A man decides that one of their goals in life is to have a very nice watch.  For them,  whatever brand, is a measure of success…  a $5000 watch.

But they can only set aside $100 per month.

50 months… a little over 4 years.

That’s a long time to wait for a goal.

Now imagine that every single month that he walks to make his $50 deposit that there is a man on the side of the road hawking those watches for $50.

There is no illusion that they are the real thing… and they are certainly not the symbol of success that he was working toward…

But it is here.  Now.  Quick.  Easy.

A cheap facsimile.   Counterfeit.

But, it would have some of the same feelings at 1/100^th the price (or so it seems).
Of course, it will break, or rust within a month… or turn his arm green, or something.

He will have to buy it again next month… and the month after that…

So actually the price is, in the long run, more…

And the bank account will stay at $0.00.
If he doesn’t fight it, he just accepts the counterfeit, and lives with the green arm… and fools himself all the live-long day.

If he fights to resist the temptation, then maybe there are months in which he is weak and fails to resist the fake watch… but soon he feels the shame of people thinking it real and the embarrassment of having fooled himself.  He casts it off and returns to the plow, refusing to look back.

Those are his only two choices…remember and resist the temptation (submitting to something greater and more REAL instead) or submit to the temptation and embrace it.

Sounds like the dark side of the force, doesn’t it?

“Quicker, easier, more seductive…”

And even when the spirit is willing, sometimes the flesh is weak…

But the battle wages on, and when he fails, it is vital that he follow the lesson of Joshua after the failure at Ai.  “Get up.”  God told him.  Find the sin in the camp, root it out, and get back to what you know to be doing.

This is the lure of Satan’s (and the world’s) provisions.

Fear or control instead of faith.

Lies instead of Truth.

Illicit (the fake) rather than Intimate (what the man really wants).

And the enemy of Intimacy is smart, powerful and strategic…

I doubt if anyone knows how many millions go into the research on human sexuality in the pornography industry… I doubt if they ever share their research… but they are experts in the skill of tempting the eye and the heart and the mind.

Their watches are the best fakes money can buy.

And the resources are enormous.

There are some date offered from 2006 – which must be massively out-dated, but I couldn’t find anything nearer to current… and sites which seemed to be more up-to-date didn’t have as much info.  If I find better, I will report on it… but it takes time… for reasons not the least of which are getting that kind of search past my web-filters!

In ’06, the aprox pornography industry revenue was $97 Billion… and imagine how hard an industry that one is to measure accurately its revenue!  That would have been larger than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix, and Earthlink … combined.

In the US alone, the number was about 13 Billion.  Exceeding the revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC… combined.
Aprox 4.2 million pornographic websites were in existence then… which was about 12%… I would not be surprised by any level of increase of number and percentage… unless it was a small increase.
There were about 68 million searches for pornography each day (or about ¼ of all searches)… and that was before smart phones were common.  And about 35% of all downloads online were pornographic.

These stats, and plenty of others can be found at various sites that reported on this finding… but I was looking at Familysafemedia.com

I post them only to begin to explain what we are up against… so, when I compare this to a guy hawking a Rolex on a street corner… remember that he has Billions of dollars

behind his efforts to create the perfect counterfeit and market it most slickly… and he knows where to stand, when to call to you, and more…

Oh, and his watches are as addictive as a drug.

And he is trying to sell them to our children too.  He even puts little cartoon figures on them…

Pornographers are not paragons of free speech; they are sleazy abusers who sell addiction to kids on playgrounds in an effort to line their pockets to fulfill their fantasies at whatever the cost to other people.

And he is connected to all kinds of other evil industries… like the sex trade… and he takes advantage of the weak, downtrodden and desperate…

Hate him yet?  He despises you and see you as his “mark” – you are buying into his con… and free porn is never free.  It still costs the lives of the abused and addicted… and the advertisers are paying for your eyes and clicks in order to fund their vices.  You interested in funding someone to kidnap someone else’s child?

Now do you hate what and who he represents?

Good, because there is still more to talk about here…