Commentary: State of Fear

Fear is a Powerful Motivator
#988c
John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 17-Apr-10; 12 minutes

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It was British philosopher Bertrand Russell who said, "Collective fear stimulates herd instinct and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd." On the other hand, it was guitarist Chet Atkins who said regarding fear, "Everything I've ever done was out of fear of being mediocre."

These quotes reveal a negative and a positive reaction to one of the most powerful of human emotions. It was the fanatical and evil talents of Joseph Goebbels, Germany's minister of propaganda, combined with Adolf Hitler's communication skills that moved an entire nation to a modern, unmatched ferocity against the Jews before and during World War II.

For some reason, it was not until I read Michael Crichton's fiction novel, State of Fear, that it dawned on me that this global warming propaganda is purposefully being used to create a fear-driven mob mentality for economic and political reasons.

Recently, we've begun hearing of items that are part of the Cap and Trade legislation that's being written. The Cap and Trade Act is part of the government's reaction to becoming convinced by the global warming propaganda. What we are hearing is something to be concerned about because it is going to be costly through taxation, over and above the health care issues, and onerous to implementation in our lives, to say the least. For example, selling your home will be costly if this has ever enacted with the items that are now in it. Selling your home will be costly and virtually impossible.

At the base of the global warming propaganda is the much-ballyhooed and much-challenged claim that the warming is caused by humans generating so much carbon dioxide pollution in the air that it is trapping the sun's heat and not allowing it to escape into space.

This morning's news announced that all flights in and out of London's airports are cancelled until further notice because of the gritty and abrasive cloud being spewed by Iceland's erupting volcano. What is the Earth's human population? About six billion, I believe. Has the carbon generation of the entire Earth—six billion people—ever shut down even one airport in man's history, let alone interrupted the air flights of an entire continent and interrupted the commerce of two continents (Europe and the United States)? The news said that airlines alone are losing $200 million a day because they can't make their flights.

If you have noticed—and I'm sure you have—the earthquakes that we have had in the last a few months—the 7.2 one in Haiti, then the one down there in Chile, which was very close to that 7.2 one. Then they moved up into Baja, where we had about a 7 or a 6.9 or something like that. And now we have a volcano spewing cinder ash into the air in Iceland, and that eruption is part of the same kind of tectonic activity as the earthquakes.

I want you to think: Man is so puny compared to nature and nature's God. By thinking that such a thing as global warming is understandable to me in only one narrow light. It is either that these people are hidebound evolutionists, or even if they are nominally religious, they do not really fear God.

Last week, I received an email chiding the Bible's use of "fearing God" in the Old Testament. I attempted to point out to the writer that the use of the term "fear" was quite broad. In any given context, it might mean anything from reverential awe and caution, all the way to sheer, outright terror. Regardless of the context, fear's use by God was fully intended by Him to be positive. I discovered when she responded that she was an evolutionist. She did not use that term whatever in her response, but her response was worded in such a way that it was easily discernible.

So I wrote another reply to another comment that she made in that response. Her reply back to me confirmed that her thinking was indeed that of an evolutionist. Her belief in evolutionist propaganda put her right smack dab into the herd mentality with other evolutionists who are fiercely against those who are not part of the anti-God herd she espouses in her life. To her, the fear of God—a righteous fear—is unreasonable. To her, despite 6,000 years of mankind's history being available for her to meditate upon, and that history shows us that mankind has advanced from being able to kill one person at a time with bows and arrows and swords, so that now we are able to kill hundreds of thousands with one bomb and have already done it. Or, we can devastate a nation's population by hundreds of thousands at a time by poisoning its water supply—but therefore, mankind is "better" than it was 6,000 years ago, and the fear of God is not needed.

Fear is one of the most powerful of human emotions, given by God to mankind so that we can choose what we are going to be motivated by it. Did you notice that I said, "choose to be motivated by"? In a carnal way, Chet Atkins chose a positive way to choose fear to become one of America's greatest guitarists ever. Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler chose to use their knowledge of fear's powers to capture an entire population's fear of another people that their fellow German countrymen already thought of in a prejudiced way as strange—maybe enviously or being religiously deformed. Fear move those people to ferocity against those "strange" people who were different from what they were, and produced the Holocaust. About six million people perished through imprisonment, starvation as well as incineration. A whole nation moved to fear to protect themselves and turn ferociously against those that they were prejudiced against.

I've thought lately about how much of my life is driven by fear. It's not all bad, but many choices are driven by fear, for example, of the economic crisis the entire world is in right now. I do not like it (I mean, the economic crisis). But at the same time, God is still on His throne and He has apparently ordained that that crisis be so. So I believe that my choice is that I must willingly accept it and work through it.

We must fear Him and keep His commandments. He has made it possible for us to choose to fear Him by giving us the faith to do so. Choosing to fear God does not remove from us the responsibility to weigh as many factors as we can before we choose whether we are going to fear Him or man. But I want you to remember a couple of things that He promises in His word—actually many times. He says in Isaiah 41:10,

Isaiah 41:10 Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.

But there is another verse that we are a lot more familiar with. It's in Revelation 3:10 in the message to the Philadelphia people. I'm going to read to you from the Phillips' Translation, and it's very interesting how they reword it.

Revelation 3:10 (The New Testament in Modern English) Because you have obeyed My call to patient endurance, I will keep you safe [meaning, "anywhere you are, at any time"]. I will keep you safe [Then he adds] from the hour of trial, which is to come upon the whole world.

. . . and we seem to be right on the precipice of it. Fear is mounting on every side, in every area. We just found out about wild animals, besides economic crises, besides earthquakes, besides volcanoes going on, there is much to fear. But God says, "I will keep you safe from the hour of trial, which is to come upon the whole world to test all who live upon the earth."

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