Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / WM Conference: Breana Claussen ‘The Worldview Of Media’

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WM Conference: Breana Claussen ‘The Worldview Of Media’ · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

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Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events,
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defending biblical Christianity, no topic, off limits.
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And now, here's your host, David Firazzo.
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Hello, friends.
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Welcome to World View Matters podcast.
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God bless you.
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We have a special treat for you today.
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As we'd like to share another session from our recent conference in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
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Now, Dr. Jake Jacobs commented that this young accomplished believer who spoke at the conference
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gives him hope for the future of today's youth.
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So from this conference, we just had, check out this message by founder and editor-in-chief
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of Harbinger's Daily News.
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Here's Brianna Clawson.
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My name is Brianna Clawson.
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I am the editor-in-chief and founder of Harbinger's Daily.
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It's a Christian news site that is really dedicated to making sure that we're rightly dividing
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God's word and doing so without compromise.
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And we work with some wonderful and amazing Christian news organizations across the globe,
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Christian ministries across the globe that are getting it right and that are being bold
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talking about what's going on in the world and applying the Bible to it and applying Bible
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prophecy to it.
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So by now, being at the World View Matters Conference, we probably all have a good understanding
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of what it means to have a biblical worldview and what it boils down to is what our standard
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of truth is.
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And we know from the question that Pontius Pilate asked, what is truth that Jesus provided
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that answer when he said that I am the way the truth and the life.
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And we judge everything based off of that standard of God's word, that standard of truth.
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And the Bible has a great deal to say about the world that's around us.
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It has a great deal to say about the history of the world, the origins of the earth, the
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origins of human beings.
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It also has a great deal to tell us about the cultural issues of our world.
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And even those that our culture likes to say is beyond the purview of the church, they're
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too political for us to talk about these are important issues and their biblical issues
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that God gives us instruction about.
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And when we talk about secular media, the problem really isn't that they just simply don't
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have that biblical worldview.
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The problem is that they've become anti-God and have rejected God in his word and are
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pushing a worldview that is against God entirely.
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And there are many institutions that present a worldview, but news media organizations
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quite literally present how you should view the world around you.
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And that includes cultural events, current issues, science, morality, they even instruct
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you on how you should view Christians as a whole.
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And the press has a long history of shaping and twisting the worldview of societies.
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And today, the goal of most media organizations is best described by Isaiah 520, will unto
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them that call good evil and evil good.
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And is it any wonder that we have a society that also reflects this verse and also calls
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good evil and evil good?
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It's because of what's being pushed by the news media and the press.
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And the sanctity of life is diminished by the news media, God's institutions for marriage
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and family are distorted.
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God's design for gender is twisted, Christians are viewed as radical, lawlessness and racism
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are being stoked, globalism, and Marxism are being promoted.
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The false science of climate change, evolution and the origins of the earth are being treated
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as indisputable facts.
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And you have God's chosen people, Israel and the Jews that are viciously demonized and
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anti-Semitism as a result is growing across the world.
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Good is being called evil and evil is being called good.
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And all of these things construct a worldview in our society that is anti-Christ, that
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is against Christ and it's being done so deliberately.
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And unfortunately, there are a great deal of Christians out there who shrug their shoulders
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at this and worse open themselves and their families up to taking in these lies.
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And by doing so, they fail to recognize the sheer power of the media to distort the
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worldview of a society.
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And the person who probably understood this the best was Hitler and Nazi Germany.
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And like many of you I find it astonishing that you had a civilized society in Germany
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that all of a sudden was so enveloped in this worldview that was so obviously evil,
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this ideology that where they saw atrocities being committed and they didn't shudder at
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it, they applauded that it was taking place.
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And when we consider how does that happen, it was no small part to the media that was,
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this was the worldview that they were promoting heavily.
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And Hitler learned that when he came into power that it was a vital tool of control and
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one that was so consequential that he likely wouldn't have gone very far if it hadn't been
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for the news media that was promoting what he was saying in his agenda.
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And it's funny, in the 1920s, the Nazis didn't have a whole lot of support in Germany
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at all.
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In 1928, you had the Nazi party got 3% of the German vote.
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There's three and 100 people supported what the Nazis were doing.
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And you fast forward four years and with the help of Nazi-controlled newspapers that depicted
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Hitler like a savior and his enemies as a cancer to society, that number became one in three.
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So it went from three in one hundred to one in three in four years.
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And that should shock each of us.
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And so that gave Hitler enough power, enough control over the parliament within Germany
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because there was a lot of political parties in Germany at that period of time.
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So it gave him the power to urge the president at that time demand that he'd be made the
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chancellor of Germany, he'd be appointed to that position.
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So that's how he had risen to power.
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But in 1933, when Hitler was appointed to be chancellor of Germany, one of the first objectives
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that he had was to develop this stranglehold over the German press because at that time,
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the Nazis only controlled 3% of the 4,700 newspapers within Germany.
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And they did this by arresting publishers who had dissenting views.
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They destroyed printing press equipment of independent papers.
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They forced the sale of newspapers to Nazi organizations.
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They established the Reich Press Chamber in editor's law and these essentially ran all
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of the German press through this new filter that you had to get their permission to be a publisher.
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You couldn't be non-Aryan and you couldn't be married to somebody who was Jewish.
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And so that caused a lot of people to be siphoned from the German press at that time.
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And in addition to that, the Reich Press Chamber established publishing mandates and these
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publishing mandates were daily instructions that were sent to all of the press within Germany,
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telling them what topics they were allowed to write on, what topics they were not allowed
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to write on, and what angle they had to take in their coverage.
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So it was complete control over all of these publications.
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And yeah, so you had a lot of news publishers at that time that fled Germany and then it
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was very easy for the Nazis to scoop up those publications and gain that readership.
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And by 1944, the 4700 newspapers dwindled to 1,100, half of which were directly controlled
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by the Nazis and the other half were those that were willing to self-sensor, that were
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willing to comply with the guidelines.
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But what's important to consider is think about how that affected the German population,
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how much that would have distorted it.
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It's not as though they were getting in these foreign newspapers where they could get an
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alternative worldview.
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They were only presented one worldview.
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And all of the publishers agreed with that worldview.
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Everybody loved Hitler, everybody loved this agenda, or at least that's what they were
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being told.
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They were being told who was winning, who their enemies were, both internally and abroad.
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They decided what was disinformation.
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And I think you even see within our society today there's this simple human nature that
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says that we want to gravitate toward what's popular and what the vast majority of people
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are saying and believing.
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And there's many people today that have subscribed to ideologies that are absolutely ludicrous
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because not because they're actually popular, but because the news media is presenting them,
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because it's more popular than they are, and people are being taken captive by that.
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And I could talk to you about the propaganda minister within Germany who is very consequential
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on all of this.
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He was the one who was the head of this blacklist over Germany's press, and he actually called
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himself a defender of the German press, which I don't know if you know people that are
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lying tend to tell you the exact opposite of what is actually true.
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But yeah, he was very consequential in distorting the German worldview, and you had Hitler
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who actually wanted him to be his successor.
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And a famous quote from him is, make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and
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eventually they will believe it.
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It's not propaganda's task to be intelligent, it's task is to lead to success.
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The person that I actually want to focus on is a man by the name of Julius Striker,
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and he was the head of Hitler's favorite newspaper, as it was called, and Hitler actually
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had built display cases across Germany so that everyone could, which you can see in the
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photo here, could, it could get as much attention from the public as possible.
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And its whole goal was devoted to building anti-Semitic propaganda against the Jewish people.
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And yeah, it was Hitler's favorite paper, it was a short weekly edition, so it was only
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eight pages long, it was very short, it also included caricatures against the Jews.
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But his crafted lies against the Jews, painted them as sub-human criminal masterminds,
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that he fabricated reports and stories where Jews were connected to every unsolved murder.
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They were branded as sexual deviants and race polluters, bent on the defilements of German
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women.
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They were branded as power-hungry, people who were constantly enemies and conspiring against
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Germany.
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None of this was true, of course, but it was extremely effective.
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And one particularly egregious example of this with Julius Striker is surrounded the
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Exodus account, where he twisted this.
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So he told the German public, look at what the Jews did when they were in Egypt.
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They went into the land, they increased the number, and they were a plague on the society,
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and they went and they killed all the firstborns in Egypt.
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And yeah, you know, what's so sad is that the German public was so biblically illiterate
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that they didn't recognize that obvious twisting of scripture, and it wouldn't be the only
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time that Julius Striker had done that.
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In fact, while he quoted the Bible a lot, he in speeches would say that the Christianity
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was the main obstacle of the agenda that he was pushing against the Jews, because people
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with a biblical worldview could see through the lies and had a love for the Jewish people.
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And you know, after the war ended, you had a lot of Germany collectively that threw up
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their hands, and they said, we have no idea about, you know, everything that happened
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specifically is it related to the Holocaust.
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This was all, you know, beyond the purview of the public, but that wasn't actually true,
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because the German people, they heard the rhetoric in the speeches.
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They saw people being, you know, Jews, the eradication of the Jews being openly called
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for by these Nazi leaders.
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They saw Jewish people being shunned from public life.
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They saw them carted away into ghettos.
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They saw synagogues burn, Jewish books destroyed, and no doubt many of them saw executions.
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And they also, they read the articles from Julius Striker, who called the annihilation of
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the Jewish people not only justified, but a moral necessity, and following the war,
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Striker sat alongside Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg Trials to face earthly justice.
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And he walked into that room full of confidence.
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He said, I'm a businessman, I'm a publisher, I'm not involved in the military or military
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decisions.
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There is no chance that I'm going to be found guilty alongside all these Nazi leaders,
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and he was absolutely wrong.
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The trial concluded that Striker's newspaper propaganda played a vital role in the implementation
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of the Holocaust, and he was found guilty of crimes against humanity and was publicly
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hanged.
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And I want you to consider that conclusion for a moment because that's a big deal that
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a newspaper publisher was found guilty of crimes against humanity because the trial had
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no choice but to acknowledge that the media's role in manipulating public opinion was so
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consequential and dangerous that it directly enabled the Nazi's ability to carry out atrocities
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without societal pushback.
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And that's what's really important to understand.
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That is the impact that the news media can have on a society's worldview.
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And a free press is exceptionally important.
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America's founding fathers understood the importance of a free press.
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It's vital to a free society.
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But when the news media is ideologically driven, it no longer cares about reporting truth,
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it focuses shifts to shaping the public's worldview to go along with that particular
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ideology.
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And if you flash forward to today, we can see this vividly in our news groups specifically
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again as it relates to the Jewish people and now the nation of Israel.
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And I want to quote from a person named Maddie Friedman, and he was a reporter and editor
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for the Associated Press.
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And the Associated Press, it's very large, it's used by thousands of news organizations.
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But he was in the Jerusalem Bureau from 2006 to 2011.
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And the shift that he witnessed, not only in the Associated Press, but also in the time
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CNN, BBC, and many others was very startling.
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And he said, news decisions were increasingly being made by people who are not interested
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in explanatory journalism.
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They were activists.
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Activists had moved into key positions in the Bureau, and they had a very different idea
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of what press coverage was supposed to do.
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The question was increasingly, sorry, the question increasingly being asked was not what
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is going on.
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The question was, who does this serve?
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And that is an activist question.
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So when you look at the story, you don't ask, is it true?
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Is it not true?
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You ask, who is it going to help?
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Is it going to help the good guys, or is it going to help the bad guys?
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So if Israel in the story is a villain, then the story that makes Israel seem reasonable,
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rational, or sympathetic, needs to be downplayed to the extent possible or made to disappear.
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I think that many people in the journalism world today view their job not as explaining
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a complicated situation, but as swaying people toward the correct political conclusion.
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When the journalists become activists, then no one can understand what's going on because
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the story itself is fake.
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And I would like to reiterate again that this is the former editor of the Associated Press
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and thousands of news publications pay a great deal of money to be able to use Associated
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Press articles on their website.
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And many of them are also conservative groups, conservative groups like Newsmax and Breitbart.
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And that should startle you again because you may be reading a conservative news group,
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and you're not reading conservative news at all.
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You're reading news that is incredibly biased.
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And so it's important to note, and these news publications, specifically the conservative
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ones, should reject that.
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You know, these filler stories may be more convenient, but you're undermining the truth
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of your publication.
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And David Freeman also highlighted, sorry, David Freeman, he was in the Ambassador to Israel,
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actually, US Ambassador to Israel, Maddie Friedman.
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He also highlighted a story from 2008, as he was working as an editor in the Associated
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Press, and Israel, the Prime Minister at that time, had presented a peace agreement to
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the Palestinians now, like all the other agreements that Israel's tried to make with the Palestinians,
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the Palestinians did end up rejecting it, but the Associated Press was hand-delivered
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information about this.
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And when they were hand-delivered the information, they were going to be the first to break this
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story, which is a big deal in the news world.
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And instead, the staffers were told to drop the story.
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And he said, quote, we were not allowed to cover it, because it would have made the
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Israelis whom we were trying to villainize and demonize seem like they were trying to
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solve the conflict on reasonable lines.
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That shows you how biased this media is.
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That shows you how biased all these media groups are.
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They're not willing to cover a big story, even if it benefits them, because it doesn't
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villainize the groups that they want to be villainized.
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And here's a quote also from him when he addresses the media's response to October 7th.
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And he called it a tense time in the news world for the ideologically driven press.
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You'll see why.
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He says, the massacre on October 7th was very problematic for the ideological strain that
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now controls a lot of the press, because it was counterintuitive.
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You're not supposed to sympathize with the Israelis.
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And they had no choice but to sympathize with the Israelis because of the heinousness of
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the actions that were taken against them.
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And that also should be stunning to all of us to look at.
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I mean, consider that, this horrible event had happened, where Israelis were massacred,
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they were tortured, whole families.
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This was horrific, and the news media looked at it as inconvenient, because it didn't paint
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Israel in a bad brush, and they had to publish something that would cause people to sympathize
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with the people who just faced this massacre again.
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That's horrific.
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And that's also why, less than a month later, they jumped at the opportunity, all of these
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news groups, to publish a story on an Israeli strike on a hospital in Gaza with 500 people
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are more killed.
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The only problem was the story wasn't true at all, because it turns out that a terrorist
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organization is not a reliable source of information.
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And yeah, I mean, they continue to do that, but yeah, you had, first of all, they did
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not hit the hospital, it hit the parking lot.
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500 people were not killed, and it was a misfired Hamas rocket, not an Israeli strike.
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But they all reported on it, and they all did very little to correct the record.
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With groups like the New York Times, you can still find their original article published
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that has this information, blaming this on Israel, and pushing this false information.
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And they've continued to publish Hamas propaganda throughout the war, including Hamas rubber
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stamp death tolls and claims of starvation.
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And they didn't mention that from October 23 to March of 2024, the IDF made approximately
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100,000 phone calls, dropped 1.3 million leaflets, sent 1.5 million text messages, and 17
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million voice recordings, and an effort to get gaseous civilians out of harm's way.
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They did not mention that.
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They did not mention that between October 2023 and August of 2025, Israel allowed and facilitated
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the entry of over 1.9 million tons of aid in Gaza.
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Because it doesn't villainize the Jewish state.
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And I could talk about Al Jazeera, which is Katari owned.
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This is an anti-Semitic nation and a state sponsor of terrorism.
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That when the IDF went into Gaza, they found that Al Jazeera had many of their staffers
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that were members of Hamas, and in addition to being members of Hamas, they also had direct
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lines of communication to Hamas leadership to be telling them what to publish, what not
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to publish, and what angle to take in their publishing.
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And we recently heard that as well, obviously, in Nazi Germany, that that's the propaganda
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control that it has over Al Jazeera.
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And this is a publication that has a very vastly growing audience.
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In the English-speaking world, it rivals the numbers of CNN, not that CNN is doing that
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great with regards to numbers right now, but they are growing rapidly.
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And that also is helped by Google.
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Because when you search any event going on in the Middle East, who do they put at the
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top of search results?
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That alone tells people that they should be trusted, even though obviously their connections
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to terrorism are obvious.
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And I remember having many conversations with Christians where they defended the fact
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that they read Al Jazeera.
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And I would give them the information about their connections to terrorism, and it wouldn't
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seem to matter because it was more about the popularity of Al Jazeera rather than whether
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or not what they were pushing is actually true.
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The popularity lends the credibility when it shouldn't.
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And the BBC also, I mean, it's been absolutely egregious with the BBC.
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In the first two months of the Israel Hamas war, they violated their own editorial guidelines
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over 1,500 times.
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They referred in the same period of time.
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They used the word war crimes and they applied it to Israel 18 times more than the terrorist
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organization, Hamas.
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They barbed their staffers from attending a march against anti-Semitism because they
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told them that it was too controversial for them to take part in.
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They have a mass exodus of Jewish staffers that left and they had 208 staffers, contributors
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and suppliers that sent a letter highlighting the hostility towards Jews among inside
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that organization.
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And this is a publicly funded broadcaster.
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I mean, this is a big deal.
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They sent a memo looking and seeking out people within the IDF who are willing to claim
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that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.
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That's not a group that is looking for the truth.
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That's a group that's looking for voices that will only align with what they're trying
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to push and how they're trying to change that worldview of society against the Jews.
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And there's more.
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I could bring up a whole lot more with them.
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But again, a publicly funded broadcaster in the UK and the CNN's no better, New York
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Times is no better, Times is no better, I mean, the list is extensive.
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And it's not only the demonization of Israel, it's the demonization of Jews as a whole.
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We saw in 2024 an Israeli team in the Netherlands, an Israeli soccer team.
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And when the Jewish people had exited after the tournament was over, there was a violent
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mob laying and waiting to hunt down Jews in the streets.
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And that's exactly what they did.
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And you had Jewish people that were hiding in store rooms.
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You had Israel that was sending evacuation planes.
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And I mean, it was absolutely horrific to watch the footage of it.
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And what was the response of the media?
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They blamed the Jews for being hunted in the streets.
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And the reason why I point to Israel and the Jews is because anti-Semitism is deeply
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satanic.
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It's rooted in a personal vendetta, a hatred that Satan has for the Jewish people.
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He knows that they're interwoven into God's plan of redemption.
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And he also knows that their future salvation is linked directly to his judgment.
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And that's why anti-Semitism and this mindset that comes with it is so incredibly irrational.
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It's not that it actually makes sense any of these arguments or accusations levied against
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them.
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It doesn't make sense.
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It defies logic.
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And that's because the origins of this hate is satanic.
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And it's actually biblical prophecy as well.
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Because God not only told us in advance that the modern state of Israel would be the target
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of the world.
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He also told us that individual Jewish people that were scattered in the diaspora would
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have a notorious reputation for the false accusations that would be laid against them.
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And you can read it in Ezekiel 36 says that they are taken up in the lips of talkers.
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They are an infamy of the people.
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And boy is Bible prophecy very precise and accurate in that because that is exactly what
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we've seen against the Jewish people.
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That's another example about how the Bible illuminates our understanding of these things.
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And with the understanding that Christians have about the world, people don't get that.
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I mean, you have more clarity about our world than the top and finest news analysts in the
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world because you don't have to be the expert.
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God is the expert.
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And we refer back to Him to see what He has to say about all of these things.
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And of course, as I mentioned at the beginning, this applies to many issues that are under
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the banner of this anti-god agenda.
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And increasingly these things are branded as political and we're told not to touch it
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as Christians, especially pastors from the pulpit.
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And that's an absolute mistake because they need to prepare people to be equipped to give
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an answer on all of these things.
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The media is willing to lie about abortion, sexuality, gender, family freedoms, the separation
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of church and state, which is not at all what they're claiming it is.
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It was actually a letter written by Thomas Jefferson that was about keeping the state's
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nose out of the church, not the other way around.
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But I digress.
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Open borders, climate change, and much, much more.
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Again, you don't have to be a climate scientist to know that the claims related to climate
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change are false.
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All you have to know is that what God's word has to say about the future, and what God's
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word has to say about the future has nothing to do with the earth being destroyed by mad
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made catastrophic climate change.
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So when you have people like Al Gore or AOC stand up and tell you that the world is going
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to end in X amount of years, because of this, you know as a Christian, you don't have to
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be an expert to know it's just not true.
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And so following that same trajectory that we talked about earlier, it doesn't matter
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if the story is true.
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It only matters if it serves an ideology in bending people's worldview.
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And even what has the appearance of being a straight news report is deeply manipulative.
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And I think a lot of people don't understand that they like to separate opinion from what's
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just a general report and they think that that can be trusted because it just looks like
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straight news.
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But the problem is that included in these articles, they are emitting critical context.
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They are using bias experts.
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They are distorting polling and analysis.
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They are explaining outright lies.
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And they use carefully chosen adjectives such as allegedly and claimed when they want
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the reader to cast out on a specific viewpoint.
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And all of these things work together to give an impression to that reader that when they
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finish that article, they come to the same conclusion that they wanted them to come to
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at the end of that article.
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So it's deeply manipulative in that.
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And if we're aware that someone is lying to us, common sense says that we should stop
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listening to them.
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If you had a neighbor that came up to you with information about your other neighbors
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and then you found out that it was a lie, you probably wouldn't be accepting them over
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for tea the next day.
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And we should trade it the same way with media organizations when we find that there are
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lies, when we find that there are inconsistencies with God's word, we should be pushing them
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aside completely and no longer using them as a point of reference.
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And I think a big part of it as well, it doesn't matter how long that they've been around,
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it just matters when we test it against God's word.
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And there's a lot of people, unfortunately, that are very arrogant about their level of
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discernment, they're puffed up in their own discernment.
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When we consume lies deliberately, boasting that we can see through it, that's such a dangerous
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game to play.
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It's so dangerous because it builds a mentality where you don't have to go back and search
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the scriptures daily on all these things over and over again when they come up.
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And Acts 17 is one of my favorite chapters in the Bible.
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And it contrasts two different groups of people, the Thessalonians and the Brians.
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And the Thessalonians were people who just trusted in their gut reaction.
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Paul went and preached to them and he told them about biblical prophecy.
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He told them how biblical prophecy had been fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.
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And they said, okay, well, I guess each of us will decide based on how we feel about
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what you just said and we'll go forward from there.
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And you had a lot of people who did come to salvation, but we even see in Paul's letters
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to the Thessalonians that their discernment level was very minimal because they trusted
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in that gut reaction.
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But conversely, you had the Brians.
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And Paul said that the Brians were more noble than those in Thessalonica, and that they
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received the word with all readiness of mind and searched the scriptures daily whether
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those things be so.
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And that's exactly what we should be doing as Christians, taking back every single one
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of these issues and playing it against scripture so we understand what scripture has to say
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about it.
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And don't just automatically assume that your, you know, spirit will speak within you
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and you'll just automatically know, you know, it requires actually doing the work.
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It requires because even Satan presents himself as an angel of light, just because we think
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we may be led in a direction where, oh, this is fine and this is not fine.
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When we actually go to God's word with that discernment, it's surprising how much you
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say, oh, that was my flesh or that was whatever it may be.
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And we really do need to rely on God's word for that.
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For the worldview of our society is being manipulated dramatically by news organizations.
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Christians grounded in a biblical worldview are without excuse.
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We have the answers provided to us.
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We know the history of the world and where we should stand on cultural issues.
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We know what the Bible says is coming.
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And we should be listening to news organizations that carry a biblical worldview without compromise.
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And that part is very important because there's a lot of news organizations today that carry
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the banner of Christian and are absolutely not.
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They have compromised to reach a broader audience of people.
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And by doing so, a little 11, 11, the whole lump, a little compromise, compromise, the
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whole publication.
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And it's good for nothing when you bend and manipulate scripture around the culture.
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You lose all of the impact that the gospel has and the truth has.
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People like to quote the verse that says about the woman caught in adultery where God had
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Jesus had stopped her from being condemned for that.
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But they forget to mention that he said, go forth and sin no more.
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That's what people need to hear.
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They need the hard truth.
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That's part of love is giving that.
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But news publications, Christian news publications should be doing is equipping us to be salt and
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light to our culture, equipping us to understand what's going on in the world so that we can
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relay that information to the other people that are around us and give a good answer on
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these things.
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And our pastors should be doing it too and not so concerned about whether or not the IRS
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likes that they're doing it because these are biblical issues that people need to hear.
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And we need to not be listening to those who are waging a war on a biblical worldview.