The Jamming of Light—Part One | Straightway Online

In This Issue:

External Broadcasting—A Jamming Effect

Let us notice its beginning and purpose. When broadcasting first began in the 1920s, Britain’s worldwide empire still existed. The BBC immediately recognized the implications of broadcasting for the empire. It began experimenting with overseas transmissions in 1928. This pioneer external service, entirely in English, was aimed at both British sympathizers in the colonies and residents of the dominions to maintain their ties with the home country. The BBC launched its first foreign language external broadcasts in 1938 on the eve of World War II. These broadcasts, in the Arabic language, aimed at counteracting Italian radio propaganda directed toward the Near East. Soon Germany and Britain began a deadly war of words. The United States added its voice to the word war when President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Elmer Davis, a popular radio newscaster, to head the Office of War Information (OWI). An important component of the OWI was the Voice of America, which went on the air in February, 1942. At this time Congress was wary of creating a government propaganda agency, fearing it might in the future be turned against Americans themselves by a political party in power. And to this day U.S. law forbids release of government radio, television, and film programs designed for overseas use within the United States. The purpose of Voice of America was to transmit objective news to those behind the Iron Curtain. Radio Liberty was brought into existence to beam the message of objective truth to the former USSR, and Radio Free Europe was appointed to broadcast to the countries of Poland, Hungary, and other buffer states.

The communist nations have always placed much faith in the power of propaganda. In fact, one of the earliest uses of propaganda by external radio (and this was in pre-broadcasting days) was the radio-telegraphic transmission of Lenin’s 1917 message to dissidents in other countries announcing the communist revolution. As the Soviet Union forged ahead of the United States as the leading international broadcaster (in terms of hours on the air) during the 1970s, the world was thrust into a war of words, of ideologies, of the power of thought, each vying for preeminence. One country might implant a lie, and another would counteract it with the truth. Who would win?

Yet, it did not stop with simple transmission. Ideally, the truth should be the best rebuttal for propaganda. However, sometimes the truth hurts, especially in this context of nations and peoples. Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Liberty were begun to transmit the truth to those in darkness (at least ideological darkness). Atheistic governments could not stand by and allow the collapse of their lie, for what would the people say if they knew that the entire foundation of their revolution, their government, their country, their economics was based upon a lie? Something had to be done. Therefore, these nations resorted to jamming of foreign broadcasts.

Jamming, a form of electronic interference, makes a radio signal unintelligible by the broadcasting of sheer noise on the same or adjacent channels. Behind the Iron Curtain, the common peasant down in his basement, listening secretly to Voice of America or Radio Free Europe and trying to gain an objective perspective of what is happening in the world, would have suddenly heard a piercing noise jamming the words being transmitted. To regain his mental sanity he would eventually need to turn the radio off. Jamming is an extremely expensive business. Western sources estimated that in the early 1970s Russia devoted 3,000 transmitters to jamming operations, at an annual cost of $185 million. The cost is in excess of $400 million now. The jamming intensified after the 1980 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the confrontation between Polish trade unionists and their communist government. The Soviets’ hatred for such radio stations in the free world is illustrated in several bombings that have taken place over the years by the communists. One bombing back in 1981 in Munich did over $2 million in damage to a Radio Free Europe station.

Spiritual Jamming

Generally speaking, mankind abhors the truth, the light dispelling his darkness. In John 3:19-21 states,

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

Mankind hates the light of the truth and will allow no limitation of expense to destroy it. One of the greatest ploys of Satan against truth has been to jam the truth. Even in the early church, the propaganda began. Paul warned the Corinthians about carnality, false concepts of Christian liberties, false prophets and apostles, and Satan’s transforming himself into an angel of light; even the Gnostics were making inroads.

The key to jamming, principally speaking, is to use the same spectrum of light, to broadcast on the same frequency, but to produce distortion, to bring confusion to the hearer. The same is true in this matter of truth. The enemy uses light to fight light. Even in our time a multitude of science fiction movies reinforce the use of light as a weapon. Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back gave dazzling displays of the weapons of light, light guns, and light swords.

The devil has used three avenues in history to thwart the Word of God: (1) a simple destruction of the Scriptures as in the days of Jehoikim, Antiochus Epiphanes, and later the Caesars of Rome culminating with Diocletian; (2) a skepticism causing doubting of the Scriptures by the Encyclopedists, the skeptics, and the infidels such as Voltaire and Thomas Paine; and (3) a jamming of the truth through Higher Criticism and textual criticism by theologians and professing Christians revealing that the devil changed his strategy in the 1800s. They were men of the book, so they said. At the turn of the twentieth century Karl Barth came forward to the world and declared, “We need to get back to the Bible!” But his view of the Bible was not the same as the biblical view of the Bible. The use of the weapon of light and Scriptures brought a distortion to truth, and many were deceived by the jamming. This approach has been used for centuries by the Roman Catholic Church, when they tried to use the garb of Christianity, the councils, and the Scriptures to jam the voices of the pre-reformers such as Wyclif and Huss. But, thank God, the message got through to some, including a German named Martin Luther. Yet in 1546 a counter-reformation was underway by the Romanists. They set up their own stations of propaganda: popes endeavored to reform; the Jesuit order was formed; the Inquisitions were restructured; Roman Catholic schools were started to counteract the truth of the Protestant schools; the Council of Trent convened; the Apocrypha was canonized; tradition of the church became the final authority. Yes, these were jamming stations which were erected, using light to jam light.

Dear reader, we are seeing this today in the Neo-Evangelical movement; a movement projected as a scholarly, biblical movement, and oh, how it has jammed the truth of God’s Word! The Charismatic movement is another subtle jamming station against the truth of the Holy Spirit and the gifts. Men like Billy Graham preach somewhat the Fundamental message, yet take a truly non-separatist position in music and lifestyle. In a time when men need to get back home, live with fidelity to their wives, and be true fathers to their children, the Promise Keepers have risen up in their ecumenical, liberal, contemporary ways as another jamming station against the truth. The multitude is duped to believe all this is true Christianity. Yes, the Devil uses light to jam light.

What is this principle of light against light? We must go back to the beginning of creation prior to our time in the dimension of angelic time. The Scriptures give us a brief glimpse of the anointed cherub, a powerful angel, one who was full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. He was an angel who had precious stones as his covering. The workmanship of this angel included tabrets and pipes of music; he was perfect in his ways from the day that he was created (Ezekiel 28:12-15). He was Lucifer, the Luciferous One, the Son of the Morning. Whereas the archangel Gabriel was the protector of truth, Lucifer was the protector of light, the anointed cherub that covereth. We read of two cherubim that covered the mercy seat, where the light of the shekina resided in the Holy of Holies. What type and shadow is this in the understanding of Lucifer, the Son of the Morning, and Christ Jesus, the Bright and Morning Star? Lucifer was the covering and protector of the light; the unapproachable light was God the light of the world. What brilliance Lucifer must have possessed! He had brilliance of the stones and brilliance of music. He was a walking doxology. As a created being he was so close to God; as a canopied glory he was so near the Son. But his heart was lifted up because of his beauty; he corrupted his wisdom by reason of his brightness. Because of his pride he was cast out of the mountain of God as profane and dismissed as the covering cherub from the midst of the stones of fire. In Luke 10:18, the Lord spoke to the seventy disciples saying, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.” Yes, this light, the covering of light, the protector of light, was now the fallen light. Matthew 6:23 was previously quoted: “If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness.” The light became darkness, and how great was that darkness! His fall was so deep (unlike Adam’s fall) that it brought immediate apostasy, which was irrevocable and unredeemable. How great is his darkness!

Satan is also identified in Revelation 12:4 as the great red dragon: “And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth.” The tail of the dragon is the part of the body in the Old Testament that is noted with false prophets in Isaiah 9:14-16:

Therefore the Lord will cut off from Israel head and tail, branch and rush, in one day. The ancient and honourable, he is the head; and the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail. For the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed.

Satan, in turning truth into a lie and light into darkness, convinced one third of the angels to follow him in his rebellion against God, and against the light. He drew one third of the stars (the angelic host). This word drew means “to violently drag.” This definition reveals the power of his jamming in order to convince those angels who fell with him. The Son of the Morning had become the Prince of Darkness.

When God made this world in six days, he placed man and woman in a garden of delight. Genesis 2:25 states, “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” Although Adam and Eve were physical creatures, yet in a pre-fallen state, they seemed to have unique sight, sight beyond the limitations of the physical. Could it be that these two had eiden sight before the Fall? They saw not so much the physical appearance but also the character of an entity? Adam called his wife woman because she was taken out of man. “Therefore, shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” What sight, yea, what insight Adam had! He truly saw beyond the physical and into the character and spiritual dimension of creation. But it must be noticed in Genesis 3 the creature Satan chose for the temptation. The word for serpent in the Hebrew is nacaash. The word means “brilliant one, shining one.” It may be that Eve initially viewed this serpent to be a light bearer or an angel of light. According to I Timothy 2:14, the Greek reveals the fact that she was fully deceived in the transgression. And II Corinthians 11:3 reveals that “the serpent beguiled Eve.” No doubt, this holy couple was accustomed to seeing angelic beings in that pre-fallen state since their sight was beyond the natural sight. Eve may have fully believed that this shining one, this brilliant one, was an angel of God. The serpent’s response to Eve in Genesis was, “Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” This unique enticement to the woman, “your eyes will be opened,” indicate that there would be a greater ability to discern and to penetrate into things not otherwise perceived. The words, “knowing good and evil,” reveal another aspect of this encounter. The verb to know is from yada, which implies more than intellectual perception; it is a unique perception of the soul. The shining one, the brilliant one, was a light bearer jamming the words previously given by God. There seems to be no question in Eve’s mind when this visitor spoke of god-likeness. The woman spoke not a single word to the shining one after this, because she was entirely engrossed in the contemplation of the things promised and in the hope of the realization of the spurious greatness suggested by this shining one. “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.” Notice that Adam was with her, standing there, hearing the conversation of the serpent, viewing his wife. Adam would not be deceived, but willingly partook of the forbidden fruit. “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked…” When they lost that eiden sight the natural would be their sight. The serpent had convinced them to believe they would be as gods, knowing good and evil. He promised a perception beyond the natural sight. He distorted the light; he was jamming the truth.

II Corinthians 11:13-15 reads,

For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.

The word here for transformed is metaskema. Meta means “to come across”; skema is one of the synonyms meaning “outward expression.” There is another Greek word morphe which means “outward expression.” But the difference between skema and morphe is that skema is an outward expression that does not correlate with the inner nature of the thing; on the other hand, in morphe the outward expression does correlate with the inner nature. Metaskema, therefore, is the coming across with a different outward expression which does not correlate with the inner nature. It is a false expression being manifested. Satan has the memory of his past; he desires to recapture his position in order to use it to his advantage. But Satan cannot give true or pure light; it is no longer his nature. He will endeavor to come across as light, but somewhere in the presentation there will be a distortion of truth and darkness in the principle. He tries to metamorphose himself, but since the Holy Spirit, Who is the Illuminator of truth, is absent, the word metaskema is appropriate for his transformation. This principle is important concerning Satan; though he often comes close to the truth to bring about the jamming of truth, his motive is to destroy the individual’s relationship with God.

Paul states in Galatians 1:6-8:

I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

Notice briefly the content of this passage: they were removing themselves from the true gospel unto another gospel (the Greek is in the present tense). Now Paul has a play of words here: in verse six the word another is the word heteros, meaning “another of another kind.” In verse seven another is the word allos which means “another of the same kind.” This gospel that they were turning to was another gospel of another kind than that of the apostle, and it was not a gospel like the Gospel of Paul. It was a perverting gospel changing the heart and nature of the Gospel. And even if an angel had given another gospel, if he had come as a messenger of light, they were not to believe it, and that angel should be accursed. In II Corinthians 11:4, Paul speaks of this word another again: “For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached.” This time the word is allos. Paul even warns of those coming preaching another of the same kind of Jesus, like the Jesus of Paul’s preaching. How close some deceptions are to the real thing! Paul condemns both types of deception: if it is a different gospel or a like gospel, it is not the same gospel.

James 1:17 states, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” The false light or jamming of the light will therefore have a variableness; there will be a shadow in its presentation. Because of such deception, because of such jamming, the Bible exhorts us to try the lights, or as John would declare in I John 4:1, “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” Anyone who gets upset when the message is to be tried or tested is one who hates the light. Ephesians 5:10 beseeches us to “prove what is acceptable unto the Lord.” We are not to be conforming to this age, but to be transforming both inner nature and outward expression, “that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:2). If we allow darkness to get by in the name of Christ, that darkness will grow.

As we mentioned earlier, the jamming of truth has been used throughout church history. The Roman Catholic Church perverted truth. The Neo-Orthodox movement and the Neo-Moralist movement have jammed light in the twentieth century. The heteros Christ of those movements became an allos Christ in the Neo-Evangelical movement, coming closer to the real Christ. What deception and jamming were and still are evident in that movement! (We will notice this movement in another chapter.) Then the Charismatic movement came, giving emphasis upon the Spirit, renewal, and vibrancy of worship and music. The jamming began to take its toll upon the Evangelicals and many Fundamentalists too. (These effects will also be dealt with in another chapter.) Oh, that God would save us from being sucked into the vortex of these deceptions: some are heteros in nature, and others are allos in nature. It is amazing how gullible the churches are becoming to the subtle changes which are taking place in the music. These changes are similar to the famous experiment made by the Russian Pavlov, the father of modern brainwashing. After a caged dog was fed for several weeks with an accompanying light and bell, the dog became conditioned to the light and the bell and no longer relied on his instinct of smell. After such conditioning, Pavlov changed the diet of the dog to broken glass and sharp materials. He shoved the bowl in the cage; the light flashed and the bell rang, and the dog, conditioned to the sight and sound, consumed the contents of the bowl and died of internal hemorrhaging in just a few hours. (Such a sad story to the glory of mind conditioning.) Seen with regularity in Neo-Christianity, so many are duped into believing that as long as the words Jesus or Holy Spirit are somewhere in the lyrics that song is acceptable.

Straightway: A Publication of the Foundations Ministries

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External Broadcasting—A Jamming Effect

Spiritual Jamming