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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Eric Walsh

Dumbing Down of God’s People

Father God, we thank you for this opportunity Lord to share your word.

Ask Father God that you just make me a nail upon the wall that you Lord you fill this place with your Holy Spirit.

Father God I'm not seen today but upon that nail Lord hang a portrait of Jesus Christ so that today only the Son of God is felt and seen.

Our message this morning is entitled, The Dumbing Down of the Remnant.

I have a NIV Bible so I'm gonna read from the King James Version on my cell phone.

So this might not be too easy but let me find a verse.

Turn with me to 2 Thessalonians, oh thanks, 2 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, the second chapter.

The books of Thessalonians are very important books.

The only New Testament book written, there's only 1 New Testament book written before the books of Thessalonians.

These are the first books Paul wrote and he wrote them because he really believed in the church at Thessalonica and knew that it was going to be a cornerstone church for ministry for a long time.

When you read Acts chapter 17 you get the story of the Thessalonians and how Paul came into the city and how the people of the city were so angry at what happened that they actually went and hired thugs to go and look about getting rid of the Christians, to beat them up and destroy them.

And that's a wonderful story in and of itself in a lot of ways, except that the people of Thessalonica, and there was a synagogue there, Paul thought probably that the church would have taken on more easily.

What's interesting about the church at Thessalonica is that the Thessalonian Church was a Gentile church.

There were plenty of Jews in the area and there was a synagogue so it would have seemed that the synagogue would have taken the message of truth and would have accepted it, but the truth is they rejected the message for the most part.

So when you read in the book Acts of the Apostles by Ellen White on Thessalonians, 1 of the things she mentions is that Paul gave some of his most persuasive arguments of the Messiahship of Christ in the synagogue for the Thessalonians.

They rejected it and the church was predominantly a Gentile church.

The Bible even says that the women of Thessalonica, the astute and wise women were the ones who came in.

Somehow the Jews missed it and the Gentiles got in that area and that's what that church was built out of.

This is 1 of the churches that lasted the longest as well.

Long after papal Rome even rose, the church at Thessalonica was a church that was strong and that was going strong for a long time and was considered the Orthodox Church of the East.

So Paul gives them some some warnings, some words that I believe are relevant today and I'm gonna read from 2nd Thessalonians chapter 2 and we're going to start at verse 7.

The Bible says for the mystery of iniquity doth already work, 2nd Thessalonians 2 and verse 7, the mystery of iniquity doth already work only he who now lets will let until he be taken out of the way.

And then shall that wicked be revealed whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.

Even him whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders.

And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish because they receive not the love of the truth that they might be saved.

And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie.

That they all might be damned who believe not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

I read a book called The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America and there's another book entitled The Dumbing Down of America.

1 of the authors, the author of the book, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, wrote the book as a Washington insider.

She worked for the Department of Education and wrote a book where she basically was exposing the fact that Washington, the United States government, let's just say, for over 100 years has been working to stupefy its citizens.

Seems like X-Files conspiracy theory material.

But she was an insider and actually had documentation in the book to to back this up.

Her rationale is this, that somewhere along the line those who were running the United States, the power brokers of the United States, decided it would be better to create a people who were controlled not by the strength of the arm of government but by their lack of their ability to think critically.

That if you cause the US population to not be able to make wise decisions, if they were not taught to think straight and to think for themselves, you could effectively dumb them down, follow me now, dumb them down to the point where democracy would no longer be of full effect.

Which means that those in power, those families in power, would be able to stay in power.

You would create a class of people who were 2 things, consumers and workers and nothing else.

And so you could literally control the US population by taking away certain things out of the education system.

Because if you have 2 theories to think about, you're going to think critically.

If 1 of them is just given to you to regurgitate back to the teacher, you're not going to think critically.

It is also made so that You are trained so that you simply accept what the media tells you.

So that in a presidential election, we tend to believe we have 2 choices.

In a country of 270 million people, you get 2 viable choices.

Ironically, according to the book and some of the other books I've read, you don't really have even 2 choices.

The Democrats and the Republicans aren't as far apart as you would think.

1 of the things that people say to kind of back that up is that in the last presidential election, the 2 people running for office, Bush and Kerry, were related, they were cousins.

Interesting, in a country of 270 some odd million, you'd have 2 people running for office that were relatives on some level.

So this book describes that the United States government worked to make sure that its citizens weren't critical thinkers.

Except when you really look at the population.

When you really look at what we believe, what we accept as truth, and when you look at what we are, truthfully, the United States has simply become a nation of consumers and workers.

We consume the vast majority of most of what is made in the world.

I've been to Beijing China, I was in China twice last year and the Chinese are becoming wealthy on the fact that they can sell stuff through Walmart to a waiting US population.

Our country has begun to deteriorate because there are forces at work described here by Paul who hate the democracy and the Republic of the United States of America.

That force is the is the Vatican, the papacy.

And 1 of the things that happened, if you read history, and if you read it well, if you read some of the quotes from Abraham Lincoln, ever since the inception of the United States, the creation of this great nation in 1776, there have been European forces, basically backed by the Vatican, that have been working to destroy this democracy.

Because Europe was controlled by monarchs and each monarch was supposedly divinely given its position.

It ruled by right of divine presence And so if you rule because God says you rule, you only owe allegiance to 1 place.

That would be the church, the Catholic church.

So for hundreds of years during the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, all of that time, the world was able to be controlled really by 1 office.

Then all of a sudden came the United States of America.

Out of nowhere a democracy pops up where people say no longer will the church and the state work in unison to control the people.

The people will be able to choose who leads them and who leads them won't be able to just lead them forever.

All of a sudden a different kind of leadership came out based in Protestant thinking and it really angered those who had controlled Europe for a long time.

So this woman is arguing in her book, The Dumbing Down of America, some women wanted to make sure democracy couldn't survive because You don't really have a democracy if you don't have people who can think.

And so the United States of America, they have been working to make you more concerned with who wins on American Idol than who the God of the universe is.

They've been working to make you more concerned on who wins the NBA championship than who wins the great controversy.

So successful that we're looking at what is now a pseudo Christianity in America.

Where now that when you hear the television preachers preach, they don't preach about grace, they don't preach about mercy, they don't preach about repentance anymore, they preach about prosperity.

That's what you hear on TBN if you watch TBN for just a few hours, you hear a watered-down version, yay a different gospel is being preached.

And Christendom in general is suffering because now all across the country churches no longer judge how successful they are by how saintly or righteous the people sitting in the pews are.

Churches are judged by how many people are sitting in the pews regardless of the people's condition.

It'd be like you know in Joel Osteen, I probably said this here before, Joel Osteen when he was interviewed on CNN and his mega church, because mega churches are a part of this dumbing down of the church, mega church, so that you have fewer people in control of more Christians, 30, 000 member church, Joel Osteen says that Larry King asks him a question, What, you know, after he gives this whole parade about being a motivational preacher and wanting to encourage people to live better lives and to be more successful on earth, he says, well what do you do about sin?

Larry King, who's a very astute, knows a lot about Christianity, says to Joel Osteen, What do you do about sin?

A preacher who doesn't deal with sin is like a physician who says, I don't see any patient who has an illness.

Or a plumber says, I never work on a house with a leak.

And the message being preached, the gospel being preached, is simply 1 of success and prosperity and getting more and more and more.

Paul warned the Thessalonians because Paul understood that in the last days the church would come full circle and that there would be those from inside the church, never fear what's outside the church as much as fearing what's inside the church, those who would be raised up who would come against the house of God.

That in the last days there would be those who would come against the house of God and they would come with damnable heresies, they would come with false teaching, they would come with extra burdens on the people of God, And they would try to shackle the believers so that the believers would begin to lose heart and fall away.

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Dumbing Down of God’s People

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