Day 9: The Content Flood
Pulpit Puppet Masters and the Curated Gospel Reclaiming the freedom to choose in an age of manufactured faith
Yesterday we exposed the corruption of repentance, that endless cycle which manages and magnifies sin instead of killing it. The same failures week after week culminating in the same confession all the while nothing actually changes. It looks like the real thing, our confession feels spiritual and uses all the right language, but it produces no transformation, no fruit, no freedom.
You might have noticed that we have been circling something for some time now. Puppet strings and people unaware of the mise-en-scène. A curated maze of endless options, choices all culminating in a trap designed for destruction. Babylon baptized and the mark it leaves on those who have conformed and been captured by the stage dressing and the set pieces that seem like reality but are staged, scripted, seeking to perpetuate the cycle that distorts what is real. There is a real enemy who works constantly not only to hold sway over the deceived but who also excludes and isolates those who try to leave all the while corrupting the true repentance which could provide freedom to all. Everything so far has been pointing to a reality we have been circling but haven’t yet named.
Today we name it.
We’re not just being manipulated. We’re being played. Literally. On a board we didn’t know existed.
The Board We Never Saw
Think about chess for a moment and consider the pawn. The pawn doesn’t see the board. It sees only the square directly in front of it, maybe the diagonal squares where it might capture an opponent. It moves forward because that’s what pawns do, one square at a time, occasionally two on the first move. The pawn has no idea it’s being sacrificed to open a lane for the bishop three moves from now. It doesn’t know the player decided long ago that this particular piece was expendable, that its advance which feels so much like progress is actually a calculated loss serving someone else’s strategy.
The pawn thinks it’s advancing. The player knows it’s being spent.
This is what has been happening to us.
Every piece of content we consume, every video we watch, every podcast we download, every sermon we stream, every book we add to our reading list, every scroll through our feed. It’s all movement. Square by square we’re being positioned, kept focused on the next piece of information so we never look up and see the whole game being played around us. We feel like we’re growing because we’re always learning something new. We feel like we’re advancing because we’re always consuming more. But a pawn moved forward is still a pawn. Still on the board. Still serving someone else’s strategy no matter how many squares it travels.
Have we considered who is moving us? Have we asked whose strategy we’re serving? Have we looked up from our square long enough to see that there’s a board at all?
The content flood isn’t random noise in an information age. It isn’t the inevitable byproduct of technology. It’s the mechanism that keeps our eyes fixed on our square so we never look up and see the board.
The Strong Man’s Castle
Jesus told a parable that most of us have heard but few have truly understood:
“When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are safe; but when one stronger than he attacks him and overcomes him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted and divides his spoil.” (Luke 11:21-22)
Here is the strong man, fully armed, guarding his palace, keeping his goods safe inside. But who is this strong man? Who guards the palace? And perhaps most importantly for us, who are the goods he keeps inside?
The strong man is the one Jesus came to bind. He is the prince of the power of the air, the god of this age who has blinded the minds of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:4). He guards his palace, his kingdom of darkness, and his goods are the souls he’s captured, the minds he’s blinded, the lives he’s stolen and stored away behind his walls.
We were among his goods. Perhaps we still are.
But notice where the strong man positions himself. He’s in his palace. Behind walls. Protected. In chess there’s a move called castling, a defensive maneuver where the king and the rook switch positions, allowing the king to tuck behind a wall of pawns where he’s protected, hidden, safe from direct attack. The king moves out of the center of the board, away from where the action is, and lets his other pieces do the fighting while he stays safely behind the wall.
The strong man has castled.
He’s not out in the open where we can confront him directly. He’s hidden behind walls made of systems and institutions, platforms and programs, compromised religion and endless content. We spend our whole lives fighting the pieces we can see: the false teachers, the corrupt denominations, the compromised churches, the puppet masters in pulpits. We identify them, expose them, leave them, warn others about them. We feel like we’re making progress because we’re attacking something real.
But they’re not the king. They’re the rooks and bishops and knights arranged to protect the one who positioned them there in the first place. We attack the wall with everything we have and we never reach the king hiding behind it.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the Welsh preacher who pastored Westminster Chapel in London through the mid-twentieth century, saw this with remarkable clarity in his sermons on spiritual warfare. He described the strong man’s palace as a prison where the keeper never shows himself. You walk the grounds freely, going wherever you want. No one stops you. No guards block your path. No chains bind your ankles. You think you’re free because nothing visible restrains you. But try to leave. Try to climb the wall. Try to escape the compound entirely. That’s when you discover the keeper is very real, and he will club you back down to the ground before you ever reach the top.
The keeper stays hidden. The walls stay up. And we stay inside, fighting shadows, exhausting ourselves against pieces the player can always replace.
The Player Behind the Player
Here’s what changes everything once we see it: the puppet masters are puppets too.
We’ve spent eight days exposing them. The pulpit manipulators who curate the gospel for their own purposes. The builders of the mise-en-scène who arrange everything to manufacture a response. The architects of the maze who give us the illusion of choice while controlling every option. The priests of baptized Babylon who wear the name of Christ while bearing the image of the beast. They are culpable for what they’ve done, make no mistake about that. They will answer for the sheep they’ve scattered, the truth they’ve twisted, the souls they’ve kept in bondage while claiming to set them free.
But they’re not the final enemy. They’re pieces on the same board we’ve been playing on.
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.” (Ephesians 2:1-2)
There it is. The prince of the power of the air. The spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. The puppet masters standing in their pulpits think they’re the ones pulling strings but there’s a hand on their strings too. They think they’re players making strategic moves for their own benefit. They’re pieces being moved by a player they’ve never seen, serving a strategy they don’t understand.
This is why the battle isn’t against flesh and blood.
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12)
That compromised pastor isn’t our final enemy. He’s a pawn who thinks he’s a player. That corrupt institution isn’t our final enemy. It’s a rook protecting a king it doesn’t even know it serves. That false teacher isn’t our final enemy. He’s a bishop moving on diagonals he didn’t choose, thinking his strategy is his own while executing someone else’s game plan.
Behind them all is the player who castled long ago, who set up the board before any of us were born, who floods us with content to keep our eyes fixed on our square while he moves his pieces into position around us.
The Flood That Drowns
Now we can understand the content flood for what it really is. It’s strategic. Strategy implies a game. A game implies a player making calculated moves.
“Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (2 Timothy 3:7)
Ever learning. That phrase should haunt us. Always consuming, always taking in more. Podcast after podcast, video after video, book after book, conference after conference. Always moving forward on our square, always absorbing more information about God, about the Bible, about theology, about spiritual growth, about the Christian life. The content never stops flowing and neither does our consumption of it.
But we never arrive.
We never come to the knowledge of the truth. Not because truth isn’t available. Not because we’re insincere in our seeking. We never arrive because the flood keeps us moving square by square, always advancing toward some destination that keeps receding, always learning more without ever truly knowing.
The content flood serves the strong man’s strategy in ways most believers never recognize. It keeps us busy, occupied, distracted. We feel productive because we’re learning something new every day. We feel spiritual because the content we’re consuming has Christian labels attached to it. But consumption is not transformation. Information is not encounter. We can listen to a thousand sermons about Jesus Christ and never actually meet Him. We can read a hundred books about prayer and never actually pray. We can consume endless teaching about the abundant life and remain as empty as we were when we started.
The flood keeps us isolated too (remember what we saw in Day 7). Isolated believers consume content instead of living in community. They watch someone else break bread instead of breaking it themselves. They learn about Christianity from a screen instead of living it out with other believers who know their name. Each pawn stays on its own square, moving forward alone, never forming the connected line that could actually threaten the enemy’s position.
The flood keeps us dependent. Dependent on the content creators. Dependent on the platforms that deliver their words to us. Dependent on the systems that curate what we see and when we see it. We need the next video, the next podcast, the next book to feel like we’re making progress in our faith. But we’re not growing. We’re being fed by someone who decides what we eat, what we think about, which questions seem important and which ones never occur to us to ask.
And perhaps most devastatingly, the flood drowns out the still small voice. In all that noise, in all that content clamoring for our attention, how can we possibly hear the Shepherd? There are too many voices speaking into our lives, too much input demanding our response. The Spirit speaks in stillness but the content never stops long enough for stillness to settle over our souls.
“Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)
How can we be still when the flood keeps rising? How can we know Him when we’re always being taught about Him by someone else? How can we hear His voice when a hundred other voices fill every moment of silence that might have been His opportunity to speak?
The flood isn’t feeding us. It’s drowning us. And drowned men don’t cry out for help because their lungs are already full.
The Other Castle
But there’s another castle on this board, another king who has been moved to the side. And this one isn’t hiding for his own protection. He’s been pushed there by the very institution that claims His name.
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” (Revelation 3:20)
Stop and consider who Jesus is speaking to here. This isn’t written to unbelievers. It’s written to a church. To Laodicea. To the lukewarm church, the self-satisfied church, the church that declares “I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing” while Jesus describes them as wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.
And where is Jesus in relation to this church? He’s outside. Knocking. Waiting to be let in to the church that bears His name.
The true King has been castled out of position. Not for His protection but for theirs. Because if Jesus Christ were actually at the center of the church, if He were truly Lord and not just a label, everything would have to change. The production would have to stop. The programs would have to end. The content flood would have to dry up and give way to something far more dangerous: actual encounter with the living God who demands everything and transforms everyone who truly meets Him.
So they’ve moved Him to the side. Marginalized Him in His own house. The celebrity pastors occupy center stage. The worship leaders command the spotlight. The programs and productions and platforms and content fill every available space. And Jesus stands at the door, outside the church that sings songs with His name in them, knocking, waiting for anyone who might hear His voice above all the noise being generated in His honor.
The devil’s castle keeps him hidden so we can’t fight him. The church’s castle keeps Christ sidelined so they don’t have to follow Him. Both are deception. Both use the same move for opposite reasons. Both call it something other than what it is.
The Difference Between Knowing About and Knowing
Jesus confronted the religious experts of His day with words that should terrify anyone drowning in the content flood:
“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” (John 5:39-40)
These men searched the Scriptures with tremendous diligence. They consumed the content of their day more thoroughly than anyone else. They knew the text better than we ever will, could quote lengthy passages from memory, understood the fine points of every theological debate. They had mastered the information.
But they refused to come to Him.
This is the great danger of the content flood. We can consume endless teaching about Jesus Christ and never actually come to Jesus Christ. We can learn theology and miss the Theologian. We can study the Word exhaustively and refuse the Word made flesh. We can fill our minds with information about Him while our hearts remain strangers to His presence.
The Scriptures bear witness about Him. The sermons point to Him. The books describe Him. The podcasts discuss Him. But pointing is not arriving. Witness is not encounter. Description is not presence.
“Now this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.” (John 17:3)
Eternal life is knowing Him. Not knowing about Him. Knowing Him. The Greek word is ginōskō and it describes intimate, experiential knowledge. The kind of knowing that comes only from encounter, only from relationship, only from being in someone’s presence long enough to recognize their voice without seeing their face.
The content flood gives us information. Only the Spirit gives us encounter.
And here’s the question that exposes everything: Can we find God when we seek Him? Not find more content about God. Not find another teacher explaining God. Can we find God Himself? When we turn off the podcast and sit in silence, is He there? When we close the book and open our hearts, does He speak? When we step away from the screen and into stillness, do we encounter the living Christ?
Or do we only know Him through the mediation of the flood, through the voices of others who claim to speak for Him, through content about Him that never quite becomes communion with Him?
People, Not Pawns
We were never meant to be pawns. Never meant to be positioned on squares we didn’t choose, moved by hands we couldn’t see, sacrificed for strategies we didn’t understand. We were never meant to spend our lives focused on the next square, the next piece of content, the next video or podcast or book, never looking up, never seeing the game being played around us and through us.
Whether puppet or pawn, the reality is the same: our will has been taken from us. The puppet has strings. The pawn has squares. Both are moved by hands they don’t see. Both think their movement is their own. Both serve a strategy they never chose.
The strings and the squares are different images of a single theft. In Day 1 we named it: the thief comes to steal before he kills and destroys. What does he steal first? Our voice. Our choice. The God-given free will that makes love possible and worship real.
This is how the spirit of this age operates. He doesn’t create anything. He only counterfeits what God has made, taking what God designed for good and warping it for his own ends. God gave us free will so we could choose Him freely, so our love would be genuine, so our worship would mean something because it cost us something. The enemy captures that will and convinces us we’re still free while he moves us square by square across his board, while he pulls our strings toward destinations we never chose.
The puppet thinks it’s dancing. The pawn thinks it’s advancing. Both are being played by someone who benefits from their movement.
This is why the gospel is such a threat to the enemy’s game. Jesus Christ doesn’t just offer better content. He doesn’t just give us a different square on the same board. He offers something the strong man cannot counterfeit: genuine freedom. The restoration of our stolen will. The return of our silenced voice. The ability to actually choose that was stolen in Eden and has been suppressed by every system of control ever since.
“For those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” (Romans 8:14)
Led by the Spirit. Not pushed by content. Not pulled by strings. Not moved by algorithms or positioned by systems or advanced square by square through someone else’s strategy. Led. By the Spirit. As sons and daughters. As children of the living God who have received back what was stolen from humanity at the beginning: the freedom to follow, the voice to respond, the will to choose the King who gave everything to set them free.
This is the invitation that changes everything. Step off the board.
The strong man has castled, yes. He’s hidden behind his walls, protected by pieces we’ve mistaken for the real enemy our whole lives. But One stronger has come. And He’s not playing the same game. He’s not trying to checkmate the devil on the devil’s board by the devil’s rules. He’s overturning the board entirely.
“When one stronger than he attacks him and overcomes him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted and divides his spoil.” (Luke 11:22)
The stronger One doesn’t win the chess match. He ends it. He doesn’t capture our king. He breaks the whole game. He divides the spoil, which means we who were goods stored in the strong man’s palace, property in the enemy’s inventory, become children in the Father’s house. We were pawns being spent. Now we’re people being loved. We were property being used. Now we’re family being welcomed home.
The King who rescues us isn’t castled behind walls of protection. He’s not hiding where we can’t reach Him. He left the highest place and entered enemy territory. He stormed the strong man’s castle and is even now dividing the spoil, setting captives free one by one, opening blind eyes, giving new life to those who were dead in their trespasses and sins.
He’s not behind walls. He’s knocking at our door.
Will we let Him in?
Damascus Road Moment
The board is visible now. The game is exposed. The flood that kept us distracted and drowning has been named for what it is. And the choice stands before us: remain pawns on a board we never chose, or step off entirely and follow the King who overturns every game.
STOP
“Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)
Stop consuming. Stop scrolling. Stop filling every available moment with more input. In the stillness the board becomes visible for the first time. In the silence His voice becomes audible above all the others. We cannot hear the Shepherd calling our name while the flood is roaring in our ears. Be still. And in that stillness, know. Not know about. Know Him.
“Come now, and let us reason together, says the LORD.” (Isaiah 1:18)
He’s inviting us to direct encounter. Not mediated through content creators. Not filtered through platforms or programs. Reasoning together, face to face, our voice and His in actual conversation. But we have to stop long enough to come to Him.
LOOK
“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” (John 5:39-40)
Look honestly at what we’ve been consuming all this time and ask the hard question: Has it brought us to Him, or has it substituted for Him? Do we know Jesus Christ, or do we know about Jesus Christ? Can we recognize His voice when He speaks, or do we only recognize the voices of those who claim to speak for Him? The Scriptures bear witness. The content points. But have we arrived at the One they point to, or have we been moving square by square toward a destination we never quite reach?
“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)
Look at His face. Not at more content about His face. His actual face. Behold Him directly, and in beholding, be transformed into what we were always meant to become.
LISTEN
“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27)
Listen for the Shepherd’s voice. Not the content creators who claim to speak for Him. Not the platforms that package and monetize His name. His voice. Do we know what it sounds like? Would we recognize it if He spoke to us directly? In the silence, when the flood stops and the content ends and no one is teaching us anything, does He speak?
“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” (Matthew 11:15)
Jesus repeated this warning because it’s possible to lose our ears entirely. The flood can deafen us. The content can fill our hearing so completely that there’s no room left for His voice. He who has ears, let him hear. Do we still have ears? Or has the flood filled them with so many other voices that His has become unrecognizable?
LIVE
“Now this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.” (John 17:3)
Today, turn off the flood. Close the apps. Stop the stream. Sit in silence and ask Jesus Christ to make Himself known to us. Not through another teacher’s voice or another creator’s content, but directly, personally, Spirit to spirit.
This week, replace one hour of content consumption with one hour of stillness, prayer, and Scripture without commentary. Let the Word speak for itself. Let the Spirit interpret what it means. Let the Shepherd’s voice become familiar again so that when He calls our name, we recognize Him immediately.
We were never meant to be pawns, moved by forces we couldn’t see, spent in strategies we didn’t choose. We were meant to be known and to know Him. We were meant to hear His voice and follow wherever He leads. We were meant to step off the board entirely and walk with the King who doesn’t play the enemy’s game but overturns it completely.
The flood is loud. His voice is still and small. But His voice is life.
Will we listen?
Tomorrow: The Photograph of Bread