Big Louie’s Adult Superstore, The Lion’s Den, J’s Adult Boutique, Starlite Adult Video. These aren’t dingy, back alley shops in some big city’s dark corners. These are a few of the seven “adult” establishments lining a 250-mile stretch of Interstate 44 that cuts through Missouri. Bold billboards announce each one, tantalizing travelers with offers of huge selections of pornography—followed by conspicuous exit now signs. And you don’t have to go far to accept these offers: The stores are in plain view from the highway.

This Midwestern strip of i-44—with an average of one adult store every 35 miles—is a good representation of how big the adult industry really is. There are more adult bookstores in the United States than there are McDonald’s restaurants. Pornographic products outsell diapers two to one. And Americans spend more at strip clubs than at Broadway, regional theaters and orchestra performances combined.

The actual figures for how much porn takes in is up for debate—no one really knows. Some have estimated as high as $10 to $15 billion—more than Americans spend on major league baseball, basketball and football combined. Some say this figure was fabricated, mostly by the porn industry itself, which, like Hollywood, likes to exaggerate its figures. One conservative estimate says closer to $3 billion a year (excluding strip clubs). Five years ago, according to a Forbes.com article, adult videos were generating $5 billion in sales and rentals. It also estimated the global industry of legal porn as raking in $56 billion a year. (Note the term legal.)

Most analysts agree that porn on the Internet—cyberporn—is taking in an estimated $1 billion a year. The number of erotic webpages has rocketed 1,800 percent since 1998, to where in 2003 there were 1.3 million pornographic sites—according to a study released in September 2003 by the Seattle-based Web-filtering company n2h2. A 2002 n2h2 report predicted that the online porn industry would grow to become a $5-7 billion business within five years.

These figures at least get us in the ballpark: Porn is huge.

Is this the sign of a healthy society, or one plagued with sexual obsession? Is porn therapeutic or harmful? What is the plain truth about pornography? Don’t be so sure you know!

If you believe porn is wrong, do you know why? There is a deep spiritual dimension that few understand, and it must first be discussed before we can answer this matter sufficiently. It comes from the foundation of all knowledge—God’s Word, the Holy Bible.

But isn’t the Bible out of date? you might ask. This magazine often—in the context of world events—trumpets how utterly current and even ahead of its time God’s Word is. It tells of future events before they happen. Is that an out-of-date book? Is it really just the prudish teachings of some ancient clerics? Or could it be the instruction manual for our everyday existence—current to this very moment and on into the future?

The Vital, Missing Dimension

Adult industry advocates say porn helps us become more open and comfortable about sex—that people still too often think of sex as something shameful, dirty. This “open” philosophy, in fact, sums up the “New Morality”—a movement after World War i that brought about drastic social changes thanks to research by Sigmund Freud a few years prior. Before the First World War it was illegal in the U.S. to publish, sell or distribute material on sex. Under the New Morality, however, sex became freely and openly discussed.

Attitudes changed about sex. Under the puritanical Old Morality, some authorities claimed that a woman’s visible arms, ankles or elbows were “obscene.” Some thought the Bible to be obscene, because of its plain teaching on sexual matters. But now, proponents of this New Morality would have us think that nothing is sexually obscene. And the Bible, in its balanced view, is now seen as prudish.

During this flourishing of the New Morality, Herbert W. Armstrong was able to offer “open,” frank, plain teaching on the subject of sex in his book The Missing Dimension in Sex. He used society’s openness about the subject to trumpet this vital biblical understanding, and condemned—as porn advocates do—the prudish society that branded sex as shameful. But he also sternly condemned the side of the sexual pendulum to which society had swung.

What pornophiles don’t realize is that the same spirit responsible for inspiring this present era of openness and unlimited sexual freedoms is the same spirit that, for centuries, held the Western world in the grip of thinking that sex is shameful.

Satan, once the archangel Lucifer, is the god and deceiver of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4; Revelation 12:9). The Bible reveals that angels are sexless (Matthew 22:30). And this evil angel hates sex, marriage and family most of all because it pictures God’s family plan for mankind. Satan’s broadcasts throughout man’s history caused the developed world to view sex the same way he did—as being shameful, nasty, embarrassing, something on the animal level. He was, after all, responsible for Adam and Eve discovering their nakedness and their being ashamed of it (see Genesis 3).

But God is not ashamed of sex. He created it! The Old Morality—under which proper education on sex was scarce—did irreparable harm to marriages and families! But this doesn’t mean that the New Morality—this opposite extreme—has helped. As Mr. Armstrong said in his book, if the Old Morality was the frying pan, this New Morality is the fire.

With the onset of the New Morality came increasing advancements in mass technology. The sexless Satan—hostile to God, His creation and His plan—used this technology to broadcast his “new” message. He still thought of sex as shameful, nasty and degrading, but instead of holding the world in prudish ignorance and embarrassment of it, he let the floodgates open so wide that sex, as in ancient times, became an idol. Society was now free—emancipated—from the restraints of yesteryear.

Through the sheer prevalence of sex in these modern media, he could discredit the institution of marriage and family. This New Morality—with its message that any sexual restraints are evil—would do even more for his cause than the Old. God’s family plan—pictured through family, marriage and sex—could be marred in the minds of the deceived millions. Divorce rose sharply, as did cohabitation of couples—heterosexual and homosexual. Sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies and abortion became rampant. The number of sexually active teenagers grew. By 2002, 34 percent of all births in the U.S. were to unmarried women. And more than half of all marriages in the U.S. ended in divorce.

This “new IMmorality”—this unbridled openness about sex—flourished through mainstream media: books, magazines, and, eventually, movies and television. But it is most epitomized by “adult entertainment.” Pornography’s content encapsulates all the messages of Satan’s most cunning deception.

For some decades, porn proliferated mostly within an underground subculture. Then, with new mass technology in the 1990s, namely the Internet, this New Morality went to the next level. Millions could view pornography anonymously, until it came to the point where society in general was not ashamed of its fascination with erotica.

It’s IN, and It’s Everywhere

Just as society shed its sex-is-shameful outlook for anything goes, the same has happened in pornography. Once the guilty pleasure of the underworld, porn is now hip—it’s in. And if you think it’s harmful, you are laughably out of touch—or so the thinking goes.

Porn is “the new martini,” as a character on a popular television drama put it—a favorite at parties. Who can forget the shocking Frontline report in 1998 about the children of Rockdale County in Georgia, where scads of affluent teens gathered in their rich parents’ homes for sex parties that included imitating the acts they viewed on the Playboy channel?

Porn is quickly becoming America’s favorite pastime. The entertainment industry is catering to it by churning out more adult movies—over 10,000 a year—than Hollywood feature films (only 400). The moguls of the porn business are not just a few sleazy-looking kingpins from the seedy underworld. They are “respected” businesspeople who, after a hard day of filming sex, go back to their pads in the burbs, with the wife, the kids and the family pet.

Producers and actors within the industry are achieving household-name status. Porn queen Jenna Jameson has been on tour with mainstream talk shows, had billboards in Times Square, been the subject of documentaries—mainly to promote her sordid autobiography, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star. She has made prime-time tv appearances, playing herself on one nbc drama last season. “The culture doesn’t just shrug at her celebrity; it embraces it” (Wall Street Journal, August 27).

And even though Jameson turned down having a reality show on network television called Who Wants to Be a Porn Star, a network in England finished its first season of a porn-style reality show in August, whose winner was awarded a porn film contract.

So who does want to be a porn star? Industry execs will tell you that girls aren’t necessarily being recruited to play these parts. Many are lining up to audition to partake of the average wage of $400 per scene.

In addition to porn stars achieving mainstream celebrity status, prime-time television has embraced pornography’s influence on our culture. On the networks, there was Fox’s effort at a drama about the industry—Skin—and a new openness about it on prime-time sitcoms like Friends.hbo’s documentaries glorify the adult industry, while Showtime’s Family Business—about porn producer Adam Glasser and his accountant, his 70-something-year-old mother—has finished three seasons. There have been executive meetings between Adult Video News executives and the networks about televising the avn Awards Show—the “Oscars of porn,” as it is called.

Every medium has catapulted pornography into the limelight of acceptability: music videos, radio talk shows, major films. Hollywood has glamorized porn in movies like Wonderland, starring Val Kilmer. Boogie Nights earned Burt Reynolds an Oscar nomination. And 20th Century Fox’s most recent porn-based flick, The Girl Next Door, is about a teenage boy who falls in love with a former adult film star.

Consider also the increasing amount of material making it into mainstream entertainment—what we could call “pop porn.” This is material that, at one time, was cutting edge even for pornographers like Larry Flynt—particularly hbo’s triumph with Sex and the City, which tackled subjects that Flynt said he could barely broach in the 1970s. Even movies with less than an R rating now include “pornographic” material—either implied or shown, comedic or serious—that involves once-off-limits perversions.

Well, so what? Is this truly harming us? The facts, when viewed in light of the spiritual dimension—God’s perspective—will make the answer plain!

What IS Pornography?

Before we proceed any further, let us define a few terms. We have generally been using the word pornography to describe all “adult entertainment.” Some want to call it something more like “sexual material,” since pornography carries a negative connotation. Others use the more artistic term erotica to soften its reputation. But the actual etymology of pornography shows it to mean “writings of prostitutes.” It was material intended primarily for sexual arousal, particularly in men.

But even in this field, there are varying levels, or degrees, of pornography. The two most common classifications are softcore, or soft porn—the most commonly marketed—and hardcore porn. Hardcore usually involves what could legally be considered “obscene,” meaning that it offends the accepted norm of sexual morality. This segment usually constitutes “illegal” porn. It is not as pervasive as softcore material and usually includes a massive amount of actual sex acts, bestiality and sadomasochistic abuse—i.e. violence and torture in combination with sex.

Not surprisingly, it’s hardcore material that is gaining more momentum in the industry (the reasons for which we’ll see a bit later). In Britain, 33 percent of all Internet users are accessing hardcore porn sites. The statistic about one in five boys and one in 10 girls having their first exposure to pornography by age 12 is referring also to hardcore porn.

Harmful Effects of Porn

So how does pornography affect our society? First let’s look at the most extreme effects—pornography’s association with criminal behavior and sexual deviancy.

“I wasn’t some guy hanging out in bars, or a bum. I wasn’t a pervert in the sense that people look at somebody and say, ‘I know there’s something wrong with him’ …. I was a normal person. I had good friends. I led a normal life, except for this one, small but very potent and destructive segment [pornography] I kept very secret and close to myself.” These were the words of the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy to Dr. James Dobson hours before his execution (afa Journal, September 2004).

Though pornography doesn’t necessarily make all of its consumers criminals, it does, with nearly all criminals of a certain ilk, play a key factor in their antisocial behavior. Research has found that almost half of rapists “used pornography depicting consenting sex to arouse themselves before seeking out a victim. In another study, sex offenders said that pornography increased their appetites for deviant activities” (www.nationalcoalition.org).

Eighty-six percent of rapists admit to regular use of porn, and 57 percent admit to imitating porn scenes in committing their sex crimes. An fbi report found that 81 percent of serial sex murderers admitted to using pornography (www.resourcefoundation.org).

Yet “free speech” advocates, like Feminists for Free Expression, will state on their website: “No research … finds a link between ‘kinky’ or ‘degrading’ images and violence. … The derailed impulses of child abusers and rapists are caused by childhood traumas. ‘They are not,’ wrote leading researcher John Money, ‘borrowed from movies, books or other people.’”

That’s about as logical as saying that an apple pie is made with apples and nothing else! Sure, childhood traumas play a part—but even viewing porn is a kind of “trauma”; rapists are more likely than non-offenders to have viewed hardcore porn before age 10. Porn is simply a major ingredient in the antisocial behavior of child abusers and rapists.

Ted Bundy said he didn’t know a violent sexual deviant in jail who wasn’t addicted to porn. In fact, in an interview shortly before his execution, he said, “You are going to kill me, and that will protect society from me. But out there are many, many more people who are addicted to pornography, and you are doing nothing about that.”

Dr. Victor Cline—an expert in the field of sex addiction and pornography—has done extensive research into porn’s relationship to criminality. He tells of one businessman, head of a church committee on helping troubled children, who became a serial rapist from watching porn. He had a healthy childhood and made good grades in school. “His first rape,” Cline wrote, “was triggered by seeing a close resemblance in the woman he assaulted to the leading character in a porn movie he had seen earlier in the day” (www.moralityinmedia.org).

Dr. Cline has many more stories. He relates one of a 12-year-old boy who, a few days after listening to dial-a-porn, sexually assaulted a 4-year-old girl in his mother’s day-care center. “He had never been exposed to pornography before. He had never acted out sexually before and was not a behavior problem in the home” (ibid.).

Effects on the Family

The Trumpet’s editor in chief has frequently said that pornography “tears the family apart.”

Pornophiles would have you believe otherwise—that it’s harmless, constitutional, and even a healthy mental excursion, especially if used in moderation. They’ll tell you it’s beneficial even if it’s secret and is kept from the spouse (46 percent of all porn site users are married). They talk about the three A’s when it comes to cyberporn: It’s accessible, affordable and anonymous. They’ll quote a 2001 survey of over 7,000 adults that found two thirds of Internet porn users say it hasn’t affected their relationships.

On the other hand, there are the two thirds of divorce lawyers at a 2003 convention who said the Internet played a significant role in divorce.

Those who say pornography is harmless—that it has no effect on the consumer—are simply ignoring the fact that our educational system is based on the notion that printed material will influence minds; our advertising industry is basing its profits on the concept that people are motivated to act by visual images; and many works of art and literature often have profound effects on people.

Many say that porn makes us more open about sexuality—helps us remove our inhibitions. Yet pornography is often used in secret—fostering deception within a marriage.

Experts say that “men who frequently view porn may develop unrealistic expectations of women’s appearance and behavior, have difficulty forming and sustaining relationships and feeling sexually satisfied” (Time Magazine, January 19).

This fact is backed up by a story Mr. Armstrong told in Missing Dimension. A married man once decided to dabble in an affair. As Mr. Armstrong explained, he then entered another affair. “Soon he discovered that somehow his wife had changed. She was no longer so beautiful and attractive. She seemed no longer desirable. He couldn’t figure what had happened to her. Of course nothing had happened to her—it had happened to him!”

Porn does the same thing to marriages.

Advocates of the New Morality—and usually also of porn—say that we are more sexually fulfilled because there are no restraints. But ironically, our marriages are not happier!

Porn also has devastating effects on children.

One girl whose father was a respected man in the community became wise to her dad’s growing addiction to porn. “I noticed my dad becoming less and less the fun social person I had always pictured.” She noticed his lack of eye contact with her and her friends, and conversation between father and daughter dwindled (afa Journal, op. cit.).

Another young girl who was affected by her father’s obsession with porn was Tonya Flynt, daughter of the famous porn guru and founder of Hustler magazine, Larry Flynt.

Tonya was raised in the world of porn. She watched her father in the grips of this obsession, was abused by him, and was finally institutionalized at age 13.

Later in life she established the Tonya Flynt Foundation Against Pornography and Sexual Abuse. She aims to change society’s view of the porn-is-victimless myth. “How can anyone believe that lie?” she asks. “Yes, I grew up around it; my life was nearly destroyed by it. …

“I believe in the First Amendment,” she states. “I believe that is a wonderful freedom. But with that freedom comes responsibility. …

“Pornography has shaped our television, movie industries, art, theater, music, public decency and our basic institution of marriage and family. Pornography’s greatest harm is its ability to desensitize us to evil. It is impossible to measure how greatly it has rotted the core of our nation” (www.mfc.org).

Porn destroys families—plain and simple. And as the family is the foundation of a nation’s stability, Flynt’s daughter is right: “[I]t has rotted the core of our nation.” There is not one redeeming quality in something that causes that kind of harm in people’s lives! It destroys nations!

Harmless to Singles?

“Cyberporn is not just breaking up marriages,” writes Lynn Sherr. “It can have another, even more insidious effect: keeping young people from even forming relationships” (abcnews.com, August 27). In one sense, pornography essentially eliminates the need for a dating life, for marriage and for family. If someone is getting his or her sexual fulfillment and “intimacy” from a computer screen, what incentive is there to find that special someone and settle down?

The Almighty God created sex to strengthen love within the family. He did not intend for unrestrained use of it to eliminate the need for family.

Consider the “pop porn,” or the sexual content so prevalent in tv programming today, and the effect it is having on our teenagers. “Teenagers who watch a lot of television with sexual content are twice as likely to engage in intercourse than those who watch few such programs,” according to a study of nearly 1,800 12-to-17-year-olds (Reuters, September 7; emphasis mine throughout).

The study found that “shows where sex was talked about but not depicted had just as much impact as the more explicit shows” and that “12-year-olds who watched a lot of sexual content behaved like the 14- or 15-year-olds who watched the least amount.” Reuters continues, “It did find that the 10 percent of those who watched the most television with sexual content were twice as likely to have initiated sexual intercourse when checked a year later than adolescents who were among the 10 percent who watched the least amount of sexual content.”

Suggestive movies and television inflame a strong pull in people—especially teens, as this study shows. How much more does pornography?

Porn destroys human relations even on a non-sexual level, by reducing one’s capacity to love, says Dr. Cline. “[I]t results in a marked dissociation of sex from friendship, affection, caring and other normal healthy emotions and traits which help marital relationships” (op. cit.).

Pornography affects any mind—married or unmarried—old, and especially young. How?

Consider the messages of pornography. What is the attitude behind it?

First, it depicts an unrealistic and wrong view of sex. Fewer than 5 percent of all sexual encounters in pornography depict “normal” heterosexual intercourse. Someone who knew nothing about human sexuality and decided to learn about it purely from adult entertainment would think that one in five sexual encounters involved simulated or actual violence and torture.

Part of this view of sex is the message that casual sex carries no negative consequences or responsibility. That sex with anyone, anytime, anyplace, is acceptable and even beneficial. That sex, in the fantasy world of pornography, is the same thing as love and intimacy.

Another message in pornography involves the degradation of women (and, in less mainstream content, children). Playboy’s women are called “bunnies” or “playmates.” Penthouse calls its women “pets.” The theme of porn is that the woman’s only purpose is to meet the sexual demands of men.

Porn often depicts rape as pleasurable to a woman. It also perversely depicts torture and prostitution as exciting and enjoyable.

Two former adult movie critics told London’s Guardian newspaper, “[W]e have never properly resolved what we think about how, why and whether it is degrading to women. We suspect that it might be. We suspect that pornography might be degrading to everybody” (Nov. 8, 2003).

And that’s just the point. Pornography is degrading to everyone!

It is from the mind of the devil! He broadcasts his messages through pornography—that humans are slaves to their sexual urges and that marriage and family are obstacles to sexual fulfillment. In fact, usually the only occasion a “family” is depicted in pornography is in the context of incest.

As Mr. Armstrong eloquently explained in Mystery of the Ages, “Satan has seized on this sin to make it far more universal than is generally realized. Satan, himself, has no sex. He is resentful of the fact God has endowed humans with sex. Therefore, Satan sways humanity into making sexual sins one of the most universal and destructive.”

Harmless If in Moderation?

Even if porn is used in “moderation,” even if it does not foster an addiction, we still must understand the deep evil behind pornography.

Understanding God’s purpose for sex, marriage and family—and how much Satan wants to destroy that understanding—we must understand that pornography is becoming one of the devil’s most powerful weapons on our minds, to make us hostile toward God’s transcendent purpose for creating humanity!

With porn, there is no “moderation.” It’s like saying you can consume rat poison as long as you do it in moderation (and you don’t tell your spouse).

The fact of the matter is, there is nothing moderate about our society’s use of porn. We are glutting ourselves on this poison!

Desensitization and the Future of Porn

Present trends indicate that pornography is inevitably going to get more prevalent and perverted. It will happen through a “creeping cycle of desensitization,” as one author put it.

This author was referring to the increase of objectionable content in movies and on television. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when the film industry had to compete with television, films started to include content that wasn’t available on the mainstream medium—tackling more “mature” subjects and including more violence, sexual content and “adult” language. The film industry would go as far as it could in this direction until there was a public outcry—then it would pull back slightly to appease the censors. A little later, it would proceed forward again after people had become desensitized to the content.

The same is true of most media outlets today, which are profit-driven businesses that compete for the attention of consumers. Often what gets the attention is something bawdier and seedier. If you watched a reality show last season where someone ate dead bugs, what will it take to get you to tune in to a competing reality show? Maybe it advertises that its contestants will eat live bugs. And so it goes for sexual content in movies, on television and in pornography. When consumers get desensitized to something, another business goes a step further to produce something that will sell.

As Mr. Armstrong wrote in Missing Dimension, “Today we have ‘progressed’ completely past ‘topless’ bars and restaurants. When they became no longer shocking, ‘bottomless’ followed, and finally, the supreme jolt as a shocker—and in several places—to entertain a lust-gripped audience, actual live sexual intercourse performed in the nude on stage. Not simulated. ‘For real!‘” This book was revised in the late 1970s and still holds its currency! “Actual live sexual intercourse” is common in the adult entertainment business, and it is the boon of the pay-per-view industry.

As the cycle of desensitization occurs on television and in movies, pornography has to sink to new depths to satisfy its audience. As soft porn becomes more mainstream and part of the regular tv and film diet, cyberporn barons have to “upgrade” their services to include more material that you can’t get just anywhere.

Based on this cycle, we can see that porn is only going to get more obscene—and what was once considered pornographic will eventually become common fare for television and mainstream movie audiences. This, it could be argued, has already been happening for years.

Business of Porn

Porn is a business driven by this cycle of desensitization.

Ever since Hugh Hefner scraped together $7,000 to reprint a nude calendar of Marilyn Monroe, with a couple of articles (and sold 50,000 copies), businesspersons have discovered that porn is a logical choice for those out to make a profit—“profit through lust,” as Mr. Armstrong called it in Missing Dimension.

On one average workday, any person with a modest camera and a few thousand bucks can produce a porn film, sell it for $29.95 (or more) a copy, and make tens of thousands—even millions—of dollars.

On hotel televisions with pay-per-view capabilities, porn movies are rented 10 times as often as regular feature films—and they cost more. Do the math. It’s a profitable decision for hotels, which benefit from people’s addiction to porn—usually garnering 5 to 10 percent of the revenue that goes to distribution companies like LodgeNet or On Command.

Porn, because of its pervasive demand, is largely immune to the ups and downs of the economy. “If you look around at a lot of the other dot-com businesses out there, they’re not profitable,” says Cybererotica’s president Jonathan Silverstein. “We are very, very profitable. We’ve learned what it takes to make a dollar. Not just make a dollar, but make a dollar and make a dollar and make a dollar” (msnbc News, Aug. 9, 2000).

And this business will do anything to make a dollar. It won’t just play on the increasing desensitization of society. It often relies on subtle, deceptive traps to lure people into this addiction.

Adult websites reserve domain names that are similar to common website addresses—like hotmail.com—where if someone accidentally adds a letter or leaves one out—up comes the porn site. Some use common names you might never associate with a porn site.

Through pop-up ads, banners and a technique known as “mousetrapping,” porn sites can lure unsuspecting Web surfers. If surfers who accidentally happen on some porn sites try to close out of the site, they are sent to another webpage automatically—which can happen dozens of times until the users panic and restart their computer.

Little wonder that in 2001, 70 percent of 15-to-17-year-olds said they’d accidentally seen porn on the Net (Time, op. cit.).

The Ultimate Future of Porn Because of the greed-driven nature of the pornography business and the cycle of desensitization afflicting our society, porn is destined to thrive and become more normalized in mainstream society. We will see it do more damage to marriages and families.

Don’t get caught in its obsessive trap! Realize the devilish motives behind this industry—don’t fall victim to it. If you believe porn is evil, you are not “laughably out of touch.” You are not anti-sex. PORNOGRAPHYis anti-sex!

Embrace God’s view of sex. God is pro-sex. He created it—and for a transcendent purpose! Used properly, it will help to keep families intact and nations strong. It will help bring us peace—within our homes and in society!

A time is coming soon when pornography will be completely eradicated—both through “government regulation” and the changing of human nature. When Jesus Christ returns to Earth, He will establish the government of God over this whole planet. That government will enforce the keeping of God’s perfect, beautiful, joy-producing law.

But it won’t just be through this government’s “regulation.” As Richard Nixon said, “When indecent books no longer find a market, when pornographic films can no longer draw an audience, when obscene plays open to empty houses, then the tide will turn. Government can maintain [barriers] against obscenity, but only people can turn back the tide.”

At the core, it is human nature that must be changed. And Satan—who broadcasts on humanity’s pulls and moods—must be removed. That is exactly what will happen. Soon he will no longer be able to transmit his anti-God, anti-family message.

Imagine this world of tomorrow! Obscenity will be done away through the presence of one “pure language” (Zephaniah 3:9). Artistic expression and freedom will be allowed within the confines of this pure tongue, and within the ultimate guidelines of God’s loving law.

Yes, a pure world is coming. But it is first coming through an intense purification process! God, in His Word, compares the end-time sexual craze in the Western world to that of Sodom and Gomorrah. And He says the same fate is coming on our people if we don’t repent! This coming Tribulation is the only way God will be able to get through. Thankfully, the world will be humbled, and society will be compelled to live by God’s righteous standard.

In the World Tomorrow, all will keep this law. Yes, there will be restrictions—restrictions from things that harm us, just as a parent would restrict his toddler from running into a busy intersection. Think of a world free of pornography—a world where sexual activity is used and cherished as God intended it.

There will be no more rape, abuse, child molestation, venereal diseases, illegitimate children. Proper sex education will be of high priority in all homes, and will be supported by right teaching in all schools. Married couples will trust each other. No more deception—either from illicit affairs or clandestine moments with the computer. This trust will engender sexual bliss within all marriages. Knowledge of the missing dimension in sex—God’s revelation—will be understood by all. Couples will not feel the need to turn to smut or other perverted sorts of sexual experimentation for any sort of fulfillment.

To understand how to live this abundant way today, it cannot be overstressed that you must have Herbert Armstrong’s book The Missing Dimension in Sex.

It was only 30 years ago that, when the predecessor to this magazine addressed the subject of porn, the solution it presented was simply to stay away from it—simply not to visit adult bookstores, shops or movie theaters. If only it were that easy today. Porn is thrust at us, through popular culture, tricky Internet ploys and the like. You must understand how to battle this pervasive element of our culture. You need to understand The Missing Dimension in Sex. Please request your copy today. Because it is so essential to your life, we can only offer it absolutely free.With reporting by Sarah Leap