In the battle for the souls of men, the notion has been advanced that God is not able or not willing to save us from the suffering and destruction we are experiencing. This concept arises from the false belief that the present world order is in accordance with God’s will. In fact, the present world order is the product of the satanic dominion, which has been allowed rulership over the earth for the time being. This concept is perhaps difficult to accept, but is plainly stated in the scriptures:

19 We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

1 John 5:19

30 Jesus said, "This voice was for your benefit, not mine. 31 Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out.

John 12:30-31

The bible makes it clear that at this time, the world is not being run according to God’s principles but according to Satan the devil. This explains the state of the world, and this point is crucial in understanding why religious people are not able to make an impact against the government policies destroying our nation.

For example, in the matter of homosexuality, it is clear that the government is intent on promoting the homosexual agenda no matter how unpopular it may be with religious people. The System is trying to re-engineer truth. The standards of morality in which we believe are now being overturned because the government tells us it is OK to sin. In doing so, they are putting themselves in place of God.

Let us review some of the basic points that have been discussed so far:

A satanic agenda is behind the present political and economic system. The "Image of the Beast" prophesied in the book of revelation is our modern media, and is being used to deceive mankind into following human governments and institutions instead of God. The most sinister goal of the media is to brainwash people into the belief that religious convictions are foolish and out-dated, so that when Jesus Christ returns (the second coming) the media will deceive people into believing that this is simply an aberration of natural phenomenon. A religious explanation is required in order to understand the present world, and the present system is destined to fail because it is inherently flawed. All of our technological systems will fail and the economy will collapse. Christ will return from heaven to de-throne Satan, and Christ will rule the earth for a thousand years.

The "Beast" prophesied in the book of Revelation is not limited to any one government or human organization, but is the entire system which controls the world. This system consists of governments, banks, and large corporations, but is not limited to these organizations. These organizations all work together for a common goal, and this goal is the satanically inspired destruction of humanity. While some people even of high rank in the system may have a sincere agenda, the overall system nevertheless serves Satan. This is clear from the results which the system produces. In this book, the term "the system" is used interchangeably with "the Beast", and refers simply to the present world order under Satan the devil, who, as the bible reveals, is the god of this age.

The system is trying to narrow our thinking. The underlying, unspoken message of conformism which the media projects, is intended to make us believe that there are only certain avenues of thought which are possible and acceptable. Only mass media has such power over people’s minds. But someone may argue that prior to the mass media, people’s imaginations were more limited because they were not exposed to a wide range of thoughts. It could be argued that the technology which enables the whole world to communicate thus "enriches" everyone with a wider range of possibilities. The author suggests that the media has in fact accomplished the exact opposite of this, and that it is instead used to impose a single interpretation of reality upon all of mankind.

This argument should be considered based on an observation of man’s previous achievements. If we recall the past thousands of years of cultural and technological development prior to the existence of the mass media, it is obvious that mankind was not impeded by a lack of media, since the media does not add to human communication but rather distorts it, by altering it from intelligent two-way discussion between two or more people, into a one-way discourse in which those who control the media "broadcast" their propaganda into the minds of all people. Therefore the concept that the media, including the internet, is enhancing human communications, is false. The author contends that while the electronic medium has increased the volume of communications which is occurring, it has actually reduced the quality and meaning of human relationships.

A recent study conducted at Carnegie Mellon University found that the use of the internet and email causes depression (Calgary Herald Aug 29, 1998). Apparently the natural human relationships which are displaced by the use of the internet has a negative effect on the human psyche. If this study had been funded by a group of anti-technology people you would have reason to doubt the findings, since we all know that various groups can generate studies for their own purposes. The convincing aspect of the study is that it was funded by technology companies, who were expecting the opposite result!

The negative aspects of electronic media are wide ranging. This can be seen in obvious examples such as shock television talk shows, in which perverted people fight over complicated personal depravities: "My lesbian lover left me for my dog." These examples are not subtle and therefore are dismissed as fringe. We do not consider them to be a symptom of media itself but rather a product of greedy television producers who will do anything for better ratings. But there is more than greed involved in such developments. While simple greed may indeed be the motive of individuals, the system itself is served by this trend. The result of massive numbers of people being exposed to such evil lifestyles is that there will be more people who will themselves turn to a depraved lifestyle, especially unsupervised children who watch these shows. But other examples which are not as obvious should also be considered. Many children and teenagers spend their time in internet chat rooms. We should question the value of a society where children are not engaged in fulfilling conversation with their parents and relatives and thus turn to anonymous discussion with strangers. I suggest this is a symptom of something very wrong.

What about email? Do not people benefit from it by being able to communicate with relatives? I suggest that we only need such communications because our corporate culture has displaced us from our relatives in the first place: this is an example of how technology first creates a problem and then appears to solve it with more technology. In previous times people were able to spend their whole lives in the same place where they were born and raised, and there was no need for email in the first place, for you could simply walk to your relatives house and talk face to face. Now that we have a culture where our corporate employers move us at their whim from one city to another, a culture in which our economic dependence on corporations requires us to leave our families and move far away just to stay employed, now we of course need communications technology so that we can maintain contact with our relatives.

Over the course of time we have "advanced" to the point where we need more and more technology to make up for the problems caused by previous technology. Therefore the argument that the internet is a marvelous communication tool which unites the world into a "global village" is foolish: why did we not just stay in our village in the first place?

But this concept of creating problems for ourselves and then coming up with ingenious complicated solutions is not restricted to communications technology. What about our modern fixation with exercise, which has become necessary only because of the labour saving technologies which now prevent us from exerting any physical effort in daily life?

We drive everywhere in our cars, and then we go to the health club and spend an hour on a treadmill. Does this make any sense?

Airline travel is also a very questionable technology. For thousands of years we survived without it, but now we need airplanes. Once again we are deluded into thinking of the technology (air travel) as a benefit because we fail to remember the circumstances which make it necessary in the first place: the displacement of human beings away from family and relatives, which is itself a result of the corporate economy.

Prior to the corporate economy, there was no need for people to leave their homes and relatives to seek work in the cities, and so there was no need for mechanized high speed travel for these displaced people to visit their relatives. Technology not only expands to solve the problems created by previous technologies, but even individual technologies compound upon their own problems. Air travel has now evolved to the point where it is no longer considered a luxury but a necessity, and as a result the volume of traffic increases so that we need bigger airports, more air-traffic controllers, and more anti-terrorist measures in the airports - and, tragically, more airplane crashes. After a while, we always end up serving the technologies which were supposedly invented to serve us.

Our debts are expanding exponentially, and our taxes are increasingly required to pay just the interest on these debts, and this is largely because we keep inventing expensive new technologies which, once created, are deemed necessary and yet they cannot be afforded, so we go into debt to pay for them.

Medical advancements are a good example. In previous times, sick people either recovered or died, and we accepted this as an act of God. Today we have so many expensive and complex medical technologies available - which fewer and fewer people can afford - that the prospect of losing a dying relative is no longer a matter of accepting the will of God but a matter of how much medical insurance is available. In this manner, technology has become a trap from which we cannot escape, because it provides benefits which are both indispensable and at the same time unaffordable and impossibly complex. In the realm of medicine, the lure of technology is most powerful because it holds the promise to extend life and alleviate suffering. But ironically, we are not able to reduce suffering on the planet no matter how much medical advances we are able to make. For example, if doctors work to eradicate one disease, another takes it’s place. And worse, war and crime have not been reduced by technology, and therefore no matter how much we advance the state of medical technology we still suffer and die. I am not suggesting we should give up the practice of medicine, but rather I am pointing out the futility of our condition. Now that we have the power to extend life with medical technology we have to deal with the question of when and how far this effort should be extended. In the end result, I suggest we have not made any real advance, for the simple reason that we have tried to bypass the simple instructions of the bible. We have tried to use technology to alleviate problems which have a spiritual cause. God promised that if we simply follow His laws, we would not have any of our present problems in the first place:

12 If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the LORD your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your forefathers. 13 He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land - your grain, new wine and oil - the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land that he swore to your forefathers to give you. 14 You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor any of your livestock without young. 15 The LORD will keep you free from every disease.

Deut 7:12-15

3 "`If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, 4 I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit. 5 Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land.

6 "`I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid. I will remove savage beasts from the land, and the sword will not pass through your country.

Lev 26:3-6

In our modern world, we cannot bring ourselves to believe that physically perceptible problems such as famine, disease or war could have a spiritual cause. We have been brainwashed into believing that science and technology are the answer to our problems, when in fact our problems are a result of not living in harmony with God. Technology cannot take away the consequences of sin, which is the true reason for our problems.

The preoccupation with science has led us to a belief system which writes sin out of the picture completely. We are being misled into believing that we can forget about the eternal consequences of defying God because technology will save us from His wrath. This is a false concept, as the book of Revelation makes frightfully clear:

8 But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars - their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death."

Rev 21:8

No amount of technology can save us from the wrath of God. The only thing that can save us is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Technology and science has become a false God in our culture. It has misled us into the idea that spiritual beliefs are only adhered to by those who are too stupid to understand science and technology. We should remember that belief in spiritual cause and effect is not limited to the uneducated. Many great scientists do believe in God and realize that their scientific pursuits are only an exploration of God’s creation. Such an attitude towards God and science - one which sees science simply as one facet of God’s creation - does not lead to a mistaken idea of science as savior. Unfortunately, when God is "written out" of the equation, we tend to think that we have become smarter than God and that we no longer need to listen to Him. This is a very dangerous idea. No matter how smart we become or how far we advance, we still need God. We cannot save ourselves. The technological industrial world we have created is faulty and is about to collapse like a house of cards, because we have assumed that we can invent our way out of spiritual problems with scientific solutions. But physical, scientific solutions are not adequate to address problems which are spiritual in origin.

Take sickness for example. We assume that the scourge of disease which has plagued mankind is simply the result of bacteria or viruses - physical organisms which can be studied and understood by looking through microscopes. But while the existence of these bacteria can be verified "scientifically", we should not conclude that the problem of disease itself can be overcome scientifically.

The present state of consumer culture in the Western world is not a natural outcome of the free market, as the system wants us to believe, but is instead a manufactured culture which is designed to create conformity to a lifestyle which makes people easier to control as servants of the system. The underlying motive behind the entire plan is to destroy human beings not only physically but spiritually - to destroy all hope and to remove from them any tendency to seek God.

We suffer from a diminished perception of God and a corresponding undue faith in technology. An extreme case of this tendency is the modern idea that we should plan to intercept asteroids which may otherwise collide with earth. Do we really believe we can avert such cosmic catastrophes as asteroid impacts, when we are not even able to accurately predict the weather? We cannot stop floods or predict earthquakes, and we are going to stop asteroids from hitting the earth? In December of 1997, a large meteor struck Greenland. The story appeared in the Globe and Mail but was quickly hushed up, because it was an embarrassment to the scientific community that they were not aware it would happen in advance.

We have become so reliant on complex man made systems and machines that we do not want to admit how totally incapable they are of saving us. Anyone familiar with the bible knows that many ancient advanced cultures were destroyed because they became arrogant against God. But we are deceived into believing that the answer to catastrophes is to turn to technology for safety. While many people see a warning from God in present day disasters, this natural and healthy response is diverted by the media, who never concede that there is divine significance to anything. Have you ever heard a CNN reporter conclude a report of an earthquake with a reference to God? The media does not acknowledge God because the media is the "Image of the Beast" from the book of Revelation, and it’s objective is to deceive people into worshipping the "beast" which is the system of governments, banks and corporations which run the world. The media’s goal is to keep the public’s attention away from spiritual matters and to focus them on money, the stock market, science, technology, and entertainment. The media is both a distraction mechanism and a human re-engineering machine. By endless repetition of certain key themes, the media brainwashes people into accepting the notion that all of our problems can be resolved by human institutions, human laws and human technology.

But this is a false doctrine, and it is misleading people into the biggest con in history. The ultimate result of this deception is that many people will reject Christ at his return, because they will be deceived into believing that the Second Coming is an alien invasion.

All modern institutions play a role in the anti-God agenda of the system. The education system, the medical profession, the Hollywood movie industry, and the financial industry. All of these are coordinated to present a false view of reality which is designed to cause people to reject God and worship the system.

Even though we consider ourselves to be living in a time of unprecedented "progress", this saying applies: "The more things change the more they stay the same."

The most basic problem of humanity is the same today as it was in the garden of Eden. It is the issue of humans’ relationship with their creator, and their unwillingness to accept that they do not have life apart from God. Every other "modern" problem which may arise is simply a variation on this question: "Do we accept God’s direction or do we go our own way?"

The system has convinced most of us that the problems we face today are of a material scientific nature, and have nothing to do with religion. When religion is discussed in the media it is usually in the context of fanaticism or "extremism". The modern media has so skillfully manipulated modern language that the very word religion is now connected in many people’s minds with negative notions. The media has purposefully worked towards discrediting religion in the eyes of the public and has offered instead the false religion of science and human politics. The media continually reinforces the idea that the solutions to our problems can be found in technology and skillful political action. Just as Nimrod presented himself as a "mighty hunter before the Lord", modern politicians are portrayed by the media as though they hold our future in their hands. If there is a problem with the environment, or the economy or anything else, we are supposed to believe that either new legislation or job creation or a new computer system will solve the problem.

The author presents an alternate view: The problems we face do not hinge upon better legislation or faster computers or lower unemployment, or lower inflation or interest rates, but rather on a much more fundamental point: are we living in harmony with God? The difficulty for the average person in accepting this idea is that the system has so powerfully convinced everyone that modern problems bear no relation to spiritual issues.

If people do not have jobs, we are told, it is because the economy is slow and the solution is for the governments to manipulate the economy or create jobs. The media has done a masterful job of reducing every issue into a simplistic material problem, for which a direct "scientific" cause and effect relationship can be established. For example: Low interest rates = booming economy = low unemployment. Once we are mesmerized into watching this equation day after day on the news, we lose sight of the fact that the real problems we face are far more serious than the manipulation of a paper money supply. For example, the natural disasters which are becoming more frequent. Floods, storms, earthquakes, volcanoes. Diseases such as AIDS. Growing crime and violence. Family breakups. War and nuclear bombs. These are real problems against which the supply of paper money means nothing. But the media are artists at distraction. The term "smoke and mirrors" applies to the way the media is used to divert attention from real problems and keep us focused on artificial problems. But wait; you may say that the media does report the "real issues" such as disasters and war. Of course they report these stories, but it is not the facts being reported that direct public opinion, it is the cause and effect which the media applies to these stories. Natural disasters are reported as being a result of "El Ninio", a weather effect which is simply a cyclical part of earth’s climate. There is never any discussion of the relationship between disasters and man’s relationship with God. The media creates a false cause-and-effect belief system which is designed to convince us that such disasters are related strictly to the physical scientific realm and have purely scientific explanations. By promoting this false belief, the media achieves its goal of discouraging people from turning to God. All these disasters should be causing people to ponder their own fate and thus turn to God. But that would mean no longer looking to the system as savior.

The author suggests that the media is the "Image of the Beast". The media is that arm of the system charged with the task of manipulating the world’s belief system. The aim of the media is to keep people’s minds from turning to God as the end time approaches. It is important to make the distinction between the "Beast" and the "Image of the Beast." The book of Revelation tells us that the "Image of the Beast" causes people to worship the Beast, which is a world ruling system.

This is a serious accusation. The author is suggesting that the news organizations of the world are coordinated in their efforts to deceive and manipulate people for the specific purpose of alienating them from God.

Satan is the God of this age. Biblical scripture makes this very plain:

19 We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

1 John 5:19

2 ..... the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

Eph 2:2

4 The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers...

2 Cor 4:4

Notice that the bible refers to Satan as the "god of this age", and the "ruler of the kingdom of the air." 1 John 5:19 makes it clear that the whole world is under Satan’s control.

The Bible also makes it clear that anyone who likes the way the present world operates is not in harmony with God:

4 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.

James 4:4

The bottom line is that our present civilization is inherently evil and destined for destruction, and we cannot put any hope in it. Our only hope can be in the return of Christ to de-throne Satan. This event is prophesied in the book of Revelation:

11 I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. 12 His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. 13 He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. 14 The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. 15 Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. "He will rule them with an iron scepter." He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.

17 And I saw an angel standing in the sun, who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in midair, "Come, gather together for the great supper of God, 18 so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and mighty men, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, small and great."

19 Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to make war against the rider on the horse and his army. 20 But the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who had performed the miraculous signs on his behalf. With these signs he had deluded those who had received the mark of the beast and worshipped his image. The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur. 21 The rest of them were killed with the sword that came out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh.

1 And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. 2 He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.

Rev 19:11 - 20:2

When I say that our civilization is destined for destruction, this is not to say that the entire earth will be destroyed. It is the system of today’s government and media manipulated culture which will be destroyed, because this system leads people away from God. To understand why this will happen, we have to realize that the present world is organized in a way which is designed to destroy humanity. This planned destruction of humanity is orchestrated by Satan the devil. But the satanic agenda is not just to physically kill people, since physical death does not prevent a believer’s salvation, but rather to destroy the spiritual life of man by leading him away from God.

The corporate economy has stolen the meaningfulness of work from people. Trades which were once carried out by skilled craftsmen who poured their souls into their craft are now carried out by unskilled workers in factories. The aim of the modern system is to make everything into a quantifiable process which can be tracked and evaluated with computers and accounting programs, and to reduce the contribution of humans to little more than robots.

This whole sham (automation and computerization) was sold to us under the lie that it would bring utopia and less work and more leisure time, but in fact it has made life more stressful and less pleasurable. People need meaningful work which they can consider theirs alone in order to gain satisfaction from their lives.

The media has conditioned us to believe that the glamorous and desirable jobs are those in corporate employment. Yet such jobs only serve the overall corporate and government agendas. People who work in the corporate environment realize that their work is not meaningful because it is not their own work - it is only used to further the vast profit motives of the financial moguls who control everything. But even though we realize this deep down inside, we are conditioned to accept it, by the media, which is used to calm our concern. The method is quite simple and it relies on the human emotional response. When people are concerned about something, they subconsciously want to have their fears soothed more than they want the actual problem to be resolved. This goes back to our earliest childhood experiences with mom. When we hurt ourselves mom was not able to make the pain go away, but she was able to hold us and say soothing things. So we learned early to accept the idea that pain (or problems) will never really go away, but we can obtain some relief by having someone say soothing things to us while we are hurting The media, which is the master of using childhood psychology to control us, uses this same principle. When opinion polls indicate that people are becoming discontented, the media will respond by talking about it. Simply by publishing articles which appear to address "both sides of the issue" (as if there are only two options) people are subtly convinced that everything which can be done is being done. Once people become tired of hearing about the problem and the discussion becomes routine, offering no new angles, then people will conclude that the issue is dead and they will no longer worry about it.

In this manner, the media has trained us that if we don’t like things the way they are, we are allowed to cry about it for awhile, and then we must get back to work.

Your comments are welcomed. Mr. Lucas has been invited to respond to them as well. God bless.

Next blog - The Complexity Syndrome

Mr. Lucas' book can be purchased by clicking this link - PURCHASE BOOK

What are the defining characteristics of our present age? What forces are really driving world events?

This book suggests that there is an overall system with an overall agenda. The agenda is cleverly hidden behind a veil of purposely engineered economic, social and technological problems, such that we become preoccupied with these issues to the complete exclusion of spiritual and religious matters.

Issues such as homosexual rights and abortion are presented to us by the media as if they were single issues and as though they warranted single-issue focus, when in fact there is a larger more sinister agenda to which these sub-agendas belong. This book seeks to address the modern "battle of morals" by focusing the attention on the ultimate spiritual forces behind the scenes, rather than on simply arguing each issue on its own. It is the author’s conviction that the crisis we are facing cannot be understood or addressed unless it is viewed from a spiritual perspective, rather than the narrow social, political and scientific perspectives to which the media seeks to confine our discussion. It is a mistake to argue over social, moral and spiritual matters from the standpoint of a "Left vs. Right" political debate, since the real issues at hand are far wider in scope than political orientation. In fact, the very delineation of modern debate along the lines of political ideology is a clever fabrication of the modern media, and is used to confuse us into the belief that all our discussions must take place along pre-defined, media sanctioned "battle lines". One goal of the media is to make our discussion process very narrow and to fix the outcome of every debate, by re-engineering our language and by pre-defining the mood of public discussion. When one player in the game has the means to set the rules, to decide how and when the play will occur, then he will surely use that advantage to make the game go his way. That is what is occurring in the media today. While there is a vast religious population which is tormented by the flow of our culture towards perversion and homosexuality, nevertheless the system seems to be winning, and the conservative religious population cannot seem to prevent the slide. Why is this? It is because we are playing a game by someone else’s rules. We are trying to counter a force which is more powerful than we are, and on top of that we are continually drawn into modes of battle which are completely impossible for us to win. We can only get out of this losing scenario by stepping back and taking a look at the problem from the "Big Picture" rather than being confined to fight each issue within the narrow and restrictive confines which the media is imposing on us. This is the aim of my book - to broaden the view of the reader so that he or she may see what is happening above and beyond the confusing array of media issues which are engineered to distract us.

In order to present such an overall picture I must from the outset declare the terms which are now defining our world and the battle raging in it. We should not believe that there is a battle between men and women, or Muslim and Christian, or Iraq and the US or Conservatives and Liberals. These are distractions which are designed to keep us busy fighting each other while the enemy advances on all of us.

The purpose of the media driven debates over subjects like gun control is to polarize people into two opposing camps. The old divide and conquer technique. We are supposed to be so busy fighting with each other that we ignore the system which profits from our fighting. A familiar theme indeed. Just as war is used to impoverish and oppress us and to justify taxes, so too these engineered "social debates" are used to create conflict and confusion.

The real enemy is Satan the devil, who seeks to destroy all humans whether they are male, female, Muslim, Christian, American or Arab, Liberal or Conservative. Through the news media, Satan the devil has tricked us into believing that the enemy is some human ideological group, perhaps feminists or environmentalists. We are not supposed to view the battle in the spiritual terms which the bible reveals, for that would expose the true master plan which plots our destruction:

4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.

2 Cor 10:4

8 Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

1 Peter 5:8

Your comments are welcomed. Mr. Lucas has been invited to respond to them as well. God bless.

Next blog - The Biggest Lie of All

Mr. Lucas' book can be purchased by clicking this link - PURCHASE BOOK

Perception has replaced utility as the measure of worth. This is due to the abnormal attention which is focused on television and movies, which now have the power to distort human thought so that people are believing they need certain things, and need to be doing certain things, which in themselves have no value. Take for example the compulsive cell-phone user. Does he or she really need to be talking constantly on this gadget - even to the exclusion of those around him - or is this simply a modern image which the media portrays as glamorous and desirable? The same is true for computer usage, which is now perceived as "the thing to do" to the exclusion of simpler and more natural pursuits which used to involve the family. Current marketing efforts are targeting teenagers to try and convince them that they need to carry around pagers to be hip and cool. This is a distortion of human needs and priorities. It is taking a great toll on us. Not only are we constantly pressured to buy our children more expensive and utterly needless accessories, but our children are directly targeted by advertising and are led to believe that their self worth and acceptance by their friends is dependent on whether they have all the latest clothes and gadgets.

Advertising is the culprit in this problem, since it allows those with money and power to influence the population in any direction which they deem profitable. If a car manufacturer is willing to spend enough money marketing a new car model there is no limit to the popularity which can be attributed to the vehicle, no matter how un-spectacular the new car may be. A mass hysteria can be created in consumer demand, simply by unrelenting repetition of media images which portray the new product as desirable and fashionable.

This distortion in human perspective is creating a great deal of harm in our society. Parents are compelled to purchase for their children all sorts of expensive electronic gadgets, designer clothes and shoes, just to prevent the child from feeling inferior to his peers who have all these items. Few of us, as parents, have the resolve to instead teach our children to reject unreasonable trends, and to teach them the value of thinking carefully about the value of the item before deciding they must have it. But this problem is compounded greatly by the damaged self esteem of many in our society, who feel that they of themselves have no value and try desperately to clothe themselves with whatever is perceived to be fashionable, in an attempt to gain some measure of acceptance in society. I believe that if we were giving our children unconditional love and adequate attention, it would be far easier to teach them to reject foolish trends which are designed simply to enrich the corporations who sell the items. It is only when children do not receive love and validation from their parents that they seek to gain it by conforming to the public "model of perfection" which is portrayed by the media. In this manner, the media and advertising industry in particular, together with the corporations who promote products, are guilty of harming society and especially children, because their greed for profit is so extreme that they knowingly deceive children into believing they must have all the latest toys and clothes and products. In our commercialized culture, we consider it a right of all such companies to pursue profit in this unholy manner, and we regard our children’s’ welfare as secondary to the corporate well-being. We do this because we have been trapped into a Faustian relationship with the system and the corporations, so that our own financial well-being depends on the success of these corporations, either because they employ us or because we hold shares of these companies, or both. The entire corporate industrial world has created a society in which individual self esteem is controlled by those who sell us products.

So it appears we are trapped and doomed to trundle along behind the system, since to reject it means to reject our own standard of living. This is the impossible dilemma we are in, and I suggest there is no way for us, by our own hand, to extricate ourselves from it. It will only change through great pain and trouble when the system we have built finally collapses in upon itself, and the entire infrastructure we have built is destroyed, (and this will occur by God’s hand) only then will there be any hope for a return to a simpler and more natural existence without the corporate industrial system which presently dominates our lives.

Now am I justified in saying that this system will be destroyed by God’s hand? Let the reader interpret for himself the following scripture:

"Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great! She has become a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit, a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird. 3 For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries."

4 Then I heard another voice from heaven say: "Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; 5 for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes. 6 Give back to her as she has given; pay her back double for what she has done. Mix her a double portion from her own cup.

7 Give her as much torture and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself. In her heart she boasts, `I sit as queen; I am not a widow, and I will never mourn.’ 8 Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake her: death, mourning and famine. She will be consumed by fire, for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.

9 "When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her. 10 Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry: "`Woe! Woe, O great city, O Babylon, city of power! In one hour your doom has come!’

11 "The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes any more - 12 cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; 13 cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and bodies and souls of men.

14 "They will say, `The fruit you longed for is gone from you. All your riches and splendor have vanished, never to be recovered.’ 15 The merchants who sold these things and gained their wealth from her will stand far off, terrified at her torment. They will weep and mourn 16 and cry out: "`Woe! Woe, O great city, dressed in fine linen, purple and scarlet, and glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls! 17 In one hour such great wealth has been brought to ruin!’ "Every sea captain, and all who travel by ship, the sailors, and all who earn their living from the sea, will stand far off. 18 When they see the smoke of her burning, they will exclaim, `Was there ever a city like this great city?’ 19 They will throw dust on their heads, and with weeping and mourning cry out: "`Woe! Woe, O great city, where all who had ships on the sea became rich through her wealth! In one hour she has been brought to ruin! 20 Rejoice over her, O heaven! Rejoice, saints and apostles and prophets! God has judged her for the way she treated you.’"

Rev 18:2-20

The system will fall. This system has made profit for the elite of the world by trading in the "bodies and souls of men" (Rev 18:13). This means that those who are rich have become rich by exploiting the lives of human beings. The system of this world is evil and it will be crushed, and this will be followed by the Millennial rule of Christ:

11 I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. 12 His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. 13 He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. 14 The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. 15 Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. "He will rule them with an iron scepter." He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.

Rev 19:11-16

Our materialistic lifestyle provides too many distractions and thereby makes God seem obsolete. Does this mean that God can only survive if He no longer has to compete with technology? No, but it is we who cannot survive if we have to choose between God and this modern lifestyle, for we are incapable of balancing our spiritual lives in the presence of the modern distractions. As it is written:

24 "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

Matt 6:24

So then, the above argument should not be taken to imply that God is threatened by our modern lifestyle, for He is in charge of the entire universe, but rather it is we who suffer from it because we lose our perspective and forget our origins and our limitations, and so we are in danger of being deceived into the belief that we no longer need God. Technology should therefore not be viewed as a liberating force which "frees" us from dependence on God, but a dangerous peril which deceives us into arrogance toward our Creator. Therefore the fall of man, in which Adam and Eve desired the knowledge of good and evil despite God’s warning, can be interpreted as man’s insistence on obtaining "scientific" knowledge before he was spiritually ready for it.

We must not forget what the bible reveals will be the ultimate outcome of all this:

11 Let him who does wrong continue to do wrong; let him who is vile continue to be vile; let him who does right continue to do right; and let him who is holy continue to be holy."

12 "Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. 13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

14 "Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. 15 Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.

Rev 22:11-15

Despite the hard lessons we have learned from our present problems, we will prevail and be returned to the garden and the tree of life if we adhere to God’s way and if we reject the false allure of Satan’s system. This is not to say that it is evil for us to use technology or to live in the modern world, but rather that we must be careful not to let a preoccupation with modern trends make us forget that in the end, our lives depend on the grace of God, and we must be willing to relegate material progress into its rightful place, as a mere temporary chapter in the human experience, which can serve to teach us the futility of life apart from God, and the futility of trying to live by our own standards, for in fact it is not our clever inventions which can save us, but only God.

But we should pause for a moment from the religious aspect of the discussion, just to make the point that even if we analyze our present lifestyle in purely "scientific" terms, it is apparent that the industrial lifestyle cannot be sustained. It is totally destructive and consumes everything until it exhausts all resources, and therefore it is doomed to fail one way or another. The bible indicates that it will be brought down, mercifully, by the hand of God before it can escalate to the point of destroying the entire earth. So we should not think that God will destroy the present system because he wants to deny us this "wonderful" technological progress we have accomplished, but the opposite is true: that the system we have created is so vile and creates such misery, that it will be destroyed for our own good and replaced with a better, more natural and healthier system under God’s leadership.

Therefore the way to look at scientific knowledge in our age is this: Without spiritual maturity scientific knowledge is corrupted and destructive for us, in the same way that if you give a small child a book of matches he will burn down the whole house - only a mature person can be entrusted with fire. So it is with the "knowledge of good and evil" which we obtained illegitimately in the garden. We obtained it before we were ready for it and our present circumstances today are the result. The book of matches - like nuclear fusion - was stolen by an immature child, and we are burning down our own house.

Your comments are welcomed. Mr. Lucas has been invited to respond to them as well. God bless.

Next blog - Introduction To Section 2

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The system today makes it very difficult for individuals to own and operate their own farms profitably. Taxes and competition with corporate farming is driving people off the land and into cities. This is exactly what the system wants. The system does not want self-reliant people sustaining themselves from their own land.

The principle of land ownership is central to the fair distribution of wealth. When people own their own land and are free to sustain themselves from it, they are free from dependence on the system. The most important aspect of land ownership is the inheritance of land - the passing down of land from one generation to the next. This principle is stipulated in the bible. It forms the basis of continuation of wealth and self-sufficiency from one generation to the next.

When this principle is followed, no one needs to be "born poor". Everyone is entitled to a share in the land, since the land was created by God and is owned by God - the land is not owned by governments and corporations as the system would have us believe.

In our society, we are increasingly being restrained from using the land. Environmentalists (or perhaps government agencies working under the pretense of environmentalism) are telling us that we are no longer allowed to even walk on certain parcels of land, because these places are "fragile ecosystems". The system is using such reasons for making people believe that they are not entitled to use the land which God made for all men. More and more land is used by the system for all sorts of destructive activity, and yet individual people and families are not allowed to live on the land unless they can afford a huge mortgage and spend their lives in debt to the banks. Why have we allowed the land we are entitled to by God to be controlled by governments and banks? Why should a family have to take out a mortgage from a bank just to live on a piece of land? I suggest that the same principle which was used from ancient times should apply: If a piece of land is not being used by anyone, then anyone should be free to build a house on it and farm it for their own use. Why should huge tracts of land remain in the hands of corporations, land speculators and governments just so they can gain wealth for themselves? The land belongs to God and all men are entitled to a share in it - without having to borrow money from the bank.

This faulty system of economic manipulation which enslaves us will be destroyed:

16 Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.

17 The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and out of the temple came a loud voice from the throne, saying, "It is done!"

18 Then there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a severe earthquake. No earthquake like it has ever occurred since man has been on earth, so tremendous was the quake.

19 The great city split into three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed. God remembered Babylon the Great and gave her the cup filled with the wine of the fury of his wrath.

Rev 16:16-19

When the cities of the nations collapse as foretold in the above scripture, the result will be that the entire economic system and infrastructure of the world will collapse with it.

11 I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. 12 His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. 13 He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. 14 The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean.

15 Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. "He will rule them with an iron scepter." He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.

17 And I saw an angel standing in the sun, who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in midair, "Come, gather together for the great supper of God, 18 so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and mighty men, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, small and great."

Rev 19:11-18

Even though our modern world may have certain pleasures and benefits, we enjoy them at the expense of far more important things, like justice, righteousness and a healthy lifestyle. The same "modern" pleasures which tempted Lot’s wife to turn back when God was destroying Sodom and Gomorra will tempt many in our society to lament over the destruction of our modern civilization.

The corporate economy has shifted the work we do into a negative direction, so that instead of each individual feeling that he can contribute something by applying effort and ingenuity, he is forced to work for someone else as an employee (a slave) or else he has to be dependent on the government. Neither of these choices are acceptable.

5 "So I will come near to you for judgment. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages....

Mal 3:5

6 The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops.

2 Tim 2:6

The author does not advocate political solutions, but rather makes the point simply that the problems around which political debates revolve have their origin in the fundamental problems of a corporate economy, which are unnatural, unhealthy, and which always lead to a disparity in power as well as social problems. It was only through banking and large corporations that vast numbers of people became enslaved to the system, because now the products which were previously attributed to the hard and skillful work of individuals were merely a product of some factory, and the workers were no longer skilled craftsmen but slaves who were now serving the banks and corporations.

Your comments are welcomed. Mr. Lucas has been invited to respond to them as well. God bless.

Next blog - The Deception of Mass-Media and Advertising

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Today we are destroying the land with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. We justify this as a requirement for feeding people. But God reveals in the bible that simply following His instructions of land usage would ensure abundance of crops and more than adequate food for all of us. Note what the bible tells us:

2 "Speak to the Israelites and say to them: `When you enter the land I am going to give you, the land itself must observe a Sabbath to the LORD.

3 For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops.

4 But in the seventh year the land is to have a Sabbath of rest, a Sabbath to the LORD. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards.

5 Do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land is to have a year of rest.

Lev 25:2-5

This principle is still practiced today by many farmers, and is often known as letting the land lie "fallow". The results are proven. But for the growing number of corporate farms, the concept of letting a corporate asset remain dormant for a year is unacceptable, since for them everything is defined in terms of money and profit without regard for the laws of God or the long term effects on the land. These corporations see fit to pump the land full of chemicals in order to take more from it than it can naturally sustain. Of these people the following is written:

The time has come for judging the dead,... and for destroying those who destroy the earth."

Rev 11:18

25 "I am against you, O destroying mountain, you who destroy the whole earth," declares the LORD. "I will stretch out my hand against you, roll you off the cliffs, and make you a burned-out mountain.

Jer 51:25

God will destroy those greedy people who are destroying the earth for their own profit.

Your comments are welcomed. Mr. Lucas has been invited to respond to them as well. God bless.

Next blog - The Birthright Principle of Land Ownership

Mr. Lucas' book can be purchased by clicking this link - PURCHASE BOOK

The practice of modern marketing - or advertising through the media - has distorted the natural flow of economics between human beings. It twists the normal economic relationships between people, because it removes the real incentive for acquiring goods for practical reasons and replaces it with an artificial desire for things based on perception rather than utility.

Marketing applies to more than material products. It is used to promote people and ideas. The power of marketing lies in repetition. When you repeat an idea often enough within a certain time span, it becomes permanently rooted in the mind. People and ideas can be marketed. Ideology can be marketed. Marketing is the science of propaganda and image projection. It is the "Image of the Beast." Marketing, advertising and the Media are faces of the same Beast. The media is the vehicle through which marketing is accomplished. It is the means by which the Beast defines its image for the public. The media is the public relations department of the Beast.

There was a time when beauty truly was in the eye of the beholder, since there was no media and therefore no media-sanctioned ideal. But with the present media power we are no longer allowed to decide for ourselves just how much fat tissue is normal, either on our own bodies or others. We are being told exactly how much fat (measured with calipers) is acceptable. The media uses the power of marketing to convince us what we should look like and what we should think. What kinds of things are marketed? Hollywood markets people - actors and actresses - in order to make them into spokes-people for certain ideas. They do not always function as spokes-people in the sense of openly talking about a certain cause. The media has become so sophisticated in the art of selling ideas that they are able to make us subconsciously "pick up" on the unspoken message which an actor or actress presents. This can include a subtle promotion of homosexuality, or a subtle suggestion to conform to the system. In many cases, only those who are sensitive to such signals (i.e. body language) can consciously pick up these hints. Such subtle hints are like a fragrance which is barely perceptible, and because it is registered so faintly it borders on the subconscious rather than conscious side of human perception. But quiet suggestions are very effective, as we have learned from the incident in the garden of Eden, when Satan - the most subtle of all the creatures in the garden - was able to tempt Eve by merely suggesting that she was missing out on something:

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, `You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?"

Gen 3:1

The strategy which Satan used was to merely plant the idea that there was something of value being withheld from Eve. Her own mind filled in the rest of the temptation. This is also how subliminal advertising works. The advertisers only have to make a suggestion of something we secretly - sinfully - desire. Our own lust fills in the rest of the process, as the following scripture makes clear:

14 but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.

15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

16 Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers. 17 Every good and perfect gift is from above...

James 1:14-17

And so, while at an academic level we may realize that "every good and per- fect gift is from above" - and that God would not keep anything from us which is truly good - nevertheless the seed of doubt about God’s intention can be planted in a person’s mind by the most subtle of suggestions:

4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

Gen 3:4-5

The power of suggestion is well known to advertising experts. The field of subliminal advertising is built upon the knowledge that people can be subconsciously induced to believe something or to do something or to buy something, simply by being given a hint which is embedded in an advertisement. Because the hints appeal to some very complex human forces, which are buried deep in our minds, we do not want to believe that such forces can actually motivate us, but they do. We can be certain that advertising works because there is no way that companies would spend as much as they do on advertising without being able to measure an influence on our buying habits. In this manner, the advertisers are guilty of destroying many lives and harming many people, because through their unrestrained greed they have acted to destroy human beings. To them the condemnation of satanic greed applies:

16 Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned. So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, O guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones.

17 Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth; I made a spectacle of you before kings.

18 By your many sins and dishonest trade you have desecrated your sanctuaries.

Ezek 28:16-18

This scripture, which describes the fall of Satan, reveals that one of the most fundamental satanic traits is greed and pride which is carried so far that it destroys and consumes everything around it. The scripture in Ezekial 28 is dual - it describes both the physical fall of the Kingdom of ancient Tyre (Ezek 27:2) as well as the story of Satan’s fall. In the same manner as the kingdom of Tyre was destroyed in ancient times because it became obsessed with the never ending pursuit of wealth, so too our modern commercialized culture, which is driven by the marketing forces of advertisers and the media, is destined to be destroyed. This is prophesied in the book of Revelation:

1 After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor.

2 With a mighty voice he shouted: "Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great! She has become a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit, a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird.

3 For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries."

Rev 18:1-3

Note that what is spoken of in this scripture is "excessive luxuries". The "kings of the earth" - political leaders of the nations - are intimately involved with the beast and become rich by a system which pushes people on a treadmill of materialism and consumption, and the beast becomes richer and more powerful by exploiting people both as workers and consumers. The system exploits people from both ends - while they work to produce wealth for the system and when they purchase the goods which are foisted upon them by unrelenting media hype and advertising. In this manner the system - the "Beast" - is condemned by God for corrupting and poisoning the earth with unrestrained greed.

The "Babylon" which is described in the book of Revelation is the modern system of this world, which is built upon frenzied commercial trade, and which has lost all sense of perspective with regards to the proper place for commerce. Commerce is the vehicle through which the beast controls the entire world, and it will culminate in a cashless society in which human beings will be compelled to receive a tattoo or microchip implanted in their skin - the "mark of the Beast":

16 He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, 17 so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.

Rev 13:16-17

It is the system in which we live which bombards us with the continual false impression that we need more and more and bigger and better. Without advertising and media to distort human perspective, people would only buy products and items which they need rather than being deceived by the media into believing they need something which they really do not.

The argument for freedom to pursue this greedy media driven "business culture" is rooted in the so-called American dream. It is interesting to note that we always call this the American Dream and not the "American Reality". It is indeed a dream, and a bad dream at that. It never has and never will be a reality for the majority of us, because the system creates a mire of taxes, complicated laws and regulations, and mind-distorting confusion for the masses in order to sustain the elite at the helm while the rest of us struggle for our whole lives as slaves of the system.

But the system has so well sold us on this "dream" that we actually believe if we only work hard enough everything will be OK. In reality, it is not lack of hard work which keeps us from getting ahead, but rather a system of unjust law and taxation, debt, inflation, and ever-changing technology which keeps us off balance and prevents us from gaining control over our lives. By keeping us in perpetual debt, the beast makes us live from hand to mouth, so that everything we earn is stolen away from us. Note that perpetual debt is not acceptable in God’s view, since even the ancient commandments to the Israelites made provision for releasing debtors from their burden after a seven year period, and returning land to each family after a fifty year period:

1 At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts.

2 This is how it is to be done: Every creditor shall cancel the loan he has made to his fellow Israelite. He shall not require payment from his fellow Israelite or brother, because the LORD’s time for canceling debts has been proclaimed.

Deut 15:1-2

10 Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each one of you is to return to his family property and each to his own clan.

Lev 25:10

Therefore, the perpetual debt to which the system - and in particular the banks - hold us, is against the law of God. We should, as a nation, enforce this law of debt cancellation. This would destroy the power of the banks and the hold which the beast has over us.

Your comments are welcomed. Mr. Lucas has been invited to respond to them as well. God bless.

Next blog - The Land Sabbath

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What will the world look like when corporations own everything? If you want to know the answer to that question, all you have to do is look around you. That dismal world of corporate rule has already arrived.

How many independent restaurants are left in any city? How many stores and businesses and manufacturers are owned and operated by a family business? Even the ones who are owe so much to the bank that they do not really have ownership at all. Why is everything based on debt these days? How did we get to such a strange point in our society that if you want to do anything of significance you have to first go to the bank and get a loan? Why have we allowed the banks to become the most powerful organizations in the whole world? Whom does such a system benefit?

The orientation of all modern business to the stock market has produced a business environment in which individuals and families can no longer maintain financial independence. Almost all sectors of the service industry or manufacturing are so completely dominated by large corporations, that there is virtually nothing left for the individual to contribute. Whereas at one time anyone who was willing to put forth effort, and especially if that effort was combined with skill, could profit by exchanging his work for the work of someone else, the modern corporate dominated environment has reduced all of us to mere serfs, such that our individual value has become minimized.

Prices are going up but wages are going down. How can this be? Do not the prices we pay for goods and services contain the wages paid to those who provide them? Then would it not seem reasonable that increasing prices would effectively increase wages, and thereby this thing called inflation would only exist "on paper", for as each man pays more for his purchases, his wages would be increasing accordingly, and so the inflation would scarcely affect him.

But this is not the case. Our purchasing power is going down. This can only be explained by the fact that the difference between rising prices and falling wages consists of increased corporate profits and increasing taxes, as well as the declining value of the dollar which results from an expanding money supply.

Imagine how ludicrous is the modern situation, in which flesh and blood human beings have been contorted into believing that they can be happy serving some faceless corporation. How many thousands of people go off to work each day with the misguided idea that their lives have meaning in serving as some little drone, whose only purpose in life is to enrich a huge corporation. Most people figure out eventually that this is a sham. But how can it be that such a lifestyle has become acceptable in the first place? Under what conditions could people be cajoled into accepting a "Corporate Guidance" as the main focus of their lives?

Part of the answer lies in the culture of white collar work which the media has created. The media has, over the course of the last 20 - 30 years, brainwashed everyone into the belief that if you don’t have a white collar job you are a loser. If you work with your hands you are made to feel that you are a second class human being. Do we honestly believe that office work is healthy and fulfilling? Anyone who has spent any time in an office environment knows that it is depressing and futile. This leads us to the next question: Since most of us recognize this fact, why do we put up with it? Because we have been conditioned into accepting the corporate office misery by war. It is only since the first and second world wars that huge corporations have dominated the workplace. War is the means the system used to convert the face of America from privately owned family run companies into corporate behemoths. It is the massive public funded (tax funded) war effort which enabled corporations to gain such a disproportionate advantage over the marketplace. In a natural economy there is no possible way for a few companies to acquire such vast amounts of money and capitol. This was only made possible because the beast - through the elite war mongers who run the banking system - convinced governments not only to go to war but to go into debt building war machinery. And this war machinery was built by the huge corporations of today or their predecessors. Once the war is over, the governments still owe the bank, and so our taxes are increased to pay for it. We are now locked into a system of perpetual debt. There is no way to pay off the debt we now hold.

The only way to deal with the problem is to erase the debt - to default on it and declare it non-existent. We are now in a downward spiral of debt financing - we are taking out new debt just to pay the interest on the last debt - and this has been going on for years.

War is the ultimate enabler for the Beast. As a result of the first and second world wars, in which the emphasis was on munitions and mechanized war machinery, vast numbers of citizens were conscripted as factory workers to serve the "War effort". This trend in which most of society is working for huge corporations has, ever since the second world war, been used to create a "new society" in the developed world. This new society is characterized by a system in which the vast majority of people serve as workers and exist solely to enrich the elite. These workers are deceived into believing that they are working for themselves, by means of massive media conditioning and an illusion of material prosperity, which is created by enabling these workers to sustain massive debt loads in the short term, such that they can buy lots of material items, while all their earnings are stolen back from them through taxes, interest and inflation.

Someone may argue that throughout history the masses have served kings and the majority have been servants to the elite few. This I do not dispute. It is not servitude which is new, but rather servitude under the pretense of freedom and prosperity.

The proof of this very serious accusation can be found in one simple test: How much inherited wealth is passed down from one generation to the next under the current system? If we are truly a free and prosperous nation, then the fruits of our efforts should be accumulating and each successive generation must become wealthier and financially more self-sufficient. Clearly this is not the case. We are not getting wealthier but poorer and more dependent on the system. Instead of each generation inheriting a business or a farm or some other form of accumulated wealth, the opposite is the case - elderly parents retire poor and become a "burden" to their children. Something is wrong here. There is no reason why, under any fair and just system of commerce and law, a person should be born into debt or poverty, when his parents have worked their whole lives. How then can this happen? And why do we not rebel against this slavery? It is because we are deceived into believing that we are free when we are not. We are deceived because we mistake short term material luxury for freedom and prosperity. We are not prosperous when we do not own our own land and businesses, when the bank holds title to our land, and when we must work for someone else all our lives. We must not mistake a growing collection of high tech goods for prosperity. The cars and gadgets we are able to "posses" are made available to us through debt financing, and in the end we owe everything to the banks, so that even that which we have "worked for" is confiscated. The idea of borrowing money from the bank has become so entrenched that we think nothing of it, while it is the very attribute of our culture which enslaves us. But could this claim I am making be true? Could a whole nation be deceived into serving the beast while thinking they are free and prosperous?

9 The great dragon was hurled down - that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

Rev 12:9

13 And he performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to earth in full view of men. 14 Because of the signs he was given power to do on behalf of the first beast, he deceived the inhabitants of the earth. He ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. 15 He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. 16 He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, 17 so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark,

Rev 13:13-17

It is, perhaps, unthinkable that we are all deceived. As long as we have jobs we believe that we are doing well. Could this very belief system itself be part of the deception? The media has reinforced this idea of "having a job" so powerfully that it has become the means by which we measure ourselves - what kind of job we have. There was a time when no self respecting person would work for someone else. There was a time when all men were able to be self sufficient and self employed, and only the most unfortunate and dislocated would find it necessary to work for someone else. But with the advent of urbanization and industrialization, we have, falsely, come to regard employment as a privilege rather than the slavery that it is. This misconception is perpetuated by the media, through television shows, Hollywood movies and the news. All these media sources repeat the same message - that a person’s goal should be to get a job. Why have we come to believe that the natural state is for a person to be an employee?

The beginning of this deception can be found in the invention of paper money, with which it became possible for banks and governments to defraud the population by "inflating" the supply of money at will. This inflation occurs anytime a bank or government is allowed to lend or print more money than is actually on deposit in its vaults. The result is that the money in circulation loses its value, and therefore the wages which the workers receive can no longer buy the same amount of goods. Inflation is an extremely effective means of robbing people because people cannot see it happening. The workers receive the same wages day after day and are surprised that the prices of the goods they purchase are rising. They do not suspect that the fault could be with the money supply but instead believe that it is because the merchants who sell them goods are raising their profits. It is because the money system is managed in a devious manner, and in particular because governments and banks create money through inflation, that people are robbed over the course of generations. In the modern age, we have become so accustomed to hearing about inflation that we no longer consider it as a corrupting influence, but rather we think of it as something to be "managed", when in fact inflation should never exist in the first place and exists only because the government and the banks have, quite literally, a license to print money.

The argument can be made that our economic system would collapse if we were to discontinue this method of inflation and debt financing. This is quite true. If banks stopped lending and governments stopped inflating the money supply, the entire system would collapse. As a result no one will argue for a discontinuation of the present corrupt system. It is because the system has all of us on the payroll of some corporation, and because we all posses our houses under mortgages, that we are caught in this trap. We cannot escape it because we are dependent on it. This is the deliberate outcome of the system’s intent - that we should all be enmeshed with it and unable to get out.

The single most powerful force which determines our present state is the media, since it has the power to portray one reality while we live another.

The entire story of human civilization is the result of a planned dissemination of satanic ideas, which are now sold under the guise of "modern culture", and this entire saga culminates in the deception of human beings - to lead them away from God and into the servitude of the beast. We are unwitting participants because we live only short lives, and do not see the whole picture. The whole picture goes back to the rebellion ofSatan and hinges upon the ultimate plan for mankind - to be heirs of God.

Satan the devil wants to sabotage this plan.

In the staged political debate which is shown to us by the media, we are led to believe that we live in a nation where there are two opposing political ideologies: they are the so-called Liberal and Conservative parties. (Or Democratic and Republican parties). This staged political debate is a deception. It is a clever trick which begins with the twisting of the term "Liberal" from its original meaning describing proponents of minimum government into the present day double-speak terminology in which it has, strangely, come to mean left-wing socialist ideology. This is an example of the way the media has re-engineered our language, so that the very terms we use belie their true meaning, causing confusion over the basis of the discussion. By creating the modern day Liberal movement and associating it with ideas such as pro-gay, the system has set us up for belief that the only alternative is the "hard right" which it equally contorts to include racism. On the extreme end of the hard right spectrum, we are told, is the realm of fascism. But wait a minute: This definition of political delineation does not make any sense. If we are to believe that our "two opposing political ideologies" are distinguished by being either for or against big government, then why do both ends of the political spectrum terminate in basically the same total government scenario - either communism or fascism?

This is, once again, an insidious trick which has been played on us by those who create public opinion through endless media repetition using certain key words. When we allow ourselves to become lazy in our thinking, and we no longer question the source of our information, we fall prey to the power of the beast. The clever manipulation which takes place in the language used by the media is a signature trademark of satanic deception. It is not for nothing that Satan has been called the "ruler of the kingdom of the air.":

1 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

Eph 2:1-2

He is expert at creating moods on a mass scale, by nudging people’s ideas ever so gently over the course of life times, even centuries. He has been doing this for a long time. We are warned to be wary of the devil:

8 Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9 Resist him, standing firm in the faith,

1 Pet 5:8-9

Right now, it is Satan the devil who runs this world:

30 Jesus said, "This voice was for your benefit, not mine. 31 Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. 32 But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." 33 He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.

John 12:30-33

Note that Christ himself tells us that Satan is "the prince of this world" and that he must be "driven out". If Satan is the prince of this world, can there be any doubt that he uses the most powerful methods available to achieve his goals? What then, is more powerful in shaping public opinion than the media? The author will go so far as to suggest that the media is non other that the "image of the beast" described in Revelation. The bible reveals that this "image" will come to life and speak, and will cause people to worship the beast. In interpreting the imagery which the author of Revelation utilized, we must remember that there was no such thing as mass media in those times. Even the printing press had not been invented. Therefore when God revealed visions of the future to the writer of Revelation, we cannot know in what form God would have revealed a presence such as modern mass media, yet it is not unreasonable to assume that in warning of the totalitarian beast to come, God could have provided a warning of the one force which the system uses so effectively. Therefore describing the media as an "image of the beast" makes perfect sense: The media is that force which is used to create in people’s minds the "public image" with which the beast wants to be identified! We are all familiar with the modern art of public relations and image creation for Hollywood stars and political personalities. Do we therefore think that this same art of "image engineering" would not be just as important to the organization which rules the world? If propaganda is a powerful tool for governments, then the most important aspect of propaganda must surely be the public image of the government itself: how the public perceives government’s motives and character.

Your comments are welcomed. Mr. Lucas has been invited to respond to them as well. God bless.

Next blog - The Corporate Economy

Mr. Lucas' book can be purchased by clicking this link - PURCHASE BOOK

The present media fixation with technology is a distraction which is being used to keep us from questioning what is happening around us. I call it a media fixation because it would not exist without the endless, undeserved fascination which the media heaps upon it. Human needs have nothing in common with computers, and this is why the technology fixation must be maintained artificially, with endless hype and glamorization. If computers were truly meaningful and useful, then it would not be necessary to constantly hype them.

In reality, computers are a clever distraction which make it appear as though we are inventing our way out of our problems, when in reality earthquakes, fires and floods are destroying us. Instead of pausing to seriously question what is behind all these disasters, as we should, we are told by the media that all these disasters are simply a result of "El Ninio" (how ironic - since El Ninio means "Christ Child") and, after hearing of the latest earthquake, we should all get back in front of our computers and get on with serving the Beast. We have all become like little school children before our media masters: Upon witnessing some great event, we are allowed to pause from our labour for a brief time, and then admonished to get back to work. Or, as we have been told so often: "The party is over."

The Beast, through its image the media, has distracted us from a sensible preoccupation with the meaning and direction of our lives and has focused us instead on technology and trivial issues. How reassuringly the CNN reporter smiles when informing us of the latest NASA mission. How benignly the reporter informs us of another earthquake. We are supposed to think that all is well and that all of the rumblings do not mean God is angry.

I suggest that all of the disasters which are unfolding: the forest fires, earthquakes, floods, and storms, are warnings to us. We are supposed to take note that something is amiss. We are not supposed to go on with business as usual. Note that Christ warned us that in the end time, most people would go on with their day to day affairs as if nothing would ever change:

37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

Matt 24:37-39

We are living in a time of unprecedented wide scale deception. Never before in the history of man have so many been deceived so much by so few. The extent of this mass deception is made possible by the media, which is the image of the Beast. The media is keeping us focused on trivial matters, such as technology, economic conditions, and political scandals, when the entire earth is about to convulse in the most terrible battle for human souls. We are complicit in this deception because we deny the evidence before us. Can we really believe that this system will continue on as it has? Are the signs not readily apparent to anyone who is willing to acknowledge them? This book is written for those who heed the scripture:

15 He who has ears, let him hear.

Matt 11:15

In the final analysis, people believe what they want to believe. No one can be forced to believe anything they do not want to believe. No matter what amount of evidence is presented to the closed mind, it will continue in the pattern in which it has found comfort. It is painful and disturbing to acknowledge that the foundations of our world are threatened, and that no amount of human ingenuity can deliver us. In the end result, we are at the mercy of God.

Nowhere is the over-emphasis on technology more prevalent than in Corporate America, where skill and experience is now secondary to whether one has the latest computer operating system. One should question, as always, who is behind this insane pre-occupation with computers in the workplace and why. The author suggests that in the present situation, companies are spending far more time and money to operate and upgrade computer systems and fix software glitches than they are saving money by using computers in the first place. Was not the original rationale for computerizing the workplace supposed to be increased productivity? But this never materialized. It is now becoming recognized that productivity has not increased, and this is very easy to understand for the following reason: While computers may automate certain tasks and thereby remove the need for certain people, the computer systems themselves have now become such an enormous "black hole" that they require more people to operate, upgrade and maintain, so that the net effect is that companies who formerly needed more unskilled workers to do "menial" tasks now require just as many people, but now all these people have to be computer users! So there has been no net gain in productivity at all. The savings which computers brought about have been more than offset by the added workers and costs which the computer systems themselves consume. This is the ultimate irony for the corporate economy. If computers - which have now permeated the entire world - were indeed such a boon to productivity and the economy, then why is the stock market crashing? Even if we do not consider the human side of the equation - if we consider only the cost-benefit analysis - computers are a failure! They have not improved net productivity or profitability. In fact they have negatively impacted profitability, because they have introduced a needlessly complex element into the workplace, and have thereby brought about unmanageable problems which were never anticipated - the year 2000 bug for example. Somewhere it is written: Whoever lives by the sword dies by the sword (Matt 26:52). Now we also see that whoever lives by technology dies by technology.

The promise of increased productivity and automation, which were supposed to result from computers, never materialized. But because so much has been invested in computerizing the whole world, there is now no going back. No one will admit the failure and it is simply not practical to do away with the systems now that they are in place. As a result, we will be obliged to continue dumping money into this black hole of computerization endlessly. There is no way out now. We are past the point of no return when it comes to technology. This means, in essence, that we are now bound to become servants of all the systems we have created. As the computer systems become more and more complicated, costly and full of bugs, we will be required to spend more resources on the maintenance and upgrading of these systems. There will be no end until the entire economy collapses, and then we will be forced to go back to a realistic level of existence.

Your comments are welcomed. Mr. Lucas has been invited to respond to them as well. God bless.

Next blog - The Engineering of the Corporate Mindset - When Corporations own Everything

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Modern chemistry, which is a development of the ancient occult alchemy, is symbolic of the satanic obsession to "mix all things with all things". Just as modern chemistry leads to an increasingly complex and toxic world, in which ever more complex chemical compounds are combined with each other, so too the satanic aim is to mix up the notions of good and evil: "Foul is fair and fair is foul". This is in sharp contrast to the direction of the Creator God, which is to systematically order the universe, and the earth, and to distinguish between good and evil. Just as God, in the first chapter of Genesis, brings order to the world by separating the elements into their place, the counterfeit (or mirror) of this creation is carried out in the satanic realm by creating chaos. While God separates, orders and gives shape, the devil mixes up and confuses. To extend this notion, symbolically, to the science of chemistry may at first appear as a hopeless stretch. But the reader should give the notion the careful consideration it deserves:

From its inception, the alchemists aim was to turn base elements such as lead into gold. The motive was greed. Rather than work at an honest living to earn a profit, the alchemist sought to find the secret way of making wealth out of nothing. Once again, we can determine if the science of chemistry is good or evil by the fruit which it has borne: toxic pollution, vast corporations, and chemical warfare agents - all in the name of greed. Even when chemistry is used to produce "good things" like medicine, such "good things" ultimately result in more problems than they solve. The chemical medicines, for example, result in mankind losing the knowledge of natural herbal remedies and wholesome living. Chemical fertilizers can be used to make land more productive than it is naturally capable of being, resulting in the long term destruction of the land. In essence, chemistry is founded upon the pursuit of greed. The ancient alchemists have been replaced by modern corporations, but the game is the same.

Symbolically, the chemical test tube - now extended to the role of genetic laboratory - is the mixing of all things together - good and evil - into an amorphous and indistinguishable chaos. It represents an attempt to reverse the creation by intermixing all matter such that there is no form. Satan, enraged by the beauty of God’s creation, seeks to undo it.

Your comments are welcomed. Mr. Lucas has been invited to respond to them as well. God bless.

Next blog - The Distractions of Modern Life

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Every aspect of modern life has an effect on our thinking. No single aspect of our existence alone determines our outlook on life, but rather the whole lifestyle must be examined in order to understand the nature of our present condition.

For example, when we need something, whether it is food or clothing or anything else, we are not able to obtain it through any natural process, but rather we buy it in a store. In most cases all the items we need are provided for us by large corporations. This way of living has closed our minds. We are inundated from all sides by corporate advertisements and products. Even our entertainment is pre-defined for us - we must choose from what the media offers. Because music is readily available on the radio, few families entertain themselves by playing instruments in the home. Because television is so "easy to watch" we are not inspired to make family life invigorating and fulfilling.

The system gradually clamps down on our minds. Fewer and fewer choices are available, and the path of life is increasingly dictated to us. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the life of the middle class white collar corporate employee. It is the white collar middle class employee who, while subsisting on a very low income, seeks to identify himself with the upper class. He is terrified of any change to his lifestyle (even though it is unfulfilling) because he does not have the imagination to envision himself as a free being. This lack of imagination he suffers as the result of the narrow work oriented lifestyle which oppresses him. He must be at work the same time every morning. He is not allowed to use his mind to think critically and independently. Everything he does is prescribed for him. It is the white collar corporate employee which is the most expertly refined product of the modern system. Everywhere he looks, he is discouraged from being a natural man. He is reminded that his place is at a desk in front of a computer. The Beast has its claws around such a man’s throat. He is afraid to breath. One must understand that the manner in which such oppression is maintained is largely economic. If you want to live in a tidy modern little house in the suburbs and drive a newer model car, then you need a corporate paycheck in order to pay the bills.

There is no possible way in which corporate employment can be reconciled with healthy and natural living. This is the crux of the matter. There are irreconcilable problems associated with any system which seeks to replace small scale individual initiative with large scale corporate organizations. The two alternatives of life - corporate and free market - are totally incompatible. The author suggests that the world will be brought back into balance by the return of Christ, and that the over-emphasis on materialism, technology and money will be replaced by a more balanced system in which human beings are able to live healthy, happy lives without being enslaved to governments, banks and corporations.

The interpretation of modern life which the author presents is as follows: God has allowed evil hierarchies to mislead mankind into the present state so that mankind would learn the futility of deviating from the simple precepts which God has given him. The scene in the garden of Eden stands for all time as the human saga: In the midst of natural paradise, man is tempted to seek "something better". But in reality, that which is better is the non-material spiritual existence to which man can aspire by following the path of Christianity. The false path is that which appears to offer super-material existence within the realm of the physical. But this temptation is built upon principles which are too complex for the average person. For the philosophically inclined the following question is offered: How can the physical realm offer that which is super-material? Or rather what is the point in pursuing a path to material luxury when the very bounds which man seeks to escape are in themselves material? Thus the numerous nihilistic religions of the eastern world gained a following, for they recognized the futility of material ambition. But material ambition also has a role to play in the life of mortal man, for without it he is not inspired to perform work and to be productive. Therefore the human condition is seen as a debate between materialists and nihilists. But both are in error, for the nihilist seeks to be free of materialism while still in the body, and the materialist seeks to extend his materialism beyond its reach. The correct viewpoint, which is interpreted in Christianity, is that which sees materialism in its proper context as the stage for human life, and yet looks beyond the present world in faith, knowing that God indeed has "something better" planned for us, which we will receive from Him when we have matured to the point where we are ready to inherit it.

Your comments are welcomed. Mr. Lucas has been invited to respond to them as well. God bless.

Next blog - The Symbolism of Alchemy

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