Michigan Camp Meeting 2019: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

The Media Mind

Scott Ritsema

Reclaiming the Soul in the Digital Dark Age - Part 1

Father in heaven, we thank you so much for your goodness and love to us, that you have promised to abide with us, and that where 2 or 3 are gathered, there you are with us.

And so Lord, we're going to explore your will and ask for your voice to be made known, that we might hear your direction on our media use this week.

And so Lord, please give us wisdom and guidance.

Please give us your direction, your directives from on high.

We want to set aside our opinions and our preferences and just say, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

This afternoon's session is entitled, How to be Human Again.

You know that as Bible prophecy students, as a very significant year, pointed to in Daniel 8 verse 14.

What a lot of people don't know about the history, and I was surprised to learn myself, that a big event happened in 1844 in addition to prophetic sanctuary heavenly events.

This is Samuel Morse tapping away the first telegraph ever sent.

You could say this is the first text message in history.

Now all of a sudden human beings can communicate across distances simultaneously.

This was a foreshadowing of what we have today with modern media.

Now you see it's 1844, there's a spiritual significance to that, isn't there?

And there's a spiritual controversy with the media use issue.

It goes without saying that media can be used powerfully.

We're sitting in here in the midst of very well-funded communications equipment that 3ABN has brought in to put on children's programs.

And our ministry actually has put out DVDs and We're on satellite media.

You've heard of Strong Tower Radio, Adventist World Radio, all these different ways to get the truth out, right?

We're going to talk about some of these things this week, some of the dangers, some of the mental health issues associated with them.

But A friend of mine had an injury, a major emergency that required a fundraiser and $50, 000 was raised in 9 hours.

Another friend, a family friend of ours, a little boy, 7 years old, had a flu and pneumonia, like multidimensional illness that just was stricken his body and he was in the hospital and nearly died.

And prayer requests went out on social media and everybody rallied behind this little boy and prayed for him and he was healed miraculously.

And so you can see how social media even, all sorts of media can be used to present truth, to spread the truth.

So 1844, you might go to that and be like, OK, the devil's going to be up to something in the last days.

Modern media is going to be a stumbling block in many people's lives.

And I can say amen to that, as I know you can as well.

If you've seen the Media on the Brain seminar, that was predominantly an expose of worldly media.

But here we are with these technological tools, perhaps ceasing to be tools in our lives, using the internet, using social media, using smartphones, using digital media in a way that maybe is becoming destructive to our spiritual life, to our experience of God's nature and the family life.

We're gonna explore all these themes this week, but I gotta start out with this.

But maybe some of you, because this is Michigan camp meeting, maybe some of you were here when I started this media on the brain journey.

I was a teacher, and I was seeing in my own students' lives worldly media crowding in and violent video games and Hollywood entertainment and the worldly music industry and I said, Lord, what's going on with our own youth here?

So I started sharing information with them about media and that led to a camp meeting seminar that launched this ministry, Belt of Truth Ministries, has been in existence for that period of time.

It's kind of fun, 7 years is a biblically significant number.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, don't worry I'll catch you up on some media on the brain stuff on Friday.

I hope you're planning to come to each 1 of these meetings, Sunday through Friday, 3.30 at the same place.

But all that to say, you fast forward to 2016.

And I'm looking at the data that's coming in.

What's the latest in terms of the numbers of hours people are consuming of media?

I thought that in 2012, the numbers were so catastrophically high that they couldn't get any worse.

The percentage of our country that consumed 5 hours or more of screen time per day doubled in just 4 years in that time period.

So all the way in 2016, 3 years ago now, I said it's time to update this information and to keep preaching this media message so that we can replace these things as stumbling blocks and allow them to become tools again in God's hands to present the truth instead of the devil using these as his agencies of destruction.

I couldn't believe this 1 from Nielsen Media.

You know how many minutes of media per day the average American consumed last year per day.

The average American consumed an average of 666 minutes of media per day.

Now, we wouldn't suggest this is any direct fulfillment of prophecy, but that's a pretty ominous number and a very large number to that.

Physiological effects start to come in when you're consuming this amount of media.

It becomes a problem, beginning with just our posture, because when you're on your phone, you're in this position, and what you tend to do is get forward head like that and what the Chiropractors and the the child development people and the physical therapist tell us is that in that position at a 45 degree angle you're putting 49 pounds of pressure on the upper spine there and this becomes problematic For our health for our breathing for many reasons that I'll get to in much more detail.

By the way, when you saw this on the screen, this is coming out in the next couple of months.

So you guys are hearing the Media Mind, bits of it, before the full series is out.

So if you're wondering, can I get the rest of this information?

We'll talk about DVDs actually after the closing prayer.

But back to this, at the eye hunch, they call it, it's becoming the new posture.

Like people have this permanent now, forward head posture because we're training ourselves that way with so much sitting, so much computer time, so much phone time.

And I guess the people who believe in evolution who have the chart where you're coming down from the monkey, they're gonna have to update the chart and the next guy over is coming back down.

We of course, we know that God made man upright, and not like this chart suggests, but the people who subscribe to that will have to update it.

Take a deep breath, sit up straight for a second.

Did you know that a study reveals that a large part of the population is not able to breathe properly?

Because we have high stress and we don't have proper posture.

It's talking about even people not breathing properly, taking full respiration of the lungs.

In Child Guidance it says, with the children among the first things to be aimed at should be a correct position both in sitting and in standing.

God made man upright and he desires him to possess not only the physical but the mental and moral benefit, the grace and dignity and self-possession, the courage and self-reliance which an erect bearing so greatly tends to promote.

It says let the teacher give instruction, I got to kind of watch myself on this, give instruction by example and precept.

Show what a correct position is and insist that it shall be maintained.

So I'm not going to be spying you guys down and pointing people out here on how we are posturing ourselves, but I've seen actually in myself, because I get excited about something I'm teaching and I come forward like this and I see a video, I'm like, whoa, what are you doing?

You've got to stand up straight there, have that proper posture and respiration.

Because actually when you're slumped down, they've done studies on this and people who stand like that they have more depressed feelings and more fearful feelings this promotes more courage didn't we just read in the quote that it'll produce more courage and same thing here when you when you read in the Bible that it is no longer I who live, that self is lost and that in Christ who liveth in me, and you start to come alive and you have that energy and you have that vitality and you have that courage and not no longer self-reliance, but reliance on Christ through faith.

They've also shown that standing and sitting in this position produces more negative words that we speak.

Where this, we have more positive outlook, more positive words.

School children, Which 1 do you think they perform better academically?

When they're sitting up straight, just like the quote said from child guidance.

So we have physiological effects about posture, but not just that.

Arthritis, this is something that afflicts people as they age, right?

Arthritis time bomb warning for the under 40s.

Doctors say constant texting and gaming could wear out your joints.

And the hearing, evidence of hearing damage in teens prompts researchers' warning.

It goes on to explain that there are 28%, Over a quarter of teens today have persistent tinnitus in the ears.

This is a ring in the ears from so much loud music.

So we're starting to damage our bodies all over the place.

Teen and young adult cell phone related injuries are up 84%.

You might be like, what's a cell phone related injury?

Well, they exist and they keep track of how many there are.

And 1 of those could be like there was a guy who was on his phone in San Diego, California, walked off a cliff and died on Christmas Day.

Reclaiming the Soul in the Digital Dark Age - Part 2

Father in heaven, we thank you so much for your goodness and love to us.

We thank you for camp meeting and a time to just come apart and commune with you and be with each other.

But most importantly, give us conviction on how we can live differently to your glory, to hasten your soon coming, Jesus.

I think we all know, it goes without saying that media can be used in a positive way.

My calling and my job as I've traveled around and done these media on the brain seminars and now the Media Mind seminar is to cause us to think and ask the Lord to speak to us in our media use.

And how is this perhaps disrupting our relationships with each other, our relationships with our Lord.

And is it possible that this thing that can be a great tool is also becoming a massive stumbling block, perhaps the greatest stumbling block in people's lives today.

And so we're gonna look at that today from the point of view of the disconnected childhood.

Now if you're coming in wondering about this, okay, this is a session about child development, childhood media use, does this apply to me?

I wanna share a few quotations, I wanna pray first, but I wanna share a few quotations that will help everybody go, okay, yes, this matters to all of us.

Before I give you those quotes, the conference asked me to send this around, just put initials on that.

They're just counting our seminar attendance there, just put your initials on that.

And for anybody who wasn't here yesterday, Pass that 1 around as well, and you can sign in for the email newsletter as well for Belt of Truth Ministries.

1 who has long been our instructor was speaking to the people.

He said, the subject of education should interest, watch this, the whole Seventh-day Adventist body.

Now if you're coming in not as a Seventh-day Adventist, you get to kind of hear an in-house discussion here from this quotation, but this is a mandate for members of the Seventh-day Adventist church that we should be interested in child development.

The decisions regarding the character of our schoolwork should not be left wholly to principals and teachers.

Now I love doing seminars on education, true education, and all of that.

We're not talking about the schoolwork, but The quotation still applies.

If we are members of this faith community, this remnant church, then we should take a deep interest in the development of the children.

It goes on and says, there is no work more important than the education of our youth.

The church is asleep and does not realize the magnitude of this matter of educating the children and youth.

God requires that the church arouse from her lethargy and see what is that manner of service demanded of her at this time of peril.

The Lord of heaven is looking on to see who is doing the work he would have done for the children and youth.

Are we doing the work for the children and youth or are we asleep in a lethargy?

As a church, as individuals, if we would stand clear in the judgment, wow that's a strong preface, If we would stand clear in the judgment, we must make more liberal efforts for the training of our young people.

So if you don't have kids in the home or you're not in that phase of life right now where kids are kind of in the picture, think through this from the standpoint of this last generation Lord willing that is coming up that will finish the work.

These little raising the remnant people who can go forth with that message.

It is all of our job to be helping that and feeding the little lambs of the flock if we would stand clear in the judgment.

So this session is about the disconnected childhood.

So we're going to talk about media use in childhood today, but just a little review from yesterday.

We saw yesterday that the media mind, and you'll actually be able to see it on the screen this time.

This was off the screen the whole time last time, driving everybody crazy, including myself.

But we saw that the media mind is checked out Remember the guy walking into the manhole on his phone and we're walking into incoming traffic and totally oblivious to those around us The mind of Christ though engaged engaged in every respect of what that means to be human again.

We saw physiological effects of excessive media use with increased myopia rates and nearsightedness which they call screen sightedness.

We saw a forward head posture that is that is the the malady of a generation because of so much hunching.

We saw many different cell phone related injuries and such on the physiological, but more important than the physiological effects of media use, the media mind becomes deceivable.

When you just bathe yourself in nonstop inputs from media sources, mainstream media, worldly media, social media, then we become more and more conformed to this world.

But God wants us to be not conformed, but what?

Transformed by the renewing of our minds.

So the mind of Christ becomes critically thinking we've been invited to be thinkers Not mere reflectors of other men's thoughts and that's what this seminar is all about to prompting us to think The media mind we saw is tired You remember seeing the sleep deprivation data the mind of Christ engaged That 1 was pretty amazing when you saw how indeed the sleep deprivation problems are skyrocketing in this culture in which we live.

I wanted to show you this quotation that I didn't get to yesterday from Dr.

Larry Rosen who talked about this with teen use of media close before bed, he found that they're using it in the middle of the night as well.

In 1 study, we found that most students used their phones right up to the minute when they closed their eyes and attempted to fall asleep.

And Not just that, 3 quarters of students slept with their phones on or set to vibrate and close in hand, often in hand.

In fact, researchers were astounded by how many teenagers are sleeping with the cell phone under their pillow, on.

So it's right up against their head with that radiation effect as well, EMF radiation.

Roughly half of them checked their phones in the middle of the night for reasons other than to check the time, social media being the main culprit, and adults as well.

We saw information about adults, 95% of us using our phones in the hour before bedtime, and that blue light frequency.

I realized I didn't give you quite enough practical tips, because I was trying to amputate and surgically remove enough of the content to be able to fit it into 1 hour.

And I feel like this 1 got the boot and shouldn't have gotten the boot.

They are really really fashionable and really cool-looking not really actually but they block blue light frequencies So you throw those on in the hour or 2 before bed and it helps to block that, you know We got fluorescent lights.

We got LED lights sometimes we are using screens in the evening time and this can help to mitigate some of those problems and give us a more restful sleep, which the Bible says, he will giveth his beloved sleep.

And that's a wonderful promise of the Bible we saw yesterday.

We also saw that the media mind is not well, and we're gonna see that more today and tomorrow.

The mental health problems, a mental health crisis that is emerging over excessive media use.

But we saw the mind of Christ is healing.

Victoria Dunkley's practice where she's had hundreds of children coming into her practice with all of these major psychiatric disorders.

And the parents are at their wit's end, and what do we do?

80% of her patients had the majority of their symptoms disappear just from withholding particularly interactive screen-based media use, video games, and use of smart devices in childhood.

People ask me, by the way, I want you to email me.

If you have any questions as we go through the week, I wanna hear the questions.

I'll try to work that into the seminar or just I can answer you on email too.

The only questions I got yesterday, they were not about the content at all, which is okay.

People were like, how do we get her book?

How do we pre-order the Media Mind Series?

So I'll answer those right now, But I'd prefer even giving me your content questions Scott Ritzema at gmail.com So you can get that book reset your child's brain at belt of truth ministries Dot-com you can order it right at the right there on the store page and this 1 doesn't come out till September So you guys are hearing like a sneak peek of the DVD series?

That's gonna be on satellite media and gonna be in a lot of people's hands come September.

So this is kind of a fun experience where we're taking the training wheels off together.

But if you want the full experience where it's not amputated and surgically and you know, it's the professional quality production, the DVDs that you can share with people, go to the website beltoftruthministries.com, pre-order the Media Minds, and you get a discount right now in June.

Just put in June at checkout and that will give you the $15 off.

The last thing we saw was, oh I already said that, so we're on to the next thing of the day.

I want to start with a story about Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs was asked by an interviewer before he died about this new device that was about to hit the store shelves.

The tablets were now going to be taking the world by storm.

Jobs, what do your kids think of this device?

I mean, they just must be gaga over this.

It's the neatest thing ever invented, right?

Do you know what he said in answer to that question?

Reclaiming the Soul in the Digital Dark Age - Part 4

Father in heaven, we thank you so much for your goodness to us.

We thank you for Jesus, the 1 in whom we live and move and have our being.

We thank you that we can have a seminar inquiring of our Lord Jesus.

What would he have us to do with regard to our media use?

Please bring us enlightenment and understanding.

Please bring us discernment and courage as well to make decisions for our lives.

Help us to be inspired to share these things with others as we think about those who are trapped in this prison of digital addiction.

And so we just pray for your Holy Spirit to be present with us and give us hope, give us promise, give us understanding.

I wanna begin with a Facebook executive, former Facebook executive that I quoted yesterday.

Do you remember what he said yesterday before I continue with what he said there?

Yes, he said we are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.

He says we're destroying how society works by everything going digital in terms of our social relationships.

And now, I quote him saying this in the same interview he did.

Former Facebook executive says, you don't realize it, but you are being programmed.

We're going to see in this session how big tech is on a absolute rampage with programming this generation.

And before I even say that, I want to tell you that you can hear him say these things instead of just reading it on a screen.

By looking at our Media Mind trailer that we just released.

Last week we did, we put together a preview of the Media Mind.

Oh, and that reminds me also, the ABC with their table there tomorrow, They said, let's have the people be able to place the pre-orders for the Media Mind through the ABC right there at the table.

Then it's not me telling you, go to the website and do that and you're not on your smartphones while you're listening to a message, right?

Because you're engaged, you're here, You're fully present.

So anyway, this series that we're going through is portions of the full Media Mind series that's going to be released in September, and you'll be able to order that at the table tomorrow.

So be sure to be here tomorrow for our final media mind session.

Now did I say final session or final media mind session?

Final media mind session, because Friday we're going to do some of the throwback material, the classic media on the brain information.

And if you haven't heard that in a while, maybe I've been to your church or you were here 7 years ago when we did that live at the camp meeting.

Come anyway, because it's great review, and then you can internalize it, and you can share those things with others.

But we are indeed being programmed, so hear him say that on the trailer, that you'll probably find it on YouTube.

That's the only way I'll know how to give it to you.

I don't know if you can search it on YouTube yet.

But the Media Minds trailer number 1 and the Media Minds trailer number 2 will have this fellow and Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook, when he came out and he's like, God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains.

And he says, we were deliberately exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology when we created these platforms.

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The Media Mind

Reclaiming the Soul in the Digital Dark Age - Part 1

Transcript

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Parts

Reclaiming the Soul in the Digital Dark Age - Part 1

56m

Reclaiming the Soul in the Digital Dark Age - Part 2

56m

Reclaiming the Soul in the Digital Dark Age - Part 4

1h 4m

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