Media & the Apocalypse

Media, Fear, and the Media's Power to Shape Social Psychology

So it's good to say it again in case anybody's popping in at just the moment. We want this to be so very helpful to the body of Christ. We want to be principled stick to scripture and really examine this not based upon our fear or the media.

But what is the Word of God say? What a biblical what are proper biblical principles and approaches you've already heard us say a number of times on this episode that kovat 19 Coronavirus is very very serious.

It can be very deadly. It is not a joke. It is not just the flu. So when this actually gets to a certain part of the population it's horrific and it's a horrific very sad way to die because people are even saying a lot of nurses saying these people come in and We're there.

We're on the one end of the spectrum of this where they are dying. They're dying alone without their family because their family can't be in there with them and it's a horrifying thing to see. Yeah, so we we recognize how very serious this thing is.

But with that Joe It recognizing how serious it is we've heard numbers of a mortality rate around 1 or even Substantially less depending on we factor in the fact that this has been here a lot longer than we thought and many more people have had Kovat 19 and not reported many people still have it and have not reported.

So the number is actually a pretty much higher than what you see in terms of what the media is Posting or what's actually right now being tested. But with that we're talking about the fact that it is very serious but let's talk about the media that that aspect of the media and just that fear and the Anxiousness and the pumping out of all these different stories.

How should we face that because you mentioned the sovereignty of God the beginning of your article and the judgments of God? But you talk about this whole herd mentality and and the media I'd like to hear you just give it to articulate that position for everyone to hear.

The Media, Social Psychology, and Apocalyptic Hysteria

Well, you know the the power of the media to shape Ideas and also to shape social psychology is well known. It's been known for a very long time. I was reading recently in a history journal about Albert F Porter in 1919 in the United States who was making predictions about cataclysmic weather events and volcanic eruptions based on a theory he had About the alignment of the planets and its creation of sunspots and It's worth looking into because there was a massive hysteria in the United States he'd recently blamed the Spanish flu on the movements of Jupiter at that time and He was making these predictions that within four months within December of that year.

There would be these cataclysmic events and Media and broadsheets latched on to this and it shaped social psychology and all kinds of Hysteria broke loose and I've been sort of watching this with interest that the lack of often measured Commentary and trying to think well, why why is that?

Why why would you have a media desperate to stoke? The most apocalyptic.

A.

Grabbing headlines beyond of course, you know selling newspapers or attracting traffic to their websites. Why would you want to drive that. And my view actually is that when when there is a lack of measured careful?

Thoughtful.

Reporting which has already been a casualty of this crisis I think there's an attempt going on actually a kind of in a decrystallized increasingly decrystallized West you've got an attempt here to re-enchant the world because there's a there's a sort of utopian longing for a Rupture in the continuity of history.

This is this has long been a vision of revolutionaries that if you can utopians require a rupture in the sense of the continuity of history because that will bring an opportunity about to birth a new world a new world order a new Hope for humanity, and I think I've mentioned I do mention in the article that the former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown Has already been calling for sort of temporary world government structures to stage manage the world.

You've got radical socialists in the in the UK Talking about this as well. You've got even I think your mayor of New York talking about how you know life can't return to what it was before. Even after this so There's I think that there's something in the heart of human beings.

I mentioned the the Japanese writer Who said, you know deep in their hearts? Everyone is waiting for the end of the world to come. Yeah. And so there's an element of that because people are if outside of Christ wracked with guilt.

And we know we deserve judgment. And on the other hand, there's a sense that I think People almost long for a crisis like this to unite people so that with it with a rupture in the continuity of history.

Maybe there's an opportunity for a new world to emerge and I think that that some of that kind of social psychology is going on right now and it has a religious root.

End-Stage Western Culture, the Nuclear Family, and Life in a Fallen World

Hmm. Did you see. I haven't even had a chance to really talk about this. I did you see the article Joe? Came out last week. I think some liberal nutjob I think it was like Washington Post maybe or something said that the that the that the Nuclear family is at fault.

And it needs to be it needs to be abolished the family. I mean, that's what they want. And I when I read that I mean the article was just hilariously Bad, but that's that's the mindset with some of these.

Well, I think we're gonna see more of that because I think we are in the West. We're an end-stage culture right now. We're we're we're we're a decadent culture. We're falling off. We're falling away.

We're in the grip of all kinds of social decay and and massive debt load. You guys have often spoken about the culture of death.

And.

End-stage cultures are very susceptible to hysterical reactions to these things. And I think Jeff you mentioned in the introduction there that you know The reality of viruses and plagues. I mean for in the you know before the modern era this kind of thing would happen every 10 Or 15 years.

There'd be an outbreak of something.

Yeah.

And of course We don't have to look back that far to to think about the SARS outbreak and the swine flu outbreak and so on. That's right, and You know, this is it this this is life in a fallen world. Especially a world which violates God's norms for how we treat animals what kind of animals we eat.

And.

You know when rebellion against God is going on in the culture I don't know. Why would you we would expect anything different?

Very good.