The Omega Letter Intelligence Digest
Vol: 45 Issue: 2 - Thursday, June 02, 2005
"When You're a Celebrity. . ."
"Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen." (1st John 5:21)
I received an email the other day thanking me for not wasting valuable column inches with breathless updates from the Michael Jackson trial or Paris Hilton. I replied with a promise that I would not.
So I am hope I am not wasting valuable column inches today. God willing, I hope to use their situations to make a point, instead.
After a seemingly endless trial, former pop star Michael Jackson's case is expected to go to the jury either today, or perhaps on Friday, depending on the length of each side's closing arguments.
The judge in the case has allotted four hours each to both the prosecution and defense.
Going into the facts of the case would be both distasteful and unnecessary. It seems unlikely in the extreme that there is anybody who doesn't know the particulars of the case unless they neither read newspapers nor own a television.
People in IRAN know about Michael Jackson's case, for crying out loud. KIRN Radio Iran broadcasts the details in Persian, prompting the mad mullahs to announce their preference for Cat Stevens and banning Michael Jackson's music.
If the mad mullahs know all the details, it is safe to assume you do, as well.
For fun, I 'Googled' Michael Jackson this morning as I was preparing my thoughts for today's Omega Letter. I got twenty-one MILLION hits.
Jackson is facing ten separate counts of various kinds of bizarre and perverted behavior with young boys and their families.
As he makes his way to court, he is surrounded by throngs of wild-eyed fans, begging for his autograph and bearing signs saying, "Free Michael Jackson" and "We Love You, Michael."
Michael Jackson's perversions first surfaced more than ten years ago in a much-publicized story in which Jackson ducked prosecution on similar charges in 1993 by entering into a $20 million legal settlement with his accuser.
This expensive, but novel evasion of the law earned Jackson the distinction of having a law named after him, the "Michael Jackson Law" that prevents offenders from using civil law to shield them from criminal penalties.
Jackson's evasion of prosecution was headline news in 1993, as were the charges that Jackson thought were worth $20 million to Jackson in hush money.
Many industry analysts predicted that Jackson, who had four #1 singles and was voted #1 Male Artist of the Year in 1992, was 'finished.' Once Jackson's fans heard that he paid $20 million in hush money to shield him from charges of homosexual pedophilia, they would abandon him, they said.
Instead, he was voted #1 Artist of the year for 1993. He remained number one on the charts for years afterward. Even though his bizarre behavior eventually caused his career to falter, his music continues to sell to his hard-core fans even now.
Then, there is the OTHER person I promised I wouldn't waste space on -- Paris Hilton.
Apart from being an heiress, few people even knew who she was until her pornographic video made headlines a few years ago, by surfacing on the internet.
What would be, to normal people, an unspeakable shame, (assuming normal people would make a tape like that in the first place, which is for another discussion) was to Paris Hilton, a ticket to fame and adulation.
Before you knew it, she had her own TV show, which was universally panned as 'garbage' -- resulting in a second, and, rumor has it, yet a THIRD spin-off.
Robert Downey Jr. is making a television comeback, following several incarcerations and dozens and dozens of arrests for cocaine.
Hugh Grant is currently starring in a hit comedy after being arrested in Los Angeles some years ago for a public morals crime on a downtown city street. Actor Christian Slater was arrested last week after allegedly groping a woman on a New York street. He is currently still starring on Broadway.
Tim Allen, who starred in the family sitcom revolving around the family of "Tim the Toolman Taylor" suffered no damage to his career when it was revealed he was a convicted felon who served three years in prison for selling drugs.
Assessment:
In our popular culture, the term 'idol worshippers' doesn't immediately apply to followers of, say, Buddha or practioners of Hindu worship.
I 'Googled' the phrase 'idol worshippers's and the first story that came up pertained to Fox's "American Idol" TV program.
The program promises to take ordinary people and turn them into 'pop idols', hence the program's title. I've never actually watched the whole thing all the way through, but it has so large a following that it's happenings actually find their way into news broadcasts.
The entertainment industry isn't the only one with 'idols'. So is the Church.
Of the professing Church, Paul says, "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears." (2nd Timothy 4:3)
The first example that comes to mind would be individual churches, those who regard their leaders as 'infallible' or -- nearly infallible. The Roman Catholic Popes, for example, are deemed, when speaking ex cathedra, to be speaking infallible truths.
Many mainstream Protestant churches have taken cues from their leadership and begun ordaining homosexuals, recognizing homosexual marriage and accepting homosexuality as a legitimate, alternative lifestyle.
Then there is the electronic 'church'. Superstar TV preachers are also idolized by their followers, seemingly willing to toss their Bibles aside in favor of some 'new' revelation from God.
Benny Hinn once said on TBN that there are actually nine Gods. On the same occasion, he said Adam could fly like a bird. (Yet he commands a following so vast that I am sure I just offended someone reading this right now.)
John Anzovini promises money from God in exchange for money sent specifically to him. R.W. Shambaugh once claimed the ability to raise the dead . . . the list goes on. And the money pours in.
I would be willing to bet that there aren't ten Bible-believing, Christ-professing churches in all of America in which somebody could stand up and preach nine Gods, a flying Adam, makes claims of raising the dead and then make an iron-clad promise of a ten-fold return, direct from God, (in exchange for money contributed to the preacher - not the church), and expect not to be booted out the front door on his rear end.
But these guys not only do it, but they are Christian TV idols. They operate on the same principle of celebrity that make idols out of characters like Michael Jackson and Paris Hilton. Idols are worshipped as being above the limitations of mere mortals.
A recent popular country song entitled, "Celebrity" succinctly defines idol worship as it exists in the final hours of the Church Age;
"Cause when you're a celebrity, / It's adios reality. / No matter what you do, / People think you're cool, / Just cause you're on TV. / I can fall in and out of love, / Have marriages that barely last a month. / When they go down the drain ' I'll blame it on the fame /And say it's just so tough. /Being a celebrity."
Brad Paisley's song mirrors the Apostle Paul's description of society in the last days of the Church Age.
Paul begins by separating the concept of the 'last days' being the whole of the Church Age from the concept of the 'last days' in the future sense, saying; "This know also, that in the last days perilous times SHALL come."
Paul was not writing to his own generation, or in the general sense of the Church Age as being the final Dispensation of human government before the Millennial Kingdom, or he would have said the last days 'are here'.
All of Paul's description suggests a FUTURE society that would exist in some FUTURE period designated 'the last days'. There can only be one future sense of the 'last days' which would be the last days of the Church Age itself.
Note that Paul says that men, "SHALL be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God." (2nd Timothy 3:1-4)
While such traits existed in Paul's day, the generation of 'perilous times' would be one that is CHARACTERIZED by those traits.
Paul said it would be a generation characterized by the fact that 'evil men and seducers SHALL wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.' (v.13)
We usually apply these verses to our political leaders, since they reflect the political worldview of their constituents. But society is more than politics.
Politics is but one reflection of society. Another is entertainment. Another is its relationship with God. Paul's description of social mores in the last generation addresses all three segments.
Note that all three; politics, entertainment and religiosity, function on the same principle. Set up an idol and accord him worship, or as Paisley described it,
"No matter what you do, / People think you're cool, / Just cause you're on TV." Television can rightly be described as the 'imagination of the thoughts of men's hearts' brought to life on the screen.
In describing the last days, Jesus said "But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." (Matthew 24:38)
God gives this account of the days of Noah thusly:
"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." (Genesis 6:5)
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