Baxter - Against such there is no law

[Malvaro]

This was sent to me awhile back via email....

The Internet
“Against such there is no law”
by Irvin Baxter

There are many ungodly things available on the Internet. At the same time, the gospel of Jesus Christ is taught on the Internet.
Now, television is on the Internet. A recent advertisement offered 3,000 channels of television right on your computer.
What are we going to do?

I have always been an opponent of television. For 32 years of pastoring, I required that members not own televisions if they wanted to be in our church choir or hold any church office.
Now anyone who has a computer and the Internet has access to everything that is on television…and a whole lot more. Almost all of our people have computers and the Internet. Almost all of our preachers have computers and access to the Internet. Technology has done an end-run around us.
What are we going to do?

We could pass a resolution against having the Internet, but that would be ludicrous, and no one would obey it. It would be like passing a resolution against cell phones. As a matter of fact, cell phones now offer access to the Internet (and to television).
We could say that we can webcast the gospel on the Internet but not on television, but the reasonably intelligent would look at us as being ignorant and naïve because they know the Internet and television have become one and the same.
It makes me uncomfortable to say these things because of my lifelong stance against television. But the truth is the truth, and even though it may risk reputation, the time has come to speak the truth.

So should we remove the prohibition in our manual against television? I have no desire to own a television, but the truth is that I have one sitting on my lap right now. I’m using it to write this article. And if you own a computer, you own a television. Actually, you own something more powerful and potentially more evil than a television. Technology has rendered our stance of the last forty years obsolete.
So what are we going to do?

The first thing we must do is to be honest and face the truth. A computer hooked to the Internet is a television. So have we been wrong preaching against the evils of television all these years? Certainly not! We still have to preach against the evils of television and the evils of the new form of television—the Internet.
Can we banish the Internet from among us? You and I know that’s not going to happen. So how do we deal with it then?
In Galatians 5:23, the Apostle Paul was teaching on the spiritual attribute called temperance. He said concerning temperance, “…against such there is no law.” Paul was saying that it is impossible to pass a law enforcing temperance, yet without temperance a person will never come to spiritual maturity and will eventually be lost.
We are not going to be able to pass a law against the Internet, as potentially evil as it may be; yet if we do not exercise self-control when using the Internet, it will destroy us.
Furthermore, we don’t want to banish the Internet. It is our only hope of reaching the six billion people on earth with the gospel in the very short time that we have left before the Second Coming.

What about ministering on television?
Has the time come to allow ministers to use television to reach the lost? The truth is, we will allow it now, or we will allow it in a year or two. The computer and the television will be totally merged by then. Any informed person knows this is true.
What do we gain by not allowing ministry now? Are we keeping our people from ungodly programming? No. If they want it, they have it right now on their computers.
So what is accomplished by prohibiting preaching on television by people who passionately hold the truth? Two things: 1. We insure that Trinitarians are protected from hearing the truth. 2. We guarantee that hungry people who turn on the television looking for God (this is happening every day) will not hear the truth. We guarantee they will immediately be indoctrinated with a false gospel and the poison of Trinitarian doctrine.

Is television effective in reaching the lost?
Some contend that television is not effective in reaching the lost. However, the same people preach adamantly about how effective it is in spreading evil.
The truth is that the more effective a means of communication is, the more potential it has for spreading good or evil depending on the message being transmitted. God used the printed page to spread His word. Karl Marx used the printed page to spread the evil of Communism.
A Christian TV network put our 2005 Dallas prophecy conference on television (free of charge and unsolicited). We received 560 phone calls in one and a half hours as a result of this single program. Those who say radio and television do not work simply don’t know.
Some religious programming has been rather ineffective; however, some has been very effective. I am privileged to preach to between 300 and 500 unsaved people per week in our conferences around the country because of our radio program—“Politics & Religion.” In 2005, we were able to enroll 1,500 individuals in Bible studies taught by oneness, apostolic people. In one conference alone in Dallas, we had over 3,000 people in attendance. At least 80% of those were non-apostolic people. All of this because of radio.

Dear brothers and sisters, no law is going to be able to control all of the means of audio-visual communications available today. If our people want evil, they have access to all they want. Technology has bypassed the protective fences that we sincerely attempted to build.
Now, only the spiritual attribute of temperance (self-control) will guard us from the encroachment of evil.
Knowing that we can receive hundreds of phone calls each day from people hungry for God, can we in good conscience stand before God if we don’t use this tool? I am convinced that Endtime Ministries alone could average 200 calls per day or more. This would amount to 52,000 calls per year. Others may greatly exceed this. Together it could be incredible what could be accomplished.

Racing the rapture!
We are almost out of time to fulfill the great commission. The newly born Jewish Sanhedrin announced in June of 2005 that they were launching the rebuilding of Israel’s temple—one of the prominent signs in scripture of the endtime. They are building it off-site like Solomon built the First Temple. When the political situation allows, the prefabricated temple will be ready for quick assembly on the Temple Mount.
President Bush signed the Real ID Act on May 11, 2005. This law mandates that every American will be required to have a National ID card by 2008. Without it, you will not drive, fly on an airplane, ride a train, enter a federal building, hold a job or open a bank account. Without a job or a bank account, a person will not be able to buy or sell.
The other prophetic fulfillments that are happening right now are too many to elaborate on in this small space.

If a politician ran for office in America, but renounced the use of television to spread his message, he would be the laughing stock of the world. Yet we have the most important message on earth. Can we justify not using the most powerful means of communication on earth to spread it?
Is this article endorsing the corruption that emanates from Hollywood? Certainly not! Is it a plea to allow the use of the most powerful means of communication on earth to spread the true gospel in the very short time that we have left? Yes, it is.


Footnote: Fellow ministers, this issue should not become a source of division among us. This is not a conservative vs. liberal question. The most conservative among us still have to face the fact that a computer on the Internet is now a television. Whether we like it or not, this is dumped in our laps by advancing technology. Our only choice is to use the world without abusing it, as we are instructed in 1 Corinthians 7:31. As much as we would prefer a black and white solution, it is simply not available and is not going to be. Our only answer is temperance.

NOTE: The following article demonstrates that a computer hooked to the Internet has become a TV with thousands of channels.

[Malvaro]

Coming Soon to TV Land: The Internet, Actually
January 7, 2006
By JOHN MARKOFF

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 6 - What would a world with television coming through the Internet be like?
Instead of tuning into programs preset and determined by the broadcast network or cable or satellite TV provider, viewers would be able to search the Internet and choose from hundreds of thousands of programs sent to them from high-speed connections.

At the International Consumer Electronics Show here this week, a future dominated by Internet Protocol TV, or IPTV, seemed possible, maybe even inevitable.

Giants like Yahoo and Google turned their attentions to offering new Internet programming. Hardware companies like Intel introduced chips and platforms that can push videos sent via an Internet connection to living room screens. And Microsoft looked for alliances that would allow its software to dominate living rooms as well as the home office.

"At one level it's clear that the dam has broken," said Paul Otellini, chief executive of Intel. "There's an inevitable move to use the Internet as a distribution medium, and that's not going to stop."

The rapid emergence of the consumer electronics and computer companies as Internet video providers is certain to challenge the control of the cable, telephone and satellite companies, which seek to dominate the distribution of digital content to the home. Competition has intensified as more consumers have upgraded to digital televisions.
Indeed, the easy availability of on-demand content over the Internet is certain to accelerate consumer expectations that they will have more control over digital video content, both to watch programs when they want as well as to move video programs to different types of displays in different rooms of the home.

"Appointment-based television is dead," said William Randolph Hearst III, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm. "The cable industry is really in danger of becoming commoditized."
Mr. Hearst sits on the board of Akimbo, a provider of an Internet service that permits users to download video content via the Internet to a set-top box digital video player. This week, Akimbo announced its first mainstream content deal to enable its customers to download Hollywood movies for later viewing on their televisions.

In the battle for the living room, cable, satellite, and increasingly, phone companies are trying to defend their turf by offering more choice through an array of content in video-on-demand programs.
But fending off the Internet's openness will be a struggle, one that the online companies themselves lost years ago.
At the onset of the dot-com era, large online service companies like AOL, Compuserve and MSN tried to lock customers into electronic walled gardens of digital information.
But it quickly became apparent that no single company could compete with the vast variety of information and entertainment sources provided on the Web.
The same phenomenon may well overtake traditional TV providers. Potentially, IPTV could replace the 100- or 500-channel world of the cable and satellite companies with millions of hybrid combinations that increasingly blend video, text from the Web, and even video-game-style interactivity.

Though still new, IPTV is already commercially available in limited areas both in the United States and internationally. To date, the new digital Internet content is hard to find and of uneven quality. Moreover, the consumer electronics industry is still struggling to complete copy protection agreements with Hollywood and other content providers.
But the advantage of IPTV is that it can potentially be deployed at lower cost than current cable television systems and can offer consumers features like the ability to record several programs simultaneously without having to add costly additional tuners. (And IPTV can potentially record many streams if bandwidth is available.)

A prototype of one feature of the Microsoft IPTV service, known in the industry as a matrix channel, allows several baseball games to be viewed simultaneously along with textual information like player statistics.
Internet search is also likely to play a defining role in shaping IPTV, according to executives attending the consumer electronics show.

Both Yahoo and Google announced plans to distribute video at the show, and Yahoo showed a new application intended to be used with a high-definition television to ease the search for video content, stream digital video and permit users to keep their personal information and files in sync whether they are viewing a PC, TV or mobile phone.
Proponents stress that the open- video Internet is still in its infancy and the battle may not be completely joined until a new generation of faster Internet connections reach the home. This is because to stream digital video requires about 1.5 megabits of bandwidth to send conventional NTSC video and from 6 to 8 megabits to send high-definition video.
Currently broadband data rates in the United States reach just 1.5 megabits or less, but those speeds are beginning to rise after years of delay as D.S.L. and cable companies upgrade their plant and equipment with fiber optic lines.
There are powerful companies that are now anxious to reach homes without being subjected to special content arrangements with D.S.L., cable and satellite providers.

They are companies like Apple, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others, with all of them beginning to make available an ever-widening array of video content that looks more like a world of five million channels rather than 50 or even 500.
On Thursday, Intel introduced its new ViiV computer design that is intended to bring the abilities of the personal computer to the living room. ViiV is a set of computer hardware and software technologies that will go inside computers and set-top boxes.

Several hundred consumer electronics and computer companies announced plans to build ViiV-based systems, and Mr. Otellini said that more than 100 companies, including AOL, ESPN, MTV, NBC and Turner Broadcasting, would offer digital content for ViiV-based systems.

In his presentation at the consumer show Wednesday, Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman, said that its home television Media Center version of Windows would be available for the new ViiV computers.
The logjam that has prevented such digital content delivery deals has been broken, Mr. Gates said, because the consumer electronics industry has now begun to reach so-called managed-content copyright protection agreements with Hollywood.
Moreover, many industry executives expect Steven P. Jobs to extend iTunes video service of Apple Computer from his company's portable iPods into the living room, possibly as early as next week at the company's annual MacWorld Exhibition in San Francisco.
NOTE: This has now happened.

Microsoft is also cooperating with two of the largest telephone service providers. After spending more than a decade courting the cable industry, with a plan that was originally called Cablesoft, Microsoft shifted allies and is now introducing its technology with telephone service providers.
Last fall, both AT&T, formerly SBC, and Verizon began limited introductions of Microsoft's version of IPTV.
Still, critics charge that the telephone companies are intentionally crippling the Internet capabilities of their services to appear much like traditional closed cable offerings.
"They're trying to construct their own separate world to keep their walled garden," said Robert Frankston, a personal computer industry pioneer and former Microsoft researcher.
The growing tension has begun to show in the objections of existing D.S.L. and cable providers that are threatening to create surcharges for Internet content providers as well as the prospect of the deployment of a two-tiered Internet in which favored customers would in effect have special high-performance lanes reserved for their use.
"They believe that if you control the user interface you make more money than if you are a dumb pipe," said Rob Glaser, chief executive of RealNetworks, the Internet music and video service provider.
Microsoft executives defend the way in which the telephone companies are deploying the company's IPTV technology, saying that if consumers are exposed to the chaos and uneven quality of the open Internet, it is likely to undermine the development of the new services.

"You need to begin with something that is easy to use and not overwhelming," said Christine A. Heckart, marketing general manager for Microsoft's TV division. "If we do this well you will have an experience much like TV today, only better."
She acknowledges that today's Internet generation may be far more receptive to a more interactive experience than traditional TV and eager not to be fenced in by their television service providers.
Microsoft has an early lead in offering IPTV technology both to the industry and to consumers, but at the electronics show this year Intel showed significant independence and introduced its own software features including digital video recording abilities with its ViiV platform.

Both companies, however, are trying to change the nature of television by making it possible for small start-ups to compete with giant networks by making available content that has never before been able to reach a global audience.
One such company is International Television Networks Inc. of Laguna Niguel, Calif. ...
The company has adopted a strategy of making video content available for specialized markets, which was previously not possible using traditional television broadcasting technology.
"I can do everything a cable company can do," said David Koenig, the company's founder and chief technology officer, "but I will have 100,000 channels."

Enjoy!

[CC1]

Just have had time to read the first fourth or so of his article but what I read is right on the money.

Technology has indeed done an end run around Old Time Pentecosts legalist approach of just outright banning things that might have evil associated with them.

Time to start teaching maturity!

[Steve Epley]

The problem with Bro. Baxter's equation as to his comments on the calls he recieved from the broadcast is this he deals in the sensational not solid Bible preaching. NEVER have I seen an article in his magazine the addresses the plan of salvation so his broadcast would say nothing. Just my thoughts.

[QueenEsther]

Originally Posted by Steve Epley

The problem with Bro. Baxter's equation as to his comments on the calls he recieved from the broadcast is this he deals in the sensational not solid Bible preaching. NEVER have I seen an article in his magazine the addresses the plan of salvation so his broadcast would say nothing. Just my thoughts.

No, but they advertise for tracts that do. And believe me they give them away by the tons and many have been saved as a result.

[Ferd]

Originally Posted by Steve Epley

The problem with Bro. Baxter's equation as to his comments on the calls he recieved from the broadcast is this he deals in the sensational not solid Bible preaching. NEVER have I seen an article in his magazine the addresses the plan of salvation so his broadcast would say nothing. Just my thoughts.

Elder, his radio show "Politics and Religion” is in the Dallas Market. In fact Dallas has been his largest market that I am aware of, and one of the primary reasons for his moving here.
I have listened to his radio broadcast several times while in the car, never for more than 20 minutes or so (as that is about how long I am typically driving from one place to another), and I can say that most of the time, I have heard IB tell someone they both need to be baptized in Jesus Name, and receive the Holy Ghost. He has said that in very clear and certain language, not beating around the bush one bit.

He has always been an unabashedly Oneness Apostolic Pentecostal. I don’t know that I can say I agree with much of his ideas on the end times but I do know for certain that we have a number of people who are in OUR church because the first listened to his program, then contacted him and he directed them to our church. This I know first hand. It is not what someone has told me.

[Michael The Disciple]

Amen Bro Baxter! Good spiritual wisdom baptized in common sense.

[Carpenter]

Interesting indeed...I couldn't read the whole thing and maintain any vigilant interest level, but I thought this comment was poignant...

Technology has done an end-run around us.
What are we going to do?

We could pass a resolution against having the Internet, but that would be ludicrous, and no one would obey it.

Isn't this the entire crux of the matter? As a statement representative of the organization, believing that Technology has somehow done a rope-a-dope on the church, and further that the church doesn't know how to respond (he did make the statment more than once...WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?).

Secondly, he has little faith that anyone would obey a tennant of the church IF so mandated...I actually laughed at that one!

What does this say about the UPC organization, its leadership, and the current state of affairs?

Unbelivably apropos...