Statistics say most individuals decide to trust in Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour by 14 or 15 years of age. After that, it gets a lot tougher.

Marketers of Satan’s program are increasingly aware of this simple fact and so they’re adamant on targeting children in every form of media, etc.

On last Friday night’s edition of Nightline was a cutesy-style segment about a 30-year-old Philadelphia atheist (Editor’s Note: He was too chicken to give his full name so he simply went by “Brian”) who advertises in Teen Beat magazine’s website urging kids to take his “Blasphemy Challenge.”

The specific challenge he gives is to make personal YouTube videos “denying, denouncing or blaspheming the Holy Spirit” to be posted on his site. So far he has had more than 800 responders.

Brian, who says he was raised Catholic and became a “born-again Christian” at 13 but now thinks of God as being in line with the Tooth Fairy, explains that by blaspheming the Holy Spirit “we’re showing that we are not scared of this unforgivable sin.”

As any Bible student knows, the “Unforgivable Sin” is what Mark 3:29 warns about: “But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.”

Of his evil intent, Brian explains, “Hopefully (teens) are at a point where they are not so indoctrinated and set in their ways that they can overcome this religious superstition that has been put into their brain unfairly.”

*****

In another segment on this same edition of Nightline, it was reported that two young men who call themselves evangelists set up a booth last month at the annual Adult Expo in Las Vegas, recognized as the world’s biggest porn convention. These two are big pals with legendary porn actor Ron Jeremy.

Here’s an outtake from a transcript of the show that appears on Nightline’s website:

“The annual Adult Expo boasts two halls full of various exhibits ranging from the latest prosthetic devices, to hardcore high-definition films and handcuffs covered in pink ersatz fur.

“The XXX Church set up camp, somewhat sheepishly, between the male gay section and the so-called Bang Bus — a tired old minivan which is used to film sex scenes that are then sold via the Internet.

“The Porn Pastors, as they call themselves, do not preach in open-air sermons at the convention, but instead seek to engage porn ‘delegates’ in conversation and then hand out Bibles, which proclaim ‘Jesus Loves Porn Stars.’ And they are adamant that they are simply obeying the Great Commission at the end of Matthew's gospel to ‘go and make disciples of all nations.’

" ‘We've got to meet them where they're at. That's the Great Commission,’ explains (seminary-trained evangelist Craig Gross). ‘I think that God is using people that work with Triple X Church to carry about his message, to carry out his plan.’

“They will need a miracle to stop this road show — the business of pornography is now worth at least $13 billion a year. It drives Web traffic around the world and is at the forefront of digital technology.

“But the porn industry maintains that it has the most stringent health and safety rules, that nobody is ever degraded, and that the industry is just another legitimate form of adult entertainment. They also point out that an increasing number of porn stars are now migrating to the mainstream entertainment — like Jenna Jameson and Stormy Daniels, who appeared (perhaps ironically) in ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin.’

“The XXX Church pastors reject these arguments and are determined to challenge the juggernaut of porn even as it thunders out of the shadows and into the mainstream. In addition to their presence at the Adult Expo, Mahon and Gross also tour universities where they debate with their philosophical nemesis: the legendary porn actor Ron Jeremy. They have become good friends with Jeremy but he remains undeterred, having starred in 1,800 porn movies…and counting.”

*****

Jordan, says, “The gods of America are sex, education and religion. You know why sex is a god? I Cor. 11:7 says that the woman is the glory of the man. And a culture that makes the naked body of a woman the hook for life is only glorying in itself.

“With education, like Proverbs 18 says, you just want an alibi to get away from accountability—get rid of God and have an excuse not to be accountable.

“Religion gives you confidence that you can trust yourself to get it done. It’s the arrogance of thinking, ‘I can do something to make God happy with me.’

“That philosophy, that loving human viewpoint—today we call it the ‘New Age Movement.’ There’s nothing new age about the New Age thinking—it’s as old as Genesis 3.

“You can easily recognize that what the Gnostics we’re talking about back in the 1^st and 2^nd century is what we call New Age thinking in our vernacular. That’s what the Book of Colossians is focused on!”

*****

As R. Dawson Barlow, a missionary in China who was raised Catholic, states in his 2005 book, The Apostasy of the Christian Church, “Gnosticism was alive and thriving in the days of the Apostles. . .(and it is today) prominent beyond our wildest imagination. . . One of the most surprising elements is that is represented quite unmistakably in the largest segments of the church of ‘Christendom’ in Western culture. . .

“One of the foundational ‘doctrines’ of Gnosticism was that between Almighty God and we humans, there exists a series of emanations or an eons (which mean mediators). When all those ‘mediators’ are grouped together in a long link (and no one has ever defined just how long that link was/is), they provide a means for us ‘evil’ humans to some indirect contact with ‘god’. . .

“The Roman, Russian and Greek Orthodox position place a strong emphasis on the fact that Christ is one of our mediators, but not our ONLY mediator. . . Since the Scriptures mean little or nothing to the ‘Christian Religion’ of Western culture, the practice of ritualistic, repetitious prayers, are directed to whomever (just like Gnosticism), and this practice prevails throughout the world under the appearance of ‘Christian’ devotion. . .

“A recognition of any mediator between God and man other than the Lord Jesus Christ is nothing but a revival of Gnosticism, i.e., if anyone believes the Bible. If the witness of the Bible is not considered as a document that is trustworthy, the whole discussion is superfluous.

“Even in these days of the 21^st century, we are witnessing a plethora of attention concerning angels. There is a multitude of books, dolls and stories concerning the angels and most of them are in flagrant opposition to the teaching of the Holy Scripture, not to mention all those sentimental songs about angels.”

*****

Jordan says, “The philosophy of the world—no matter what category you put it under or what branch it comes to—is just designed to teach you that you only need yourself to achieve something.

“If you’re looking for personal salvation, all you need is yourself and what you can do; if you’re looking for enlightenment, all you need is yourself.

“And the whole fundamental short-coming of this philosophy—or the love of human viewpoint—is you’re trying to develop systems that explain life outside of God’s Word. This, as Paul says, only leads to ‘vain deceit.’

“There are only seven excuses for sin whether you have an IQ of 190 or an IQ of 47: 1. Everybody does it. 2. We always have done it. 3. A little bit doesn’t hurt. 4. My conscience really doesn’t bother me. 5. We know when to quit. 6. You gotta make a living. 7. It really just all depends on how you look at it.

“You know what that is? That’s the application of the, ‘I’m sufficient in myself.’ That’s the deceit and the mechanisms of deceiving that are vain, worthless, useless. They don’t work—it turns out not to be true.

“You see when you trust Christ, you trust someone and a message that is so fundamentally, radically different from everything in human viewpoint; from everything in life around you—the way the world works. It’s so different from everything. You become totally radicalized.

“I was 15 when I trusted Jesus Christ and I quickly learned that trusting Him made me a lot different from all the people around me; the world around me. When you went to high school and college in the 1960s, like I did, well, that was the generation of ‘riot, rhythm and revolution.’

“The thinking was, ‘If it’s 30 years old you ought to just bury it—it’s no good.’ You didn’t trust anything over 30 and you never thought about getting to be over 30 when you were 16 or 17.”