"Entertainment of Death"
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INTRODUCTION
Have you ever considered some of the lies we have been told? Like the check is in the mail, job security, save in a savings and loan where your money is safe, etc. You believe your job or career with a company is secure, or that savings and loan associations and banks are safe places for your money. Then you see jobs being lost by the thousands (cutbacks in military, businesses and government), savings and loan associations and banks closing or being taken over, people and cities going bankrupt. You wonder if there is anything you can believe in. There is, but first you must stop believing the lies of the world and trust in God.The first thing you need to grasp is the fact that who you really are is a spirit. The body you are in is just a vehicle, like a car. If you see a Mercedes with dark windows hiding the driver cruising down the boulevard, your first thought may be that the driver has money and probably is dressed nicely. But if you see a ten-year-old, smoking, backfiring, rusty heap lurching down the street, you may think the poor person driving the junker is in really bad financial condition. But the truth of both cases may be the reverse. We all too often judge by outward appearances and not by what is inside.
That spirit inside of you is who you really are and it is being made into whatever you want, by whatever you feed it. You are Flesh, Soul, and Spirit. The flesh is all of your senses and the soul is the mind and emotions. So, whatever you feed into your mind either by the senses or emotions is what you will become. Like a car, you need to pump fuel into your body and spirit to run. By eating, you feed the body, and by reading the Bible or hearing the Word, you feed the spirit. If you use cheap gas in your car it may clang a lot and not run very well. The same is true for the body; if you feed it junk you will regret it sooner or later. But if you feed the spirit the lies (things) of the world you will regret it eternally. This is why you need to have the spirit in control, not the flesh.
You have to realize that, until you leave this body for your new body in heaven, you don't really know what you look like. It is like a baby in the womb of a woman. You know it is a baby, but until it leaves its mother's womb, no one knows if it is a boy or girl, or the color of the hair and eyes. The same is true for us, except we can control what we become by being careful about what we put in our spirit. Romans 10:17 says, "Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God", so whatever we hear, listen to, watch, or read will affect our faith.
What does all of this have to do with this book? Everything! This entire book is about the trash we allow into our lives. I want to share with you some things about myself, and how I came to know what I am about to share with you in the upcoming chapters.
In 1969 I was in high school and trying my hardest to get involved in the occult. I thought it would be fun to be a warlock and have magical powers. I did not believe in Satan and I thought magic was either good or bad. I tried for four years to join covens and be a part of the occult but every time I got close, something came between the group and me.
By 1973 I was in the U.S. Air Force stationed in Albuquerque, New Mexico. At this time I had been in the service for two years and had been involved in drinking and smoking pot (yes, I inhaled). Then one day I went to church with a girl I had met. I only went to impress her, but while attending this service I came to know the Lord and was baptized in the body and by water. I never drank or smoked pot after this and I spent all the time I could in the Word of God (the Bible) until I was offered an early discharge from the Air Force following the Vietnam War.
In 1974 I went back to Houston, Texas, and tried to stay involved in the Word and to live the way God wanted me to live, but the church I attended was not teaching the Word on the level I needed to keep me on the right track. Within a year I had stopped reading the Bible and had started wandering from the faith. At this point I was involved in producing comic book and media conventions. After two years of producing conventions and working in a comic book store, I really began to stray.
In 1982 I produced "The Ultimate Fantasy", a Star Trek stage show, with the idea of putting on rock concerts if it did well. But, for some unknown reason, Ultimate Fantasy failed. I analyzed and reviewed the situation and all of our efforts, but I really could not figure out why this extravaganza had failed. We had even priced tickets as low as $10.00 for this 4-1/2 hour laser light and stage show, which was an excellent bargain for this type of entertainment.
The following year I was in a serious car accident which resulted in my spending two years in and out of hospitals (mostly in). After receiving a settlement for the car wreck in 1986, I invested in a comic book store that soon grew into a chain of seven stores. We carried all the role-playing, historical and fantasy games, comics, books, and miscellaneous items. But this also failed. Again, I could not figure out why this was happening to me. We were one of the first stores to carry all of the games and one of only four full time comic book stores in a city of three million people. Seeing the other stores prosper, I cut all of the spending that I could. I even advertised heavily, yet I was still not prospering.
In 1989 I started attending church again and my whole family came to know the Lord at Lamb of God Lutheran Church in Humble, Texas. Now, after three years of studying again with people in and out of my church (I thank God for Raymond Bean who had the most influence) whose knowledge of the Word and whose spiritual development were far advanced beyond mine, I have realized what had happened in my past. First, from 1969 to 1973, it was the Lord helping me stay out of the occult. Again, in 1982 it was the Lord helping again. He knew I would have gotten back into drugs and fallen away totally if Ultimate Fantasy had succeeded. He also saw where the comic book business would have eventually taken me if it had succeeded. I am not saying that the Lord caused all of these failures, but I did not involve Him in them or listen to Him. I was doing it on my own accord and, of course, if you do something of your own accord or of man's, you will ultimately fail. If I had involved the Lord, I would not have done a lot of the things I did. If you fail in a venture, don't blame the Lord. The Lord doesn't make you fail, but neither can He help you if you don't listen to Him.
During my period of rebellion from 1978 to 1987, I played Dungeons and Dragons and read a lot of comics, but mainly I was a movie buff. My favorite genre was horror films. If I had listened to the Lord, he would have advised me against these things and I would have done much better with my time and money. But, thanks to the Lord, He did not give up on me and neither did those who were praying for me.
During the period of January 1992 to May 1993, I became aware of how much I needed to learn about the Word and how far off course I was. So in May 1993, after much discussion and a lot of prayer, Bill and I quit receiving product in our stores and by July 3, 1993, we had closed all of our comic book stores. Since then the Lord has taken me even further into the Word and shown me so much that is wrong not just with comics, cards, and role-playing games, but also with Television, movies, and other forms of the media.
My hope is that, as you read this book you will learn from my mistakes and my 25-year involvement in comics, cards, role-playing games, Tarot cards, horoscopes, computerized games, and the occult.
The main thing I want you to get out of this book is to be very careful with the items I cover and don't take anything for granted. Don't ever assume that something is innocent or harmless. I do not write this book on my own, but through the power of the Holy Spirit. Even though it may seem that the media is being bashed, it is not. This book could have been a lot stronger. This book is meant to be an aid to help those involved in the areas covered to see what they are getting into. I hope and pray that this book will be a help to you and your family.
Jerry Wilhite
CHAPTER 1TV & MOVIES
Our Minds Are Being ProgrammedWe're not robots or computers! How can you possibly say that our minds are being programmed? The best place to start our explanation would be with the fact that our brains are like mini-computers, except that our brains are much more sophisticated. From the time we are born our brain starts digesting the information it receives from the five senses. Our senses are the pathways to our computer (brain). We learn to sit up, stand, walk, talk, and so forth, based on the information fed to our brain. Our brain takes that information and puts it to immediate use or stores it for later use.
In school we start learning (being programmed) with the "three R's". If you don't think this is programming, consider this: if you learn 2+2=4, then in your mind no other answer other than 4 will be right. But if, while you were in the first grade, your teacher told you 2+2=5, you would believe it, mainly because there is nothing for you to use to dispute this answer. So, as you can see, we are programmed, just like a computer, because if you tell a computer before it gets any other information that 2+2=5, then the computer will only recognize 2+2 as 5. Another example is our concept of the earth's shape. Before it was proved that the world was round, people believed, through teaching, that the world was flat. We know this to be false, but if we could go back six hundred years or more we would find people who would laugh at the idea that the world was round and who would argue that point until they turned blue. This is because in their learning (programming) process they were told the world was flat.
Let's look at how we are programmed. First we are programmed by our senses. When we touch something we recognize it by the way it feels as well as by how it looks, smells, and sounds. We often use more than one of the senses to figure out what we have encountered. Our brain receives data from these senses, combines the information and logs the result in its memory. Then the next time we touch that item our brain pulls up that sensation to find out what it was the first time. Our other senses confirm what the brain is saying. The same goes for the other senses. Each one plays a part in its own way of sending information to the brain. But, you will notice that the two senses you rely on the most are sight and hearing. We learn to walk and talk mostly by what we see and hear. In school, we learn by seeing or reading and hearing. In the Bible, in Romans 10:17, we are told that faith comes by hearing (or reading) the word. There, also, the senses play a big part in our faith.
Now we realize that we can be programmed. We know that our brain is what is being programmed, and that the pathways to the brain are our five senses (the keyboard to our programming). We also see how things we see, hear, touch, feel or smell are programming us (typing on the keyboard to give us commands or instructions).
Like a computer, our brain takes whatever is put in and retains it until we purge it or use it. There is a saying among computer programmers, "Garbage in - Garbage out". This means that if you put the wrong information (garbage) into your computer, you will get the wrong results (garbage) back out of your computer. The same holds true for us: the more trash we put in, the harder it is to get anything else out. For example, if you have been told all of your life that there is no God, then you will believe this no matter what you see or hear (unless it comes from God). If you see a miracle, you will use a worldly explanation to justify what has happened and to reaffirm your stand that there is no God.
Okay. We have accepted the concept that our environment has programmed our minds. Now let us look at how the world has been programming and re-programming us during the last sixty years. In the thirties, movies with sound (talkies) were invented. In that decade alone we had movies such as Frankenstein (man creates life and then the creation rebels and overpowers the creator). Compare this story to how Lucifer (the creation) attempted to overcome God (the Creator) and become God. Then we have Dracula (a being with power over animals, life and death). This is another story of creation trying to take control. Now look at the Wizard of Oz (a tin man, a scarecrow, flying monkeys, witches, and a talking lion). In this children's favorite a man, who is a wizard, is going to give a heart to the tin man, a brain to the scarecrow, and courage to a lion. Do you see a pattern forming? Each of these popular movies echoes the theme of the creation attempting to wrest power and control from the creator. These are just a few of the movies that came out in the thirties.
By the forties we had true-life stories of heroes from the World Wars such as "The Audie Murphy Story". Now start mixing the true-life stories and the other stories we could relate to with the horror films and we see our brains being fed a little reality mixed with a lot of falsehoods.
By the time the fifties were over we had movies about space, monsters from space, movies about all kinds of UFOs, and other science fiction movies. Remember, too, that in the fifties the space age was starting and people who were watching the movies also were watching the news reports of our progress into space. Now even more of the falsehoods and lies were mixed with the truth (fear is now being introduced).
Throughout the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties, the movies became more and more sophisticated and mixed ever-increasing amounts of the lies (worldly things) in with the truth. So, by now people believe that in the future there will be a federation of planets (of course there is still no proof there is other life out there). More people are acting violently toward each other and are more self-centered. Who do you think wants this, God or Satan? Satan, of course. God wants us to show love and compassion, not hate and fear. If you look at the movies that have come out over the years you can see how, with the passing of time, we are acting more like what the movies say we are than we want to admit. The fear has taken over and we are acting like trapped animals. In the succeeding chapters of this book I will give even more examples of this frightening trend.
Television Invades Society
Satan has used television and movies to separate us from God. To accomplish this, he had to start reprogramming us from a society that would not accept X-rated and violent films to a society that lives on them. These changes did not happen overnight. They were very slow and subtle so we did not notice where Satan was leading us.
You don't believe that movies and television affect you? Then why do advertisers spend billions of dollars on advertising on television and even more money getting their product into a movie? This is all done to sell product and it must be working because the companies are still advertising in both.
Now let's look at what else has helped us to be programmed. The Tel-A-Vision. Yes, I know I misspelled television, but I did this on purpose to make a point. Let's sound out this word. "Tel" is a form of "tele", meaning "from a distance". The word "Vision" means something seen supernaturally. These words together then mean remote-controlled supernatural sight. The point is, whose vision are we watching and following? Earlier I stated that we are being programmed with lies and one of these lies is that there is hope only through man and technology. So, don't worry if there is a problem today, there will be a pill tomorrow to solve it.
What has television done for us? It has filled three to five hours of our time each night with shows that tell us what life is and how we should live. But we are so busy watching television that we don't live; we exist. TV also tells us what we should buy and that, if we don't buy the right product, we won't be happy or fulfilled.
The television offerings of the fifties were mostly sitcoms (situation comedies) and talk shows, with a few game shows and the nightly news. Some say that radio gave birth to television and that television of the fifties was just radio with pictures. If this is the case, then the public was being seduced and programmed by the radio programs they heard as far back as the twenties. Add to that the programming that the movies were starting to do in the thirties.
In the fifties people who owned televisions started watching comedy shows during the dinner hour and justified it by stating that humor was good. Humor had started to steal our family time, but this was not enough for Satan. Not enough homes had a television yet, and in those homes that did have a set the people were not always watching it like he wanted.
In the sixties television took on a whole new image with more news programs and with new shows that were more diversified. During the Vietnam War news broadcasts about the conflict started coming directly out of Vietnam. These broadcasts would graphically show the gruesome acts of war while the public ate dinner. If someone had a friend or relative in Vietnam or were afraid that someone they knew would have to go to Vietnam in the future and were concerned about them, then they watched the six o'clock news.
This was the beginning of dependency on television. Since the news is on between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m., if you want to eat dinner during this time and still watch the news, you had better eat in front of the television. This is where we started losing family time nationwide. Prior to the intrusion of television, most people would talk about their day during dinner. When dinner and discussion around the dining room table were replaced with quick bites watching the TV news, the break-down of the family began. After nearly ten years of watching the news at dinner for information about the war and other current events going on in the nation or the world, we had become so programmed that when Vietnam was over we continued watching from habit.
But then, of course, Satan made sure we continued watching. The Watergate scandal occurred right at the end of the Vietnam conflict and this kept the public glued to the television. After Watergate came the ever-changing political stories and scandals from the White House. Then came the fuel embargo, followed by even more global and national concerns. Satan worked overtime to keep us glued to the news so that we would not talk with each other or visit neighbors.
Let's not forget that television broadcasts did not end when the news was over. Usually there was a comedy show or some other form of escape to take us away from all the problems of the world we had just watched on the news. We justified watching these programs because we were so depressed by what the news had shown us. Don't you think that is what Satan wanted? Now the public was being programmed by shows that showed life with no major problems that man could not solve, and that life was about the things you owned and life always had a happy ending. When the public started realizing that their lives were not like that, they started buying things to make them happy in order to have the same happy ending they saw daily on television. Of course this brought on debt, longer working hours, second jobs, and desperation, but no happiness.
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