The Fastest-Selling Entertainment Product in Human History

Will middle-aged men across the country fail to show up for work on November 19? It’s the question the Wall Street Journal raised last week in its article “Managers Beware: Grand Theft Auto VI Is Going to Cause a Work Blackout.”

[BRIEF]

Grand Theft Auto V came out 13 years ago, and fans are desperate for the new installment of the game where you can murder police officers, have sex with prostitutes, rob banks, and do whatever else pops into your mind. Selling such an experience in America today is a recipe for runaway financial success:

• GTA V was the fastest-selling entertainment product in human history, earning $1 billion in its first three days.
• GTA VI’s trailers have racked up huge numbers of views, with half a billion views on just one of them on its first day.

The original GTA was released 29 years ago, and the franchise has made more than $10 billion so far. In GTA VI, the sex and violence will look more lifelike than ever—and the profits will soar further.

Three decades ago, the target audience was young people. Some people have literally grown up immersing themselves in this openly wicked and progressively more depraved and realistic open-world gameplay.

• And now, even the GTA buyer who was only 18 is approaching 50. Some are saying they plan to take time off work and prepare meals ahead of time so they can binge on GTA VI as soon as it’s released. The Wall Street Journal says gamers “have deemed it an unofficial holiday.”

Leaving aside all the filth and terrible content they are and will be immersing themselves in, what does it say about modern masculinity that middle-aged men invest this kind of time into a game?

The Bible reveals that the god of this world is actually Satan (2 Corinthians 4:4). He has a strong reason for immersing men’s minds in simulated sex, gory violence and open lawlessness in GTA and thousands more games plus movies, television series, music and social media.

• Satan is flooding the airwaves, broadcasting perverse distractions into men’s minds. It’s hard to stir people up to get interested in anything serious, especially the truth God reveals in the Bible.

This is exactly what God described in Romans 1:21 (Revised Standard Version):

For although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened.

Men across our society are consumed with vain, futile thinking. They willingly tune into Satan’s broadcast. Verse 28 says that God gave them over to a “reprobate mind.”

• The release date of Grand Theft Auto is an unofficial public holiday only in a society sick with depraved minds.

This is what happens when we close our minds to God’s truth.

God is letting mankind learn his lesson from consuming all this anti-family, anti-God content. These games are full of what excites Satan the devil, and every time we indulge in them, we are making ourselves mentally and spiritually sick.

Today’s young people have grown up in a world of Grand Theft Auto morality. They should be sick of it—and they will be. God will force us to recognize how destructive this perversion is and, ultimately, help us finally turn away from it. Retain God in your knowledge. Learn the fear of God. That’s the solution to a society full of reprobate minds.

Sick of the perversion? Request your free copy of The Missing Dimension in Sex, by Herbert W. Armstrong.

The EU Needs a New Vision

Iceland voted against European Union membership, 52.8 percent to 47.2 percent this weekend, and it’s causing a bit of an identity crisis for Brussels.

• Had Iceland voted “yes,” the country would have negotiated an EU entry deal, with the final package put to another referendum.

Iceland has long rejected EU membership, largely due to fish. EU membership could mean having to share fishing rights. In a nation where fish feature on every single one of its coins, that’s a big deal.

This failure was not an act of cod. Instead, Iceland’s young people turned dramatically against the EU.

• In June, a Gallup poll found that 63 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds supported EU membership, and 37 percent opposed.
• By the last poll before the referendum, the figures had almost reversed, with 60 percent of young people opposing EU membership.

The EU sees itself as the future. It could have handled a defeat at the hands of supposedly backward-looking older voters, clinging to the past. But to be spurned by the young raises awkward questions. Maybe pan-Europeanism isn’t the future after all.

Why the reversal?

• The pro-EU campaign focused on logic and numbers. Joining the EU, they claimed, would lower inflation and raise incomes.
• The euroskeptics challenged those claims but focused on a more emotional message: Rejecting the EU is about freedom, Icelander identity and controlling your own destiny.

The EU’s big weakness right now is that it lacks an emotional appeal. It had it in the years after World War ii: The European Economic Community was not just about trade but about a brotherhood of nations. It was sold as a way to heal a continent constantly split by war. But that doesn’t resonate for a generation whose parents and even grandparents did not experience World War ii.

An alternative identity for Europe going forward involves reviving its Catholic heritage.

• Some new political parties are emphasizing that heritage, especially how it differentiates native Europeans from the Muslim migrants pouring across their borders. It’s a heritage that Europe’s countries share and its enemies, generally, do not.

Vladimir Putin, the mullahs in Iran and even, to a lesser extent, Donald Trump all use religion to strengthen political power. How long before the EU reaches for the same tool?

• When they do, many will rejoice. It will look like God and the Bible have a muscular new champion.

But the Bible prophesies exactly this turn—and where it will lead. Europe will be controlled by a force that “looks like a lamb” but “speaks like a dragon.” When Europe revives this old identity, it will revive the Dark Ages.

Israel to Build Greece’s Achilles Shield

Israel signed a $3.5 billion deal yesterday to build Greece’s Achilles Shield, an air defense array that will block drones, aircraft and missiles when it becomes operational within three years.

• Greece and Israel seem like natural partners since they have a common enemy in Turkey. However, Bible prophecy warns that Israel should not trust Europe.

The deal involves the export of Israel’s advanced David’s Sling, barak mx and Spyder surface-to-air missile systems.

• Israeli defense company Rafael will also build Greece a “new national command-and-control system,” Reuters reports.
• Rafael signed a related $30 million agreement yesterday to give Greece its Drone Dome system.

Achilles Shield is the largest Israeli-Greek defense deal, but it’s not the first. In 2022, Israeli defense company Elbit agreed to build flight schools in Greece as well as sell missiles, drones and rocket launchers in a $1.6 billion deal.

Israel is also equipping other European nations with its advanced technologies.

• In 2023, Israel signed a $4 billion deal, its largest weapons export deal in history, to give Germany its Arrow 3 air defense system.
• In 2023, Israel signed a $370 million deal to supply Finland with its David’s Sling system.

These deals are only made with countries viewed as close allies, since they involve divulging the strengths and vulnerabilities of Israel’s most advanced military technologies.

The Achilles Shield agreement actually exposes Israel’s Achilles’ heel: its reliance on technology, rather than the God of Israel, for protection.

IN OTHER NEWS

Japan reorients defense spending for modern warfare: Japan is preparing to steer more of its record defense spending toward drones, missiles and ammunition stockpiles as it seeks to strengthen and modernize its firepower, the nation’s Defense Ministry said yesterday. Japan’s military spending has climbed steadily over the past several years and now surpasses $55 billion annually, a remarkable shift for a nation that spent decades restrained by postwar pacifist policies. The nation is now on the fast track toward once again becoming a major Asia-Pacific military power.

German substation under attack: Homemade rockets detonated at the Jänschwalde lignite-fired power plant substation in Brandenburg earlier today. Several overhead lines have been damaged. The perpetrators are currently unknown. Earlier this month, a drone carrying an explosive device was discovered at a German airport, and evidence from that attempted attack implicates Russian spies, the German government announced today. Russian hybrid warfare is spurring Europeans to become more militaristic.