Let's start today. God is good. The title of the message today is, Protesting Too Much, Escaping Satanic Manipulation. I'll explain as we proceed. The text I chose is Proverbs 15, 31 and 32. Let's read it together, please. The ear that heareth the reproof of life abideth among the wise. He that refuseth instruction despises his own soul. Holy God, we do pray that you would minister to us, speak to us, convict us, encourage, Lord. We know that your word is perfect and preserved and inspired. And you wrote it, Lord, our Creator, our Savior. And we pray right now, as you promised, Lord, your Spirit would go with your Word and give us a good blessing today. Exactly what we need, Lord, what we need to hear. In Jesus' name, Amen. You may be seated. Thank you, Church. Let's read that again. The ear that heareth the reproof of life abides among the wise. He that refuseth instruction despises his own soul. You can hear but not hear, as you understand. And there are many mechanisms, manipulative techniques that the devil offers you to escape really hearing reproof. It says in Proverbs 19, hear counsel and receive instruction that thou mayest be wise in thy latter end. You are not going to grow and you're not going to be blessed at the judgment seat of Christ. You're not going to have good habits that become part of your character if you don't learn to hear and receive instruction. which oftentimes means correction, reproof, guidance. Now, as I said, various means have been perfected, promoted, practiced by the flesh, the world, the devil, to keep people from hearing the reproof of life. So they end up in death. They end up in destruction. There are creative defense mechanisms offered by Satan to you, readily available for you. And they're all made, designed to keep you on the path to destruction, so you will not correct your way. The Bible says we're not ignorant of His devices, church, if you follow the Scriptures. So, the title of my message, protesting too much, question mark, It's a play. It's from a play by Shakespeare around 1603, right before our King James Bible was published. Sometimes people call it protesting too loudly. They say, I think you're protesting too loudly. What does that mean? It's from a play, Hamlet, 1603 by Shakespeare. And it says, the lady doth protest too much, methinks. It really means, I think you're protesting too much. Not getting all into the play that Shakespeare wrote, I'll just give you a quick little synopsis of the context of the words. Hamlet thinks his father was poisoned by his uncle, who then married the queen mother. So he says, I know what I'll do. I'm going to set up a play where the exact thing happens, and I'm going to watch my relatives and see how they respond to see who basically was in on this whole thing to prove my suspicions. So in the play, within this play, the mother insists, I will never remarry if my husband ever dies. Her exact words were this, both here and hence, pursue me lasting strife. If once I be a widow, ever I be a wife. She means I'm not going to get married again if my husband dies. So he looks over at the queen mother and he says, how like you this play? And she replies, the lady doth protest too much, methinks. What does she say? She's saying that the woman of the plague, by how fervently she declared her faithfulness, was a sign to her that she was not to be believed. So the phrase originally meant to exclaim in a manner too excessive to be believed as sincere. Now you'll see this. Any of you that have raised children, Imagine a little child, he comes running around the corner, he or she, and says, I didn't break the cookie jar. I didn't do it. I didn't even eat a cookie. So the child doth protest too much, methinks. Now, you need to understand that protest in this day and age could also mean insist. We know today we use it to mean to deny. But whether you are affirming something, or whether you are denying something, if it's excessive, if it's too much, or too loudly, it could mean that some kind of attempt to cover the real truth is at hand. Detectives, when they are cross-examining or maybe interviewing you, and they begin to ask questions. They have all of these things, some of it common sense, some of it psychobabble, but they have all these ways of trying to discern if you're lying. And one of them is if you are overly insisting that you didn't do something in an excessive way, with all kinds of colorful language, that's a sign to them, they may be guilty of this. Cambridge English Dictionary says it means to protest too much means to express an opinion or a fact so strongly or so often that people start to doubt that you are telling the truth. Or maybe you are not confident about what you are saying. They actually teach writers today that if you use constant adjectives Putting everything in caps. Instead of saying very much, you say very, very, very, very much. That it actually can take away from what you're trying to say and make you look less believable. It makes it look like there's desperation. Like there's insecurity. Like you're even doubting what you're writing and you're trying to convince yourself. And maybe, in a sense, we can make an application here. When our Lord says, let your yea be yea and your nay be nay, I meant it ought to be enough in some ways. However, an argument could be made on the other side. That if you show no emotion whatsoever, if you're overly stoic about something, It can also make you appear unbelievable. Why isn't that husband, if he's not guilty of murder, why isn't he upset? He just says, no, I didn't do it. There needs to be some emotion, some kind of passion, some type of assertion. So, either extreme can make you look guilty. So, from this basic understanding of human nature, it is often claimed today That if you are protesting something at all, it must be a sign that you really identify with it. Now they use this selectively. Sigmund Freud, the cocaine-headed founder of psychoanalysis, he called it reaction formation. Today, they will conclude that any extreme anger or disgust at something like sodomy must mean that you are a closet homosexual. Now, hold on a second. Before we get too hard on these people, that is sometimes true. Sometimes people have come out and they have been some of the loudest, constant, preachers against certain sins and come to find out they're guilty of those very sins, as if it was a smoke screen, as if they were trying to somehow convince themselves in regard to their own guilt. And so, yes, that can happen and it has happened. Sometimes people are trying to cover inner guilt. Sometimes they're trying too hard to portray the opposite of what they really are, suspecting that somebody is finding a kink in their armor. But let's turn this around on those who are too quick to use it to silence all opposition to their leftist, sinful practices. Listen to me, Church of God. You say something's wrong, like homosexuality, whatever it is, They're going to come after you as a defense mechanism. They're going to say you're protesting too loudly. We know what's going on here. You really are doing the sin, committing the sin that you are protesting. It's a way to silence you. See, it's a way to make you, oh, I don't want to act like I'm doing the sin. So I need to be quiet about it and never reprove. Hey, it works. It's reverse psychology of some kind. It accomplishes. Everybody gets real quiet because they don't want to say, I don't want to act like I'm guilty. But let's turn it around on them. Does it therefore mean that anybody who exercises disgust or anger at what they call bigoted, homophobic, gay bashers are really secretly disgusted with the sin themselves? You ever think about that? Maybe in this climate of propaganda. They're dealing with the shame that society has placed on their true feelings. They know that sodomy is naturally disgusting and offensive, but they continue to accuse people of being bigots and homophobic because they are secretly closet fundamentalists. So next time somebody calls you a homophobe, say, I bet you're a fundamentalist. You're just not out of the closet yet. You're just afraid to face what's really in your heart. That's why you're calling me a bigot. You know what's inside. Face it. You think it's gross too. You know it's against nature. You see the mayor of Fort Worth riding in a limousine or whatever it was, Sodomite parade, there's a transvestite looking hideous thing right next to her. And she's smiling as if it's all normal. She knows that's not normal. She's smiling and playing the game. Oh, I can't believe these bigots out here. No, no, you know it's gross too. You know it's gross too. Let's say there's a woman. She says, he makes me so mad. What a bully. How unkind he is. What a narcissist. Her friend elbows her and says, I think you really like him. You talk about him so much. She says, no, I don't. Ugh, how dare you? No, the lady doth protest too much, methinks. See, that's the idea. You're always talking about something. You're always protesting. Maybe it's a sign that you don't want to deal with it. Or whatever reason, you are trying to put up a smoke screen about your real feelings and who you really are. Now listen, I proclaimed in other messages recently that me thinks many protest too little. In regard to many issues, wow, we're too silent. People have used this so much that everybody's afraid to say anything because they don't want to show up in the media or be accused. And so I'm going to tell you, there's a lack of courage. There's a fear. They're afraid of the scarecrows that people set up. See, in debate, people set up straw men, and you run from that straw man, and then they laugh. Don't be afraid of straw men. Don't be afraid of straw men. Don't be afraid of the little scarecrows and their little games. They can scream. They can holler. They can mock. They can do whatever they want. Don't allow it to affect you, because it's just a game. It's a debate game. And the louder they proclaim it, the more it looks like they're insecure. They're insecure. Debaters and arguers have said that a lot of times, those that have to insult the most is because they don't have an argument. Those that have to cuss the most, those that have to use railing the most, are ones with the less amount of real substance to their points. Maybe they are a closet believer in the very thing, but they're afraid to admit it. So they argue against it. Hey, nobody wants to be ridiculed by the powerful media machine. Nobody wants to be made the center of a new TikTok video or some viral video. You know, nobody wants to be where the whole world comes together, eats popcorn and laughs at you. Nobody wants that. So everybody's walking on pins and needles. I got to make sure that I'm not accused. I got to make sure I'm silent. I'm just going to be quiet, mind my own business. But you know, throw this back on them like we did before, but in another way. We can rightfully argue that those who are most vocal about accusing others of protesting too much, or accusing them of being hypocrites with hypocritical motives, it must be that they are protesting too much. They are protesting the protesting too much, which means that they are secretly guilty. In other words, they wish they had half the guts these other people have. They wish they were not such cowards or fools. It says in Proverbs 24, wisdom is too high for a fool. He opened, if not his mouth, in the gate. They come after you and say, you're protesting too much. Say, no, maybe you're protesting too much. Maybe what I'm doing makes you uncomfortable because you know you ought to be doing it. Maybe I am doing what you wish you had the courage to do. What's good for the goose has to be good for the gander. I mean, you can't call somebody a homophobe or call them a closet homosexual because they're saying homosexuality is wrong. It might be that you're a closet fundamentalist. It might be, as we see just now, that you wish that you had the courage to stand up. But you know, you're guilty of silence. You're guilty of being a coward. If somebody who protests sodomy is really always a secret sodomite, then those who protest too much or too loudly against protesters protesting too loudly You get it. These must be guilty of reaction formation. They wanna stand up. They wanna have some backbone. They wanna be like you, but they're closet protesters. Do you remember the Bible? God says he had 7,000 in the day of Elijah that had not bowed the knee to Baal. Elijah thought he was the only one. Where were they at? Preachers like J. Vernon McGee says, where were they? They were silent. They believed like Elijah did, but they didn't have the courage of Elijah. That's the idea. There's a lot of people out there that want to be like you. There's a lot of people out there that wish they had the boldness. But instead of admitting it to themselves, they play manipulation games to try to hide their guilt. Let's notice something now, putting aside these disclaimers and qualifications. There does exist this tendency for many people to accuse somebody else of something in an attempt to somehow make their own guilty conscience feel better. This just came out the other day, a headline that says, Private Investigator Reveals the Key Signs You're Dating or Married to a Cheater. One of them was, wake up now, wake up, wake up. One of them was they get excessively defensive, they gaslight, they accuse you of cheating. That's true, many times. It doesn't mean any time you're accused that the other person must be guilty, but it means if without evidence, for no seemingly good reason, you get suddenly accused of cheating, what's going on here? A person might be insecure. They might have been victimized in the past, but it might also be that they're guilty. They have a guilty conscience, and it makes them feel better to accuse you. He added how the psychological term for this behavior is called projection, and says people tend to project what's inside of them onto other people. Daniel Aikon is this detective, I think, in Australia. Now listen, you see this in the Bible, or you see it in regard to the Bible. I'm going to do a sermon one day on defending the saints of God in the Bible. People project their own guilt and sins on people in the Bible. They see Jonathan and David loving one another as friends, and what do they conclude? Ah, they must be homosexuals. It's their own guilty conscience and wickedness that they're projecting onto people in the Bible. And I could go on and on and on. And they're just unrighteously dealing with the characters of the Bible. And I don't think anybody's ever put that together before. Maybe they have, but I don't know about it. The Daily Caller, August 25th, just the other day, put it this way. Gotta follow this, try to stay awake for me today. An NBC journalist who criticized people on Twitter for reporting on transgender surgery for minors at Boston's Children's Hospital also authored an article in 2019 where she appears to take credit for Facebook removing the accounts of privately run pedophile sting groups that expose pedophiles. So this person goes around, and if anybody's standing up trying to expose sin, she attacks those organizations or people, see. And she says, hey, it works. I've been able to remove them and de-platform them all over the place here. The efforts of Brandy Zandrosny, one of NBC's disinformation reporters, in both cases follow a nearly identical pattern. First, identify a perceived right-wing element online that is highlighting or covering a contentious, questionable, or perhaps even criminal issue. Then, cast the subjects of the coverage as victims of harassment. So those that are really guilty that these right-wingers are trying to expose, you call them victims and say the Christians or the conservatives or these right-wingers are harassing these poor people. You change the victim. You change who is guilty now. Source the public outrage to the coverage itself rather than the contentious questionable or criminal behavior of the subject. Oh, no, it's not the pedophiles out here that you got to worry about. It's these people trying to expose them. And you get outrage, collective outrage. You gather it together and say, these people are harassing, but they did that with the whole communist thing in the 1950s. You know, the people are guilty of McCarthyism. In other words, it's the people that are upset that the media and Hollywood and the music industry are filled with a communist, a communist. So, in other words, this works. It's a common thing. accuse those trying to expose the criminal behavior. Then contact massive tech corporations and alert them that these groups are operating on their platform. Michael Morris, managing editor of Free Speech America and Business at the Media Research Center says it's becoming more common for the far left to call speech they disagree with violent in an effort to silence Opposition. So, notice. You're brave enough to stand up and expose something that's very evil and call attention to it. The game is now to call attention to you and say, because you expose this, it's really because you harass people. You are violent. Look what you're doing to these people. So what they're doing is this, if you dare speak against anything the left or those like them are doing, they make you the offender. Now let me show you a Bible prophecy coming true right before your eyes. Isaiah 29, what did they do? God says He's going to judge them. Why? Because they make a man an offender for a word. and they lay a snare for him that reproveth in the gate." In other words, God predicted in the last days, before the second coming, this is what would happen. Hate crimes, all of these imaginary crimes, these mind crimes, all of these things. But really, it's because you said something was wrong, you're now an offender. You can go to jail for that. There's some countries right now that people are in jail, or they get fined if they say homosexuality is wrong. That's a crime! And that's how they wanted to be here, more and more. There's people right now in prison in America because of horrible, horrible injustice throughout our land. Horrible, horrible. And everybody just watches and says that's sad, they probably deserved it. But no, there's some horrible things going on in our land right now where people that try to expose something are in jail or in prison suffering great persecution right now. They silence your accusation by accusing you. Even if nobody's accusing them, they make themselves feel better to their arrogant, prideful hearts and guilty consciences. So they're going to attack others because they are guilty. Follow me now, listen. Let's say you have a blind spot in your life about the way you raise your children. You do many things very, very good, but you know in one certain area you have a big blind spot. I don't know what it is. You feel guilty about it. The Holy Ghost is convicting you about it. But instead of realizing that blind spot, instead of admitting it and trying to fix it, you begin to lash out at others in a harsh manner. What does that do? It makes you feel better about yourself, what you're being convicted about. And it also is a defense mechanism to keep anybody else back who might accuse you of your sore spot. See. You feel guilty about something you're justified, attack others. Satanic mechanism to avoid reproof. God says, Woe to them that call evil good and good evil, that put darkness for light and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter, but watch this, which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him. Cain took away Abel's righteousness by slandering him. There are righteous people, but they get judged severely and harshly and get slandered, maybe in court. Maybe these are corrupt judges. Maybe they're false accusers in court. Or maybe it's just in the gate or throughout the land. The point is, God looks down and says, there are righteous people that you are slandering. And why are you slandering them? Why are you accusing them? Why are you hurting their good name and their testimony across the land? You're doing it because it makes you feel better about your own sin and guilt that you've not repented of. And also, you hope it will keep these people from exposing you. See, nothing new under the sun, folks. This is always the general methodology of hardened sinners and backsliders, but in these last days, it is an organized agenda. They teach you how to destroy a nation or overthrow or bring in a revolution by using these means. Expose anyone as evil who dares expose evil. That's it. You've got to work to destroy the family, work to destroy the church, so you can have your revolution. Anybody that stands up and exposes you for destroying the family or destroying the church, You must come after as evil with all of your might, as loud as you can, with all the passion. And it becomes very corporate, very organized among those in the conspiracy. Psalms 94 says, they gather themselves together. against the soul of the righteous and condemn the innocent blood. One New Age writer called it the Aquarian Conspiracy. Dave Hunt called it the Archon Conspiracy. Proverbs says, He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the Lord. Why do they condemn the just? It's a defensive mechanism. Proverbs 24, he that saith unto the wicked thou art righteous, him shall the people curse, nations shall abhor him. But to them that rebuke him shall be delight, and a good blessing shall come upon them. That's not instantaneous at all times, but in the long run, in the long run, the good people of God look back upon you and you are praised as a hero. Church of God, you should always examine your own motives in reproving others. There's two reasons I'm trying to give you all this. One, so you can examine yourself when you go to rebuke somebody. What's my motive? Am I trying to cover my own sin, make myself feel better? Is this to keep them from rebuking me? And number two, I want you to be able to resist this when people come after you and use it against you. I don't want you to be silent when God tells you to go reprove somebody in love. So always examine yourself. You better know that something's wicked, and you better respond against it with the right measure of assertion at the right time and the right way with the right motives. You could have too much zeal without any humility, without carefulness. Phineas was zealous in a good way and he was praised by God in the Bible. But later he and Israel almost shed innocent blood over Ed, a memorial that they thought was an idol temple. At least they were wise to confront the other tribes about it first before shedding blood. The Lord Jesus tells you, Matthew 18, if your brothers offended thee, go to your brother alone, privately, and deal with it. That's how you survive the local church. That's how you keep your friends. That's how you do what's right. You don't just go get upset about something. You don't just talk about it behind their back. No, you go to the person and you deal with it if you're not able in mercy to overlook it. You go communicate. called assertive communication. Notice Matthew, our Lord Jesus says, Judge not that you be not judged. Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye? That little speck. But considereth not the beam that is in thine own eye? In other words, if you show no mercy at all in your judgment of others, how can you expect to receive mercy? Now, in the same sermon, in the same book, and in the same Bible, don't take this too far. The Lord says, beware of dogs, beware of those swine, those hogs, beware of fools, because you can get bitten by them. Judge righteous judgment. Don't be lazy and unloving to where you just let people continue in their sin. Our Lord says, after you remove this beam, then you can remove that moat that's in your brother's eye. Now you can go, even the small thing you can help him work on, because you can see clearly now and you have the right motive, see. But if you are so severe in your lack of charity, how can you ask God for mercy for your own sins? James says, for he shall have judgment without mercy that have showed no mercy and mercy rejoiceth against judgment. In other words, you want to show up at the judgment seat of Christ having shown mercy on a lot of people. Now, not a foolish mercy, not a sinful mercy, not a worldly mercy, because you don't get any points for that. You get in a lot of trouble and a lot of hurt and a lot of destruction. But where you should show mercy, a charitable mercy, a due process, a patience. What is this being that's in somebody's eye? It might be any big sin that they're blind to, but they're being so harsh with somebody about a little sin. Or they're falsely accusing somebody. They don't see clearly because of their guilt. Or one thing the beam might be is just their own pride. That's big enough, isn't it? You know, that's one of the first sins that God says He hates. In Proverbs 6, He says these six things that the Lord hates, seven are an abomination unto Him, a proud look, that's the first thing. If God hates you looking proud and a lying tongue, if God hates you looking proud, He certainly hates the pride that's in your heart that you're walking in. I used to think that maybe there was a play on words here. In early sermons, when I first started preaching, judge not that you be not judged. I know the basic idea is if you don't want to be judged harshly by God, don't be harsh with others. I get it. But I always wondered if there was something here Judge not that you be not judged. In other words, don't judge people as a defensive mechanism to keep yourself from being judged. Don't go out here and judge people and get onto their sins because you're guilty and it's making you feel better. Or you're trying to somehow distract them from calling attention to your sin. Judge not that you be not judged. Certainly the idea, if not in those very words, is in the context, is in the teaching. One of the motivations that people have for severity and judgment is their own guilt. One of the motivations they have to have such unrighteous, harsh judgment is they're trying to distract. Somebody gets out here and they get in messed up trash on the computer or something, And then they come and they're just a bear in their home. Or somebody gets out of here and is doing something wrong and nobody knows about it. And they go around and they get real severe with other people around them. Now there might be other reasons. There could be stress, crash, blood sugar, all kinds of things. But I'm telling you, that is one reason for people raging and being severe with one another. It's their own guilt. It's a defense mechanism. Pride can't handle the blind spot, the sore spot, that protected spot. And in their pride and self-righteousness, when they see that sore spot that they have, they go on the rampage. Judging others in the same area they feel guilty in. So my appeal to you today, folks, is number one, don't guilt trip people to make you look better. Don't guilt trip each other as a defense mechanism. Don't try to keep folks down so they never have enough boldness to look up and accuse you. Hitler and the Nazis taught this. They said any opposition that tries to expose the evil we're doing, go after the opposition with all, just annihilate them with bombastic humor and sarcasm and rail upon them publicly. Outrage. And this is what's happening today. An organized agenda as they gain more and more power and destroy the country and make it a communist new world socialist nation. I tell you what they're trying to do is use this humiliation and outrage to silence the opposition. It's happening in the churches. It's happening in the political realm. The world parades this type of mechanism on sitcoms, television, back when you had television sitcoms. I don't know if you still do today or not. The witty comebacks that everybody's taught from the time they're young to just, if anybody comes after you and accuses you of something, get them back, get them with a witty comeback, you know, some type of sarcastic comeback. And people train themselves their whole life to sit here and do that. So you come up and say, you know, brother, you ought not do this. Oh, they're coming after you with something, you know. What a childish thing. Are we in a Sunday school class now? Are you in your Spider-Man pajamas? It's a natural thing. You've been trained to do it by television, by movies, by the culture since you were a child. Somebody comes after you, attack them. Be more witty and sarcastic. Oh, some people walk around and they collect the weaknesses that they think they see, and they save them up and put them in their bank to use. If anybody ever comes after them, they're ready to bludgeon them in regard to whatever that thing is they think they see. That sore spot in the other person. What it means is, get away from me, or I'm coming after you and your sore spot. Brothers and sisters do it to one another, you know. It's a very bad thing. Very bad thing. It's not wrong to reason with one another. It ought to be done in the right spirit, though, with the right motives. Your motive is important. Reproving others should never be manipulation, an attempt to avoid your own reproof or to distract. You know, sodomy is wrong. The Bible says that that's a sin, an abomination to God, and then they come after some perceived sin that they think you have. Much of this is behind the so-called Karen hysteria. You'll see a woman somewhere trying to protect her boys from practical nudity. in public or at a lake somewhere or a water park. She's outraged. She says, I have a husband here. I have children here. This is a family place. And you have to have that degree of immodesty? Well, what happens? Who is the guilty one? See, in all of these, whatever it's TikTok, communist junk, whatever it is, YouTube, whatever it is out here, you gotta always ask yourself, because the media's gonna put it on the front page, who really is the guilty one here? Who should we have a collective outrage about? Sometimes it's the one walking around naked. It's not the person getting on to them. That's the one they want you to have outrage about. Look at this Karen, you know, let people mind their own business. Some of the latest is, school teacher, look what they're doing, wearing such tight, overly immodest clothes. And then they parade it all over Instagram and the internet. They say, look what I'm doing in front of the kids, ha ha ha, isn't this cute? Somebody dares say shame on you for showing up in a classroom with children looking like that. Is there no decency? And all of a sudden he gets on the front page. Look what these Karens are saying. Look what they're doing. You know what they're doing? They're body shaming. They're body shamers. So collective outrage. Let's go after the Karens. Go after the body shamers. Wait a minute here. Shame the reprovers? It says in Amos, they hate him that rebukes in the gate. They abhor him that speaketh uprightly. Oh, if it's a sin that is condoned and treasured and is used to destroy this country and family, it's a protected sin. If you dare say anything about it, they're coming after you. You're going to be the guilty one. Little girls getting raped and strangled and killed all around this nation by porn addicts. Drug dealers abounding, going into neighborhoods, getting kids addicted to their dope so they can make money off of them. Some folks finally say, you know what? I think we have a safe community here. I think we have a safe neighborhood. Now let's all join together and watch and make sure nobody enters in to try to strangle and rape anybody. Let's do what we can to keep the drug culture out of our neighborhood so our kids can ride bikes in the streets and they can play, you know. Every day, the people of this community are reminded, if you see something, say something. We call it the Community Watch Program. We beg you, if you see something, say something. Don't let a little girl get raped. Don't let these drug pushers enter in here. Somebody says, OK. They try to look out for their neighbors and their precious children. They see somebody they never saw before. They see somebody acting strange. They call police or they go confront them. They're called a Karen. I get part of it. There are some crazy, overzealous people. Some people are too quick to judge. But you definitely see this among the liberals and the leftists. Let somebody see you without a face mask during one of their big pharma moral crusades like COVID. They're worse than the Taliban. Wow. So the problem is much of this is all one-sided. It's designed by liberal controlled media to disarm and shame you into silence by ridicule, by humiliation. And you've got to get back from it and say, wait a second here, I'm not going to fall for that manipulation. Who's the guilty one here? Maybe this person that's reproving is overreacting. Maybe they are out of line here. But maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe that's the way the media wants you to have your one-sided, bent ridicule. It's offenders pretending to be the offended. It's perpetrators playing the victim, pretending to be victim. Shaming anybody that dares shame their agenda, which is the destruction of family, the youth, the churches, the neighborhoods. They've got to destroy the families of America. They've got to destroy the neighborhoods. So they use outrage in the media. They use comedy. They use ridicule. They've actually made being a homophobe today, whatever that is. I still don't even know what a homophobe is. But most people don't even know what a racist is. All of these things that they're using, what are you really even saying? Do you even know what you're saying? But today, in the culture, being a so-called homophobe is worse than being a sodomite. Doing something so sick and unnatural and gross and perverted. It goes on and on. Just insert the latest sin and it's all protected the same way. You come after the sin, they come after you. D'Souza charges that far-left Democrats and progressives are guilty of projection when they call Republicans and conservatives Nazis and fascists. D'Souza contends that in reality, the Democratic Party platform and progressive policy positions more closely resemble the ideologies of Hitler and Mussolini. He's saying the real Nazis are the ones calling you Nazis. Throughout Death of a Nation, de Souza draws parallels between the status policies of the Democratic Party and these totalitarian regimes. Movie review, Death of a Nation and U.S. Represented. What did he do in this documentary? He said, hey, they're calling you a Nazi. They're calling you a fascist. That's because that's what they're guilty of. That's who they are. Projection is this term for imagining that others possess faults which are actually your faults. So my point today is let's all examine our motives with pure godly motives. Go and reprove when it's time. And I want you to be able to resist and ignore the various games and tricks that Satan uses to silence you, to guilt trip you, to shame you into silence. Never use a wicked means to escape your own reproofs. And never be manipulated by others who use them. You can never be a good parent, a good pastor, a good watcher, a mature adult. a good big brother you can never be a good teacher good anything if you allow all the never be a good husband you can never be anything and be what God wants you to be and really be of any service and blessing to anybody if you allow people to guilt trip you all the time and play these little games I need you to understand something, though, Church of God, please know and be ready. When the means of manipulation or guilt tripping. Name calling, distraction, when those don't work anymore. More severe means will be resorted to by these people. It was H.G. Wells and his open conspiracy. So we're bringing in a new world order. This is a conspiracy. And if our propaganda ever fails, we'll shed blood. We'll use more severe means to accomplish our goals. But first, we're gonna try to manipulate you into silence. But see, you gotta believe God's here to protect you, and God called you to expose evil and preserve truth, and family, and church, and godliness. An example I want to give you as I close is the Southern Baptist Convention. You've heard of Southern Baptists. They're an organized group of Baptists, usually not as fundamental as an independent Baptist, see. Usually they have more relaxed standards, and I'm not saying every single church, but I'm saying usually a Southern Baptist church as a member of the Southern Baptist Convention will have looser standards than an independent Baptist. That's why Baptists say, I'm an independent fundamental Baptist, and they're trying to make themselves distinct from the Southern Baptist. However, the Southern Baptist had been infiltrated for many, many years by compromise leaders working from the inside. to try to bring the Southern Baptist churches to vote Democrat. Because by and large, your average Southern Baptist church is going to vote for Trump. They're going to vote conservative or what they think is conservative every time. Not everybody. But that's going to be the general situation. So the propaganda, the manipulation from inside is failing. So the DOJ, Department of Justice, has just now launched an investigation against the Southern Baptist Convention. Western Journal was smart enough and keen enough, Mark Devine, an excellent, excellent, excellent article he wrote in August 17, 2022. Op-ed. Will the D.O.G. investigation finally put S.B.C. elites on the same page as rank-and-file evangelicals? Here's what he means. The just revealed investigation of sex abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention by the Justice Department ratchets up the Biden administration's attacks on his political opponents. The probe also marks the abject failure of the SBC elite's decade-plus winsomeness campaign designed to sanctify evangelical votes for the Democratic Party and, as philosopher Stephen Wolf contends, to render evangelicals harmless to the regime. So what he's saying here is that they're going after the SBC for supposed sex crimes and it's showing that the propaganda isn't working. The liberals within the SBC have been unable to cause Southern Baptists to vote for Democrats. After all their work, they haven't been able to do it. They say, well, we've got to admit, they're the compassionate ones. Well, you've got to admit, the liberal does have compassion, unlike us. And Christians in the pew are like, no, I don't know what you're talking about. Aborting a baby is not compassionate. So they're not falling for it. Tyranny, not justice, social or otherwise, accounts for the behavior of the DOJ. To educated eyes, parents who push back against the pushing of critical race theory and transgenderism down the throats of their children are not domestic terrorists. No supposed crisis of sexual abuse in the SPC prompted Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate the institutions of the largest Protestant denomination in America. Well, what did? Southern Baptist voting patterns. So you've got to take them down. Against the directives of their erstwhile leaders, evangelicals, including Southern Baptists, twice voted 80 plus percent for Donald Trump. These voters show no signs of exchanging their politics for the never-Trumpism modeled and commended to them by Russell Moore, David French, and Francis Collins. The Daily Wire's Megan Basham and former Midwestern Baptist Seminary President Mark Koppenger. expose the current SVC elite's public panic over a handful of sex abuse cases as one more virtue signal to the Democratic voting blue communities they wish to please. Now listen to this. This is stuff I was wanting to gather, statistics. With only 409 abusers found over the course of 21 years, and a denomination boasting about 15 million members, Basham questions any crisis reading of such data. Hey, one example of abuse is horrible. One example is horrible, if proven. But don't act like this is the Catholic Church. Don't act like this is the Charismatics and some of this other stuff that's going on. Don't act like these are Democrats or something, you know what I mean? God forbid, root out every abuser, expose them with true justice and due process. But this is a propaganda game. This is a propaganda game. Copenger calculates that of the 28 million Southern Baptists in churches surveyed over a 20-year period by the Houston Chronicle, 222 were convicted of abuse crimes. That means 99.999% of Southern Baptist churches reported zero confirmed instances of sexual abuse for two decades, and that is not a crisis made. What Moore called an SPC apocalypse, and French dubbed a horror, turned out to be stunningly a low incident rate. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton taught the nation that around half of Trump supporters are a basket of deplorables who cling to their guns and religion. and are uncomfortable with people who don't look like them. Since then, the SPC elites have labored to signal that they pretty much agree with that assessment. They urged evangelicals not to celebrate the overturning of Roe versus Wade. They charged champions of a secure border with xenophobia. They mocked deplorables whose jobs were threatened should they shun the shot. They opposed a Louisiana bill that would have abolished abortion. Who are these people? God forbid. Expose them. They said critical race theory can aid interpretation of the Bible. They joined in hysteria over January 6, but fell mute as the nation's cities burned in the summer of 2020. They said evangelical churches should provide safe places for same-sex attracted to tell their stories. But SBC elite efforts failed to alter evangelical voting patterns in favor of the Democrats. It turns out then that the Biden administration's awards no prizes for efforts, just results, just results. So here come the feds. See, once propaganda fails, once manipulation fails, now comes hardcore persecution. Francis Collins and Russell Moore said that taking the vaccine is a great way to love your neighbor as Jesus commanded. Antonio Gramsci perfected one of Karl Marx's foundational convictions that the family and the church are the most intolerable institutions to the totalitarian dreams they harbored. In other words, you've got to get rid of them. You've got to get rid of the, you've got to destroy the church. You've got to destroy the family. It's in the way. It's in the way. They're now saying that if you even call somebody an accuser, if a preacher's accused or somebody over here is accused, you might say, his accuser, they say, you're not allowed to say that anymore. You can't call that person an accuser. But wait a minute, there hasn't been a trial yet. You haven't heard the other side. No, no, you're not allowed to call them an accuser. I believe that person's playing the victim. Oh, you're not allowed to use that phrase anymore. That's an outlawed phrase. You can't accuse anybody of playing the victim unless it's us accusing the right wing. So here's my conclusion for you today. God bless you. I want you to remember how morally dangerous what I preach today is to your life and family. When you play the victim and reverse accusation and deflect it back on somebody else, you will never grow. Listen to me, church. When the Holy Spirit convicts you for something, and He's been on you, pricking against you, poking at you, and He's been raising up people around you, it just happens to be that sermon, it happens to be this person. When that conviction is working on you, don't you use the defensive mechanism to reflect it. Don't you start going after others severely to try to deal with your guilt. You'll never grow. You will be left in perpetual immaturity and always be a baby Christian. You will never grow up in the Lord. You will never get to be used by the Lord. You will always be unstable to the destruction of your life and the life of those who look to you. Unstable as water. And understand, when you try to help people, and you try to reprove them, and they come after you with tantrums, and all of these guilt manipulation tactics, you can't fall for it. You can't fall for it. You've got to, in love, say, no, it's not going to work. It's not going to work. You need to grow. You need to grow. Proverbs says, reproves of instruction are the way of life. Holy Father, we do pray, God. We've all done this. We've all done the things that I'm talking about. And Father, I know that we are only mature right now to the extent that we have not done such things. Now, Father, I pray that You'll teach these young people and all Christians of all ages, Lord, to hear the reproofs of life, to not shun it, to not hate reproof, to not be so quick to be defensive, to not be so quick with an immature comeback, to not be so quick to attack others when we're feeling convicted about something. Now, Father, I pray also that you'll help us grow up, be strong, and be good leaders. And I pray in the name of the Lord Jesus that you'll help us stand against this organized agenda of Satan to use this defense mechanism to ridicule and scorn anybody that dares reproving the gate. God, thank you for letting us discern the times. to warn of this game, this tool of Satan. Now be with all who have heard this sermon today. I thank you for them, Lord. I thank you for the time in this church and outside this church. I thank you for the time that they have put into hearing. Being willing to hear, Lord. Being willing to suffer through. And we pray, Father, that You would bring any that are called to be here, here, God. Any who want to live right, be mature, and grow, and stand for the foundations of the family, the King James Bible, the Gospel, the fear of the Lord, and all the other important foundations, Father, I pray You bring them here that are meant to be here. And let nothing get in the way. Let them know that the King's business requires haste. We love You and thank You, Lord. In Jesus' name, Amen.