find an inverse relationship present: The more indoctrinating and dogmatic the parents were with their kids, the more of those kids that walk from the faith. Conversely, the less dogmatic and less indoctrinating the parents, the higher percentage of children I observe as winding up choosing Jesus as Lord and King in their lives. Think about it. There’s something to it.

Conversion is in the hands of THE SPIRIT. And the fruit of the Spirit is LOVE. Love is kind, patient, longsuffering, etc. – and when it is present in our sharing Jesus, it is absent of what motivates and operates indoctrinational methodologies. Indoctrination often includes didactic musts, fear, endless repetitions, punishments, ostracization, demands, controls – all sorts of things that are antithetical to genuine love. So if I had kids today I would trade all forms of indoctrination for every opportunity to love. It is of EXTREME INTEREST that God’s only begotten Son was not a parent. I think this is more symbolic and important than we might imagine. But I’m not going to explain why tonight.

A Moment from the Word

On December 25th of 2016 we delivered one of the most important messages of this ministry – we called it, “An Illustration of the Christ” and in it we set forth what we believe is the biblical description of who Jesus was and is. In that teaching a number of principles were set forth regarding the Christ and the Only True God who sent Him, and if you are interested and have an hour to invest you might want to tune in to that message by going to www.campuschurch.tv

I’m not going to rehearse the contents of that message tonight but am simply going to read Hebrews chapter one with you during this “From the Word” segment. There is a Bible out there called the Amplified Bible and it takes words and assigns them enhanced (or amplified meanings) to aid in comprehension. I am going to give you an Amplified Reading of Hebrews chapter one verses 1-9. In other words I am going to read what it says but am going to add information found in other parts of scripture to the words I read. Listen carefully to the emphasis I make in this reading – and let the Spirit Guide.

Hebrews 1:1 God (the One and Only True and Living God), at sundry times and in divers manners (over the course of biblical history recorded in the Old Testament) spake in time past (He did what we are

God's Communication Through His Son

God used to talk to us by and through prophets.

In these last days, the writer is calling the days in which he wrote, “these last days,” and we are at a place where more years have passed since he wrote than had passed WHEN he wrote! What does this mean? It means that by the term “last days,” the author was speaking about the last days of THAT AGE – an age that was about to end. "Has in these last days spoken unto us by his Son" (this is His only begotten Son, a Son whom was made of a woman, who was a Man, and the only Man who had the Only True and Living God as His actual Father) "has in these last days spoken unto us by his Son whom He (the only True and Living God) hath appointed heir of all things" (the One God has Given His only Son EVERYTHING) by whom also he made the worlds; (since God made the worlds by speaking we know that He created the worlds through His Words . . . and His Words were made flesh and dwelt among us as His Son).

The Supremacy of the Son

Who (speaking of His Son now we get a summary description of Him) Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty (of God, His Father) on high; (The still speaking of Jesus) Being made (being what? Being made. Yes, this is talking about the Man Jesus and not the word thriving inside the man but the Man who dwelled among us was made) Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance (because He was God’s only Human Son) obtained a more excellent name than they. For unto which of the angels said he at any time, (or when Has God ever said to any angel) “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again (again, when has God ever said to any angel), I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son? And again, (or as another example) when did God ever bringeth in the firstbegotten into the world, and say, “And let all the angels of God worship him.” (the implication is never) And of the angels did God ever saith, “Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire." (no) But unto the Son he (the One True living God said – AGAIN, GOD SAID THIS TO JESUS), Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, (even Jesus God? That’s what it says) hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. (Whose fellows? Jesus fellow human beings).

And that would be us. His fellow human beings.

Chomsky's Ideas on Institutional Religion

And with that, let’s continue talking about Chomsky’s ideas and how they apply to institutional religion today. Now, so far, Chomsky has maintained that Big Government, Corporations, and Major Multi-Media Conglomerates have sought to reduce democracy so the “few Masters of Humanity” can manipulate and control the masses. Tonight he is going to take us a step further or deeper and we, in turn, are going to apply this deeper steep to the historic brick and mortar church. As time has worn on Chomsky notes that the Masters of Humanity have had to change their approaches to achieve their goal of wealth, power and control over the masses and this is summarized in the third Principle of their need to occasionally Redesign the Economy. He says, “Since the 1970’s there has been a concerted effort on the “masters of mankind” to shift the economy in two crucial respects.” I am only going to focus on one of the two in our use of this information to examine the modern church and

Financialization of the Economy

This "crucial respect" Chomsky presents is "To increase the role of financial institutions, banks, investment firms, insurance companies" in modern life. To prove his point, Dr. Chomsky points out that "financial institutions had 40% of corporate profits – far beyond anything in the past." I mean in 1948 that percentage was 8% to give you some comparison.

What does this mean, exactly? In the United States all the way up into the 1950s, America's economy was largely based on production – producing things – cars, widgets and the like, right. We were the great manufacturing center of the world. 11% of our Gross Domestic Production came from finances (banking, investments, insurances) but more than 28% was due to manufacturing. Financial institutions were a relatively small part of the economy and their task was to take unused assets (like a bank's cash reserves) and make it available to merchants and manufacturers – and even joe-homeowner – to use and improve upon their interests.

The Impact of Deregulation

These activities were highly regulated. This means that there were systems in place to make sure all the methods and practices going on in each segment of these financial centers were within compliance with laws. This regulation forced commercial banks (those that lend to mom and pop and corporations) to keep their business separate from investment banks, and insurance companies were separate from investment and commercial banks.

What did this accomplish? Never in the history of financial institutions was there a financial "crisis" so long as the regulators and the regulations were in place. You with me so far? But guess what happened? Scheming men and women, wanting "more, more, more" – more money, more of the pie, more of what was going on in other groups camps – lobbied for something called DEREGULATION – taking away the boundaries and allowing everyone to have their hand in everything else.

This hit in the 1970s. And it opened the door for a single word to grow like a cancer in this country AND the world… GREED. Banks that once offered FDIC insured products to their customers could now offer investments from the same building. Insurance companies could act like banks and so could investment firms with their money markets and the like. Everyone in finance wanted to become a "one-stop shop." And everything changed. Astronomical rivers of speculative capital flowed which caused enormous changes in the financial sectors.

The Shift to Financial Manipulations

Soon, because of Greed, the manufacturing center of the world became the center for financial manipulations of all sorts… complex financial instruments were introduced, money manipulations, and by 2010 manufacturing was down to 11% and finance was up to the high twenties. Chomsky points out that back in the day the directors of major manufacturing companies were typically engineers of some sort but today they are all graduates in finance – a telling indication of the focus of what corporations are all about.

Because of deregulation, companies like GE stopped focusing on making lightbulbs and today makes MOST of their profits and money through money manipulations! More than half of GE’s profits come from things like index arbitrage and moving money around in complicated ways – so complicated that only the Masters understand and get in the game – while more and more and more of the masses abandon positions of participation and become spectators – spectators that are controlled and taken advantage of by their unregulated activities. Chomsky calls this element of Redesigning the Economy, the financialization of the economy.

Hand in hand with this is the Offshoring of Production which I am not going to cover tonight but it certainly plays a role in the Redesigning of the Economy. So how does what we have just talked about apply to brick and mortar religion today?

Paul says in Ephesians 6:12 "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." In a less direct but more exact way, Young Literal Translation says it this way: "because we have not the wrestling with blood and flesh, but with the principalities, with the authorities, with the world-rulers of the darkness of this age, with the spiritual things of the evil in the heavenly places," Because of this insight I am of the opinion that the "principles flowing out from principalities," and "the authority flowing out from world rulers in this dark age" are no new thing under the sun, then what Chomsky is.

The Influence of Religion and Politics

Describing has long existed in the hearts of the Religious Masters of Humanity and thrives into this very day. I mean hasn’t organized religion long tried to deregulate their limited scope and become all things to all people all the time? Haven’t churches, that ought to be feeding people the Word of God freely also long attempted, in the spirit of deregulation (and in the very name of God) to become everything to everyone? All the way back to Constantine, Luther and Calvin, Joseph Smith, and modern Evangelicalism have all believed it their duty to engage in politics. And certainly today the churches have attempted to become a one stop shop, equipped with everything from coffee shops, bookstores, travel agencies, and concert promoters. Like the corporations around us, this Christian deregulation has been fueled by the same objective – GREED. GREED for more people in the seats, which means more money in the coffers, which means more wealth (for the Masters of humanity) which means more power, which means more control. I mean, even look at preachers of the faith at the start of the faith. Lowly apostles sent forth into the world to suffer. And compare them with the CEO’s and boards of the churches today. Most have sought to “redesign the economies” of simplicity, and teaching the Word, and remaining regulated by the Holy Spirit to a worldly deregulation in some shape, form or fashion.

Chomsky and the Notion of Anti-Americanism

Before we open the phone lines, there is one more thing Chomsky points out before he moves on to his fourth Principle. Going back to his younger days as an MIT professor, because of his views, he was considered very, “anti-American.” It was a title slapped on his forehead by those who did not appreciate his views – and guess who they would be? That’s right, the very same people who seek ultimate power and wealth as a means to gain control. It is of great interest to me that he is someone who plainly points out the sinister nature behind the trend to produce offshore by major corporations but he is the one called Unamerican. Hmmmm. I mean because he resisted the Viet Nam war he was labeled Anti-American. And today in retrospect we know what that war was all about, don’t we? My own father in law (now deceased) a full bird colonel in the US Army and perhaps one of the most ardent American patriots to walk the earth who served in Viet Nam before his death told me he would not have gone if given the choice today. So to the vilification of Chomsky through the use of the term “unAmerican.” He says, “Actually this notion of Anti-American is quite an interesting one. It’s a (listen) it’s a TOTALITARIAN notion. It isn’t used in free societies.”

The Use of Labels in Totalitarian Regimes

He goes on and explains: “In totalitarian states the notion is used. So in the old Soviet Union dissidents are called, “anti-Soviets,” – that was the worst condemnation a person could receive (and I would add Stalin made sure of that). See, when the few want their way TOTALLY, names like anti-American are used against those who challenge their TOTALITARIAN ways. We have certainly seen this in the Mormon faith, have we not? We’ve seen it in the State of Israel where in both Anti-Mormon and Anti-Semite are used sometimes justly but also unjustly as a means to protect the totalitarian desires of the group. In free societies, places where totalitarianism is absent, critics are allowed, sans the labeling. But the MORE totalistic a group, the MORE labeling that occurs. In a truly totalitarian regime a label can mean imprisonment and even execution – which is a wonderful way for groups to maintain control. In the US, terms like anti-American, and Marxist are terms of abuse. But in the US if you find yourself vilified there is a lot of room to wiggle about.

Reflecting on Vilification in Faith

But let me wrap up tonight with a final parallel. In the faith, which is NOT a totalitarian institution, terms that vilify, and malign, and label INDIVIDUALS ought to be reconsidered before being assigned. I say this from both being guilty of vilification and from being vilified as a “heretic” (the term used in Christian Totalitarianism to assassinate the character of others.) I’ve learned. And repented. And choose to stand with anyone anywhere anytime who claims Jesus as Lord. No questions, no vetting asked. Vilification comes hand in hand with an demanded objectified faith. The fruits of the Spirit arrives sidecar with a subjective stance.

Redesigning What's Been Redesigned

redesign what’s been redesigned by the few.

And with that let’s open up the phone lines:

Phone Lines

(801)

Final Note

SPOT