BRUTE HUSBANDS WITH A TV SET

Jude 1:10 But these speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves.

“After two orangutans at the St. Petersburg Zoo in Russia began neglecting the baby with which they were blessed in November, zookeepers devised a plan to educate them in the joys of family life by having them watch television programs about being good parents. But the male ape became so engrossed watching television that he not only continued to ignore his son, but began ignoring his mate as well. And when she became upset over the neglect, keepers had second thoughts. Zoo director Ivan Korneyev was quoted saying, ‘We’ll reduce the time of TV watching in order to keep the family together.’” (New American, March 1,1999)

[Commentary: Christian men, if you think you can somehow justify having a TV, you should at least go unplug the antenna. One cannot control what comes across that thing. The Christian man places his family at risk every time the TV is turned on. The world’s programs and commercials will either stir up lust, envy or covetousness or they will desensitize you and your family in regard to evil. You will begin to think with a psychological mindset and find true Biblical Christianity to be “strange”. The Bible says separate from the world. It even says separate from carnal Christians.

You are not obeying this with a TV in your living room:

2Co 6:17 Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,

1Co 5:11 But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.

2Th 3:14 And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed.

If you think you can obey these verses and watch worldly programming, the world has already dulled your intellect. Isn’t it time you quit justifying your sin? What you “set” efore your eyes will influence you, your wife and your children:

“A study published in the journal ‘Pediatrics’ in November 1998 linked the turn of teens to alcohol to the time they spend watching television and music videos...Authors of the study speculated that the increases were due to the influence of frequent media portrayals of drinking....” (New American, March 1, 1999)

One brother writes:

“It is amazing how many ‘christians’ can tell me who Forrest Gump and Obi Wan Kenobi are, yet fail to know anything about the lives of Billy Sunday, D.L. Moody, Charles Finney, Hudson taylor, George Mueller or Peter Cartwright.” (James Lyman, Florida)

This is not an argument for anti-technology. It is a call to anti-carnality! If you husbands will “ape” the world and continue to justify the sin of polluting your households, perhaps some even stronger words from a previous age will knock some sense into you. It is time for you to love your family and quit “monkeying around” with the world:

“I don’t care a rap what you think about it before I begin or after I am through. I have a message that burns its way into your soul and into my heart...In my opinion the theater is of such doubtful character that it has been relegated to the class of forbidden amusements...If you want obscenity you will find it in the theater...Your show has to be tainted in order to gather in the coin...You will find divorce smeared all over the stage, and adultery even lurking in the flies. Why, there are shows where they have beds right in the middle of the stage, and carryings on which, if they happened in your own homes, would probably result in your receiving a visit from the police....The time is long past when any number of serious-minded citizens look to the theater for entertainment or instruction...You listen to me! I defy anybody to contradict what I have to say about the matter.”

(Billy Sunday, 1862-1935, Twenty Centuries Of Great Preaching) “Would you allow in your parlor such brazen indecency enacted as is dramatized every night in some of the theaters of America...? That which is wrong in a parlor is wrong on a stage. It ought to require just as much completeness of apparel to be honorable in one place as to be honorable in another. If fathers and mothers take their sons and daughters to see such Sodomite lack of robe, and then, in after time, the plowshare of libertinism and profligacy should go through their own household, they will get what they deserve.” (T. Dewitt Talmage, Social Dynamite, 1888)

Earlier generations would faint at what you justify in your living room before your wife and children with your TV is connected to worldly programming. Now quit sitting there pleasing yourself because you “feel” conviction. Go disconnect the antenna and cut the wire now before the Devil “perverts” your mind again:

Pr 14:16 ¶ A wise man feareth, and departeth from evil: but the fool rageth, and is confident.

Mt 28:7 And go quickly,...

WORDS WORTH REMEMBERING

“Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they don’t understand; but for me, I have always noticed that the passages that bother me are those I do understand.” (Mark Twain)

This editorial comes from "The Kingdom Alert Update" [kingdom-alert-update] #7 (March 12,1999)