The X-Rated Economy

Pornography is no longer an illegal business. The market for pornography is not confined to perverts or other emotional cripples. To the contrary, the largest part of the market is middle-class people. In an increasingly permissive society, those who do enjoy pornography are free to revel in it. Now, here’s something that really shocked me. According to the California Department of Justice, the nation’s pornographers do a $4 billion plus a year business. Do you know that that is more than the movie industry and the music industry combined? Pornography. And by the way, according to one West Coast Police Department, that is only one-third of the real business.

It’s closer to $12 billion a year. Skin magazines circulate 16 million copies a month and generate a half a billion dollars a year in revenue. Adult films. Get this one. Those triple X and those weird little deals where they have these things, 780 of those film theatres in the United States showing those rotten things. Listen to this. Two million people per week go through the door at $3.50 a head or nearly $400 million a year. Another $100 million goes into what are called sex toys. But the biggest of all are the little bookshops where you get the dirty books and look at the little peep shows.

Whatever they are. One of them in New York takes in $10,000 a day. The Los Angeles Police Department estimates there are $125 million annually put in the little peep shows and the bookshops. It’s a business, people. It’s beyond anything we could ever imagine. Al Goldstein, one of the porno kings in our country, said, it’s a high-risk business, but my lawyers make as much money as I do. Harassment from the law doesn’t do anything. It just cuts the profit margin a little. And right in the middle of it is a man who claims to be born again.

Don’t you believe it? Listen, people. That’s the old life. And that’s what it’ll go to. And that’s what it’s gone to. And you see it. And I see it. But that’s the old thing. The apostle Paul says, hey, listen, you, verse 17, walk not as the other Gentiles walk. That’s not our life. That’s not our lifestyle. That’s not where we’re coming from. And I’ll tell you something. If when you came to Jesus Christ, you didn’t recognize that that stuff had to be cut off, then I don’t know whether you were really saved.

If you’re still hanging on to that thing as a way of life, I question your salvation. Because James chapter four and verse four says, friendship with the world is enmity with God. You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that if you’re a friend of the world, you’re the enemy of God. If when you came to Jesus Christ, you didn’t make a conscious cut from the system of this world, I question whether your salvation was genuine. I question it. If you didn’t have an overwhelming sense of your sinfulness so that you cried out to God for mercy and the evil that was in your life, you wanted it washed away.

I question whether you’re a Christian. First John two says, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the things of the world, the love of the father is not in him. Right? It’s not there. Now when you became a Christian, you if you really were saved, and I think there are a lot of people who think they are and they’re not, and there are some right in this church like that. But if you really came and you were really saved, then you consciously cut the cord with the world.

Now it keeps coming back and waltzing you from time to time. And that’s what Paul’s talking about here. Don’t let it do that. But when you were a Christian, you had to realize you were a sinner, and you were taking a break from the world, and you were making a cleavage with the system. You can’t be an immoral, ungodly person, and just come along and accept Jesus, and never change your lifestyle, and tell me it’s real salvation. It isn’t. I heard a guy on the PTL the other night, and he said, It’s so wonderful.

He said, It’s so wonderful. You don’t have to change anything on the inside, and you don’t have to change anything on the outside when you come to Jesus. That’s a lie right out of hell. If you think that’s a ministry, you’re wrong. That’s diabolical. That’s going to send more people on the broad road to destruction than it’ll ever get on the narrow way to salvation. There better be a change. The world has its whole lifestyle, and it’s not ours. This is the way they live. They live with their own minds, telling them what to do.

They live in ignorance. They live without a sense of decency. And they live in a greedy quest to fulfill their lusts. Not us. And when you came to Jesus Christ, that was what you recognized. Your life was going to be different. Oh, it’s not always easy. That’s why Paul says, We can’t live that way. We can’t walk that way. We’re different. That’s not our lifestyle. Look with me for a minute at Acts 2 37, Acts 2 37. Peter preached a sermon. I mean, on the day of Pentecost, and it had a tremendous effect. The people were just really shaken.

And it says in verse 37, when they heard this, they were pricked in their hearts and they were under a tremendous conviction. And they said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do? In other words, how do we get out of this mess we’re in? They realized they had to do something different than they were doing, right? Nobody ever got saved, who didn’t realize he had to do something different than what he was doing. He said, the first thing you do is repent. Listen, I believe with all my heart that nobody can come to Jesus Christ unless he repents.

Thank you for joining us in this exploration of the X-rated economy. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].