The Adventures of the Extreme Freedom Team #13

Site: www.extremefreedomteam.com

Video: WHAT IF ...?

Video Summary:

This is a long video, over 15 minutes. This video opens with a scene on a baseball field. Joe Markiewicz is the narrator. This is a video about a dream. He says, “It is a story about you, about me, really it could be about anybody.” He talks of the dreams you had as a child before what they would refer to as the ‘rut’ of daily living. He talks about his past dream of wanting to be a major league baseball player, but he was injured in college, so he did not get to realize that. He says, “I am grown up now and have my own kids. But I still want to be a somebody, and I still have dreams.”

“If you could imagine your perfect day” describe it without boundaries of money, location, or people. This video is about Joe’s perfect day. This is a longer version of the previous video about renting the baseball field and playing. The team is his best friends, they have their own uniforms (They say 'freedom team'). Everyone can swing away, but “I can swing for as long as I want, because it is my field.” His kids are with him.

At the stands, there are picnics and souvenirs, Joe is even signing (autographing) one of the hats. Team pictures, announcers, player introductions, and everything else just like a real baseball game. “A chance to be a kid again.” Day One (another band that follows around people in the Quixtar MO's, Goads is the other one I know about) makes an appearance to sing the National Anthem. His dad throws the first pitch. After his explanation of what his dream would be, complete with images and video in a nice, soft musical tune, it pans back to the field and the music gets thrashy as they start to play the game. The stands look pretty funny as they are mostly empty, but have a few people watching these amatuers on a professional field. In the stands is a frightening line of people without shirts with their bodies painted, each with a separate letter: M A R K I E W I C Z is the first part, I could not discern what the next part was. At one part, someone inverts a whole bottle of Nutrilite(R) Carb Blocker 2 into his mouth, then a few scenes later, it is people drinking down XS.

After the game, it pans back to the field with Joe and he tells us that we all have dreams down deep of how we want to live our lives, but we sell ourselves short and give up. “It is about your dreams and how you are living your life to make your dreams come true.” He admonishes us to achieve our dreams because there are too many people out there watching everything we do. For the ultimate ending, he ends with a bible verse: Pslams 37:4-5 – “Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. (NKJV)”

My Thoughts:

As with previous comments, having a dream to fulfill your pleasures is not intrinsically wrong, unless your pleasures are to walk over someone else. In this case, the goal is worthwhile, but the means is not. Joe and his business team use a deceptive model to fleece their ‘business owners’ out of money in exchange for a bunch of motivational tapes. They tell the people that these tools are optional, but so is success. If you are not plugged into the system and you go to one of these people, they will tell you that you need to get involved in the system, then after a period of time, you will start to succeed. They have a saying in the business, “Volume trails tool flow by about 6 months.” (The time frame will vary based on what exact team you are in.)

On to the actual video, it is pretty sad that a person would take this and post it on the internet in this format. It is clear from the introductory comments and exit comments that the purpose is to show you what this can give you, regardless of what the disclaimers on the bottom of the site says.

As for the theology, they are still promoting that God wants you to be successful and have all sorts of money and do what you want to do. That could not be further from the truth. It is not about us here, it is about God. If money was the mark of success, every single apostle and Jesus Christ himself were complete failures. It is not about spending your time fulfilling your desires, it is about witnessing the faith in Jesus Christ through the Gospel. The verse put on the end of the video seems to justify what they are doing, let us examine that verse. The 1994 edition of the Quest Study Bible (Zondervan) has to say about this verse, “Does God give us anything we desire? No. But He will give us our desires when they first are shaped by a delight in the Lord…we must first meet the conditions attached to it: By loving God above all else, our desires will become what He desires for us.” Erwin Lutzer has to say, “How can God give us the desires of our heart if our desires are evil? He can’t. He is talking about the new desires…people that are converted have a new heart with new desires.” (Message: Deceived and Loving It from the series “Why Bad People do Good Things”) John Calvin states in his commentary on the Psalms, “This delight is set in opposite to the vain and deceitful allurements of the world, which so intoxicate the ungodly, that despising the blessing of God, they dream of no other happiness than what presents itself for the time before their eyes…This does not imply that the Godly immediately obtain whatever their fancy may suggest to them; nor would it be for their profit that God should grant them all their vain desires.” About verse 5, Calvin continues, “We are taught this passage how to preserve our minds in tranquility amidst anxieties, dangers, and floods of trouble.” Contrary to this, Joe believes that only be making a ton of money can we gain the piece of mind from anxieties.

I pray that these people would see the truth that they are hurting thousands of people a year for the ability to rent baseball stadiums, buy fancy cars and nice houses. I pray that they may repent before it is too late. I encourage you to read the Gospel of Jesus Christ if you are inspired to learn more.