With all the movement in Congress to police and clean up the internet, I decided it was time to look into the issue myself. The 1984 U.S. Attorney General's Commission on Pornography spent more than one whole year on the issue. They reviewed 2735 magazines, 1725 books and 2,370 films. They held public hearings, listened to 224 witnesses, and inspected sixteen porn shops. (I ask you 2370 films weren't enough?) My research (thank God) is not that extensive. I would guess I have spent 50 - 70 hrs. over the last three years, in my spare time, looking up various aspects of this online industry. The results of what I have found are, to say the least, chilling.
I recall hearing of this same problem occurring within Roman society shortly before its fall. There they obviously felt enlightened, and found no problem with temples of prostitution, group sex, and open homosexuality. It sounds eerily familiar doesn't it? Here in the twentieth century, we Americans struggle to free our society from the "shackles" of our Puritanical forefathers. And now we too have deemed ourselves enlightened, embracing that same decadence that collapsed what was arguably the world's greatest society. Was it the introduction of the miniskirt? the bikini? was it Elvis? or rock and roll? Was it a clever and calculated ploy of our adversary Satan to lull us to sleep? Did he get us to give an inch of moral ground every day? Or is it simply the corrupt nature of unregenerate, lost mankind?
The modern media culture is the contemporary catalyst of today's improvident sex saturation. There currently is hardly more than a handful of network sitcoms that are not based on or full of sexual tension and innuendo. I can remember Rob and Laura Petrie had separate beds! Our enchantment with sexuality is made clear by the facts. Every week Americans buy two million tickets to X-rated movies, with an annual box office take of 500 million dollars. Forty percent of all American VCR owners have rented X-rated movies. Direct mail sales of pornography top $3 billion annually. It is estimated that porn is an $8 billion dollar a year industry. A whopping 90% of all adolescents between the ages of thirteen and fifteen have examined porn in one of its forms. Not only can porn be found in drug stores, grocery stores, convenience stores, gas stations, and malls; but, it is at its most prolific on the internet. Finding porn is not difficult to do since any search conducted on a typical popular search engine usually hits one or more porno sites. Searching for a porn-related topic yields hundreds of thousands of hits. It is a fact that pornography is the most visited and downloaded type of material on the internet. Pictures, videos, sound recordings are all freely available to anyone of any age with access to the internet. Most of these sites merely ask you to electronically sign a statement such as this; I am not a member of law enforcement, It is legal to view this material in my community, I do not find pornography objectionable, etc. , etc.. One popular site has simply put "blah, blah, blah, just let me in" in its terms. For born-again Christians its as though you have entered the lair of old Beelzebub himself.
Many Christians fear and stay away from cyber-space because they know Sodom is out there. And you'll always hear these ones; Why do you think they call it the web? or Why do you think they call it the net? (Just tell your born-again friends, hereby known as b.a.c.'s, you've done research on internet porno, they'll say "mmm hmmm..., I bet you have brother," and look at you funny from then on. It is almost as though they expect you like in the film "Alien" to have some beast suddenly burst forth from your chest in a shower of blood and entrails). Many sites are named in a neo-biblical or anti-Christ fashion, with names such as "Seven Devils" or "Lucifer's Ladies". It appeals to man's biggest weakness, his unquenchable lust. Even though we Americans say we are moral we want no part in restricting access to this material. We feel we are more enlightened than that. "What about the first amendment?", we argue. Restricting the internet is like fencing in the old west. Just look at the reaction to our President's adultery. Most Americans didn't even care. Some even went so far as to question whether oral sex constituted adultery at all! This new enlightenment has spawned sin and disease not un-similar to that of Roman times. It has created new and dangerous strains of venereal disease. It has produced the epidemic killer HIV. It has led to the loss of millions of lives to the practice of abortion. It has increased the roles of welfare and poverty; and has led to rape, incest and child abuse. "Those, in every age, have sunk deepest into folly, who have relied most on their own understandings."
We can find similarities in the gods of the fallen ancient civilizations of Canaan, Greece, or Rome. Let's take the ancient Canaanite deity Ashtoreth. Statues found of this pagan fertility goddess have exaggerated breasts and pudenda. The rituals and rite of this pagan religion included sexual intercourse with the priestesses of her temple (or anyone else for that matter). In Greece there was the institution of the gymnasium where Greek boys and men exercised publicly in the nude. By the 4th century B.C. it had become the educational and cultural center for all Greek youth. It was considered an essential feature of a Greek city. Yet it was ultimately men worshipping the human body. Or take the Roman system of paganism with Saturn for instance who it's said ate his children. These were incestuous gods having sexual relations with their mothers, daughters and sisters. Gods who appeared as men, and who were worshipped. Christians in Rome were called atheists, and ultimately martyred, because they refused to worship them. To worship is defined as; to pay homage, to give reverence to someone or something. Herein we see man's folly worshipping the creation rather than the Creator.
What more suitable a format for Satan than the use of the internet. He knows what works with man is the same thing that's always worked. Appeal to his lust, which is based in pride, which is based in self, which is opposed to God. That's right, he uses it to propagate his ages old sin idolatry. It is as if he had repackaged the same old nasty, moldy, stanky bread in a bright new wrapper. Then they had statues, today they have photos and videos. Through internet pornography men give devotion, pay reverence, to, worship an image of man. Therefore viewing pornography is gross idolatry and a rejection of God.
It is said the idolater is the slave to the depraved ideas his idols represent. Nothing can be more true then someone suffering from an addiction to pornography. It is an endless escalation of depraved behavior, that at first consumes minutes, then hours, then whole days. Not unlike heroin, or any other highly addictive drug it is an incremental seeking of a satisfaction that is unattainable, A constant search for a "fix". The proverbial bar is raised over and over again, Like the amount of a drug that is increased time and again to acheive a good high for the addict until his dosage rises to lethal limit. those using internet porn need to view increasingly explicit images for longer periods of time, while seeking out the nethermost forms of human depravity, It is like trying to fill a vessel with no bottom, to put out a fire with gasoline, satisfaction becomes impossible to acquire. The unfettered merchants of Cyber-sodom peddle their wicked wares freely. Pushers, they ration out small samples for free. In this way they lure in the unsuspecting lusters. Like sheep destined for the slaughterhouse, they plod on toward their inevitable fate. God it is said gave them up unto their own lusts, their own desires, their own affections.
The Rabbis taught (as does the old and new testaments) that the consequence
or providential payment for sin is sin. God, it is said withdraws from
them His restraints of grace and mercy (even towards the unregenerate)
and gives them over to the dominion of sin. Sin follows sin as a kind of
avenger. " God often punishes one sin by abandoning the sinner to the commission
of others...God does not impel or intice to evil..... He says of the sinner,
Let him alone," In this God allows man as much freedom to sin as He does
to obey. It is a fact when men turn from the spiritual and the philosophical
they will immediately revert to the sensual. And so now they are vexed
day and night by the persistant screech of the pornography monkey, Sinking
to the lowest form of human degradation. they have become slaves, and are
now captives and prisoners of the very images that once brought them pleasure.