All of us have heard of (or experienced) the Hot Stove Experiment.
If a child is warned or told just once not to touch a hot stove, the average real world statistic is 80% that child will test that warning, touch the hot stove, and experience reality anyways. Afterwards, the chances that child will ever test that warning again is less than 10%. Now this is where it gets interesting.
When a child hears a message or a warning hundreds of times, he may accept it without ever testing it against reality. The child who never touched the hot stove because of the repeated warnings eventually accepts it as “truth”, regardless of whether it was true or not.
This very thought process is used to influence or deceive us daily: Psychologists call this the Illusory Truth Effect: When people hear something repeatedly, they begin to believe it, even if it contradicts clear evidence to the contrary. This is why:
advertising works
propaganda works
false teaching works
cultural drift works
spiritual deception works
Repetition bypasses critical thinking. Spiritually, this is exactly why Scripture warns so often about deception. Illusory Truth Effect is one of the devil’s most effective tools to lead us astray. We now have raised multiple generations of children and their parents who were raised in school systems using relentless repetition to push beliefs such as socialism and communism, even though the global results are clearly tragic and virtually irreversible (well below 10%). I myself was raised in a public school system, but back in those days we still stood and proudly put our hands over our hearts and repeated the Pledge of Allegiance, including “One Nation Under God”, every morning. However, by the time I was halfway through college, evolution was already being widely accepted as scientific fact; not God’s creation.
Today, most public educational environments repeatedly present socialistic or communist political or economic systems as ideal, even though historical examples reveal just the opposite:
reduced personal freedoms
centralized control
suppression of dissent
restrictions on religious expression
In our country today 38% of those under the age of 27 (Gen Z) believe that communism (interchangeably referred to as socialism by its proponents) is a more favorable system than our current free market capitalist society. Interestingly, another 37% of Gen Z see communism as unfavorable. In most communist regimes, Christian practice is heavily restricted or even punishable by death.
Through scripture and the Spirit of Prophecy, God gives us ample warnings how to deal with the devil’s onslaught coming our way. But are we doing anything more than listening to the warnings, like the child in the hot stove experiment?
The Illusory Truth Effect is effectively being used to push socialism & communism as a favorable alternate to capitalism, but it also brings with it restrictions on religious expression. You need to look no further than the antisemitism that accompanies the current rhetoric. I’m NOT pushing any kind of activist or hidden agenda, but I am deeply concerned that our churches are becoming stuck in ruts that tend to divide congregations, not unify them. You’ve heard the old saying: “United we stand, divided we fall”. Even Jesus gave us its parallel: “If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand” (Mark 3: 25).
Based upon Biblical prophecy and fulfillments that are unfolding all around us, it is clear we are truly in the last moments of time. As a church, we are at risk of collapse and disappearing (like the huge Milwaukee SDA church did in Oregon) if we can’t resolve our petty differences of opinion, abandon selfish ambitions, or refuse to unite in God’s love at the foot of Jesus’ cross. God will never force you to accept “Hot Stove” truth, but the devil’s success depends upon using force, coercion, and the Illusory Truth Effect to try to make you accept his deceptions and lies. This is particularly relevant if we aren’t vigilant in seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit and immersing ourselves in Bible truth. This will keep us from being duped by repetitious messages and doctrines that appear credible on the surface but that don’t pass the truth litmus test when put up against God’s Word.
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Larry Young is from Sandy, Oregon
