ECYC 2013: Something Better

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Eastern Canada Youth Conference

The Christian and Entertainment

Ben Middleton

Losing Your Mind

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to gather together and we ask that as we study your word and the plan that you have hatched for our salvation, we ask that you might enlighten us, that you might prepare us to make greater decisions for you.

And Father, I ask above all things that you would speak here, that your word would be clear.

All right, so why are we talking about media?

Did you know that we see an average of 5, 000 commercial messages every day?

Actually statistically speaking, the average teenager, that's most of you all here, the average teenager spends about 7.5 hours of each day with media.

Whether that be watching television or surfing the internet or playing on your clever phones, I'm sorry, smartphones, or all these other things, spend about 7.5 hours each day.

And if you would count what we call media multitasking, which is where you use more than 1 device simultaneously, It's about 10 hours a day.

Almost half of the hours of your day are spent engaging media.

Do you believe that or are you just saying that because you know I'm going to say that it does.

He's what they call a psychological illusionist.

Basically, that is to say, his illusions are mind games.

So he's kind of like a magician, but he just plays tricks with people's minds.

If you want to spend, I don't have enough time to show you the experiment, it's about 6 or 7 minutes long, but he did a subliminal advertising experiment.

What he did was he hired a couple of guys to create some designs for him and on the way to the place that he wanted them to do the designing, he left advertisements and all of these messages and he believed that he could control what idea they came up with for the project by the things he surrounded them with on the way.

So they're driving in the cab, and you'll see there will be people walking down the street, and they'll have a logo on their t-shirt, or they'll have this, or they'll have that.

And these people aren't consciously taking note of their surroundings, but they're seeing all of these things.

And as it turns out, they go and they sit down and they come up with their concepts of the design.

And after the hour, they show the guy, okay, well, these are the ideas we came up with.

This is for your taxidermy shop and this is perhaps an image, a logo that you can use.

And they show him all of these things and he's like, huh, that's interesting.

And then he shows them that he has basically the exact same thing that he wanted them to make.

But he did it by strategically locating advertisements in their surroundings on their way to his office.

But the key is that what we see dramatically affects us.

But we didn't need Darren Brown to tell us that.

As a matter of fact, we already had Jesus tell us that.

When your eyes are healthy, your whole body also is full of light.

But when they are unhealthy, your body is also full of darkness.

All right, so the things that we see will affect us on what we think, what we believe, how we act.

It will literally have an effect on our entire being.

Now that's the introduction to media, but I want to present to you that media is not just some tool that can be used, but that it is a tool that is intentionally being used by our enemy.

Does anybody know that there was a war in heaven?

In Revelation chapter 12 verses 7 to 9, man we don't have time to go through all of this but I'm gonna summarize it for you.

Michael and his angels fought against the dragon and the dragon and his angels and the dragon was cast out.

So this is the dragon versus Michael and the dragon loses and then in the end it says, rejoice ye heavens but woe to the inhabitants of the earth because anybody know why?

Because the devil has come down and he knows he has a short time so the devil was in heaven started a war lost the war and is cast down to earth And now we are in the middle of a war zone.

So there was war in heaven and there's war on earth.

But in order for us to understand the war on earth, we have to first understand the war in heaven.

So what we're going to do is ask a very simple question.

Does anybody know why there was war in heaven?

As a matter of fact, you can write down these passages.

Ezekiel chapter 28, verses 13 to 15, and Isaiah 14, verse 11 through 14.

We see that in Ezekiel 28 it literally says, you were perfect in all of your ways.

God created Lucifer as a perfect being in every possible way.

He was perfect in all his ways until iniquity was found in him.

Isaiah chapter 14 begins by saying, how are you fallen from heaven Lucifer?

Why would a perfect being somehow end up cast out of heaven?

And it says that his heart was lifted up because of his beauty.

I want to present to you that the heart of the issue was the law of God.

The heart of the great controversy in heaven, on earth, And today is the law of God.

Satan's rebellion began as an internal rebellion.

Briefly summarizing for you, he saw Christ exalted.

His desire was unjustifiable by the law and so instead of finding fault with himself, he found fault with the law of God.

You see, what happened was, you know, we understand that Christ appeared to the angels as an angel, just like he appeared to men as a man.

And when he appeared to the angels as an angel, his angelic name was Michael.

He was the archangel, he was 1 of the covering cherubs.

It was him and Lucifer who stood beside the throne of God.

And when he saw that now Michael, the archangel, who we know as Christ, was being exalted, he's like, well, hey, he's just an angel just like me.

Why come, how come I'm not being exalted like he's being exalted?

Why am I not being lifted up like he's being lifted up?

And so as a result, he begins to brood inside himself.

He says, you know this law of God, I've got a problem with it.

It tells me that I should love, and I should want the best interest of everybody else.

But right now, I want myself to be lifted up.

And God came and attempted to reason with him, attempted to work with him.

Earl Morgan

And Now for Your Listening Pleasure

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your love for us, that we can meet together in this fashion, that we might perfect praise unto your holy name, and that we might learn more about your character.

I pray, O Lord, that even in our amusements, the music we listen to, that we would put you first and declare our loyalty for your principles, your love, your mastership.

Have you ever heard of an artist named Sixto Rodriguez?

Sixto Rodriguez, I'm probably not pronouncing his name properly.

His song had the lyric quality of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, but his voice was like James Taylor.

His album never sold that well in America, but he was well known in South Africa.

And his songs enjoyed rock star status there.

He didn't receive a single cent from the sales of his album.

Otherwise he would have been a millionaire.

Instead Rodriguez worked as a laborer in Detroit, Michigan.

You see, South Africans thought that Sixto Rodriguez was dead.

No 1 knows exactly how the album even came to South Africa, as it was told on the NPR radio show.

When it came, It just spread and he became famous.

And of course, it was told that he was as dead as Jimi Hendrix.

Everybody knew his albums and everyone knew that Rodriguez was completely dead.

Rodriguez's music had a Motown feel and it was expected to be successful, but his records just failed to take off at home in the United States.

Meanwhile, a bootleg copy somehow made it to South Africa, where it struck a chord with the progressive young whites, exasperated with the apartheid system.

Perhaps the source of disinformation had to do with the fact that Rodriguez's music was censored by the apartheid government, and therefore Rodriguez was a banned artist.

The name of the album was Cold Fact and contained songs such as This Is Not A Song, It's An Outburst, or The Establishment Blues, Inner City Blues, and Street Boy.

In 2013, just this year, a documentary film was produced called Searching for Sugar Man.

It tells Sixto Rodriguez's story, starting off as a forgotten artist.

But everything changes when some South African journalist, despite all rumors of his death, get back in touch with Rodriguez.

It was arranged for him to come home to South Africa and play a comeback concert.

Flown with his family to perform in South Africa, his plane was met with a limousine that his family assumed was intended for someone else.

His daughter expected an audience of 20 to 30 people, but found instead 5, 000 fans waiting for him.

Many in the audience thought it was to be a tribute concert.

But when Rodriguez walked out onto the stage, he was greeted with 10 minutes of cheers and applause before he can even begin his performance.

And they all knew the words to his songs.

He was bigger than the Beatles, yet no 1 had knowledge of him until recently.

It is as if he was resurrected from the dead.

This story of music, portrayed as sustaining hope in apartheid South Africa, It was a story of people listening to his music for all their lives as a soundtrack of their youth.

Even though they thought he was dead, as long as the songs were alive, hope was alive.

Does the music that you listen to sustain hope, sustain spiritual life, encourage success and good values?

Does it sharpen your focus on your goals?

Music can do this and more, but it can also do damage as well.

It can cause distraction and disorder, cause mental pollution, instability, and impurity.

I want to ask you some questions about how you enjoy music.

You can show by a raise of hands how many of you listen to music on your smartphone or iPod?

How many of you have Christian music loaded on your device?

How many of you also listen to secular music?

Here are a few styles of music that you may be into.

How many of you like world music and fusion music?

It's sort of a wide genre, but basically in the music catalog, anything that's out of North America or Europe is called world music.

How many of you like reggae, calypso, and soca?

I just want us to be honest as to what our influences are.

How many here are soloists or sing with a group or choir?

Are there any professional musicians here?

I think there should actually be more of us who dedicate our ministry to music and actually live off of that ministry.

How many consider themselves non-singers?

And by the way, although they have the phrase tone deaf.

With training, a person who is relatively tone deaf can be made to recognize distinct notes and learn to sing.

We're gonna discuss some principles of music.

Naughty by Nature, How did you know that?

Let me tell you a story of a woman we'll call Tracy.

Naughty by Nature came out with this brand new song.

I think it was their debut album, and it was called OPP.

So, in short, if someone asked you what did OPP mean, they would say other people's property.

But of course, the last P did not stand for property.

It stands for something else, and it was a vulgar song.

Okay, so it's good that some of you have a confused look on your face.

That means you don't know what the song's about.

It's not a good song, but it had a very catchy beat.

Now, Tracy in this story, Christian young woman, everyone knows that she's a Christian, but she likes the beat of the song, it's catchy.

And so she starts singing it, and people see her singing the song.

Tracy, you're singing OPP by Naughty by Nature?

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The Christian and Entertainment

Losing Your Mind

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Losing Your Mind

50m

And Now for Your Listening Pleasure

47m

Sound Doctrine