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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Brandon Mascareñas

Battlefield Hollywood

And it is a pleasure to be here on this afternoon.

And we look forward to spending time and fellowshipping with all of you throughout the course of the rest of this day.

This message, this was kind of our original message that the Lord placed upon our hearts and that we've entitled Battlefield Hollywood.

Now we all understand that we're in a battle, but the good news is the battle's already been won.

Although we're still on this earth, and although we have to go through trials and tribulations, we have that rest assured hope that Christ has won the battle for us and that we need to depend more on Him.

And as Scott was saying, those that were at the sermon this morning, that we need to keep our eyes focused on Christ that we won't lose the way.

With this message that we'll be presenting today, we're gonna be looking at some topics in relation to the entertainment industry, the television and movies, and how it has been so saturated, how we've been so saturated, and it's taken our eyes completely away from God and that we cannot discern the voice of God and the voice of Jesus?

Before we get started, I would, you know, I know we can't pray enough, but I would ask that you would bow your heads with me 1 more time in prayer.

Father God, this afternoon we wanna take a few moments and we wanna look at some things here.

We wanna look at this issue of the entertainment industry, television, movies, and how does it affect us?

Lord, we know that we are on the edge of eternity and we wanna be right before Thee.

We wanna be cleansed by the blood of Jesus, and so we ask for Your guiding spirit to be with us.

We ask for the presence of the Holy Spirit and the holy angels.

Lord, we love you and we thank you for this opportunity, and we thank you that we get to fellowship together as we know the rest of the universe is worshiping you on this particular day.

In Christ's name we pray and thank you, amen.

In the book of Revelation, chapter 18, verse 23, it says, and the light of the candle shall shine no more at all in thee, and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee.

For the merchants were the great men of the earth, for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.

So all nations were deceived by this thing that we call sorcery.

Now, oftentimes in our minds, we might think that sorcery is exactly what Hollywood portrays it as.

And we often think of the dark aspect of sorcery.

We think of the wizards, we think of witches, and we think of just evil, evil, evil.

Well, we see that Hollywood has done the full gamut, from Mickey Mouse all the way to the Lord of the Rings style of sorcery.

But if we go back and we look at The Greek definition of sorcery from the book of Revelation, the word for sorcery root word is pharmakia.

We see that 1 is the use or the administering of drugs.

Magical arts often found a connection with idolatry and fostered by it.

Now, do I need to be at a different location for the feedback?

Idolatry is often, we think, is contrary to what God has ordained by worshiping him, correct?

When we are practicing an idolatry, we are not following his will, and we're not following His commandments.

We are worshiping something other than Him.

As we do just a basic study on the brain, as I'm sure many of you in this room may already know, the front part of the brain is called the frontal lobe, and it's broken down, we have the spirituality, morality, and the will take place here.

And in fact, this is where we make those decisions, those critical decisions for right or for wrong.

So if something comes our way and we need to say, okay, logically this doesn't sound right, logically we need to go the other way.

This is where this decision would take place.

But by sorcery, particular sorcery, this part of the brain can be almost impaired, if you will.

And oftentimes, we think of many things that impair our judgment.

We think of drinking and drugs and things of that sort can impair our critical thinking.

But is there something else that it can affect this part of the mind?

First Corinthians 3.16, Paul tells us that, "'Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you.

I'm sorry, it's sounding a little quiet out there.

I know we just got done eating lunch, but let's think.

He wants to communicate right here in the front part of our brains.

Well, what is 1 of the things that can impair our judgment that we cannot hear the voice of God and understand the will of God.

How many people know basically what hypnosis is?

Well, this is just a clinical definition.

Hypnosis, a mental state of heightened suggestibility characterized by a trance-like sleep.

This is variously achieved by repetition of instruction in a low level voice or having the subject Fix his gaze upon a light in an otherwise dark room.

Paul says, all things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful.

All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.

Studies have been shown where People have gone under hypnosis and have had pain-free births.

All these various things because someone suggested something to their mind, that bypassed their judgment, and they were able to go these various routes without having any sort of effect.

So what happens to your brain or in your brain while you're watching television?

There is 4 gears in our mind that make up, that basically we can think of as 4 gears.

Beta as we know is the gear that the mind is working on when we are critically engaged in conversation or we're working out a math problem or any kind of school problem and we're logically thinking about things.

Alpha is the gear in which we are kind of half awake, we're maybe not paying attention like we should, or we're daydreaming.

It's not necessarily a bad state to be in, but in hypnosis, when things happen, the mind goes from beta, the critical thinking, and it goes into alpha mode.

And at that point, things can pass our judgment and go and be stored kind of in the back parts of our long-term memory, which can be dangerous.

Again, The mind is broken up into 2 spheres.

The left side is the analytical, critical, logical thinking side.

This is where we kind of, like I said, logically think about things, where we compartmentalize everything and put it in order.

And then the right side is the emotional artistic side, and they work together hand in hand.

Oftentimes, when we go into alpha, it goes straight to the right side, and so we're basing everything off of emotion instead of logically thinking about it.

And This is what happens when we watch television.

It takes less than 30 seconds for our mind to go from beta to alpha.

In other words, it takes less than 30 seconds for us to go into a hypnotic state of mind.

We think about, as we progress, we'll see how many things are put out there and go completely overhead because we've switched brain gears, if you will, from beta to alpha.

And these things just get absorbed in our mind.

So does television affect us on a mental level?

Now here's a string of commercials that have kind of almost poked fun of this form of hypnosis, this suggestibility through the commercials and advertising.

In 12 seconds, your eyes widen to capture the rush of color.

Battlefield Hollywood

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