Steven Collins
January 1, 2008
A study conducted by Hebrew University in Israel indicates that subliminal advertising has an effect on how people vote in elections. Subliminal advertising embedded within video programming consists of images “appear[ing] for long enough to be registered by the brain but not long enough for conscious awareness,” as the New Scientist link below observes. The Jerusalem Post article indicates that subliminal advertising can be used to make Israeli voters more willing to adopt “moderate” views such as accepting possible land giveaways to the Palestinians.
This study has many possible ramifications. If it can be scientifically tested on an Israeli population now, it means the technology exists right now in the Western world to influence national and local elections. If such a practice is not illegal, I would not be surprised to learn that it is already being used in all kinds of visual mediums (TV, Cable-TV, satellite-TV, computer ads, movies, etc.). I recall years ago that subliminal advertising was reportedly being used in movie theaters to induce patrons to buy more food concessions, so this technology has long existed. The Israeli study is the first one I’ve seen which confirms that subliminal advertising can influence a voting population. Not everyone will be susceptible to subliminal advertising, but in a close election, all that is necessary to win an election is the swaying of just a small percentage of the voters. Subliminal advertising is a tool to make this happen without the voting population becoming aware that it is being “programmed” to vote a particular way. Subliminal political advertising would be a powerful tool in the hands of “big brother” types. It also makes sense that if political, social and economic subliminal advertising is allowed to happen, then those who watch the most TV and other visual mediums will be the ones most influenced by such programming.
Christians have generally expected an end-time “beast” power to emerge which dominates the globe. In the aftermath of World War II, Christians assumed the end-time “beast” power would be a totalitarian, oppressive global state led by a Hitlerian kind of figure. However, some biblical prophecies run counter to that expectation. Daniel 2’s prophecy about the final, world-ruling entity (“the ten toes”) indicates that it will be a fractious alliance or confederation of nations which don’t “cleave” to each other very well. Revelation 18 also calls the final, global system “Babylon the Great,” and indicates that it is an economic/political system. Revelation 18:11-13 prophesies this age-ending global system will be very aggressive in selling all kinds of goods and services to its global consumers. This prophecy has come to pass as Revelation 18’s “merchants of the earth” are none other than the global, multi-national corporations which do, indeed, market their products and services to a global population.
Revelation 12:9 prophesies that Satan will “deceive the whole world” at the end of our age. Subliminal advertising, if used on a wide scale, could be used by the global corporations of “Babylon the Great” to deceptively induce the mass population to vote or make economic decisions according to the wishes of the global elites. In this way, democracies can fulfill biblical prophecies about the end-time “beast” system as easily as autocracies. Christians may need to revise their expectations about how the “beast” system will come into existence and what form it will take. If Daniel 2’s prophecy about the final, world-ruling “ten toes” is similar to the final “ten kings” of the Beast system of Revelation (and I think it is), then the final world system will not be an authoritarian, Hitlerian system at all. As Revelation 18 prophecies, it will be a “globalist” system of political and corporate leaders who become very wealthy as they dominate the people and consumers of the world. It looks to me like this prophecy is being fulfilled throughout the world right now. It is especially being fulfilled in the Western World’s democracies.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1198517229622&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19626324.400&print=true
