By Eric Stogner – April 2024
As watchmen on the wall, we must always remember this most fundamental truth. When the disciples asked Jesus to tell them what will be the sign of His coming and of the end of the age? – He answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you”. He went on to describe that others will come in his name, claiming that they are the Christ and will deceive many. So, we know one thing – deception itself is the first and most important sign of the end times and is also the thing to guard against the most. And wouldn’t you say that we are in a time that is awash in information, dis-information, and misinformation. In other words, we are more likely than ever to be witnessing and be caught up in deception.
I don’t know everything, but I do know some things. And what I am going to share with you today is one of those things that I know – that I know – that I know. What I mean is that I know this truth on the Highest authority. I have only had a handful of what I would call supernatural experiences where I can say I have heard or been shown something specific from God. But what I plan to share today is one of those very few and extremely clear messages from the Lord – that applies to all of us. In other articles, I am usually sharing my opinion or defending my theory about a matter, I consider myself a conspiracy scientist and not a conspiracy theorist – I am an engineer and I like to observe evidence. But this article is different. I am stating this truth from a ‘thus sayeth the Lord’ level of conviction because, well, I actually and literally heard from the Lord on this topic.
A word about hearing from God
I know, some may have checked out already. And I get that, because I used to be one of those people who would check out if someone started talking to me the way I am about to talk with you. The idea of claiming to have heard a word from God was completely foreign to me, or even nutty and perhaps unbiblical. Because, for most of my life, I had never had even heard that believers could actually hear from God, much less had I ever consciously known that I had or could hear from God. Neither did I know anyone who had such experiences, nor had this topic ever been described or discussed in all the church sermons I had ever heard up until I was about 35 to 40 years old. And I grew up in the church and had been attending pretty actively since my youth. It just was not something that was ever talked about, and if by chance any scripture contained references to hearing God’s voice and pretty much anything supernatural, the preacher quickly moved past those references or they essentially discounted then as, perhaps, something that only happened to ‘special people’ back in ‘biblical times’.
I admit it – that WAS my worldview about God and how he works. I would have described God as the great clockmaker – the master designer of our whole world who had built it all, wound it up and set it on a shelf letting is run its course, essentially on autopilot. Growing up, I had learned some basic head-knowledge about God – his accomplishments, his directives, and suggestions for good living. I also believed in the miracles surrounding Jesus’s life, his ministry on earth, and the fact that he did, indeed, rise from the dead and ascend into heaven. I was on-board with all of that. And I basically viewed the bible as a textbook or instruction manual that God had left for us lowly earth-dwellers to use as a reference guide. I presumed that once God got everything in motion, that he watched it all from a distance, admiring his handiwork, but basically remaining uninvolved anymore. Yes, there were times he was active with Moses, etc. and of course that one massive intervention where He himself came down into His own creation as a living man. Jesus served to essentially ‘updated the user guide’, adding new chapters to and fulfilling older prophesies the bible, but then, He just left again. He went back to sitting on the Father’s throne chair in heaven. And again, sat back and watched.
I know that wasn’t very deep, it totally ignores the role of and person of the Holy Spirit, and overlooks lots of examples in the Old Testament, as well as some in the New Testament; but that view made sense to me at the time. It was what my church attendance and my lived-life experience seemed to teach. The implication being that God had already said all that needed to be said and done. His was a finished work first of creation and then again on the cross and all we needed to do was understand that and agree with it. We just needed to give mental ascent to a set of beliefs and put our hope in God that everything will turn out well for us in the end. And, in the meantime – I assumed that this life it is pretty much up to us and the outrageous slings and arrows of fortune or fate. I understood that we could pray, thought I wasn’t sure what or how much good that was supposed to do, because in my false view – God may be listening, but He didn’t really seem to do much, and prayer didn’t seem to really affect anything.
I would say that attending church was like going to school to me. And like school, it was your decision whether to pay attention and get a basic level of understanding, similar to completing high school, or keep going on to college and grad school level, particularly if you wanted to go into the ministry. And ministry was a lot of social activism and behavior modification. Faith was all pretty much an academic pursuit that did have some practical life benefits – a ‘Christianity of tips and techniques’, but that was pretty much it.
But God, as it turned out, is much bigger. He not only started bringing into my life other teachers, books, and discipleship experiences, but then he ‘blew apart’ that ‘clockmaker’ model via a dream/vision experience I had back in 2009 and I have never been the same since. Once you have had your eyes opened and have had an encounter with the Lord like I had, you can’t go back to business as usual. You can’t ‘un-ring’ that bell. You see, I was given a massive dream / vision experience on Friday, Sept 18, 2009, between the hours of 3:00 and 4:30 am that forever changed my understanding of how God works, and how He can and does speak, and is actively engaged in our lives. In this experience he gave me a warning but also a message of peace and hope concerning the passing of my wife from cancer that he informed me would be happening soon. I was starting to sense God’s active presence in other ways in the years prior, but this blew my sox off. If this has piqued your interest, you can go ahead and listen to my story in the interview Tony conducted with me that was posted on February 27, 2024. I talk about the some of the content from my book “Into God’s Country”. It is Episode #496 and can be seen in the February 2024 archive section of the “A Minute to Midnite” website or on the YouTube channel.
For now, it is important to simply know after having such a massive spiritual experience, I learned that indeed God can and does speak to us. The dream/ vision described in that interview was the most dramatic, but I have had a couple other times where the Lord spoke with some clarity and what I plan to share today of one of those. And this concerns the state of our media and what we as believers need to be alert to. Satan is indeed the Prince of the Air and the Airwaves.
Hearing from the Lord:
Here is exactly what happened and how it went down: About a decade ago, around 2012 or so (a few years after my 2009 first life-changing dream / vision experience), I was traveling on business and staying in a hotel room for the night. In those years, I was already pretty skeptical and critical of a lot of what was being broadcast on TV and other media sources. I had a sense that many of the shows were teaching bad values, and the news media already had drifted far from their stated ideals of unbiased journalism. News was becoming info-trainment and entertainment was becoming more tawdry, deteriorating with each passing season. I clearly remember a time when the ABC network started using a tag line that gleefully announced “ABC – a new kind of family”. That little phrase stuck out to me even back then. I remember thinking, ‘what sort of new family are they talking about?” Who said we needed or wanted a new ‘kind’ of family. But those subtle tag lines already revealed a lot about their agenda.
They intended to tear apart, reimagine, and reassemble a new model for the American family. And we have certainly seen that play out since then. Anyhow, I was also a technology laggard, partially to save money but also to shield my family from what felt like ever-worsening degeneracy on TV. The content of TV shows had drifted a long way from shows like “Leave it to Beaver” or “The Andy Griffith Show”. There seemed little that was being broadcast on TV in those days that was worth watching, or that upheld good family values. The culture wars were just in their infancy, but big divisions between liberal and conservative ideas were already appearing and being fomented. I begrudged the fact that I was spending more and more time trying to cull through movies at the local Blockbuster video store in order to find some that I felt comfortable enough to share with my family than I had in the past. I could sense that media was just getting darker and darker.
I had this little habit that when I traveled and was away from my family and staying in a hotel room, it was a rare opportunity for me watch cable TV and see what all I was missing by not having cable TV at home. I always wondered what the rest of the world was watching or saturating their minds with these days. I heard their conversations about the latest TV shows and tried my best to participate as much as possible, hiding the fact that I really had little idea what they were talking about because I was still living in the media dark-ages getting only the free broadcasts via an old-fashioned TV antenna as opposed to the dozens of channels on cable TV.
On such trips. I discovered that there were many shows that basically were ridiculing the values of the past. Most of the programs featured men who were portrayed as dummies but who were surrounded by wives and children who were much smarter and more savvy than them. Gone was the idea of “father knows best”. Now the common trope was ‘mother knows best …and she had her hands full managing all the kids, including the biggest kid of all – her doofus of a husband’. Kids on these new TV shows were all mostly obnoxious brats who talked back and knew better than their parents. The dramas shifted from being family-focused on a stable adult world to an erratic teen-focused world. Talk about insanity. Teens are almost pathologically immature and unable to make wise decisions. The literal definition of the word sophomore (as in a 10th grade teenager in the USA) means ‘a wise fool’. Teens in this age group are wise in their own eyes, but in reality they are often fools. But clearly there was a shift in media. Older people were portrayed as ‘square’ and out of touch, while young people were cleaver and easily able to outsmart their parents. My point is that because I was mostly shielded from the constant evolution of media, I could was in a much better position to see just how much the values were deteriorating and how the masses were being trained slowly and steadily to accept ideas that they never would have accepted just a few years in the past.
And I noticed that there were a lot of shows that glorified debauchery and the worst aspects of society. Shows like ‘Cops’ that were claimed to be ‘reality TV’ shows that simply showed image after image of a certain demographic acting poorly and getting arrested – over and over again. Is that what we should think of as quality entertainment – shows that focus on crime and reinforce negative stereotypes that we are all striving to move past and not become our ‘mental backdrop’. TV talk shows that once featured legitimate guests speaking on at least partially relevant topics had been replaced with shows like Jerry Springer where young, dumb, and deviant people revealed to the world their messed-up lives and made a show if it. Eventually the societal breakdown was being showcased with literal fights and exciting episodes where the guests on these shows would get riled up and start hitting people with folding chairs. This was becoming a normal and a hoped-for event on any given episode. There used to be a joke that said, “I went see a fight and a hockey game broke out”. This pokes fun at the fact that it just felt normal for a brawl to happen as part of any normal ice hockey game. It was the same on the Jerry Springer Show – if there wasn’t some sort of ridiculous outburst and fight, you felt like you had been jipped. And if a guest picked up a chair and security guys were called onto the scene while on camera, well that was what the people really enjoyed seeing and helped build the ratings for the show.
This glorification of evil was a trend that just kept growing from there. There were shows about sleazy people, messy lives, cheating wives, pregnant teenagers, people talking about alternate lifestyles, and on and on all being sold as edgy and authentic, instead of the somewhat Polly-anna scripted drama shows of the past. The Lord’s name was routinely being taken in vain, profanity was getting worse, etc. And perhaps these things were more true to real life, but the question remained – was art imitating life, or was life starting to imitate ‘art”. (If you can even call what was being aired on TV as any sort of art form) I think it is clear which influenced which – the people were learning to behave badly by modeling what they were being shown on TV. That is clearly the intention of the media. But it gets worse. The media celebrates the encouragement and endorsement of all manner of anti-social, anti-family and anti-biblical behavior. And today, these examples of ‘legacy media’ are mild and tame compared with what is distributed to the masses on satellite TV or cable, social media, YouTube, TikTok, porn on demand like OnlyFans. I know, we have fallen a lot further down the sewer hole since those days from a decade ago. But even then, the decline was well underway, and it vexed me even then.
What God spoke about the media:
So, there I was in this hotel room. It was probably around 9:00 pm and I felt pretty tired and just wanted to relax and watch a bit of TV before drifting off to sleep. I hoped to find something simple and harmless to watch but that proved to be a difficult challenge. There I had all these channels to choose from but there was nothing worth watching.
Rather than finding some mindless entertainment, all I found were shows that were aggravating or ‘triggering’. The more I flipped around the channels, the more disturbed I became and I again noticed the same patterns that I had been picking up on for a while. All the shows seemed to feature the kind of programming that just ridiculed and tore down that which was once good in our society – character roles and institutions like what it meant to be a woman or a man, a wife or a husband, judges and police officers, political leaders, and other people in positions of authority. I wanted to find a show where the main characters modeled and upheld values like honesty and integrity, character, and goodness, and dare I say a Judeo-Christian set of values. Because what was really starting to distress me was that all these shows featured people and plots that were being portrayed in a dark and evil light. No matter what the show, each of the character roles in society were being torn apart, deconstructed, and turned upside down. Every story was about how flawed and untrustworthy these people were, and even the superhero movies of the day started to focus on their flaws and dark sides. Why do our heroes now all need to be twisted and have dark origin stories? Over and over, what was once good was now being made to be evil! Scripture does say that in Isaiah 5:20 “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter”. That is precisely what I was observing.
So, as I flipped around the channels, taking in the variety of shows, and it was just getting more and more frustrated. Finally, I remembered that cable TV did have channels were dedicated to topics about nature. I figured that would be perfect – just let me see a video about animals, fish, or something good in God’s creation. So, I flipped to the Discovery Channel and National Geographic channel thinking, surely, these channels would have something edifying to watch. But what did I discover? One channel had a show about prostitutes, and the other was about the life of incarcerated criminals. I’m not making this up. I was shocked to see that things had sunk to this level and that this was what even these two channels held up as ‘quality entertainment’. This shows the depth that media had deteriorated to even back then.
I was so tired and frustrated that I just shut off the TV and slammed down the remote control. In a huff, I thought, ‘fine – I will just get my prayers for the evening done and go to sleep’. Not exactly the best posture to begin in prayer, but I was just so frustrated and frankly, disgusted. So, I started to calm down, turned out all the lights, hunkered down in the bed and closed my eyes so I could try to focus and begin going through the usual list of things I pray about in the evening: people or issues on my heart, etc. But I couldn’t fully shake my feelings of frustration. I could feel the unrest inside and it started drifting into my prayers. I wasn’t praying out loud but rather, thinking and praying inside my head. But, in my spirit I was feeling more and more agitated, or perhaps the best word is ‘vexed’.
As I was trying to finish my prayers, I was praying for my wife and kids, and I found myself, sort of transitioning into what felt more like complaining to God. I was thinking things like “Can you please lead us to better entertainment options to watch?” and then thoughts like: “Why is it so hard to raise kids these days”, to even thoughts like: “Why was I placed on the earth at this time in history when I am required to raise kids in this rotten media environment?!” I was getting more and more agitated as I was thinking about all the trash on TV, all the garbage we are exposed to and are influenced by. And the theme of my rant all kept coming to mind again – the idea that various institutions in life that were once something good were now begin inverted and held up as bad, corrupted, etc. And I found myself almost shouting in my mind as I thought about these TV shows and was thinking “IS NOTHING SACRED ANYMORE!”. And then it happened ….
I distinctly heard what sounded like an audible voice say: “Exactly!”.
I was so startled and shocked that my eyes flew open, and I started looking quickly around the room to see who was there in my room – because I was quite certain that I was the only person in that hotel room. And without thinking I simply reacted and spoke out loud saying, “What?!” And the same voice repeated itself again saying: “Exactly!”.
I continued to look around the room and nothing appeared out of the ordinary. I could see by the faint glow from a nightlight in the bathroom that, indeed there was nobody else in the room. And then it hit me. This could be the Lord! And immediately the story of Samuel in the bible came to mind and that gave me the insight as to what to do. I remember the words that Eli told Samuel when he heard a voice calling out to him in the night. I figured that I should say something similar, so I literally said, “speak Lord, for your servant is listening”. Frankly, I had no idea what else to say. And suddenly I heard more – or better yet, I received more. Now, instead of a clear audible voice, it was as if I was having a short conversation via mental telepathy or something, I heard distinct words and sentences, but it no longer seemed audible in the usual sense. It was more like a quick mental download. And this is what I heard, or received (it sounded like 4 specific sentences):
- Thank you, my son, for seeing things the way I see them.
- Yes, indeed, the whole world lies under the power of the evil one and, the media is his primary tool to influence the masses.
- Satan is the prince of the air and the airwaves.
- And I (meaning the Lord) am the ultimate target.
That was it. I had been wrestling with this topic of the evils on our media, and I had some of my own thoughts about this, and now, suddenly the Lord spoke and answered with such clarity. It was truly shocking and caught me completely off guard.
First, it felt good to be praised – that was certainly something that I wasn’t expecting. And the praise was rather specific. It wasn’t Him telling me what a fine or perfect person I am. He was precise at what he was calling out for praise – it was the fact that, at least on this issue, I was seeing things correctly – seeing things the way He sees them. In other words – I wasn’t being deceived. This statement alone seems like a big deal and reveals one of the goals of our entire faith journey, sometimes called our sanctification. Over time, that is God’s goal and his work in us. To train us up first to see things like He sees them, and also to respond as He would respond. When we see this kind of programming in the media – it should revolt us and vex our spirits. Apparently, God doesn’t like it and neither should we. And we shouldn’t be filling our minds on this, but rather we should be renewing our minds with good and Godly influences – like reading His Word in the Bible. This should not be a surprise or a hard concept to understand. It actually makes perfect sense.
Later, as I reflected on this whole experience, I wondered what triggered it. I mean, this is not common at all. It seemed to come from out of nowhere. All I can say is that I was indeed vexed in my spirit, and I guess I was crying out to the Lord – and He heard me and he responded! So much for the clockmaker image of God. What seemed interesting to me was the word or phrase I used just before the Lord spoke. I said, “Is nothing ‘sacred’ anymore?”. Sacred is not even a word that I use in my regular vocabulary, but it almost felt like a trigger word, if there was one, that the Lord seemed to key in on. And that makes sense when you remember what the word ‘sacred’ means. It means ‘connected with God or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration”. In other words, things that are important to God that should be treated with honor and respect, not derided, and destroyed. And that was exactly the sense I meant when I asked the question or made that statement– that things that were once good and of God were being undermined and derided by the media – and apparently God feels the same way.
Secondly, He confirmed what I felt in my heart all along. That, indeed, we are surrounded by evil, and the media is a huge part of it. I know, there are some redeeming shows and good uses of the technology but let’s not kid ourselves about all the evil the media brings and exports to the whole world. Debased content may be America’s single largest and most prolific export of all. We are mass purveyors of sin and debauchery. And now I have it on the highest authority that indeed, Satan is a force to recon with and he uses the media as one of his most powerful and pervasive tools to take down all of humanity. Media is not neutral. It is designed and produced by people who either knowingly or unknowingly are working for the evil one. It is a major tool of influence, both directly and indirectly. This is in alignment with the scripture passage in 1 John 5:19 where it says ’We know that we are of God, and that the whole world is under the power of the evil one’. There is no longer a need to explain that any further. That is the reality that existed then and even more so today. We live in a world at war.
Thirdly, the Lord even connected this evil with a frequently used description of Satan in scripture where he is called the Prince of the Air. (Eph 2:2 – see below). This confirms that Satan has a legitimate title and power – Satan is a prince who exercises power on a global scale. But he does not have more power than the King of Kings, and in fact, he is subject to and must take orders from the Lord and King. And Satan exercises his power IN the air. Meaning the space around the entire planet – that apparently does include the broadcast air or airwaves. It’s scary and fascinating at the same time, isn’t it. And in a sense, now that the Lord has revealed and confirmed this reality – don’t you feel a lot like I did – which was to think: “I knew it!” I just knew it. I had always felt things we were being shown were evil and getting more so with each passing season.
Finally, the last statement the Lord shared was an eye-opener and it really answered my questions and concerns by tying them all together. Indeed, the shows we are fed all have a similar theme, because they have a similar goal or objective. It is not about entertainment; it is about slow and steady indoctrination. The most successful indoctrination is training that doesn’t feel like training but instead feels more like amusement. Another term for this is ‘gamification” where a task is made into a game to entice people to participate and engage in it. The stories that we are shown, even the news and the advertisements ALL have an underling agenda. Their plot lines and scripts are not merely random or by accident. They all play a small part in a larger ploy. It is to indoctrinate you in some way in the ways that are counter to God’s ways, or wear you down, or expose you to just one level worse of an influence so you are desensitized to it and you slowly, but steadily, start to mimic it and accept it.
CS Lewis made this point in his famous book, The Screwtape Letters, to say that the most effective way to lead someone to hell, is by encouraging them to take small downward steps, that are light and soft underfoot. No dramatic drops in morality, just a slow, easy descent. This will prevent the individual to waking up and realizing just how far they have descended. That is what all the shows are doing to the masses. And it is difficult to notice the effect if you are saturated in it every day. But, for someone like me, who had avoided the latest TV content, I was able to notice the sharp decline of morals and values in the media, because the comparison was more stark and therefore still was shocking to me. It is like the preverbal frogs in the pot. Somehow, I had remained out of the pot while the temperature had been slowly increased. So, when I stuck a toe into the pot, I recoiled and could tell the pot was nearly at the boiling point. I had not been lulled into accepting what was being steadily pumped into people’s brain and soul.
And the end goal that the Lord revealed also makes all the sense in the world. Satan does not merely want to shift the worldview of the masses; he wants to ultimately get a large group of individuals to step completely away from God and any form of a Godly worldview. Satan’s goal is to get as many people as possible to willing abandon any notion of God, turn their back on him, spit in his face, and reject the offer of life that the Lord intends for everyone to receive. Satan can’t block the offer completely, but he can do his best to make it as unappealing as possible. It is sad, but that is what our media is all about. And the sooner we wake up and understand this clearly – and step away from media – the better. It almost feels too late these days. Media has gotten so large and pervasive and out of control. People are streaming shows and binge watching, devoting so much of their life and attention to it because it is now so convenient and ubiquitous. People can watch whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want, 24/7 if they like. They have these media devices in every room, in most restaurants, and many doctor’s waiting rooms and, in their pocket. Now there are devices on many people’s wrist and next will be wearables like VR glasses or digital contact lenses so the media will be ever present before your eyes and your mind. Who knows what else they are about to release on the world to make the masses digital slaves and zombies.
When you know the end game – shouldn’t that shock you into awake-ness and alertness?
I could write pages and pages to give examples and to explore what all this means. And I will wrap things up here and save the rest for the next couple articles. I want to focus on some very recent things in the media, and many of the more advanced ways media is a tool of Satan.
For now, you would do well to finally start to see media as this evil and diabolical. Watch it with different eyes and start watching a lot less of it. You will see your mood and spirits improve simply by fasting from its negative and evil content. Next, we will get into how the media preys upon some pretty basic human fears and natural wiring. This sort of influence is what the media uses to trigger people and manipulate them to react in a specific way. Fear is a primary motivator that Satan uses here. Media is also used to plant negative ideas and builds up fears in the people, so that they can be easily controlled. Predictive programming is another way to accomplish a negative agenda while deceiving the masses. I like to always end on a positive note – and the positive note of this essay is simply that God is not distant and is not merely a clockmaker. He is active and involved and he hears and even speaks. If you watch the interview, I gave in Episode #496 – Visions of a Believer’s passage to Heaven – Into God’s Country, you will hear the most positive news of all. That we as believers are baptized not only into Christ’s death, but also into his resurrection and restoration in heaven. Now that is what I call a really positive ending!
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