(Dangers in the Way Series): Resisting the Worlds Propoganda — A.W. Tozer

Walking Circumspectly Against Spiritual Traps

The fifth chapter of Ephesians, see then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. And I have been pointing out that we as Christians must walk circumspectly, that is, watching and looking around, lest we fall into the booby traps placed by our enemy, the devil.

The Snare of Propagandism

And today I want to talk about only one and recommend that we very carefully watch lest we fall into the snare of propagandism. I'll explain what I mean as I go along. Everybody knows what propaganda is, or as our British brethren say, propaganda.

It became a familiar word during the First World War and was intensified by the Second World War and is still a very popular English-American word, almost used to the point where it is a cliché, worn out.

Slavery of the Body and Slavery of the Mind

Now, there is an enemy in the universe that believes in slavery. He is opposed to God who believes in freedom. And there are two kinds of slavery. There is the slavery of the body, which seeks to control the conduct by physical force.

And that slavery once, of course, we had in the United States, much to our everlasting historical shame, that there was a day when men, otherwise good men, thought nothing of owning another man, owning him as you own your car.

You could sell him or trade him, own part interest in him, own him partly and be paying on him the same as you do your automobile or your house. That, I say, was a blot on our history that we never can quite get freed from.

We helped to free ourselves from the disgrace of it by abolishing it. And this is not to speak against those who were themselves partakers in this shame, because they had been brainwashed and properly conditioned psychologically to believe in it.

Even the Church has helped out there. But there is the slavery of the body, I say, where the control of the conduct is achieved by physical force and where obedience is rendered unwillingly. And the slaves know they are rendering obedience and are seeking and longing to be free from the yoke of slavery.

Now, with that, we have nothing to do this morning. It's only an illustration and for the sake of being as broad as we can and making our talks as educational as possible, I mention it. But there is another kind of slavery, and that is the slavery of the mind.

And the slavery of the mind is achieved, that control is achieved by means of ideas supplied to the mind. And obedience is rendered willingly, and the victims are unaware that they are rendering obedience and are quite satisfied and have no desire to be free from it.

Now, there are the two kinds of slavery. When you put chains on a man's ankles and wrists, and he is a slave and knows it, and you look deep into his eyes and you find there the deep, solemn revolt of the free human spirit against the bonds of slavery.

And there is the slavery that is achieved by conditioning the mind so those who are seeking to make us slaves get us, make us slaves and get their will over us by feeding us ideas which we adopt and learn to believe in and think are all right, and ignorantly adopt and follow, not knowing that we are being conditioned by keen, sharp, unscrupulous minds who are making us slaves.

We don't know that, and we render obedience rather willingly and are unaware that we are being controlled. Now, the greatest war today is the war to win the control of our minds. The greatest war that ever was fought is not in the history books anywhere.

It was not fought during the Second World War, nor in Korea, nor in the First World War, nor the Revolutionary, nor the Civil, nor any of the wars that bloody the pages of history. Those wars were wars of body against body, gun against gun, sword against sword, battalion against battalion.

But the greatest war in the world is the war, the battle for our minds. And that is being waged today by every modern effective technique. It is being waged by the press. And if you could suddenly stand up objectively and look at your own mind and see how much the press has fed into your mind and how you have come to be more or less a creature of the press, you would be shocked, I am sure, and you would spend days in fasting and prayer to get free from it.

And of course, another technique being used is that of the school system. Without a school system, of course, we would be barbarians and heathens. It must exist, we must have our schools. And then there is the radio, which is a new technique for the dissemination of ideas.

And it is also being used to help control our minds. And of course, there is the drama, which has always been in its various forms an effective technique for the controlling of the minds of the people.

And then we have developed over the last years, perhaps over the last fifty or sixty years in America, one of the most potent techniques ever devised by the mind of man for the control of the mass thinking of the people, and that is advertising.

The advertisers are the best educators in the world, and they are busy educating us by every means that they know, expensive and carefully thought out means. They are busy controlling our thinking. Now, the object, of course, is to win everyone to think the same, and to think the same on certain subjects, certain great topics, on life and love and money and pleasure and marriage and values and religion and the future and God and our relation to God and all the rest.

We are being influenced very strongly by these means, which I have mentioned, to think the same about life. Everybody is a philosopher. Only some get the reputation for being philosophers, but everybody is a philosopher, everybody.

The gangster is a philosopher, and the kid who carries a switch knife and attacks another innocent kid on the street and kills him or cuts him up, he's a philosopher too. If you press him and push him into a corner, he'll come through with reasons why he did what he did.

Reasons. And reasons are philosophy. Whatever you have reason for doing and do, that makes you a philosopher. So everybody is a philosopher. And we have certain philosophies of life or a certain philosophy of life, and we look out upon life and see it from a certain viewpoint.

That is philosophy, and that makes us philosophers. And whether we write great big books and call ourselves by that name, or whether we are simple people who would smile at the thought we are philosophers, we are all philosophers nevertheless.

How Propaganda Forms Our Philosophy

Now, who's going to control our philosophy? Who's going to determine our outlook upon life? Who's going to decide? You say, I do that myself. Oh, don't make me laugh, brother. You don't do that yourself at all.

You only think you do. And I only think I do, if I indeed didn't know that I didn't. And then we have to have our viewpoint on love. What is this love business, anyhow? All you have to do is switch a button, and they'll be telling you what it is and what it isn't.

And we get our ideas about human love, love between the sexes and love in the society. We get that from the radio, we get it from the newspaper and from the press generally, and from advertising. And then comes such thing as money.

We think of money, what the press tells us to think of money, what the radio suggests we think of money, what we have learned at school about money. And then when it comes to pleasures, we, our attitude toward life, toward pleasures, say, toward just almost anything, innocent and harmful, either one or both, we learn from the world.

They control our mind. And they get us to thinking about it the way they want us to think. And they do it, I say, by means of the press, school, radio, drama, advertising, and perhaps a few other minor techniques.

And about religion and values and the future and God, those are, of course, the most important. What I think about money is important, but what I think about God is still more important. And there never has not been a time, probably, since the great awakening under Jonathan Edwards, when there was more religion in the country than there is now, when more people talked about religion.

We are now being bombarded by persons who are trying to persuade us to think a certain way about religion and God and human values and the future life and our relation to God in the future life. Now, we are going to be what they make us, unless, of course, we stage a revolt, which I trust I may stir you up to today.

The Counsel of the Ungodly and the Word of God

Of course, the strategy to achieve these objectives is to control our conduct by disseminating ideas and to gain acceptance for the counsel of the ungodly. The Bible talks about the counsel of the ungodly and pronounces a blessing upon the man who walketh not in it.

We always must keep in mind this is a fallen world, and whatever originates in the world is bound to be bad and godless. That is, whatever originates in organized society, what originates in nature, the grass, the birds, the flowers, the simple appetites of life, they are not bad.

But whatever originates in fallen minds and fallen hearts and gets acceptance by society is godless. And the word of God was given to us to counteract the godless counsel of ungodly men and to form our minds, not by all these techniques, but by God himself.

The God who made us gave us a Bible and sent the Holy Ghost to interpret it to us in order that he may control our minds, and he who made our minds might mold them again, and he who made them once might remake them from their fall, and he who is the source and object of all our blessing and love, that that God wants to control our minds.

He has no hesitation in saying that we're to have the mind of Christ. Somebody's going to control my mind. Who is it? Is it going to be the advertiser? Is it going to be the public school? Is it going to be drama or the press or the radio?

Or is it going to be God? You've got to make up your mind on that, my friend, whether you want to or not. Somebody's going to control your mind. But now, who is it? And the Bible has given us that our minds might be directed wherewith, says the Holy Ghost, shall a young man cleanse his way by taking heed according to thy word.

How shall my ignorance become wisdom by the word of God? How shall my false notions become right notions by being corrected by the word of God? How shall my darkness become light by this book which is a light unto my pathway?

And it is from this book and from the book interpreted by the Spirit that I gain the heavenly and final and right ideas about love and marriage and life and money and pleasures and values and God and my relation to God and the future life and my status in that life.

It's from the word of God that I get it. So the warfare is on between the counsel of the ungodly and the counsel of God. And now, which is it shall control our minds? My brother, you were a pawn and a puppet caught in between.

And if you're not awakened to it, you will learn the ways of Babylon and Egypt and pick up their notions and think the way they think and value what they value and love what they love and ignore what they ignore.

Be not foolish, but wise and know what the will of the Lord is. Let him that is asleep wake out of his sleep and God will give him light, says the Holy Ghost. Now, the Christian receives another mind and it is the mind of the redeemed.

The Freedom of Loving Slavery to Christ

It's a redeemed mind, a recreated mind, and it is committed to Christ. You say, is not that another kind of slavery? That is the slavery of love. That is the slavery of worship. That is the slavery of extreme joy.

That is the slavery of the highest ecstasy. Paul, who lived in a slave state where slaves were common sights on the street, Paul said, I am a slave of Jesus Christ. Wherever the word servant occurs in the New Testament, you can write slave in, for that's what he meant.

He had no thought of a paid servant who comes at nine and leaves at five and gets her pay and goes. That's unknown in the Bible, I think. The word is slave there. And Paul told the people openly all the time that he was a slave to God Almighty and a slave to Jesus Christ, but there is the freedom.

Let me ask the young mother who with shining eyes looks upon her little babe. Let me ask that young mother, are you as free as you used to be? And she smiles and says, no, I have to stay in a lot now.

I used to be able to go everywhere with my husband, but I can't now. He goes and I have to stay home. And you say to her, are you sorry? And she smiles and says, sorry? Would you like to have it all undone and like to get rid of the little monkey?

Don't you want him around? And she laughs and says, oh, don't talk like that. Why, the slavery to this little fellow is nothing. I love it. Love never feels slavery and love never knows bondage. And that obedience to Jesus Christ, which Paul calls slavery, is not the slavery that imposes itself from the outside by laws, nor imposes itself by the introduction of alien ideas into the mind.

It is the happy, joyous bondage of freedom and love. And the holiest and freest creature in heaven above is the angel that is the nearest to the throne of God. And those creatures that bow and spread their wings and run swift as light to do the will of God and have no mind but God's and no will but his, they are the freest creatures in all the universe.

And those that try to be free from the will of God succeed only in becoming victims to the propagandists. Those who propagandize us into slavery make us think the same as they think and feel the same as they feel about things.

And they are slaves. And it is the psychology of the servile slave, the vehicle and utensil of the master that cannot call his mind his own. The bird that flies in the air is free, and yet it is bound by the laws of aerodynamics.

The stars that move in and around their ancient and unmeasured orbits are free because they are doing the will of God. And wherever we do the will of God, we are free. And wherever we break from the will of God, we are slaves.

And it says in Romans that he that sins is a slave of sin. He that does the will of God, it elsewhere tells us, is the free, happy servant of God. So let's beware the propagandists, and let's be aware of propagandism.

The World’s Propaganda Enters the Church

For the world is trying to capture, and it's a startling and shocking thing, the world is trying to capture the mind of the Saints. And they are being captured. And we are being made victims of the world's propaganda.

And the sad thing is we don't know it. If there was a law passed in the halls in Washington that said you can't go to church at Seventieth Union, and if you do, you shall be fined. And if you shall repeat the offense, you shall be jailed.

We'd know where we stood. And every last one of you Protestant Americans would stand up and put your chin high and say, if God helps me, I'll never come under that decree. I'll go to church when I please, and I'll pray to God as I want to.

My fathers founded this nation, dedicated to their proposition that every man should worship God according to the dictates of his own heart, and I'll not stay away from church because Congress said I should.

And the President signed it. And that would never happen while we have, of course, our President set up in Washington. I'm using an illustration merely. But I say if they ever got there, we'd know where we stood.

And we'd draw the line sharp and we'd say, who's on the Lord's side, let him come over. And there would be a tread of men's feet, army that would shake the earth. Three Protestant American men who would say, I will not bow to the state.

But they're not doing it that way. It's sharper and wiser. The devil is too much of a strategist to treat us like that. So he's busy air-brainwashing us, and conditioning us, little by little, and feeding his ideas into the Church, the counsel of the ungodly.

And as the ideas of the ungodly enter the Church, the ideas of God go out. And as the counsel of the ungodly come in, the counsel of God goes out. And my crusade in the day in which I live is to wake the Church and rouse it to the fact that it's being brainwashed and propagandized into accepting that which it would never accept if it was a law in Washington.

We won't bow the supple knee to any man who says, you worship the way I tell you. But little by little we're getting their ideas, willing and unaware and satisfied with being brainwashed. Remember old Lott back in Sodom?

Lot, Israel, and the Consequences of Assimilation

He had his whole family there. He went down for economic reasons. Because the grass was green, he rapidly rose to be, they say, the mayor of the city. He sat in the gate, and they say the mayor was the one who sat in the gate.

And his family was quite well known in the city. And they were slowly propagandized, brainwashed. Old Lott resisted it. He had enough of contact with Abraham, he had sat where Abraham sat. He had walked with Abraham.

He had heard Abraham pray. And after having heard Abraham, the Hebrew, offer prayers to God, you never could quite accept the brainwashing of Sodom. So Lott vexed his righteous soul. Thank God for those words, vexed and righteous, in the same man's heart.

He vexed his righteous soul. He was a part of it, but he hated it. When Sodom put on her big shows, he heard the voice of Abraham raised in prayer. In memory he heard it. And it still rang in his ears, and it poisoned all of the pleasures of Sodom.

But he wasn't big enough to get up and walk out. For economic reasons, he stayed in Sodom and hated it, and remembered the prayers of his old uncle, and loved them, and was caught in the middle. But his family wasn't so strong, they weren't so lucky.

They got poisoned, his son's in-law. They were propagandized into becoming Sodomites. And when God Almighty raised his mighty Adam, bombed a hurl on Sodom, and sent fire out from his fingertips to destroy that city, Lott fled.

He fled with his two daughters. His wife never quite made it. She had been brainwashed. She never quite made it, and Lott escaped with his two daughters. But even his two daughters had been poisoned. For the sake of common social decency, I'll not go into it.

But you know what happened. Well, then there was Israel. Israel went down into Egypt, and for 400 years they were subjected to the propaganda of the Egyptians. They kept themselves aloof, but they learned the ways of the Egyptians, and came back out idolaters.

And they were idolaters until Moses brought down the law from the mount, and corrected their wrong thinking, and put away their idolatry, and laid the law down for them, and gave them the word of God.

And then slowly they got among the nations, and the nations got among them over in Palestine, after they had entered across the sea a river, and had gone into the Holy Land, as we call it. And there they learned the ways of the heathen, the Jebusites, and the Hivites.

And the rest of them that should have been purged out of the land, were left in the land, and Israel learned the evil ways of the nations. You know the result was the Babylonian captivity. The captivity that finally destroyed idolatry.

Israel has never worshipped idols since she spent 70 years in captivity in Babylon. I wonder what it's going to take to wake the Church up. I wonder what kind of Babylon, and beside what waters, we're going to sit bitterly and hang our harps and refuse to sing.

I wonder what Ezra and Nehemiah will be sent to lead us back to the land again, purged of our idolatry and our brains that were washed again, by this time by the blood of the Lamb. And the way the world is using the Church in our day to achieve its ends, I think of the fate of the Scarlet Woman.

The Scarlet Woman and the World’s Use of Religion

I don't preach on prophecy much, though I believe in it, and I believe on the coming of Jesus to the world again. But here was the Scarlet Woman, and the world used her. And they exalted her to sit upon many waters.

And they used her to achieve their ends. And then when they had done what they wanted to do, they turned on her, says the scripture, and they hated her, and made her desolate and naked, and they burned her with fire.

As long as religious people can be the pawns and cat paws of the propagandists and can be made useful, they'll put up with us. But if ever we cross them in anything, or oppose them, or dare to stand up as free men engulfed and say, that isn't the way I see it, we'll be branded as another sect and despised.

And given the silent treatment, the press gives space to those it can use, and the silent treatment to those it cannot. The only way to help the world, my brethren, is to stay free from its brainwashing.

Standing Apart to Help the World

The man who has adopted its ways can never help it. It is by standing aloof from it that we can help it. The man who is aloof is the only man that can do any good. In the day when Hitler was taking over Germany, there was only one man of any prominence who dared stand and say, God is mine cure.

And you know who he was. Not perfect. I'm not here giving a blanket approval of everything Niemöller stands for. I'm only saying that there was a man who dared to stand and say, God is my leader, whatever you think.

And said the public press, he stood in such spiritual dignity that he turned the tables on the court that was trying him. And the man of God, but nothing but his Bible, became the judge. And the judge that sentenced him became the defendant.

They turned around and put him under what they called protective custody, the liars. They put him in prison, there in his prison, so nervous, so sick that he couldn't even take communion because the passionate joy of it affected him so nervously, he said, don't bring it anymore, I can't take it.

He isn't perfect and he's not an alliance man by any means. But he was God's man to stand in an awful hour. The sycophants and brainwashed camp followers of Hitler could do no good in that hour. And the prophets hiding in caves could do no good, but the man who stood before a court knowing that he might easily be shot against a wall, he did some good.

He gave heart to the heartless and hope to the hopeless, and strength to the weak and wobbly. And what little there is left of godliness back yonder in Germany may easily be attributed to the man who was free and would not come under the yoke.

They say that you can only help it by staying above it, and if need be, going contrary to it. Funny, isn't it? That you can only help a sinner by going contrary to him? You wives will find that out. Many a wife with a testimony who was a real Christian, she listened to her husband's blandishments and he said to her, honey, I am not against your religion at all, but I just want to think that if I go to your church, you ought to go with me.

And so little by little she went and her testimony went to the dogs. Pretty soon, instead of her standing out clean and bold and opposed to all of his doings, she went with him and pretty soon lost her testimony, and now they're back where they were.

And she has nothing but a sick memory inside of her heart. He's had his way. Now, sir, we help people not by going with them. You gamble with me, honey, tonight, and I'll go to church with you tomorrow morning.

So till three o 'clock they play their games. And the next morning, tired and weary with a hangover, they get up and go to church. She's sick inside but too weak to say anything about it. That's happened so often.

And the young fellow that sees that pretty girl, oh, they can be so attractive. They can knock a young fellow clear off his feet. And he's a Christian, a Christian. He's given his heart to Jesus. But he likes the look of that girl, and so they go out together pretty soon.

She's brainwashed him. And he says, well, maybe they are a bit radical down in my church, maybe they are. And when she gets him doing things she does and going to places she goes and looking at life as she looks at it and adopting her philosophy of values and all, he's lost his testimony.

Then they marry, bring up the family without God and without the church, and all he has is a sick memory. When he hears a hymn, he feels like a dog. And when he hears a church bell, he feels like a dog.

He's been propagandized, caught in the net of the world. No, there's only one way to help the world, and that is stand clean of it. There's only one way to bless mankind, and that is oppose mankind. Wherever he's wrong and wherever he's different from God, oppose him.

The Narrow Way and Costly Discipleship

It means that brother must be divided from brother and husband from wife and children from parents. Jesus said, if anybody come to me and hate not father and mother and home and life and everything, he's not worthy to be my disciple.

That's why we don't have crowds rushing in here and filling the balcony and hanging out the window. Not many people want to hear this. My days of talking to people may not be as many as some younger fellows, so I'm not going to let you down.

I'm telling you, you must walk circumspectly and beware of the propaganda and look out. Don't settle yourself and don't allow yourself slowly to be reasoned into wrong by the counsel of the ungodly. Better be radical on the right side and weak on the wrong side.

Better go too far than not far enough. If there's an atom bomb or hydrogen bomb going to break over the loop, if I can go down five stories, that may be four too many, but it's better to go down five than to risk dying by only going down one.

Incidentally, you can go down five stories. You know it underground down here, I've been down. I went into a building, I think it was the building where Mr. Sandrock used to have a high position, and I went down and down and down.

I think it was five stories below the ground, if I remember, that took me down. Four at least. And if, when the atom bomb breaks, I get scared and run down four stories, somebody will laugh and say, that's three more and you needed to go.

I say, all right, better be safe by going too far than be in peril by not going far enough. So we'd better say to the world, I'm sorry, the world says, oh, you're narrow. You say, maybe I am narrow, but the way is narrow, and the path to heaven isn't as broad as a 16-lane highway.

Preserving a Distinct Christian Testimony

You know, I'm too narrow, I'm walking with my God. Maybe our Pilgrim Fathers were too narrow, I rather think they were. I think they went too far when they told the children that they could not laugh on the Sabbath.

I think so. I think they went too far when they said a man could not kiss his wife on the Sabbath. I think they went too far. I think they went too far when they said you could not walk down the lane in your garden, pick up an onion and eat it, or any fruit.

Couldn't stand their eye as they looked at the sun and said, that's harvesting, it can't be done. I think they went too far. But better to have a strong testimony in the right direction, even if it goes too far, than to have all this weak compromise that's cursing us today.

I was over in Grantham, Pennsylvania, at Messiah College. They asked me to come over and speak three times. I told you about it then, you've forgotten it now. They wanted me to speak to the publication department, to the Sunday School department, and what else was it?

I've forgotten. But there were three departments. I knew nothing about any, so I spoke on all three. And I said to them, now, I'm not going to speak to you as a writer or editor, and I'm not going to speak to you as a Sunday School man, I'm not going to speak to you as whatever this other thing was.

I said, I'm going to speak to you as a preacher, preaching to your hearts. They said, we'd love it, that's just what we want. So I tied it in and somehow got away with it. Well, there were 900 people there, that council.

And they were packed into that building listening while I talked to them. And they were the plain people. You know what they are, the plain people? The women dressed in plain garments. They keep a covering on their head all the time, white or black or both.

I stopped the woman and I said to her, she's a nice looking middle-aged woman, and I said, excuse me, but I'd like to know why did some of you wear white on top of your head and some black? She took the black off and showed me the white.

She said, well, the white's always got to be there, but the black you put on for when you go out. Very kind, very friendly, and jolly about everything. And I said to one of their leaders, the men wear uniforms and they're plain people.

Some of the older fellows have long, silky beards, no ties. I had a tie on there, loud as ever, and I was dressed just the way we preachers dress. And I didn't apologize nor even refer to it. I just figured they'd invited me there, that I wasn't going to wear a robe for them.

So I got to talk to one of their leaders, the brother of the president of their society, the bishop or whatever he calls himself. They've got a lot of bishops. And he said, you know, Mr. Tozer, we're wondering whether perhaps we're not extreme, we're not going too far in our separation from the world and being plain people.

We're wondering whether we're not carrying it too far, and there's a strong movement toward conformity with the world. And I said to him, Mr. Hostetter, I'd like to give you some advice as a Gentile, as a man from the outside your little movement, I'd like to give you some advice.

Don't change. Even though you're extreme, and even though what you've done is wrong, even though we're wearing beards and head coverings in scripture, at least stand as a testimony in this terrible hour to something godly.

Even if it's a hat on your head or the beard on your chin. I said, stand, don't let them make another little worldly denomination out of you. If you've got any conviction, stand by your conviction, wash the feet of the saints with water.

If you don't want to, wash them. They washed feet, invited me down, but I was tired and didn't go. I went to bed and let them wash feet. But if you want to wash feet, and if you want to dress plain, and if they want to do these simple old-fashioned plain things in God's name, let them do it.

I said, stick by your guns and don't surrender. Even though you're extreme, and even though it doesn't have much value, be a testimony to something in this terrible hour. And that was my advice. I don't know whether it'll do any good or not, but that's what I told them.

So let's stand out, even if it's wrong. I mean, even if it's extreme. Let's stand out. Let's be known as Christians separated unto God. And if the world laughs and the other churches laugh and say, what's the matter with you Alliance people, are you holy rollers?

Say, no, I'm not as holy as I want to be. I'm too stiff to roll, I can't do much good rolling, so I'm not a holy roller, I'm just a believer in the word of God. And if I go too far, you'll forgive me, but I'd rather go too far than not far enough.

Amen? The only slavery I recommend is the sweet slavery of his yoke, which is easy, and his burden is light. And the yoke of Jesus is a love yoke, the yoke that binds us to the essence and center and son of all that's desirable and loving and wonderful and good.

Put his yoke upon you and the yoke of the world will drop away. Amen and amen. All right.