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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Brandon Mascareñas

Scott Mayer

Battlefield Hollywood Q & A

1 of the first questions that I'd like to kind of get into before we really get into the nitty-gritty of what do you think about this thing, what do you think about that, somebody asked what goes on behind the scenes of reality television.

So somebody who ever wrote this must know that I worked in reality television a lot.

My brother and I, that was probably the predominant place where we got most of our work towards the end of our Hollywood career.

And let me just start out with this question here.

Is there anybody out here that thinks reality television is real?

Okay, so we're all kind of on the same page here.

Reality television is shot a lot of times in a reality style.

The reason being is you as a viewer, when you watch these junkier cameras kind of bouncing around, you think like, oh wow, this was captured on the fly, therefore it must be real.

And let me tell you, I've worked on reality shows, very popular reality shows that I'm sure a lot of people in here have seen where they have an earbud in the guy's ear because he cannot remember a line that they tell him to say and some producer is sitting in the other room going, say this, you like this girl, you know, and he's feeding him every single line.

These things are so scripted a lot of times.

Obviously the game show ones, those have to be real because they're dealing with money and they're dealing with all sorts of other elements that people would sue if it wasn't real.

But any of those like relationship type ones, you know, those types of things are definitely manipulated.

They can actually sit down, They do so much research on who's going to actually be in the show, so they know if they put the guy who's anti-Christian in the room with the guy who's gay, who's in the room with this person, they can sit down and pretty much write out exactly how it's going to play out.

They've studied it, they know it, and so it's a formula that they have that pretty much corrals the situation.

And then also, they're mostly interview driven.

So in an interview, they can totally manipulate whatever anybody says because you don't hear the producer asking the question.

So if I sat any 1 of you down and I wanted to manipulate what you said, like I wanted to get him to say, I like the color blue, I could sit here and ask him line of questioning going, why do you like the color blue?

Now, reinstate the question because you're not going to hear my voice.

And so he would have to go, I like the color blue because.

So now I can get him to say anything I want to.

And the way that those interviews work is the producer has exactly what he needs the person to say and he sits there and just asks him questions until he says it.

He'll sit there for 3 hours and then just checks it off the list.

So they're very manipulated and staged and then you know there's there's there's shows out there that that are very popular such as The Biggest Loser.

It's about the drama in between all of that.

The losing weight is the backdrop of the show.

Do you really, really honestly learn how to properly lose weight?

You see the people go through the transformation, and Let me tell you, it is an amazing transformation.

Some of these people have their lives completely changed, but that's not what drives the show.

So you watching the show, you're still, once again, being conditioned about the drama.

This 1 says, in what ways are we being desensitized to the love message of the gospel?

Well, as we know that by repetition, through television and through movies, we start to think or potentially start to think a different way.

All of a sudden our theology will be changed, potentially, and the pure essence of the gospel that as we know it from the Bible, you know, all of a sudden we can either make it super complicated or we can go the other direction and make it so watered down that it's really over saturated with love, if you will, and it becomes a feelings-based gospel.

And, you know, again, when we've gotten to a place, if we spend so much time watching television and movies that our guard is let down all the time.

You know, studies have been shown, and this was shown in the video game case, that when a person is done playing video games, their mind stays in that alpha brainwave pattern state for a period of time after they are disengaged from video games.

And so the same can be said about television.

You know, over time we become obviously desensitized, whether it's violence or whether it's these little tiny issues, You know, Scott showed through I Love Lucy, just that little problem with line.

And all of a sudden, line may be okay to some people.

And yeah, the pure essence of the gospel is potentially lost.

Say you have been watching TV since you were little and you used to be addicted.

Let me tell you, I have plugged my brain into so much of Hollywood's content that I honestly believe that God can create in you a new spirit.

And I've seen some of the most addicted, and the drug world is obviously kind of using an extreme because usually you can see the physical effects of drug use a lot more than you can in some of our mental intakings.

I've seen people that were heroin users for 20, 30 years come to Christianity and can be completely in their right mind.

So I honestly believe that God can change anything that we've put into our mind if we just allow him to put on the mind of Christ.

Well let me tell you, it was probably not until I started reading my Bible that I even started seeing any of this because some of the clips that we've shown, which we took out for time sake and stuff, will show exactly how when you watch things, you don't realize what you've just seen and you know, you're filling your mind with all sorts of anti-God things, but I'd watched those movies 20 or 30 times and never ever saw that.

And it wasn't until I started reading my Bible and asking God, God, open my eyes, open my eyes to the world around me, and I started paying attention to things that I all of a sudden started to see that.

And then when I started focusing more on my Bible and on serving God and on doing things that were helping my fellow man than hurting them, then all of a sudden the things of this world started to grow strangely dim.

And I stopped watching movies, I stopped watching television, and actually, I don't even like to watch them, because I don't want to sit there and watch such dark things and dark images, even showing you guys some of these things.

We've struggled with it so many times, just going, I'm sick of seeing this kind of stuff.

I wish that, you know, there wasn't a place for us to stand up here and have to point these things out.

I would be happy that, you know, we didn't have this kind of a thing.

But a lot of people are just unaware and obviously pointing it out and letting them speak is a great way to start to unplug.

So my answer to that in more than a few words is Read your Bible.

Gain a close relationship with God, and you won't even wanna watch TV.

With what Scott just said, we've had people, a year after we gave this presentation, For example, up in SoCal Camp Meeting, a whole family came up to us and I barely remembered who they were, but they were telling us how they decided they were going to try to do this media fast.

And they got rid of everything and they weren't sure how their kids were going to react because the kids were very much into the Disney films.

And but they didn't want to just, you know, cut the gauntlet on them because they were, I don't know, from 7 to 12 around there.

And just by praying and the parents taking an active role in disengaging from this, the children on their own accord within 24 hours said they wanted to get rid of everything that had to do with the entertainment industry.

I mean we're talking about thousands of dollars worth of DVDs and video games.

And when they came back to us a year later, when we just saw them this last July, you could see the overflowing joy that they had from disengaging from this saturation that they had led into their family.

So again, what Scott said, yes, there is hope when we actively disengage and we pray that God will give us a new mind, because he says take this mind of Christ.

He will give that to us, it's his promise and we can rest assured hold him to that promise.

This question, 30 days of media fast, what about watching 3ABN, LLBN, Hope channels, also Gospel Music Channel?

And I think of when Lot was pulled out of the city and he asked the angel if he could go to just the smaller city.

3ABN and those channels have very incredible programming.

The point though with the media fast is to completely disengage, to almost hit the reset button in our minds.

You know, while these networks have great content, what are they doing with our time?

I mean, they can inform us, but how much do we take and just spend hours and hours and hours watching the 3ABN.

Potentially we could, instead of going to church, now we can just sit at home and watch it, and then we can watch the next program after that and the next program.

So, my encouragement with a media fast is to cut it completely off for 30 days and then reassess those things afterwards.

But the point of that media fast is, again, clear the mind, get a clear slate, and then reevaluate at the end of that 30 days.

You know, isn't it amazing that in this day and age, all of a sudden we've now surrounded ourselves with this thing called television, and if somebody says, turn it off, we go, well, what do we do now?

I mean, what has man been doing for 6, 000 years?

There's so many activities to get outside, do things with other people, interact with people.

I think on another front that the devil works, and this doesn't mean that watching 3ABN, you're all of a sudden like involving yourself in some sort of devil work, but you know our interaction with each other is building relationships with each other.

I was brought back into the church because of a DVD.

Somebody handed me Ivor Myers and and and a few other ones that just woke me up.

We can actually use this to spread a large amount of material to people that otherwise couldn't get a hold of that information.

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Battlefield Hollywood Q & A

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