‘Propaganda’ is an ugly word.   It conjures images of the Third Reich, Tokyo Rose, and the Soviet-era news agency, TASS.   The dictionary defines it as:

Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

As a boy, I pitied the Soviet people –oppressed by their own government and media through a systematic campaign of selective reporting, misinformation, and outright manipulation.   I was glad to live in a free society with a free press where government and media trafficked only in facts.   Propaganda was the tool of tyrants. Or so I thought.

But propaganda has a long and varied place in the history of communication.   Words have power even swords cannot wield.   Men are more easily compelled to yield freedoms and convictions to words, ideas, and slogans than brute force.   Especially when they believe these words, ideas, and slogans are unadulterated with bias or ulterior motives.

We pity those under the thumb of propaganda as we scroll mindlessly through highly curated social media, censored news feeds, Instagram influencers, and clairvoyant popup ads.   We decry media bias and quickly fall in line with whatever our feed feeds us to think.    The hubris that tells us ‘we are invulnerable to propaganda’ is what makes us even more vulnerable.  

What is worse, the more our lives are mediated by our devices, the more propagandized we become.    John Stonestreet recently noted in an interview on The World and Everything In It, “we have been catechized by our devices – to react and not think.”   He explains.

Think of how many times a story makes everyone breathlessly angry. And just a few hours or days later, the larger context comes out, either through more video being released, and suddenly realize the entire story is wrong. Or the entire story that you reacted to was wrong. Now, I don’t know any way around that other than have better habits than everybody else. Don’t feel like you have to tweet about something because somebody, you know, says, anybody who doesn’t speak up is complicit. That’s bogus language, based on a society that is addicted to quick takes an outrage instead of the truth. 

Words are powerful.   Ideas have consequences.    Satan’s war against God, against Truth, and against the Church began in the Garden of Eden as a war of words.   As Adam and Eve stood gazing at the forbidden fruit, Satan voices a new possibility.  “Did God really say?”   Perhaps God did not mean it?  Perhaps God cannot be trusted?   Perhaps we must look elsewhere for truth? 

Satan’s tactics have not changed.  He is a liar and the father of lies.  Lying is his native speech.  He is not merely trying to win us to his position or gain our support by his propaganda, he wants us dead.   He hates us because we bear God’s image.   His repeated failure to secure God’s throne has not wearied him.   On the contrary, he is more enraged than ever.  

Revelation 13 unfolds this rage.   Two beasts emerge.  One from the sea and one from the earth.  An unholy Trinity of counterfeits to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit emerge in the dragon, the beast from the sea, and the beast from the earth.   They are poor counterfeits but they lead the world astray to make war against the Church.

The first beast is a wild brute.  He unleashes Satan’s fury by a frontal assault against the church — pursuing, crushing, and destroying.  But Satan also has a more subtle strategy.  A second beast arises from the earth.  He appears as a lamb with two small horns, but speaks with the voice of a dragon.  While he looks gentle, harmless, and trustworthy, his words are anything but.  Through this beast, Satan assaults the Church in the realm of ideas and words, forever working to foster suspicion of God.  

How careful are you to test the spirits of this age?   To view your world, not through your devices, but through the Word of God?   Join us this week as we examine Revelation 13:11-18 and consider the call to resist Satan’s ministry of propaganda.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

We can’t resist it.   It draws us without fail.   Light was the first element of creation — the first thing spoken by God into the visible world.   Though sinful men love darkness, we were made for light.   We may scoff at the foolish moth, incapable of resisting it.   But we are the same.   Light draws us.  We can’t resist it.

Light reveals what the darkness conceals.   When we are afraid, we turn on the light.   When we are lost, we look for lights.   When we need safety, we find a well-lighted place.  All life on planet earth depends upon light.   And we are comforted by the fact that with God, even the darkness is light.   We are counseled to walk in the light as He is in the light.   Jesus described himself as the ‘light of the world.’  “If any man follows me,” he said, “he will never walk in darkness.”   And the Bible describes heaven as a place where, “night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light.”

Light brings life, comfort, clarity, truth.   But it sometimes brings danger as well.   For there are counterfeit lights, lights that are not what they seem.    When someone says they finally see the “light at the end of the tunnel” the pessimist opines, “I hope it is not a train.”   The Bible warns us of counterfeit lights when it tells us that the devil “masquerades as an angel of light.”   Ironically, the name Lucifer means ‘light-bearer.’   But the light he bears brings darkness and death to everyone who approaches.   He is like the deep-sea anglerfish.

The Deep-Sea Anglerfish is a deceiver.  In the deep dark places of the ocean, it attracts both prey and mates with a bioluminescent lure.   Unsuspecting victims are drawn to its light and beauty in a place where darkness makes all else invisible.   Yet this light is not a place of beauty or refuge, but a place of death.   Enormous teeth and a cavernous maw make this ‘Black Sea-devil’ a grotesque and lethal light post.    

Through trickery and deception, they lure and devour their prey.   Like many things in the physical world, the devilfish mirrors the spiritual world.   Satan is like the devilfish.   He appears as an angel of light only to devours us.   He draws us with subtlety and rationale.   Consuming us with his lies.   And when temptation and deceit falter, he tries despair.

The devil, tries repeatedly to overthrow God’s redemptive plan.  He fails at every turn.   Yet his failure never wearies his fury.   Revelation 12:17 warns us of his attacks.

Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea.

Revelation 13 then unfolds what this fury looks like.   Two beasts emerge.  One from the sea and one from the earth.  An unholy Trinity of counterfeits to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit emerge in the persons of the dragon, the beast from the sea, and the Beast from the earth.   They are poor counterfeits indeed, but they lead the world astray and mobilize the cultures to make war against the Church.

In this well-known narrative, the Lord Jesus calls us to endurance and faith.   Conquest belongs to the Church, but it comes at a cost.   Satan’s fury is intense.  His warfare unrelenting.  When we face his rage, it is easy to despair.   Revelation 13 drives this home, but makes it clear that this counterfeit trinity will never conquer.  Martin Luther put it well.

And though this world with devils filled, should threaten to undo us
We will not fear for God hath willed, His truth to triumph through us
The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him
His rage we can endure, for lo his doom is sure
One little word shall fell him

That Word above all earthly pow’r, no thanks to them abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him who with us sideth;
Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
The body they may kill; God’s truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever!

A Mighty Fortress Is Our God

We are all afraid of the dark, but sometimes what appears to be light is even darker.  Join us this week as we examine Revelation 13:1-10 and unpack God’s comfort for trying times.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Money was scarce when I was ten.   An ‘allowance’ was not a part of my parent’s parenting theory.  They were firmly in the ‘pay-for-performance’ camp.   And there was too little of either – pay or performance.   The few chores my father considered pay-worthy were indexed to his Depression era pay scales.  

If I was going to make any serious coin, I would have to look elsewhere.   But without a mower, my options were limited.   While there were always the odd neighbor jobs – moving gravel piles, feeding dogs, and clearing kudzu.   These were hit-or-miss.   Collecting glass Coke bottles from the roadside for a nickel each was my only reliable source of income.   In those days we were less conscious of the moral duty not to throw trash on the roadsides, so this was surprisingly profitable.

I was careful with what I earned.   A tenth to church, half to savings, and the rest to 7Eleven.   On summer days, neighborhood kids, young and old, would mount their spider-bikes and trek to the 7Eleven up on the highway.   I’m sure our parents assumed there was safety in numbers.  But looking back, I’m not so sure.   But as old-timers are apt to say, “times were different then.”

Topps baseball cards, packs of candy Marlboro cigarettes, and Now-or-Laters were always in the bag.  And righteousness could not be fulfilled without a Cherry Coke Slurpee and its accompanying spoon-straw.   But my go-to item was the giant SweetTart.  Unlike chewy ones sold today, vintage giant SweetTarts were hard and looked like enormous dishwasher tablets.  Only as the tart gave way to the sweet could you even open your eyes.   Eating too many would make your tongue raw for days.   They were intense – the mother of all complex candy flavors.  

But it was that complexity, sweet and sour, that made them so good.   Many of the joys of life depend upon a mixture of extremes.   Our loves often offer both pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, discomfort and comfort.   We even see this in the Bible and the gospel.   Before we can accept God’s mercy, we must accept that we deserve only His condemnation.    The gospel does not make good men better, it saves the unsavable.   The words of the Old Testament prophet, Hosea, are poignant.

Come, let us return to the Lord;
    for he has torn us, that he may heal us;
    he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.
After two days he will revive us;
    on the third day he will raise us up,
    that we may live before him.

Hosea 6:1-2

The Bible is both sweet and sour.   Paul described it as “the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.” (2 Corinthians 2:15-16)  The Bible speaks sweetly of mercy, but everywhere reminds us that this mercy comes through the bitterness of judgment poured out on Christ.    Those who reject this find that the gospel’s sweet promises bear bitter fruit in unbelief.  

John’s vision in Revelation 10 underscores this.   Judgements unfold against those without the seal of the living God.   The church is excluded, yet still present in the world.   What is her role?   In the interlude between the Sixth and Seventh Trumpets, John sees a vision directed to the church.   He is instructed to take a little scroll and to eat it.  Though sweet in the mouth, it is bitter in his stomach.  And in this vision, we have a picture both of the nature of the gospel and of our duty to proclaim it.  

Acts of God’s judgement are raining down on the unbelieving world.   But judgement alone will never bring men to repentance.   Without the kindness of God in the gospel, they will only be hardened.    Like a lamp on a stand, the church shines the kindness of God into a world that knows only the bitterness of the fall.   The gospel is sweet, but first it is sour.    The truth sets men free, but first it makes them mad.   It exposes their condition before applying the remedy.   It wounds, then heals.  It tears, then binds up.   It is sweet in the mouth and bitter in the stomach.

How willing are we to proclaim this sweet-and-sour gospel?   Every person deserves God’s wrath and curse.  This horror should ignite a sense of urgency.   Those you love, those you serve, those who serve you, who are not sealed through faith in Christ, will fall under horrific judgements.   They will seek for death and not find it.  And when it comes, it will not relieve.   Their only hope is the sweet-and-sour gospel.   How willing are you to say hard things to soften hard hearts?   Leon Morris puts this into perspective.  

“The true preacher of God’s Word will faithfully proclaim the denunciations of the wicked it contains.  But he does not do this with fierce glee.   Telling forth of ‘woes’ will be a bitter experience….  The wickedness of man grieved God at His heart (Genesis 6:6), and the true preacher of God’s Word enters to some degree into this suffering.” 

Leon Morris, Revelation.

God’s Word can be bitter, but it is also sweet.  Jesus has the keys to Death and Hades and gives these gospel keys us.   But will we use them?  Join us this week as we examine Revelation 10 and consider our calling to share the gospel boldly.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.  For the Order of Service, click here.