You’re kidding me, right? I was driving along in the car today, listening to the radio, when a commercial came in that caught my attention. This commercial was for a prescription drug on the market called “NuVigil” and it’s to treat something known in the medical world as, “Shift Work Disorder.” SHIFT…WORK…DISORDER!!! Let me walk you through this. If you work odd shifts at your job, or the overnight shift, apparently you don’t get rest and therefore need an addictive medication, by which to see that you get that rest–hopefully. From the NuVigil website:
“SWD is a medical condition that occurs when your work schedule is out of sync with your body’s internal sleep-wake clock. Because of this disruption to the body’s natural rhythm, people with SWD often struggle to stay awake during their waking hours or have trouble sleeping during their sleeping hours.“
So, let me make sure I understand this. Because you chose to work a shift that requires a change in sleep patterns, you need to risk your life to get rest. Our friends at the large pharmacy companies have manufactured an illness, simply based on your work schedule. I think I may have seen it all now. I have worked graveyard shift at jobs before, and as a web programmer and business owner, there have been many nights where I have pulled 24 hour shifts working. I am a night owl to begin with, but here is what I can tell you. When you don’t sleep for 24 hours…you’re tired afterward. I know this may be a great revelation to many, but it’s true. You get tired when you don’t sleep and work on top of it. The traditional cure involves something, that I believe is called…SLEEPING!! Not a chemical, cooked up in some creepy government-sponsored lab, meant to enhance you’re well-being. No thank you, Tito, I will pass.
In relation to healing ministry and divine healing, this is a case in point of why we see so many issues in working to get people healed. Our media, big drug companies, the drug culture and its gullible people combine to create a perfect storm of stupid. I wonder how many people heard this commercial, and immediately self-diagnosed themselves with this condition. Phones are already dialing a doctor to setup a consult, to tell a trained physician what their diagnosis is, and what drug may be best for them. Call me crazy, but if I have to suggest a medication to a doctor when I am in his or her office, then exactly what am I there for? Last I checked, they are the one who spent days on end without sleeping while in residency, trying to make their bones and learn the trade. If anyone in the room knows about missing sleep, I am sure the doctor may be the more informed of the two of us. In short, this is indicative of why we don’t see divine healing on any large of mainstream scale among the general population.
People may not understand what divine healing is, they may not take it seriously, but in most cases, they think it’s cute and just a nice thing you do for them. They are happy to let you know what the doctor says at their next visit. Why is divine healing difficult to get done? Because so many people refuse it or ignore it, because according to our culture, it’s just what your supposed to do. Why do we see this? The reasons are many…
The first reason is belief. First off, you can’t find the faith to believe in God. Yet, the friendly anonymous voice on the radio, convincing you that you’re sick, when you’re actually not…THAT you can believe in??? When people say they don’t know if they have faith, this is a general indicator of why. Secondly, our culture has gotten so empty and dead on the inside, that people long to be part of something. I supposed that if you have a sickness, and it becomes your identity, then you’re not alone in the world anymore. You have something to be a part of. The problem with people at large, is that the identity is absolutely wrong. You weren’t built to be sick and suffering. You have just been lied to enough times, and told that you were. Too many people have believed the lie.
Another oddity that we see a lot, is that many people actually enjoy their sickness. Yes, yes they do. Many will embrace what it does to them, so they can receive the attention and sympathy that comes along with it. In a world where a majority of individuals are starved for attention, this is one area that guarantees many people taking notice of you. Ask most sick people about their situation, and you will receive a life story plus all of the information that comes along with it. We have seen it more than once.
Finally, the key reason why we see so many issues with getting people healed through faith, is that medical issues dominate the mindsets of our time; our zeitgeist. Right now, and for the past several years, the national discussion has been on socialized medicine and the (un)affordable health care act. There is a huge push by the government in combination with pharmaceutical companies, to get you into their system. The way to convince people to buy your drug, is to take a chemical you concoct in the lab, invent an illness that it could treat, promote the illness as a real thing, then sit back and wait for the gullible to give you their gaze. It’s only a matter of time.
By convincing you that you are sick, they can sell you an addictive medication, that you will build a dependence on. When you can’t afford to feed the addiction and have nowhere to turn, Uncle Sam will be happy to step in and help feed your monkey. He who controls the supply, controls the person. Now, you are not only “sick” but now you have a dependence that someone is happy to feed into, to keep you in line. Now that you are in the grips of a created, manufactured sickness, you also have a legal addiction which places you into an even deeper form of bondage. All because you listened to the wrong voice. That’s the story of the downfall of man, traced all the way back to the beginning. Listening to the wrong, friendly-but-convincing voice, trying to “help you” by helping themselves. Some things never change.
Back to the commercial…What really flipped my flapjack with this commercial was the list of side effects that you can expect:
Common side effects may include: headache, nausea, dizziness, trouble sleeping, serious allergic reaction or rash; swelling of the face, eyes, lips, tongue, or throat; mental (psychiatric) symptoms such as depression, anxiety, hallucinations, mania, or thoughts of suicide; or heart problems including chest pain.
Did you notice the fourth side effect? You may have “trouble sleeping.” Umm, did I miss something here? In addition to these are several side effects that are yet to be revealed including risk of death! I guess if you die, you could get plenty of sleep then. So, maybe it does solve the problem after all. I don’t know what kind of productivity you can expect from a cadaver. So, employers may frown upon your untimely demise and will ultimately replace you with the next dolt who needs a fake medication to cope with the disease of the day.
Unfortunately, this is the default worldview of people in our culture. Remember, I am the gullible one for following Christ and believing there is a God. Yet believing a manufactured message, in a radio commercial, in cahoots with many shady people out to profit off my weakness, is perfectly rational thinking to the masses. Makes perfect sense to me…NOT! Why do we have so many sicknesses to deal with, and why are so many people unsure about divine healing, you ask? This is one of many commercials on radio, TV, and in magazines that are ubiquitous in our every day life. This is what people are constantly exposed to, and therefore what they renew their mind to. If this is what you filter into your thinking hours and hours per day, over weeks, months and years, then what outcome do you possibly expect?
I don’t get much into End Times debate or arguments about Revelation and its implications. However, in two places in Revelation, 9 and 18, it talks about “sorceries” or witchcraft which is the Greek word, Pharamkeia. That is a root for modern day words like Pharmaceuticals, Pharmacy and Pharmacology. I am not saying that medicines or doctors are evil, nor are they sorcerers. I am also not downplaying legitimate sickness and disease that people have to deal with. I am simply pointing out that many people have made the claim that “pharmakeia” would mean that only illicit drugs would be a factor in their particular theory of the downfall of man. In actuality, it may be just the constant use of chemicals, legal or otherwise, as a whole which may cause this. I don’t have a definitive answer, I am just speculating. We certainly can’t downplay the possibility of this.
I would submit to you, however, to factor this in. In the past several years we have seen drug commercials bombarding our attention, we have seen kids medicated left and right for simply acting kids, there are illegal drugs now being legalized for recreational use, vaccines have become suspect, and access to healthcare is at the top of political debates. No matter which downfall-of-man theory you subscribe to, what’s the most puzzling, is that this is not being enacted by force. It’s purely happening on a voluntary basis. At last count, I heard that somewhere around 70% of all Americans are continually on one prescription drug; some on up to 15 per day. That is a record high for our nation, and there is no sign of slowing down. If the government is pushing for universal health care and they succeed, what do you think their first choice, default treatment will be for every condition? That’s right, a prescription medication. Starting to see a pattern, yet?
I am not taking a political stance here. I am simply bluntly analyzing the play-by-play of what’s happening, and laying out why you see what you are seeing. This is not just one isolated case. This is a total, full-court press by the enemy to keep people sick, hopeless and dying and more specifically, under control. He can’t really defeat us, yet he can somehow always seem to get us to defeat ourselves. We tend to get so wrapped up in our lives and so self-absorbed that we sometimes totally miss the forest for the trees. In the book of James is says:
14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
This is how it’s supposed to be done. But with a culture full of people who will believe everything except the truth, our work as healing ministers, is seriously cut out for us. Now we love all of the people involved, and we are not out to condemn anyone. In fact, we constantly work to pull the gold out of everyone and every situation. In this case, I am simply using sarcastic emphasis to point out the obvious. I would be happy to minister healing for anyone mentioned above. I just wish that our culture would stop searching for something it may already have. If they did, the world would be a much better place. As ministers, we must continue to push past this and simply do our job. Yes, fiery darts WILL come. Gratefully, we have a mechanism in place to render them powerless. Thank you, God!
For a bit of a comic relief, please check out the following YouTube video. The author decided to take the radio commercial and add his own animation to enhance the understanding of what may happen to you, should you decide to give into this monstrosity of a medicine.
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