Bible calls Satan, goes after public power—that is, the power to con trol things. Where he cannot get that, he goes after public influence —that is, the power to reach and to sway men's minds. The main target is the public consciousness. That is what God wants Christians to reach with the truth, and that is what Satan wants to influence by anything and ev erything but the truth. In China, the population is con tinually assailed with the words of Chairman Mao. If you travel in a train, the words of Mao are broad cast in your car. If you go into a restaurant, a chorus of ten or a dozen young people sing or chant the words of Mao while you eat. Loudspeakers blare out Mao's words in the public places, so that the public is barraged with words, words, words; lies, lies, lies — an unceasing attack upon the mind. In the United States, the public consciousness is not dunned with any one political orthodoxy, but it is relentlessly bombarded virtually from coast to coast by many things which do not make for godliness and peace—by throbbing tribalis- tic music, by devils' propaganda for indulgence and immorality and sin and drugs and revolution. The enemy has a tremendous advantage in this because he con trols, through unbelievers who are "the children of disobedience," most of the means of access to the public consciousness. Jesus told us to go into all the world and to tell the good news of salvation-by-His-blood — to reach the public consciousness in every place with truth — and to occupy. It comes down to four things: Go. Proclaim. Publish. Occupy. We Page 52
must do it to the limit of our ca pacity, not stopping short. As evangelical believers, we have not deployed our forces wisely. We have not put what we do have where it will do the most good. We therefore have the most ur gent need for the setting of some new priorities, and for the taking of some new initiatives. In the sharp division that exists between the evangelical and the secular in America, we have a sit uation in publishing, for instance, in which there are two complete and separated realms. There is the evangelical realm, in which we have certain maga zines and books and publishers such as Zondervan, Moody, Revel I and so on. Then there is the secular, or the mass public realm, with different publishers, different magazines, different books. The evangelical publications for the evangelical realm are for the most part filled with the truth of the Lord. The publications in the mass public realm — newspapers and magazines that reach many millions of people every day, or every week, or every month — are to an overwhelming degree filled with evil things: new excesses in fashion, new excesses in morals, new extremes in occultism and false mysticism, and, of course, much of the current vogue in dis ruption, violence and revolution. So we believers reach ourselves with the truth — and I'm glad that we do — but we allow the mass public media to go the devil's way for want of a few purposeful, faith- filled Christians to occupy them, not for their personal gain, but for Christ.
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