around if somebody doesn't have one crank it up a little bit brother and we're gonna be ready to go here let's pray again and we'll begin dear father we do thank you for this day for these people that you brought together we do pray god you'll bless all who hear this message today fill me with thy spirit god i do ask in jesus holy name amen Our text is in chapter 8 of Ecclesiastes. Who is as the wise man? And who knoweth the interpretation of a thing? Stand not in an evil thing. That is in regard to authority. Stand not in an evil thing. Don't let anybody stir up rebellion in you. Where the word of a king is, there is power. Authority that is. For he knoweth not that which shall be. Talking about man in general. For who can tell him when it shall be? Talking about his death. Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. Notice they misinterpret their experience. A man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. Though he think to know it, though a wise man think to know it, there's still a lot that he does not understand. Title of the message today is, The Manipulation of Memory. The Manipulation of Memory. When verse 3 says, Stand not on an evil thing, I'm reminded of Psalms 15. Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly and worketh righteousness. And notice this now, speaketh the truth in his heart. Do not lie to yourself. And then it says verse three, he that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbor, now notice, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor. It does not matter who started the slander, whether you started it or you're just repeating it, it's still wrong. And notice, in whose eyes a vile person is contemned, but he honoreth them that fear the Lord. God says if you want to have fellowship with him, which would speak of the rapture, it would speak of the judgment seat of Christ, it would speak of the coming millennial kingdom, it would speak of your answered prayer today and your abiding with Jesus. If you want fellowship with God, do not lie to yourself, do not backbite or slander or take up a reproach from somebody else, and make sure that you see vile people as vile, and you honor them that fear the Lord. There's people out there that want you to get verse 4 backwards. They want you to honor the vile. They want you to condemn or condemn those that fear God. They want to turn you against parents. You've got to listen to me. You've got to understand this. Young people, teenagers, every one of you, they want to turn you against your parents. Why? So they can bring in a one world government. It's very simple. It's very simple. So your authority of your parents will be lessened so you will now trust in the almighty state. That is what they want to do. They want to turn you against fathers because there's a little more strength there, a little more fear, a little more power of persuasion. They want to turn you against pastors, against churches that are trying to stand today. They will use witchcraft propaganda. They know how to give you false memories. In fact, Hollywood is utilizing more than people realize. They study hypnotism. They study propaganda. And when you're watching that nice little cute character, a lot is going on where memories are being implanted in you. If that sounds crazy, you really haven't studied this thing. You really haven't studied it. It's not hard to manipulate children. The Bible says in Ephesians that children are tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine. Every wind. It's very easy to manipulate a child. And God says He doesn't want us to be as children. All they have to do is bad mouth the father. A wife just has to roll her eyes in the presence of the children. When the father leaves, she just has to utter a little word and act like she's persecuted. And I'm gonna tell you, it will manipulate your, the pastor, just bad mouth the pastor and you could turn children against the pastor. Now, God warns you that if anybody stumbles, it might be easy to do. It might be tempting to say, I want to get these children on my side. It might be tempting to manipulate their experience, their memory. But God says that there's hell coming for those that would do such a thing. You're not to be as children, even as adults. You are not to let people control your mind and your interpretation of experience. Simply because you believe something against your parent, your father, your husband, your wife, or pastor. Simply because you really feel that this is what you have experienced. Now listen to me carefully. It does not free you from accountability at the judgment seat of Christ. You say, but I really felt that that's what I was going through. I really interpreted this thing. I really had a memory in my mind. That does not free you from accountability at the judgment seat of Christ. Proverbs 17 says, the Lord trieth the hearts. He will let you go through certain things to prove whether or not you're going to be obedient and godly or not. Verse 4 says, a wicked doer giveth heed to false lips, and a liar giveth ear to a naughty tongue. You said, well, she convinced me of this. She brainwashed me. It doesn't matter. You have a responsibility. You have a responsibility to follow that which is good. See the way propaganda works is they prey upon lusts that are already there. Fears and insecurities and things that are already there. They prey upon your sin nature. God plainly tells us that if you know you're doing wrong, you will get many stripes at the judgment seat of Christ. If you know you're following a liar and you're clear with it in your mind, you will get many stripes at the judgment seat. But the Bible says, our Lord says, he that knew not, he that didn't even know, but it was still wrong, but he didn't know it, you get few stripes, but you still have accountability. This is what I'm trying to show you. The Lord says if you're angry with your brother without a cause, you get judged. And the more you act on that anger, the more severe the judgment. So you want to be really careful about the anger you're carrying around. You want to be really careful about what you think that church did to you. You want to be really careful about what you think that pastor did to me. My daddy, you don't understand what he did. You want to be careful. about that kind of thing. Don't let people turn you against godly authority. This is what Solomon means when he says, stand not in an evil thing. So how does your experience affect you? I got a lot to say today. I'll try not to keep you longer than normal, but I want you to think a lot today. I want you to think deeply about some things. How does experience, you go through experiences, how does that affect your life? Well, it's through your memory, it's through your remembrance of that experience, right? So the decisions that people make are often based on their memories, not their experiences per se. The memory of the experience. But these experiences can be wrongly interpreted. and they can even be wrongly remembered. Either way, that is going to affect your life and it can be devastating. You can have a wrong interpretation of a memory and you'll carry that thing all throughout your life and it will affect how you view men. It can affect how you view women. It can affect your marriage. It can affect how you view God. You must be very careful with how you remember things. Did it really happen? Have I interpreted it correctly? We see in Ecclesiastes 8, who is the wise man and who knoweth the interpretation of a thing? And a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. We see that we're very limited. Those that are truly wise, they're very limited in what God has revealed and what we're able to understand. We can only see so far. But the Bible says where the word of a king is, there's power. There's this authority. And praise God, we've got the word of a king. Not just King James, but we've got the God of King James. We have the King James Bible and that is God's word. Where the word of a king is, there is power. There is authority. And this is what I'm trying to show you today. I do not want you leaning to experience and to your memory even, certainly not to your feelings, more than you should. More than what is proper. And we want to understand that our final authority, our ultimate authority, is the Word of God. It is the most powerful thing to stand upon. There's an obvious place for experience and memory. Don't get me wrong. You just have to be very careful. You just have to be very careful. Look at verse 11. Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of man is fully set on them to do evil." What happened here? There are people and they are interpreting their experience. They're not interpreting the Word of God. God says, you do that, you'll die. God says, you do this, you'll miss the kingdom. God says, you do this, you're going to be judged. But you don't listen to the Word of God, we look at our experience. We say, well I did that, nothing happened. So you begin to interpret experience and that becomes your Bible. I will say that people's experience today has pretty much become the Bible to them. That is their absolute standard. Their judgment about their experiences. That's how they go through life. That's a sad way to go through life, folks. That's a sad way. Past experience can be wrongly interpreted. You can look at what appears to be a lack of consequences and assume that you're getting away with evil. You're not getting away with evil. You're not. But it looks like that. The experience, the appearance of things. The devil tempts you to look at it in a certain way. And you think, I'm getting away with this. God doesn't care. He doesn't care what I do, what I think, what I watch, how I dress, how I treat authority. He doesn't care. I'm not getting in trouble. Now listen, there are many things that you should forget and not look back on. But other things you should remember, and you need your brain to work clearly about these things. I want to show you for a moment some things you should be remembering, okay, according to the Word of God. I'm going to run through it real quick. The Bible says, Remember the Creator in the days of thy youth. Don't forget your Creator, children. When you've got your youth and you've got your energy and you seem invincible, don't forget the Creator. Don't forget God. Remember the poor, says the Bible. especially the poor Christians that are being persecuted. Remember them that are in bonds, the poor Christians that are suffering around the world, in jail, prison. Remember from whence thou art fallen, says God. Remember them who have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God, says the Bible. Don't forget them. Remember the days of old. Ask your fathers and the elders about them, says God. Remember the commandments. Oh, boy, that's a big one right there. Remember God when you're prospering, says the Bible. Remember what God did to Miriam, says God. He stops everything right in the middle of the Bible and says, hey, remember what I did to Miriam. What did Miriam do? She rebelled against authority, thought she had a good excuse. Remember Lot's wife. Two women you ought to remember in the Bible, says God. Remember Lot's wife. Remember she looked back at Sodom. That's why she didn't grow, that's why she didn't obey, and that's why she was judged. Jesus said in the last days, remember Lot's wife, because there's going to be a lot of you that are going to be just like her. Remember to give diligence to make your calling and election sure, so you can enter into the kingdom," says Peter. Remember that the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits. Don't forget that. Paul says, call to remember the former days. Call to remembrance the former days in which after you were illuminated, you endured a great fight of afflictions. What is God saying? He's saying, I want you to remember how God delivered you. I want you to remember how when you obeyed God, He got you through the trial. Don't forget that. You need to remember that experience. And this is what Paul says in Romans 5. Tribulation works patience. It gives you the opportunity to be patient. And then when you are patient, then you have experience. And then that gives you hope for the next trial. What is that experience? It's the experience that, you know what, I was patient and God blessed me. You've heard of the patience of Job. You saw how it ended up in the end. So when we read the Bible, when we learn from others' experiences, when we learn from our experience, that's a good thing, if you have it properly interpreted by the light of God's word. But beware of thinking that you could lean on your experience and your memory of that experience apart from the Scriptures. You can be very deceived about what you think you experienced. God's Word is the lamp to our feet, not your experience. It says in Jeremiah 10, O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself. It is not in man that walketh to direct his step. Don't think you can get away from that Bible and say, well, I've been through so much in my life. I know where to go. I know whether to turn right or turn left. No, you stay with the Bible. You check everything by God, and all my ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path through the Scripture. But if you start getting over into the realm of what seems right, what feels right, based upon your interpretation of your experience, you're on dangerous ground. Oh, you are dangerous. You are in a mess. Peter had much greater experiences than you will ever have until we see the Lord in person. He had wonderful memories. But what did he conclude? I remind you, 2 Peter 1, we have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. He said, I saw, I saw his majesty with my own eye. And this voice which came from heaven, we heard when we were with him in the Holy Mount. He heard God speak to the Son of God. That is amazing. What an experience, what an experiential, empirical, experience. But notice what he says in verse 19. We have also, also a more sure word of prophecy. I like that. What is he saying? He says God did not just give you experience. He did not just give you the five senses to go through life and try to understand things. You have something more sure than your eyes, more sure than your ears, more sure than the sense of touch or smell. You have the sure word of prophetic scriptures. We have The infallible word of God, where the word of a king is, there is power. Amen. You better remember that. You can be deceived in your interpretation, even your recollection of your experiences. You can be deceived by your own self, by others. Isaac was deceived in his experience. One of his senses was growing dim, his eyes. But he said, no, I'm going to trust to the sense of touch. I'm going to trust to the sense of my ears, even smell. He used all his other senses, but he was still deceived. He was still deceived. You can be deceived by others. The Antichrist is going to bring all kinds of false prophets. They're going to bring all kinds of lying wonders and all kinds of things to deceive people. What about Eve? Eve was deceived in the realm of her experience. We talked about that not long ago. Notice Genesis 2.9. Out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. Now, if you were a scientist, you do an experiment, you'd say, well, every tree is good for food. Look at them. They're all pleasant to the sight. Every single one of them looks good to my eyes. So the devil said, well, why not that tree over there? And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes, what does she say? She said, in my experience, every single time I see a tree, it's pleasant to the eyes. And this tree is pleasant to the eyes. It fits the pattern. We don't believe in exceptions, says Eve. I believe on probability, says Eve. I have a pattern here. Every single one is good. Every time I do this action, I get this result. Why would I believe then this exception? God must be lying. My father must be lying about this. Beware, children. You're going to lean to your eyes. You're going to lean to your understanding and your sense based on experience and say, well, everybody else is doing this. And look, they seem happy. They're not getting judged. Even though God says, when I come out of the sky, I'm going to judge everyone that has strange apparel on. That's what God says. In Zephaniah, read it. But you say, how can this be? Well, that's exactly what Eve had a problem with. seeing something out of the ordinary based on revelation, because God says, I know it goes contrary to everything else, but it's true. It's true. You better believe revelation over your experience. 2 Peter 3 says, In the last days, knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, not the word of God, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, I mean this has been going on and on and on, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. What are they saying? They're saying the pattern in our lives. Just like Eve could say, Every tree I see is good for food. Every tree that I see is pleasant to my eyes. And this tree is pleasant to my eyes. So I believe my father is wrong. What are these people saying? They're saying generation after generation, Jesus does not come. There's no worldwide judgment. Based upon that pattern of history that we plainly see with our own eyes, we conclude there will be no second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not in the way that it's been interpreted by Bible literalists. This is the error of the old doctrine of uniformitarianism. with the geological ages, where they believed that there's been no flood, no worldwide flood that interrupted history. This doctrine of uniformity is the assumption that some natural laws and processes that operate in our present day scientific observations have always operated in the universe in the past and they apply everywhere in the universe. The doctrine of uniformity, that's what Eve fell for. Eve says, I have a doctrine of uniformity. Every one of these trees are uniform. How dare you say that there's one that's the exception? How logical is that? So the uniformitarians believe that there will be no supernatural invasion. There's no miracles that interrupt the natural order. There's no past judgment of God, and therefore there is no future judgment. And I'm going to tell you, you might not be as complex in your uniformitarianism, but I'm going to tell you, you have a danger of falling into this more than you realize, and this is what Ecclesiastes 8 is talking about. Everything's uniform. Whether I sin or whether I don't sin, nothing changes. I still get paid. Things go all right. Everything goes on as normal. God says, beware. Beware of your experience. Beware of interpreting your experience in this way. And even when God does send judgment, isn't it strange that people still hold to uniformitarianism? Remember the Philistines reasoned this curse. Did we just get judged because we had the ark? Or was this just a chance thing that happened? And you get the backslider out here. What does the backslider say? Oh boy, that hurt. That stung. Oh, this is bad. It must have been a chance though. I don't think God just invaded nature. I think he's a deist and he's far away somewhere and he doesn't care whether I do this or not. Why does he care about things? All he cares about is the heart. And I'm telling you something, you become a uniformitarian. There were uniformitarian women in the days of Jeremiah that worshiped the queen of heaven and made cakes to her. And you know what they said? They said, now listen Jeremiah, first of all our sissy husbands Let us do this. Second, when we make cakes to the Queen of Heaven, things go well, and we prosper, and we have food to eat. But anytime we stop, and listen to these fundamentalist prophets, anytime we stop, things start going bad again. I'm going to tell you something. That was a very, very bad interpretation of their experience, wasn't it? The devil will cause you to see things in that way. You have to be very careful. You have to be very careful. Even in regard to lesser offenses, God teaches in the Bible. Take something such as tithes and offerings. God tells us in Malachi that they should interpret their experience in the big picture. They were like, well hey, we've been delaying our tithes, we've been withholding tithes and offerings, and nothing really bad's happening. God writes and says, really? Are you sure about that? Look in the big picture. Every time you get it home, something comes up and there's a major bill, and I blow upon it, and I keep blowing. And right when you get it in a bag, it's like you have a bag of hole. He says, look at this thing in the big picture. You're not looking at it right. Look at it in the long run and see, I am not mocked. This is what God's trying to say. Whether it's in big things, whether it's in little things, beware of interpreting your experience wrongly. Beware of Ecclesiastes 8 verse 11, because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily. You think you're getting away with it. Oh, no, you're going to pay up, says God. You're going to pay up one way or another. People say, should I tithe? Oh, you will tithe. You will tithe, says God. Trust me, you will tithe, says God. You will pay God whatever it is. You will pay God the time. You will pay God everything that you misuse upon this earth. The psalmist was stumbled almost by looking only at the immediate and temporal. He said, now why are these people prospering? This doesn't look right. Solomon in Ecclesiastes says, you know, some things according to experience and observation are very imbalanced. I mean, here's a righteous man and it happens unto him according to the wicked man. And here's a wicked man and it happens unto him according to the righteous man. And it can be very confusing if you try to follow your experience. I feel sorry for anybody who's trying to go through this life with experience and not God's interpretation of experience. Because we're only in this world, we're not here very long. And Paul says some people get it now, others it follows on to the judgment seat of Christ. So you must understand God is going to invade this world and then everything will be just. Everything will be balanced the way it should be. But not now. Not now. There's strange things that occur. You can't lean to your experience to interpret right from wrong. Am I making sense today? Look at 2 Corinthians 10. This is all summed up in the New Testament. Stick to the Word of God. Stick to the Word of God, not your experience merely. In 2 Corinthians 10, do you look on things after the outward appearance? Well, of course we look at things after the outward appearance. Of course we have to make some judgments based on experience and observation and testing. What does he mean here? He means, is this your main? Is this your main, absolute, infallible source of revelation? You're in trouble if it is. John 7, judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment. That means things are not always as they appear. Isaiah 11, talking about our Lord. He shall not judge after the sight of His eyes, and He's perfect, neither reprove after the hearing of His ears. Well, of course the Lord used His eyes, and of course He used His ears. What is He saying? God was perfect in the flesh, and the Lord Jesus, who had no sin nature, was nevertheless perfect, and He followed the things He could not see, the invisible, which is our God. He followed the scriptures. He obeyed the scriptures. It is written, says our Lord Jesus. John 20, Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed. Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed. Don't get that wrong. It's not saying believe something that is not there. It's not saying that you're blessed when you just have blind faith in anything. That's not what it's saying. It's saying that When God gives you enough evidence, but you still say, I have to see it for myself with my own eyes, then that's wrong. If you say, I won't trust God unless I see it with my own eyes, that's wrong. That's wrong. Because that Word of God has given us so much proof by fulfilled prophecy to show that that book is divine. I trust that book because I know it predicts the future and there's no book like it on the face of the earth. You cannot show me another book like that on the face of the earth. So therefore we trust to that book. We trust that this is God speaking in that book regardless of what we see. Regardless of what we see. There are unseen things that we see through faith in the Word. That's not blind faith. It says in 2 Corinthians 5, we walk by faith, not by sight. It means our eyesight, based upon the Word of God, is what we lean to. This is our emphasis, our priority, our foundation. It doesn't mean there's no use for appearance or experiences or memory rightly interpreted by the light of the scriptures. It means that the second coming of Christ, I cannot see it right now, I cannot feel it, but it's coming because the Word of God says so. A city is coming down out of heaven. They say, you really believe that? I say, yes, indeed. It's coming. It's coming. He's coming on a white horse, flaming fire. I believe it. I believe it because God said it. I believe it because God said it, even though I can't see it, I can't touch it. For thousands of years, there were people that have been called the empiricists, empiricists. And they've been opposed by people with more discernment and sense. The empiricists believed that knowledge was only what they can experience by the five senses. There were some in ancient Greece, quite a few, and they were opposed by wiser men. There was a revival of this empiricism in the Renaissance. If you go to college today, you will spend four years studying all the empiricists. all of the blind bats, all the deists. You'll study Hume and all of these men. You won't study Butler. You won't study the men that shut down the age of reason and placed you squarely upon revelation. You'll study Hume. You'll study all of these deists and materialists and empiricists. Here's the problem with this empiricism. What about virtue? You believe in virtue? You say, I just believe what I can see. Really? See with your eyes? What about virtue? What about the concept of virtue? What about honesty? What about duty? What about love? That's why Bill Gates, I repeat it over and over, he says, when my daughter tells me she loves me, he says, it is kind of hard for me because I know that's really no more valuable than a burp. It's just a physical thing, process. Why? Because he's an empiricist. What about truth? What about proof? All of these are beyond the realm of mere natural senses. That's why many physicists, great famous physicists became Christians, or at least got rid of their empiricism. They said, when I do an experiment, I form a hypothesis, I test it, and then I validate whether it's true or false. They said, whoa, wait a second. That's not empirical. I just went into the realm of the non-material. And that's when they realized materialism is insanity. In fact, how does one establish the claim of empiricism empirically? that only empirical evidence can be true, that there's no other source of truth. Empirically validate that for me. We know that contradictions are self-evidently false, regardless of what Buddhists and New Agers and Satanists say. How do you know that? It's a self-evident truth. When God told Noah it was going to rain, this went against history, didn't it? Had it ever rained before? No. It went against all experience. It went against all sight. It went against how things seemed and appeared. But Noah walked by the things that are not seen, not the things that are not real, the things that are not seen at the moment yet. And he moved with fear and saved his house, and guess what? It started raining for the first time, and the whole world flooded, and only Noah and his family, upon all the thousands and thousands of people on the earth, only they were saved. See, you can judge something rashly and foolishly, and it can seem or appear logical to you. There's a way that seemeth right, but the end thereof is death. Take an ox. You give it lots of feed. And he interprets empirically, things are going pretty good for me. Wow, this is great. I've never had a better time. And he doesn't realize he's getting what? Fattened up for the slaughter. Do you know God uses the same example in Proverbs? He says, you think because things are going well, that there is no God of judgment, that I'm not a God who judges sin. God says, I'm just fattening you up. You interpreted your experience wrong. You can't look out here on a farm and see when you fatten up a cow, fatten up a bull, that it's not always because his future is good. They just reported the other day that narcissists are in general happy people. Now, they're selfish and not really happy. They're not deeply happy and they're certainly not enduringly happy. but they are selfishly happy in a type of delusion. They're happy-go-lucky, all is well, there is no hell, like little butterflies fluttering all around, giggling and laughing about this and that and talking about non-essential things. You can be happy but be like an ox on the way to hell, on the way to slaughter. God says in Jeremiah 51, in their heat, that means their happiness, their drunkenness, I will make their feasts and I will make them drunken that they may rejoice. And sleep a perpetual sleep and not wake, saith the Lord, but I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter. This is when you see people party and they're saying, hey, we're having fun. You ought to follow me. Belshazzar tried that, didn't he? While their meat was yet in their mouth, says God, the wrath of God came upon them and slew the fattest of them. Along this line, Church of God, are open doors always God telling you to walk therein. You say, I wonder what I should do. I wonder. And all of a sudden tomorrow, a door opens. Does that mean God opened the door for you? Or put it this way, does it mean God opened the door and wants you to walk in it? No, that's just it. You might as well just play the lottery or something. You might as well just roll dice to see what you're going to do tomorrow. If a door opens, that must be God. Likewise, if a door closes, or you have a hindrance, does that mean it's not of God? Tell that to the four men who saved that lame fellow and got him healed. The door was closed. They couldn't get him to Jesus. They could have went home, watched TV. What did they do? They took the roof off. They said, listen, a hindrance doesn't mean it's not God's will. Take the roof off. Overcome the obstacle. And then God says, well done. Now that's faith. What about that Canaanite woman trying to get her daughter healed of devil possession? She had lots of obstacles, didn't she? Well, she was even insulted. Ignored. But she kept on forging through. And guess what? Hey folks, obstacles don't mean something's not God's will. Open doors don't mean something is God's will. It can mean that. It can mean that. The point is don't assume. Don't assume it. Test it with the word of God. If you know something's right, if you know something's right, do it and understand that the devil will allow you to be confused. Try to get you confused. Putting aside now for the moment your interpretation of your experience, let's up the ante a little bit here. Can you even trust fully and absolutely that you have experienced exactly what you think you have experienced? I'm not just talking about your interpretation of it. Has your memory been colored of your experience? Do you know in this day and age, if you see something in real life, you still have to walk away and say, what did I see? Were they actors? You see somebody protesting with you and said, I've seen one of ours and he totally did a racist thing or a horrible thing. But really, it was an actor. An agent provocateur. It was an actor. I'm not saying everything around you is staged, but a lot of it might be. A lot of it might be. Did it really happen? People say, I saw it on video. I saw a video of it. Wow. Talk to some of these men about the technology we have today for altering video. Wow. They can make you say something right there on video and you see it with your own eyes. You know the media can take things out of context and make you say something you didn't say. But now with this video editing, wow. So listen, you say I saw this with my own eyes. Well, you still have to be careful what you saw. And not only that, did you even remember correctly what you saw? You don't have an absolute recorder of everything that happened when you walk away from something. Every minute that you walk away from something, there is the danger that those things become blurry, see? And your memory about the memory can become part of what you think is the reality. Listen to what Paul says. Not only do you have limitations and a deceitful heart, but there are deceivers out there who know this about memory. In Galatians, Paul says, O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you that you should not obey the truth? See, this is something a lot of people miss. Paul through the Holy Ghost is teaching us the reality of witchcraft. Do you see that? He's saying that Christians can be bewitched. Do you think he's just speaking hyperbole? I don't think so. I think Paul is saying there are deceivers that can use witchcraft. Hypnosis is a type of witchcraft. It's a type of suggestion. When you see Simon the Sorcerer bewitching the people, he gave out that he was some great one and everybody followed him. That was a type of witchcraft. Hitler used it. People use it every day in the celebrity world, in the radio world. The Bible said in the last days, Jeremiah 51, the nations are mad. The nations are mad. So I ask you, teenager, who hath bewitched you that you don't obey the truth? I ask you, young lady, who hath bewitched you that you don't obey the truth? I ask you, man of God, who hath bewitched you that you do not obey the truth? Are you sure nobody has bewitched you? In the last days, everybody's going to be mad to some degree. If you're not careful, the nations are mad. I believe there's people out there that want the whole world, at least all Americans, to be full of dementia. Why? Because you're easily controlled, easily manipulated. Here's Eureka Alert in Nature Magazine, a study in 2016. Cannabinoids induce memory loss through the decrease in energy of the neurons. An amazing study, what they found out. And it's not just the THC, it's the cannabinoids also that are actually causing memory impairment. Amazing. Here's Molecular Psychiatry, 215, telling true from false. Cannabis users show increased susceptibility to false memories. Cannabis users have an increased susceptibility to memory distortions even when abstinent and drug-free, suggesting a long-lasting compromise of memory and cognitive control mechanisms involved in reality monitoring. Memory is one of the most frequent identified as being negatively affected by cannabis. So you've gone out here, you lived in a world where you smoked pot, you smoked marijuana, and you did it every day for a while. Listen, you cannot be sure what you experienced in life. You understand? Not just when you're stoned. Your whole concept of memory and experience has been tainted to some degree. There's people out there that want you to smoke pot. They want this to be widespread around our land. Why? Because now you can control the memories of people. You can make them, with propaganda, easily think that certain things happened that didn't. I've seen stoners come and say, yeah, you remember so and so happened. That did not happen, but a stoner thinks it happened. He totally turned the memory upside down. Not just while he stoned. So beware of drugs. Smoking leads to memory lapses, rapid declines in brain function. Alcohol, here's a headline, mashed up memory, how alcohol speeds up memory loss. I'm telling you, these things that Paul said you should never be under the power of anyway, you should be filled with the Holy Ghost, not drugs. These things are messing up your mind in ways that you don't even realize. And then, not only do you have drugs everywhere, nicotine, alcohol, Marijuana and worse things. What are all these worse things doing to your brain and mind and memory? But notice this, everybody's wanting you to meditate now. Everybody wants you to do yoga and meditation. And then they're trying to disguise it as mindfulness. They call it mindfulness meditation now. Same old garbage, same old garbage. It's rooted in Buddhism. What they're saying in mindfulness meditation is your thoughts and your feelings are observed as if from a distance without judging them good or bad. So you sit and whatever passes through your brain, you observe it. What am I feeling now? That's what some people do, they just sit there all day and let whatever wander. But you don't say, hey, that's bad, don't think about this. See, when you say that is bad, that's a bad thought, I'm gonna cast it down, you're now in control. But when you say, no, no, I'm not gonna judge it good or bad, just let it go wherever it wants to wander. Folks, now you're getting controlled by devils, you understand that? You're getting controlled by devils. And not only that, you become very susceptible to false memories. Psychological Science 2015, increased false memory susceptibility after mindfulness meditation. Memories become less reliable. No wonder this is entering into churches all over the place. No wonder they want you to pray and worship God and have these times when you sit in a corner and do your mindful meditation that's not mindful at all. It's not like Isaac meditating. It's not like Isaac meditating in the field. Isaac was thinking about scripture. He wasn't just allowing thoughts to just pour through his head. And then folks, you not only have this wicked meditation, you not only have these drugs, but you have the food supply today. Toxicology letters. It says glutamate and aspartate impair memory retention and damage hypothalamic neurons in adult mice. This is MSG, these fake sweeteners and things that's in all the food and all the restaurant food. It has about 80 different names. They kicked me out of Walmart for carrying a video camera in there and looking at just about everything in there was full of glutamate. Protect your mind. You only got one, folks. Protect your brain. You just go out here and just eat whatever somebody gives you and puts in a package, you're going to have trouble. And you're going to have dementia pretty quick before you even know it. Experimental physiology says resistant exercise reduces memory impairment induced by monosodium glutamate in male and female rats. So now there's some evidence that you can have resistant exercise and combat some of this. The first thing you want to do is resist it. Go without it. Avoid it. But how many people are getting resistant exercise? It's also true that olive oil, cinnamon, and other antioxidants help combat the MSG in the brain. But how many people are getting these biblical antioxidants? How many people are getting enough olive oil and cinnamon and things with vitamin C and all of these other things? How many people are getting the olive leaf and the these important antioxidants, not many, not many, not in the amounts they should be. And then what about heavy metals that are everywhere? And dental fillings and all kinds of other places. Vaccines everywhere. The National Organization for Rare Disorders says there may be behavioral and neurological changes associated with overexposure to mercury poisoning, of course, such as excitability and quick-tempered behavior, lack of concentration, and loss of memory. Even hallucinations. Symptoms associated with Mad Hatter Syndrome include memory loss, abnormal excitability, And then junk food in general full of trans fats. Dr. Beatrice Golomb, University of California, says trans fats were most notably linked to worse memory in young and middle-aged men during their working and career-building years. Continuing with junk food. Newsroom at UCLA says, this is your brain on sugar. UCLA study shows high fructose diet sabotages learning and memory. Eating a high fructose diet, and it's in everything, in everything. Everything is full of high fructose corn syrup and MSG. Eating a high fructose diet over the long term alters your brain's ability to learn and remember information. God, help us. What are we saying, folks? We're saying, do everything you can to preserve the brains of your children. Because you let them get to where they can't think anymore, and they can't learn, and they can't remember. They're sitting ducks for other people to come in and tell them, this is what happened. This is what happened, see. In other words, they're set up for brainwashing. Scientific American in 2014. Notice this now. The way kids learn causes them to generate more false memories than adults. Why did Paul say, don't be as children, toss to and fro with every wind of doctrine? Did you experience something or did you experience somebody telling you this is what you experienced? Now every single person will say, I know what I saw. I know what I experienced. Scientific American says children are notoriously unreliable witnesses. See, I began to think about this not long ago. You watch some documentaries or news stories about kids that have been parental alienated against a father. And they've gone on the nightly news and said, my father did this, my father did this, my father. They were fully convinced that these things happened. But then when all of a sudden the father is able to get control back over within a couple of weeks. It's like when you get rescued from a cult. We just saw something the other day about a girl in Dallas that was gonna go become a Muslim. And then she got rescued by this people that break you free from a cult. And all of a sudden they wake up and they say, wow. Suddenly now, I see things totally different. Now, it might not be an immediate process. There are things that I'm still looking at and evaluating and realizing, wait a second. And I'm finding some holes. And I'm clearing up those things, you understand. I'm realizing that I had some extra details and things that were not properly remembered. You might have carried things from 10 years old. Some of them are not dangerous. Some of them might be dangerous to how you treat others. Ottgaard and his colleagues showed participants pictures of scenes, including a classroom, a funeral, and a beach. Seven- and eight-year-old children consistently reported seeing more objects that were not in the pictures than adults did. When talking to children, for example, lawyers should try to avoid giving out clues to jog their memory or using a specially descriptive language, which could trigger activation of the pattern-making system in the brain that contributes to false memories. The Inquisitive Mind, issue 37, says, lab studies have shown that people can create rich and compelling false memories, even for highly negative events. In other words, you say this thing was really serious and highly negative. There's no way I remember that wrongly. In legal cases, these events are sometimes remembered as a repeated experience. How can this be? In other words, you go through something and you remember it for 50 years that you experienced like weekly or monthly. And all of a sudden, when you really sit down and think about it, you realize, wait a second, that didn't happen over and over again. Can people create false memories of events that they believe happened to them numerous times? The McMartin Preschool in California was a complex case in the 1980s which involved multiple child sexual abuse allegations that were later deemed to be false. This was a hysteria that broke out all throughout California. for many years. The case started with one child's report growing to over a hundred reports from children enrolled that year and former students. I mean, it spread everywhere. Yeah, I remember. Yeah, I remember that. To start, the statement from the first allegedly abused child was made by a parent who later was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, whatever that is. After this statement, the police sent a letter to 200 families. In this letter, parents were warned that their children could have also been abused and were also requested to ask their children specific questions concerning the matter. However, research shows that parents often unintentionally ask children questions in a suggestive manner that leads to false reports. This is shown by the fact that children can eventually start to believe and remember the suggested events. Here's some of the studies on that. Additionally, interviews with children conducted by social workers were rather suggestive. Many children in the case went along with these suggestive prompts, leading their testimonies to contain some bizarre elements, for instance experiencing satanic rituals, seeing witches fly in brooms, and children being flushed down toilets. The McMartin preschool is not an exceptional case. That's scary. One possibility is that children merely acquiesced to the investigators suggestions. But another even more disturbing possibility is that some of the children came to truly believe what they were alleging despite its falsity. Experimenters suggest to participants that false and true events happen to them in their childhood and to increase the credibility of the claims that their parents have confirmed this. After this phase, participants must report everything they can remember about all these childhood experiences. On average, over several studies, approximately 30% of participants indicate that they remember the false event. Research has shown that in children, negative false events are easier to implant than neutral ones. Wow, that is really scary. Throughout this brief discussion, we have shown that it is possible to implant false events in children's memory. Scientific American 2016, just because you're absolutely confident you remember something accurately doesn't mean it's true. Time Magazine, when your brain makes stuff up. Time, creating false memories in mice brains and yours. This is really scary. It goes beyond just propaganda. Scientists are implanting false memories in mice, making them actually afraid to enter a certain room or doorway because of manipulation in the cells of the brain. Wow. to whatever degree that type of stuff is going on. Crazy. I know, after years of counseling, married couples, one person said this happened. The other spouse says, no, this didn't happen. You bring them together, and it's an amazing thing. It's an amazing thing. How once you bring them together, the whole thing becomes different. The whole thing becomes different. I said, well, you just told me that this happened. Not only did you color it in an entirely different setting, but you added things that never even happened. And I don't think every one of these people were malicious. I think sometimes people just had remembered things until they bring up evidence and says, how could that have happened when this, and they sit here kind of confused. See, you talk to the wrong person, just like Eve talked to the serpent, you talk to the wrong person, you will get manipulated. And I don't care how much you stomp your foot and say something happened, you can be bewitched. This is one reason for Matthew 18. in going to the person so they can give their side and try to justify what they have done or either repent. It's the reason you take it to the next step and bring a witness so somebody else now can sit down and try to mediate. We know we can remember selfishly and deceptively in regard to God and in regard to others. A person may have fond memories of another person over the years, but then they get around the wrong people, and then they not only interpret their past memories in a different light, they can add details or background context that never occurred. This can be done through witchcraft, psychological counseling, suggestion, hypnotism, or just mere peer pressure. Take a child, put him in a room with a whole bunch of people saying the same thing every single day. What do you think's gonna happen to that child's mind? When you get some time, study parental alienation that's going on around the country. Amazing, amazing witchcraft. It's the most powerful form of all because it has the authority of a parent. Oftentimes, more often, it's the woman parental alienating children against the father. But there are times when fathers do it against the wife or mother. According to the cut, 2014, you might think you remember your third birthday party when what you really remember are the pictures. Or you might believe you have a very vivid memory from elementary school that in reality happened to your brother. I've seen cases of that over and over. Or you might be lifting your memories from books and movies you loved as a child. Elizabeth Loftus, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, Irvine, has done extensive research on this subject. We pick up information from all sorts of places and times and use it to create our memories. Loftus is the author of a well-known study from the mid-1990s in which she successfully implanted a false memory in college students about a time they got lost in the mall as a kid, even though they never had, according to research with family members. In a later study, Loftus and her colleagues were able to successfully implant false memories in college students of going to Disneyland as children and meeting Bugs Bunny, which is not even a Disney character. All our memories, even the real ones, are not exact recordings of what happened. We just must be aware of that. BBC News this year says, the moments we remember from the first years of our life are often our most treasured because we have carried them longest. The chances are they are also completely made up. Around four out of every 10 of us have fabricated our first memory, according to researchers. We crave a cohesive narrative of our own existence, and we will even invent stories to give us a more complete picture. Other people, even strangers, can rewrite our history. Researchers have found it is possible to implant all sorts of false childhood memories into adults, including one that involves drinking tea with a prince. Julia Shaw, a psychologist scientist at University College London, has even shown it is possible to convince people that they committed a violent crime that never happened. See, this goes beyond just, I saw one video of, he said, did your daddy do this? Did your daddy do this? And they'll actually show the interrogation. And they'll show the young 12-year-old boy saying, no, no. And he goes on. But after hours and hours and hours of them, did he do it? Did he do it? Finally, the kid grabs his head and says, yes, yes, yes, he did. And they said, ah, got him now, busted. Folks, what kind of false memory is that? Even Samson, the strongest man, couldn't stand against Delilah's badgering over and over and over and over. A lot of people just give in and say, okay, I just let my mind go. Whatever happened is what you... But what if you start looking up to the person? You admire the person? See, this goes beyond just pressure. Three quarters could even provide vivid descriptions of what police officers look like. In one study, 180 volunteers were told that they had become ill from eating egg salad as a child. And although this was untrue, a significant minority came to believe that they had been sick. And as a result, began to avoid egg sandwiches immediately, and continue to do so even four months after the experiment. A lot of people are saying, wow, we can use this. We can actually take people, convince them that they got sick when they ate something, and cause them to not like certain foods, you know. Experts have managed to turn people off all sorts of foods by convincing them it made them ill when they were a child. Oh, you remember when you got sick? I was going to do this to some of your children. I said, that wouldn't be proper. That wouldn't be honest. You know, hey, what, you witchcraft my child? God forbid I do something like that. But I wanted to prove to you how easy that could be done, you know. Remember when you got sick? Oh, man, you were throwing up everywhere. Yeah, I ought to do that sometimes. Yeah, yeah, hot dogs. Oh, my, remember when you got sick? No, some of you are getting sick from this stuff, you know. I don't have to convince you. Now, Josiah. Where's Josiah at? Josiah. Every time he ate a cucumber, his finger was bleeding. And being the good scientist that Josiah is, he just concluded, you know what? Cucumbers make your fingers bleed. Now, it was pretty logical. If every time you eat a cucumber, your finger bleeds, so he would not eat cucumbers, even though he liked them. Now, that was a wrong interpretation. That was correlation, not causation. Now, you could ask Sianna about cheese. I'm not going to tell you the story, but you could ask her about that. She didn't eat cheese for a long time, at least not string cheese. So, getting back, why is this important? Carrying around false memories from your childhood could be having a greater impact on you than you may realize. How is this affecting your life? and miscarriage of justice, incarceration, loss of reputation, job and status, and family breakdown occur. The Lord says, don't you divide asunder a husband and wife. Don't you come in and be a stumbling block and divide asunder the allegiance of children to their fathers, to their parents. But people can come in and whisper and divide the allegiance, the loyalty, implant false memories, or exaggerate real things that happened in a different context. The most extreme case of memory implantation involves a controversial technique called regression therapy. Remember when that went crazy in the 90s? It was all over the radio. and TV, where patients confront childhood trauma supposedly buried in their subconscious. Do you know Christians were involved? This was a hysteria that went all over America. Christians were involved in hypnotizing teenagers and kids, bringing them back, getting these multiple personalities to talk, and say, yes, my daddy and mommy did this to me, or my daddy did this, or my mommy did this. And it was a satanic thing, and they would describe all these horrible things. Now, I'm not saying that a lot of that does not occur. A lot of it does occur. Don't get me wrong. But when you go back and use a witchcraft technique to try to get guilt proven, that's wicked. That's what they did at the Salem witch trial. They just used witchcraft. They manipulated memories. Some people are very susceptible to hypnotism and bewitchment. The method is prone to inducing false childhood memories, according to the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Memories are malleable and tend to change slightly each time we revisit them. There is no perfect solution to determining if a memory is real or not because people can have extremely compelling detailed memories that are full of emotions and they feel very confident about it, but they're wildly wrong. Children are more susceptible to forming false memories than adults, especially after looking at photographs or films. Any that appear very fluid and detailed, as if you were playing back a home video, could well also be made up. In other words, you say, no, I remember in perfect detail. Well, that's probably a sign that it wasn't true. Or at least not exactly how you're remembering it. Now that's not absolute. Don't go out here and say that I said if you have vivid detail then your memory isn't true. I'm just telling you what they've seen as far as patterns is that is a sign that it might be. So be careful what you think you remember experiencing. You may find out in your 50s or later that you've been greatly affected by false memories. I was talking to a brother not long ago. serving the Lord in another country. To this day, his children that are 40-something years old will barely talk to him because of false memories and parental alienation. And he's a good man, a really good man. A lot of children, when they're 20s, 23, 24, they wake up and realize what happened to them, and then they resent the person who alienated them. So you remember that, parents out there. You remember. Some might make it to 40 or 50 and never wake up. But some of these kids are going to wake up in their early 20s and realize what you did to them and they're not going to be very happy about it. What's the ultimate point in all of this? Let's stay close to the scriptures. In spite of what you feel, in spite of how things seem, in spite of what you think, you remember. Luther says, feelings come, feelings go, and feelings are deceiving. My warrant is the word of God. Nought else is worth believing. It's the same with your feelings about your experiences. Let's hold to that sure word of prophecy. By all means, be as healthy as you possibly can. Protect your health. Protect the health of your children in these last days. Protect them from the Hollywood propaganda and brainwashing and hypnotizing that's going on to implant false memories in your children through movies. Beware of what is happening out here with diet, junk food, movies, TV. and putting your children around the wrong people. God help us. Who hath bewitched you that you should not obey the truth? God help our children. God help our churches. God help our country in these last days. Dear Holy Father, we thank you for your goodness. We thank you for that lamp to our feet, that rock, that sure word of prophecy, that authorized version, which I believe is authorized by you, God. I thank you for it. I thank you that we do have, not just some lost originals, but we do have, Father, a perfect standard by which to judge. Let us love it. Let us study it. And let us remember what you say in it, God. We thank you, Father, in Jesus' holy name. Amen.