Commentary: An Age of Mass Delusion

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Given 26-Aug-17; 16 minutes

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Our society is suffering from mass delusion, a destructive tsunami triggered by the 'progressive' far-left. The noun 'delusion' is a false fixed belief held with dogged persistence despite evidence to the contrary. Some mass delusions have produced negligible consequences, such as Big Foot and UFO sightings, but other mass delusions, such as the Salem Witch Trials, have led to innocent lives snuffed out. The current leftist, 'progressive' rage is stirring up hatred among the misinformed and under-informed citizenry in massive proportions. As Goebbels observed, if the media tells a lie long enough, it begins to be accepted in the public consciousness and believed by the gullible masses. As the end of the age approaches, the man of sin, under Satan's powerful demonic sway, will delude most of the world. We need to steer clear of the tentacles of the media and mass culture, realizing that believable or plausible lies have led to tragic consequences.


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The title of this commentary is, "An Age of Mass Delusion." This week received the latest issue of Whistleblower Magazine. The entire issue is devoted to commentaries written by conservative-minded, professional people, many of whose names you would quickly recognize as people of good reputation.

The subject is the growing and massive tsunami of delusion that has swept over the Western world, and especially the United States during the past couple of decades. It especially grew to massive proportions during the recent presidential election. The major target has been Donald Trump, who seems to be a magnet for this kind of thing.

First, a definition: To be deluded is to be led astray. "To be led astray" is a simple, basic definition and virtually everybody is led astray from time to time. But at times one can be led astray by something that seemingly goes on and on. In that circumstance, a delusion might be held for years.

It is when we search into the term’s use in psychiatry that things really get serious, because in that area of science "delusion" is defined as "a false, fixed belief, held with dogged persistence in spite of evidence, even very strong evidence, to the contrary." A person can be deluded to the point where he just will not change his mind.

It is that level of intensity that Americans and others of this world are affected by. A delusion is a serious psychological issue because sometimes its effects cause massive problems, even such things as outright hatred, murder, and warfare.

If a single individual is deluded about something, delusion’s effects are generally narrow and limited to one family or may even spread to include a small community of people who have the same delusion. You hear of these things occurring from time to time, actually sometimes very frequently. These are things like Big Foot sightings. You see one, and in the next week, there are three others who saw Big Foot as well. Another one might be UFO sightings. People become deluded that they are seeing these things flying around.

However, such is not always the case, and the delusion becomes widespread and will affect entire nations and even instigate war between nations. What is happening here in the Western world I personally would place in the "potentially very, very dangerous category."

Searching the Internet led me to discover—to my surprise—that entire books have been written, cataloging massive public delusions on a worldwide basis. It doesn't happen just in the United States. It doesn't happen just in the Western world. It happens in other nations as well, and they happen a lot more often than I ever thought and many times they have led to tragic consequences. The consequences are not always as tragic as murder or warfare, but they always produce diminished quality of life and most especially fear. The fruits are never, never good because God’s word assures us that truth sets free and delusions are almost always the fruit of falsehood.

America’s first real brush with a delusion-induced tragedy produced what is famously known as the Salem (Massachusetts) Witch trials, in which jury trials were held to determine whether a number of women—some of them just mere girls—were possessed by demons. This delusion got started, and it built, and it built, and built.

Guess when this occurred? Long before movies. Long before television. Long before there was electronic gadgetry to broadcast the delusion all over the place. The factual history of this tragic delusion has its beginnings in January of 1692. However, it is interesting that the Salem event was preceded by a history of about 100 years of focus in religious settings of discussions about demon possession within Western world locations. Those locations seem to have provided a background of historical information for people’s minds. There had to be something there to feed upon.

The Salem trials ended in May 1693, but by the time this event completely unraveled, it provided the context for the hanging of nineteen people: fourteen women and five men. In addition, seven others died in prison because they were incarcerated there after a trial, and it tragically altered the lives of many others by means of gossipy accusations being made.

Whether or not any of those people put to death were literally demon possessed, I do not know. But the fact is that the people involved on the juries believed strongly enough to decide for the death penalty. That is all it took for Massachusetts to issue the death penalty.

Do you hold it as a truth that because it is no longer AD 1700 that we moderns are impossible to deceive into believing mass lying because we are much better educated than they were when the Salem event occurred? Well, it is going on, and it is going on big in the Western world and especially in the United States of America.

It was either Adolph Hitler or Joseph Goebbels who was quoted in the 1930s as saying that if one says something often enough people will believe that what is said is true. History has proved that generality was true then and it is still true today.

Reporters are noted as being very cynical. They've seen everything. Here is an example that happened to one man in the past month. Barbara Boxer, a woman from San Francisco, elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and therefore assumed to be intelligent, told a reporter—a cynical reporter—that she believes that former presidential candidate Ben Carson is a white man. This is a woman in high elected office. She believes that former presidential candidate Ben Carson is a white man. She was politely corrected on the spot, but would not change her statement. It happened in such a circumstance the reporter came away from that interview convinced she really believes this obvious and outright lie! She dislikes Carson so deeply that she resists change despite being obviously in error.

What Barbara Boxer did is not without precedence. Rather, it is but a minor forerunner of what has already been accomplished almost times without end and is going to happen again with major, major consequences on a worldwide stage. The most obvious of all is in Revelation 12:9, where it clearly states the great Dragon deceives the whole world and does so within a continuous process. Generation after generation, he deceives through lies. So great is his influence that nobody but Jesus Christ has successfully avoided being deluded by him. Thus, we live a delusion for our entire life unless God mercifully intervenes.

You can tell from things you have read in newspapers how hardly set some people's minds are regarding the existence of God and His law. They cannot be changed. They are so deluded, they will not change their minds, and really, in that case, it is on a much bigger scale than what happened with Barbara Boxer.

We are witnessing huge numbers of our population being misinformed by fake news reported as though it is the real thing. But notice this biblical truth:

II Thessalonians 2:9-12 The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders [here is a delusion that is being manipulated into people's minds, not just with words, but with other things, really effectively burying it into a person's consciousness], and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Barbara Boxer takes pleasure in her unrighteousness. It is happening. Barbara Boxer is minor compared to what is happening in other areas. The Left practically practically lost their minds when Trump said that there were problems, persecutions, on both sides. To the Left, the Left is lily-white (as the saying goes), and everybody on the Right is a bad person. It is ingrained in their minds. Where is this going to lead? It has the potential to start a civil war.

The lie that creates the delusion in the minds of humans is who Satan says he is compared to what he truly is. That is the lie that is coming: What Satan says that he is compared to what he truly is. But the world is going to accept him because he appears as the Beast, completely possessing that person. As the Beast, he will claim to be god. The reality is he is nothing more than a demon. People will believe a deliberately-devised lying appearance rather than God’s Word. They will choose on the basis of their delusion as Barbara Boxer did. On the basis of her misinfomed opinions of Ben Carson, deliberately created in her by his political enemies. His enemies painted that in her mind.

JWR/aws/dcg





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