How Christians And Conservatives Are Helping To Destroy America

What makes America America? What distinguishes this country from the nations of the world–or from world history, for that matter? Even casual historians must admit that there has never been a country like the United States of America ever to exist. This nation is unique to world history. There has never been a country like this–and probably will never be one like it again.

As hard as it is for the anti-God types to admit, America has a deeply-rooted Christian history and culture. However, when one says, “America is a Christian country,” (usually spoken by a Christian, of course), he or she may mean something that NEVER existed. So, let’s set the record straight: America was never founded as a theocracy. And even though there are some well-meaning, albeit naïve, Christian people today who pretend that America once had, and should have again, a theocratic-type government and society, the fact is, America was NEVER a theocracy.

The only theocracy in the history of the world was Old Testament Israel under Moses. After the death of Moses, God expected Israel to be governed by the principles established through Moses. Even the reign of Israel’s greatest king, King David, could not be classified as a theocracy. He, too, was expected to adhere to the tenets and principles of Moses. Only through Moses did God directly govern the people. And even within the government of Israel, God established the roots of what became known as republican (small “r”) government. But I will save that discussion for a later day.

So, if by “Christian nation” people mean that America was established as some sort of theocracy, they are gravely mistaken. It is also unfortunate that some well-meaning (at least, I think they are well-meaning) Christian people give the unchurched world the impression that they are trying to create some sort of theocracy in America today. Some even go so far as to teach that we don’t need a Constitution or State and municipal laws–and any such laws are themselves evil. This is an asinine philosophy, to say the least.

I, for one, would never want a so-called theocracy administered by the likes of the vast majority of Christian teachers and pastors today. Are you kidding? Most of them can’t even govern a small congregation of believers who are ostensibly assembled under the same ideology, same eschatology, same ecclesiology, etc. Have you been to a church business meeting lately? You really want those people dictating national laws? God forbid!

No! There is no Moses on the scene today with new revelation dictating God’s will for the nation. That being said, there is no mistaking the fact that America has a deeply-rooted, rich Christian tradition.

America’s founders, even those who were not professing Christians, as we understand the term today, acknowledged that fact.

Benjamin Franklin wrote a pamphlet called, “Information to Those Who Would Remove to America.” It was intended to be a guide for Europeans who were thinking about relocating to this country. In it, he said, “Hence, bad examples to youth are more rare in America, which must be comfortable consideration to parents. To this may be truly added, that serious religion, under its various denominations, is not only tolerated, but respected and practiced.”

Franklin continued, “Atheism is unknown there; infidelity rare and secret; so that persons may live to a great age in that country without having their piety shocked by meeting with either an Atheist or an Infidel.”

Franklin went on: “And the Divine Being seems to have manifested his approbation of the mutual forbearance and kindness with which the different sects [Christian denominations] treat each other; by the remarkable prosperity with which he has been pleased to favor the whole country.”

Noah Webster (himself an outspoken Christian, of course), said, “The religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and His apostles, which enjoins humility, piety, and benevolence; which acknowledges in every person a brother, or a sister, and a citizen with equal rights. This is genuine Christianity, and to this we owe our free Constitutions of Government.”

Webster also said, “When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of a republican government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty.”

Notice, Webster did not say we should vote for “Christians.” He said we should vote for “just men who will rule in the fear of God.” That is the correct model set forth in both Natural and Revealed Law. Today, most Christians have never been taught this rudimentary truism.

Daniel Webster noted the following: “Finally, let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society, and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political, or literary.”

There is the correct understanding of America as a “Christian” nation. America’s founders never thought they were creating a theocracy, but they did have a “high veneration” for the Christian faith and “sought to incorporate its principles” into American government.

The principles of the Christian faith include both Natural and Revealed Law. The Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, especially, clearly illustrate the founder’s understanding and appreciation for these principles.

The Declaration begins, “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which THE LAWS OF NATURE AND OF NATURE’S GOD [emphasis added] entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the cause which impel them to the separation.

“We hold these truths to be SELF-EVIDENT [emphasis added], that all men are CREATED [emphasis added] equal, that they are endowed BY THEIR CREATOR [emphasis added] with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

As Thomas Jefferson quickly penned the Declaration (and he did write it rather quickly), he was borrowing heavily from John Locke and the commonly understood principles of Natural Law. Though the founders were dissimilar in regards to their understanding of Biblical teaching, to a man, they understood and agreed with the “self-evident” principles of Natural Law, or “the Laws of Nature.”

Furthermore, virtually every “right” enumerated in the Bill of Rights can be traced directly to commonly understood principles contained in Natural and Revealed Law. That fact is unassailable.

In addition to our common Christian heritage, America was united with a common language, along with a common culture and history. The loss of our Christian heritage, our common language, along with our common culture and history would certainly transform America into something other than America.

Unfortunately, however, there are those who share our common faith and history who are also contributing mightily to the destruction of America. I am talking about those who would identify themselves as Christians and/or conservatives. Of course, to hear these people talk, America’s problems are all caused by “liberals,” or Democrats. They would also single out drug-dealers (except they always seem to leave out certain politicians who are the true drug lords in America), pornographers, Hollywood entertainers (not all of whom are immoral reprobates, of course), and similar sorts, as being the cause of America’s destruction.

There is absolutely no question that a national breakdown of morality is seriously problematic to the survival of a free republic. No doubt about it! My only contention on this point is that the groups mentioned above are not the true problem; they are only symptomatic of the true problem. The real problem is the CHURCH. A soft, uncommitted, carnal, materialistic, lazy, self-righteous church is the root cause of ALL of America’s problems, including the ones mentioned above.

Too many of today’s churches are thoroughly consumed with self-righteousness and self-centeredness. They either try to mimic the world and by doing so become just like the world, or they think themselves better than the world and by doing so become worse than the world.

Phariseeism is a major problem today. Have you ever noticed that you seldom, if ever, hear a message about Christ and the Pharisees? Why is that? It’s because a study of the subject will reveal that too many church leaders are nothing more than modern-day Pharisees in practice. It’s a lesson that hits uncomfortably close to home.

Okay. Let me toot my own horn here. I have a DVD with three messages on the subject, “Christ And The Pharisees” available. And, seriously, when is the last time you ever heard the subject mentioned from anybody’s pulpit? I submit that one CANNOT possibly understand the ministry and teachings of Christ if one does not understand the contentious contest that took place between Christ and the Pharisees. If you would like to purchase this three-message series on ONE DVD, go here:

The spirit of Phariseeism is so prevalent among the Church today that is no wonder why so many unbelievers refuse to darken the doors of a church. Many of today’s Christians are as enslaved to the traditions and doctrines of men as any slave anywhere. How in the name of common sense can one expect Christians to fight for the political liberties of our country when they, themselves, are enslaved to the machinations of modern-day Pharisees?

Some of the most enslaved people on the planet are professing Christians. Many of our churches, Christian schools, colleges, seminaries, etc. are filled with the “servants of men.” The fact that our public education system fails to teach children to think critically is only matched by too many of today’s churches and Christian schools.

Not only do so many Christians have a slave mentality; they also have a war mentality. Who are the ones who are the first and loudest cheerleaders for perpetual wars of aggression in the Middle East? Christians and conservatives! But why should that surprise us? Look at our churches. What do you see? Perpetual war: infighting, gossip, slander, backbiting, name-calling, character assassination, etc. Some of the most mean-spirited, low-down, dishonest, conniving, and blood-thirsty people on the planet call themselves Christians. Believe me, if they could get away with it, there is no telling how many people in our country would be losing their heads at the hands of these pious-talking Christians. Hatred and bitterness is nothing more than murder of the heart; and millions of professing Christians are as guilty as can be.

Speaking of losing one’s head, the anti-Muslim bias and hysteria being evidenced in most churches today is absolutely alarming! In the mistaken notion that somehow it is God’s will that the American army be used as some sort of holy crusade against Islamic states, Christians are spearheading a perpetual war doctrine that has become the bane of freedom within our own country.

In the name of fighting a “war on terror,” America is being turned into a giant Police State–and Christians seem to be among its most ardent supporters. But Washington, D.C., is not fighting a “war on terror,” it is fighting a “war on liberty.” Our Bill of Rights is being decimated! We are living under an Orwellian surveillance society, the likes of which Hitler and Stalin could have only dreamed about. And, again, Christians and conservatives are among the loudest proponents.

Now that the GOP has control of both houses of Congress in Washington, D.C., and with a pro-war Democrat in the White House, we can expect an escalation of foreign wars during the next two years analogous to those of the G.W. Bush years. And, unfortunately, most of the Christian war fever seems to be predicated on the erroneous John Hagee theology that modern-Israel is Bible-Israel and, somehow, it is America’s responsibility to fight all of Israel’s wars.

The war fever demonstrated by too many Christians and conservatives is destroying our country. Endless wars abroad; hundreds of thousands of innocents killed–many of whom are our Christian brothers and sisters; trillions of dollars of deficit spending to fund these perpetual, unconstitutional wars of aggression; a burgeoning Police State at home under the rubric of “we are at war”; ad infinitum.

Worse still is the way Christian war fever has turned the nations of the world, not only against America, but against Christianity. How are our missionaries supposed to take the message of the Prince of Peace to a people whom we have just bombed into the Stone Age, killing their parents, children, brothers and sisters, etc.?

Since 1980, the United States has invaded, occupied, or bombed fourteen Islamic countries. Fourteen! But the pro-war politicians in D.C. keep telling the American people the reason that Muslims hate us is because of our freedom. What a crock! Some of us can remember when some of the best friends this country had were Islamic states in the Middle East. A meddling, intrusive, arrogant, war spirit in Washington, D.C., has turned people who were once friendly to the United States into some of our most fierce adversaries. And all Christians and conservatives can do is demand more and more war.

See this report:

And, as it appears right now, the only major prospective presidential candidate on the scene from either major party who is not marching in lock step with the war machine is Rand Paul. And you can bet that the military industrial complex, along with the military religious complex, will try to crucify Rand in the same way they crucified his dad, Ron Paul.

The assault against the United States is massive. We are fast losing our Christian heritage and culture–and Christians are as much to blame as anyone. They have tried to turn the Lord’s Church into a playground or entertainment center–or even worse, a corporation. Phariseeism is rampant. As a result, unbelievers have lost all respect for churches in general. I, for one, don’t blame them.

We have lost our understanding of, and appreciation for, Natural Law. Even most pastors cannot articulate the fundamental principles of Natural Law, even though this is the Law upon which America was founded. This means, we have lost the true meaning of America’s Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights.

We cheer as our country has turned into a “Warfare State.” We applaud as our nation has turned into an Orwellian surveillance society. We are losing our common language, our common history and heritage, and our common faith. Christianity in 2014-15 is not even comparable to Christianity in 1775-76. We have traded Jonas Clark for Joel Osteen.

Yes, the very people who claim to love America the most and who claim to be interested in her blessing and prosperity are too often the very ones who are helping to destroy her.

Bethel Church’s “Apostle” Bill Johnson: A Comedy of Errors, Part 2

Before I report on Apostle Bill’s endeavor to involve his followers in his “grave sucking,” undertaking, I must tell you a brief story that involves an angel, a gift, and slaying a dragon.

May 2005

Wednesday night at half past 11, I was in bed reading when a white lightning bolt struck the floor and out stepped a dazzling creature with wings the length of a 747.  “Do not fear!” he said when he saw the alarmed expression on my face. “I am the angel Archibald!”  My husband was sacked out next to me with a pillow over his head so he announced in a quiet voice, “I have come with a message from the Lord of hosts.”

A flood of feathers floated around the room so I covered my nose and mouth with both hands.  But it was too late.  “Ah-choo!”

“God bless you!” said the angel.

Now I was certain that he was the Lord’s messenger.  I tapped my husband on the back and whispered, “Wake up.”  Dead to the world.  A poke in the ribs and, “Honey…you gotta see this.”

A muffled voice groaned, “Whuuut?”

“We have a visitor.”

The pillow came off his head and he sat bolt upright in bed.  Seconds later he spotted Archibald hovering in the corner.  “Holy cow!” he exclaimed.

“Cow?” said the angel, seeming a bit cross.  “Hardly!”  His eyes shifted from my stunned husband and settled on me.  In a strong clear voice he stated matter-of-factly: “The Spirit of God has bestowed upon you a new gift.  Forthwith you will become a blogger.”

He eyed me quizzically, waiting for my response.  When none was forthcoming, he said firmly, “You are to use your new gift to expose ravenous wolves that have slipped into the sheep pen under the cover of darkness.  These wolves are teaching doctrines of demons…”

I didn’t have to ask what he meant by doctrines of demons.  He had to be alluding to Word of Faith…New Apostolic Reformation…Purpose Driven…Emergent…Social Justice…New Age…New Thought and other false teaching that had made its way into churches and seminaries while our shepherds snoozed.  “I’ve tried telling people about false teaching, I said to myself, “but what I say goes in one ear and out the other.”

I heard the angel say: “There are counterfeits who call themselves new apostles and prophets.  These men and women are giving Him (he glanced up at the ceiling) a bad name. Expose them as false teachers!”  His wings ceased fluttering and he became as still as a stone.  “Are you ready to serve the King?

“Are you kidding me?”  I exclaimed in disbelief.  “First of all, I’m not gifted to write – or at least I wasn’t, until now.”  I searched for excuses.  “And…and I got a B in English by the skin of my teeth—“

The angel cut me off sharply.  “Certainly you do not think this is news to Him (he glanced up at the ceiling).”

True.  God knows all things, including my grades in college.  Perhaps He wanted to get me out of my comfort zone.  Writing a blog would definitely accomplish that.   One last try: “But…um… I’m nobody!  No one will listen to a word I say.”

“Some will listen,” Archibald assured me.  “And others will fall for lies. It is always that way with humans.”

I turned to my husband and said, “Tell him no one will take me seriously.”

My husband came out of his stupor and said in a serious tone, “God uses nobodies all the time.  But there’s a catch.  You’ve got to be willing.”  He looked me straight in the eye. “Are you?”

Am I willing, I wondered?   I needed but a moment to ponder his question.  Yes, I guess I am, I said to myself.  I’m more than willing.  Suddenly I felt as if I could go out and slay a dragon.  “OK, I’ll do it!” I glanced over at my husband.  “The two of us can do it together.”

We high-fived and he said with a grin, “We make a good team.”

I gave Archibald a thumbs up.  “We’re in.”

Poof!  The angel disappeared, feathers and all.

—–

The next morning I found a large silver feather on the floor where Archibald had appeared to us.  He had left his calling card.

Bentley’s Angels

In I covered ’s rock-star evangelist Todd Bentley and the shame he brought on the Name of our Lord and how “Super Apostles” Bill Johnson and Rick Joyner restored him to ministry despite his obvious character flaws. There were exaggerated healings and dangerous “healing” practices that included assaulting the sick with leg drops, high kicks and head punches which he claimed the Lord told him to do to people who came to him for help.  Moreover, Bentley drank excessively, committed adultery and soon thereafter left his wife and children and married the . There’s a whole lot more to report on the fraud evangelist, but space does not allow.  So – why bring him up again?  Because he says him.  It’s not uncommon for people who are into “signs and wonders” strange manifestations, and other esoteric experiences to boast of angel visitations.  Two angels who supposedly come to Bentley are and the Winds of Change.  Winds is supposedly “a high-ranking angel over all the ones assigned to healing, breakthrough and revival unto harvest.”

To the best of my knowledge Todd Bentley has never met the Angel Archibald.  But I have.  Or have I?

Do you see the problem? I made up a story and so can you.  Anyone with a vivid imagination can make up a story about angel visitations, trips to heaven, and whatnot.   But there’s no way to validate all the wild claims people make.  Sadly, NAR leaders pitch their stories to gullible sheeple who want desperately to believe that their heroes would never lie to them. This might explain why “Super Apostle” Rick Joyner’s followers hang on his every word as he looks straight into a video camera and testifies that he’s been to heaven.  During one of his many visits he claims the Lord handed him the key to eternal joy.  Watch the he made and you’ll see that I’m not making this up.  In it Apostle Rick crows that he’s had a number of encounters with , and he knows many others who’ve had Elijah encounters too!  He’s quick to point out that it’s not necromancy (communicating with the dead) because Elijah was taken up to heaven without dying.  At 9:20 minutes you’ll learn how he met Enoch.

But this is not about Rick Joyner’s spiritual gift of pulling the wool over the sheep’s eyes.  So I’ll move on.

Grave Sucking

It’s hard to imagine anything more ludicrous than “grave sucking” yet Apostle Bill endorses this macabre practice.  Grave sucking aka “mantle grabbing” occurs when the Holy Spirit draws powers from the bones of a deceased person who, while alive, was allegedly Spirit empowered.  Since God’s mission for the dead is thwarted when he dies, the Spirit passes on his powers to individuals who visit their graves.

According to Victory Ministries, Apostle Bill led a group to John Lake’s grave where the following ensued:

He was looking for Lake’s anointing to heal the sick by a supernatural power. The people seeking this new paranormal anointing prostrated themselves upon Lake’s grave weeping, worshipping and expecting that Lake’s ministry power would strike them and his spirit would infuse them with a sign and wonders ministry like he had when he was alive.  Thus, a new preternatural cult was formed that day that is now referred to as “grave sucking.”

 Mr. Johnson testified about this bazaar act of desecration and necromancy (the practice of attempting to communicate with the spirits of the dead in order to predict or influence the future) that he and his group committed on Sid Roth’s radio show, “It’s Supernatural”

Johnson spun a weird mystical/Occult experience tale to Sid Roth about meeting the Late John Lake’s angel in the building where Lake had previously ministered in his healing rooms. He testified that two ladies went to a back room and they met a giant angel there that healed one of the women. They called Johnson and when he came into the room, he claimed there was an angel about 10 feet tall. Sid asked him, did you see the angel? Johnson replied “No, but I knew he was there and the angel said to me, ‘What took you so long, I’ve been here for 80 years!’” ()

It should surprise no one that Bill Johnson claims that he had a tête-à-tête with an angel.

What does the Bible say about playing around in the spirit realm?:

Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.  ()

Bethel School Of Sorcery

Apostle Bill runs the  in Redding CA.  According to its website:

(BSSM) is committed to the truth that God loves people, gave Himself for them and has given His Church supernatural power to bring individuals and nations into wholeness. The mission of BSSM is to equip and deploy revivalists who passionately pursue world-wide transformation in their God-given spheres of influence. Students are trained to continue in the ministry style of Jesus: to enjoy the presence of God, say what He is saying, and do what He is doing. (emphasis added)

Basically, BSSM trains people to heal the sick and raise the dead.  This raises the question: why do these folks not bring dead people back to life in America, Canada and western European countries?  Why only in the developing countries?  If the dearly departed are coming out of their graves in the developed countries, the media would surely report on it.

Insanity

The describes one man’s experience at Bethel Church (BC):

After a strange experience with an erratic Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry student who baby-sat his children, Bart McCurdy of Cottonwood decided to find out for himself what was going on at Bethel.

McCurdy said he attended a Friday night service at the church, during which he saw people painting on stage, dancing and flailing around on the ground. He found their worship music unconventional when one line of the same song was played for at least 11 minutes, he said.

McCurdy said the repetitive music, dancing, painting and excessive stimuli serve to get people worked up into an emotional frenzy where they’re expecting to see miraculous things.

“They come looking for that feel-good feeling, that high, for supposed miracles, supposed signs and wonders, speaking in tongues, gold dust, diamonds, feathers[floating down from the ceiling]. … It seems like they’re just ready for it,” he said.

Once, as she ran through her house frantically searching for her journals, the baby sitter told McCurdy the anti-Christ was in her house and Jesus was in hell saving people, he said. Shortly after that, she went into a trancelike state and said she felt 20 feet tall before losing consciousness…. The behavior made him believe she was demon-possessed, he said.

McCurdy said he regularly downloads podcasts of Bethel messages and hasn’t heard the Christian gospel message taught at Bethel. …

Then what gospel does Apostle Bill preach if not the taught in the Bible?  He teaches the (WoF) that saves no one.  What is the true gospel message?

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. ()

See also

Despite the fact that Apostle Bill teaches a false gospel he’s hugely popular with many professing Christians.  His book sales are in the millions.  He’s become so popular that a large number of churches around the globe are affiliated with BC.  This speaks volumes as to the current state of evangelicalism.  Sadly, a growing number of believers have zero discernment, thus they accept every “wind of doctrine.”  Translation: Every sort of false teaching that blows their way.

A Challenge

Christians have been warned that , as some call it, represents a danger to millions of people around the globe, especially to (low information evangelicals) and the unsaved.  Because of self-professed apostles and prophets such as C. Peter Wagner, Rick Joyner (mentioned in part ), Bill Johnson and a , we’ve seen an unbridled abuse of the Holy Spirit.  After reading this series, I challenge you to do your own research (links below).  Before starting, pray that God will reveal truth to you.  What you’ll discover is that teaching isn’t remotely close to historic orthodox Christianity — and it certainly isn’t the Christianity for which the martyrs shed their blood!  Flee from it!

Part 1

Resources:

—Phil Johnson interviews John MacArthur

–By John Lanagan

1. –Around 54:00 minutes into the session, Wagner responds during the Q&A. He tells the audience that when the Holy Spirit stopped revealing things through the written Word, He kept on revealing new things to us through the “Rhema Word.” He claims that the Holy Spirit still speaks to us today by giving us information that you cannot find in the 66 books of the Bible; info that the Bible doesn’t address, but it’s not contradictory.

—Tony Miano, host of Cross Encounters radio, discusses, among other things, the music of BC’s music team Jesus Culture (more below). Listen to Tony tell of his Twitter chat with Beni Johnson, Bill’s pastorette wife.

…scroll down—Apologetics Index

—On Solid Rock resources

–On Solid Rock Resources

Bethel Church’s Music & Entertainment:

—Ken Silva

—Amy Spreeman

Watch And Weep:

—My Word Like Fire

Helpful Scripture:

,

,

,

Bethel Church’s “Apostle” Bill Johnson: A Comedy of Errors, Part 1

Bill Johnson is no stranger to controversy.  For one thing, he claims to be an apostle, as in the unique position held by the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ.  He was given this high honor by C. Peter Wagner who holds many titles himself, including president of Global Harvest Ministries, chancellor of Wagner Leadership Institute, convening apostle of theNew Apostolic Roundtable, and my personal favorite: presiding apostle of (ICA).  So for the purpose of this article I’ll dub him Presiding Apostle Peter or PA Peter for short.   What’s important to know about him is that he’s sort of like the pope of the “new apostolic-prophetic movement.”

Following is ICA’s definition of modern day apostle:

An apostle is a Christian leader gifted, taught, commissioned, and sent by God with the authority to establish the foundational government of the church within an assigned sphere of ministry by hearing what the Spirit is saying to the churches and by setting things in order accordingly for the growth and maturity of the church.

What role do the so-called apostles play?  There are a couple of tasks, says PA Peter.  First, apostles are to “set things in order” and “they’re to assure that the body of Christ is operating on the basis of sound, biblical doctrine.”

Sound biblical doctrine my Aunt Fanny!

PA Peter and his self-proclaimed apostles and prophets are out-and-out false teachers!  These men and women (yes, there are women apostles) are well aware that accusations of heresy have been leveled against them by a large number of highly regarded orthodox Bible scholars and still they continue the pretense.

In this two part series you’ll discover the many twists and turns the new apostolic-prophetic movement has taken over the years and why those of us who are in an online discernment ministry believe it is a clear and present danger to the Body of Christ, thus we will continue warning the brethren.  ()

Now, keep in mind that the men and women involved in this heretical movement are sincere in their belief that they’re in the same league as the Old Testament prophets and the Lord’s hand-picked disciples who later became the Twelve Apostles.  The leaders have convinced their followers that the office of apostleship is not reserved for a select few, as the Bible teaches.  Moreover, they’ve led people to believe that Christ is once again choosing apostles and prophets to preside over His Church.  Listen to ’ dire warning:

Those claiming the office of apostle seek authority equal to, or at least rivaling, the authority of the original twelve apostles. There is absolutely no biblical evidence to support such an understanding of the role of apostle today. This would fit with the New Testament’s warning against false apostles ().

So – if it’s true that Christ is giving authority to a select few apostles and prophets why, pray tell, would our Lord give it to individuals who possess questionable character?  I’ll have more on this in a moment.

Suffice it to say C. Peter Wagner and Bill Johnson believe that the Lord has given them the authority to rule over the Church.  So – if it’s also true that the so-called apostles arecalled by Christ to form a government to control the Church and that they will hold Church leaders accountable then who, pray tell, is going to hold them accountable?

Itching Ears

Without getting too far afield, since the new apostolic-prophetic movement’s inception it has been referred to in a number of different ways, i.e. …Latter Rain……Manifest[ed] Sons of God…Kingdom Now…Charismatic Renewal…Positive Confession and a few others.  Its current handle, (NAR), was coined by Presiding Apostle Peter in the 1990s.  He “reinvigorated the Latter Rain/Manifest Sons of God false prophecies about a great endtime revival accompanied by signs and wonders.”  As I said, NAR leaders teach that God is restoring the lost offices of church governance – and they are His chosen ones to bring it to fruition!

Do not be surprised:

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,;and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths

In Paul’s final warning to the Church he never suggested that they embrace new movements.  On the contrary, he warned that they would not listen to the truth.  Commentator clarifies:

Having itching ears; for their ears itch, and they must have those that will scratch them. The disease of lust in their souls brings forth an itch in their ears, that they will have a mind to hear only such as will by scratching please them.

Shall they heap to themselves teachers, will be finding out teachers, not according to God’s, but to their own hearts; and there will be plenty of them to be found, they shall heap them up, choosing them without any judgment, regarding nothing but whether they will not be smart upon their lusts. (emphasis in original)

Paul’s message throughout his entire letter was that the church must “follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me” (1:13); “guard the good deposit entrusted to you (1:14); “what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also” (2:2).

Unity Over Doctrine

Now to Bill Johnson, head pastor of Bethel Church (BC).  BC’s leadership holds to the theology of the (WoF) movement.  WoF doctrine teaches the occult belief that:

He [God] framed the world with His words. You can’t build without substance. He took words — faith-Filled words were God’s substance. Here, essentially, is what God did. God filled His words with faith. He used His words as containers to hold His faith and contain that spiritual force and transport it out there into the vast darkness by saying ‘Light be!’ That’s the way God transported His faith causing creation and transformation. ()

One word: unscriptural!

BC also has its roots in the early1980s movement dubbed by C. Peter Wagner the (TW).

Following is an excerpt from Apologetics Index.  What they’ve laid out here should help prevent people from getting drawn into TW:

[D]istinctives of the Third Wave movement include — but are not limited to — the following:

• The baptism with the Holy Spirit is identified with conversion. This is unlike other Pentecostal movements, in which the baptism with the Spirit is either a separate and/or a recurring experience.
• the belief that the spiritual gifts are valid for today; that Christians can ask for, receive and learn how to use these spiritual gifts (and become better at using them with practice.
• the belief that the primary use of the is for ministry in the power and anointing of the Holy Spirit – both to bless and heal those inside the church and to minister to those outside the church (“.”). This ministry includes , , , etcetera.
• active promotion of unity — sometimes at any cost (e.g. the ‘s acceptance of certain Word-Faith teachers. “ over “
• the belief that people, Christians included, can be possessed (or ‘demonized’ — or ‘oppressed,’ something seen as a lesser form of possession) by evil spirits with or without their consent
• the belief that objects or places can project evil influence and act as conduits for demonic oppression
• the belief that traumatic events, either in our lives or in our ancestral past, can make us particularly vulnerable to demonic influence, possession or oppression
• the belief that some Christians — using appropriate spiritual gifts — can identify and cast out demonic spirits
• a general acceptance of theology, which has led to the practice of so-called ‘‘ or SLSW — an unbiblical concept in which Christians identify (through ‘‘) and then target (with SLSW) ‘.’ (all links are AI’s)  ()

WoF and TW leaders are false teachers.  (You’ll find the names of these as well as many other false teachers on my .)   Over the years self-proclaimed apostles and prophets have managed to coax undiscerning individuals to involve themselves in some of the strangest physical manifestations imaginable.  Those who participate in church services where “signs and wonders” take place like to blame their crude behavior on the Holy Spirit.  Now, try to imagine giants of the faith such as John, Peter, James or even Paul “,” crawling on all fours barking like a dog, clucking like a chicken, jerking and twitching, rolling on the floor, themselves into a convulsive state.  People involved in NAR have done these things in the past and continue them to this day.  When I think about it, it really wouldn’t surprise me to witness Apostle Bill on all fours, nose in the air, howling like a wolf.  But I digress.

Two Super Apostles Restore A Fraud

During the alleged Lakeland Outpouring aka Lakeland Revival in Florida, a story hit the news that put NAR evangelist Todd Bentley in a bad light.  It was revealed that that the rock-star evangelist was in an adulterous relationship with a female intern – and suddenly all hell broke loose.  In my column “” I scrutinized the NAR’s leaders and pointed out that Apostle Bill,

calls those who exposed Todd Bentley as a false prophet “sharks.” He also says:

“I’ll never blame the opponents [sharks] of this outpouring for Todd’s choices [sin].  However, it had a greater effect on the outcome than any of his critics will likely own up to in this lifetime. History proves this.”

(More on the Bentley brouhaha , and .)

Apostle Bill and fellow apostate – oops! — apostle-prophet decided to involve themselves in Bentley’s “.”  Just so you know, Rick Joyner’s the founder and Executive Director of MorningStar Publications and Ministries and is a big promoter of the “new breed” of apostles and prophets.

Both Bill Johnson and Rick Joyner, who are seasoned apostle-prophets, claim to hold the title “Super-Apostle” and/or “Super-Prophet” which is comparable to holding the high office of cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church.  Chew on that for a moment.  As an aside I should mention that some “” have been accused of using cultic mind control techniques on those they prey upon.

Listen to Apostle Rick pontificate about how he sees himself:

Even though I have not been able to go to journalism school, or even Bible school, in many ways I would not trade my education for anyone’s. Like Paul, I can say that what I received I did not receive from men.

I mean, really, are we supposed to believe him?  And why would we?

Now, back to Bentley.  Bringing this man under submission took place following his divorce and after he married the woman, who, by the way, wasn’t the only woman he had an extra marital affair with.  Apostle Bill was well aware that the fraud-evangelist had had a .  Both “Super-Apostles” knew that he was drunk during his Lakeland stage act yet they chose to return him to ministry.  But, then, no one has ever accused NAR leaders of doing much of anything by .

Todd Bentley is no more qualified for ministry than is disgraced televangelist/prosperity preacher , who was incarcerated for fleecing the flock (fraud).  After his release from prison, what did Bakker do?  Still craving attention, he returned to .

So – how should churches handle a person in a leadership role when he/she brings shame on the Name of our Lord Jesus?  I’ve already addressed this topic in my column entitled   In a nutshell the biblical way to handle it is for the church hierarchy to apply an appropriate level of discipline necessary to bring the person to true repentance.  Church leaders who have a “moral failing” must publically repent of his/her sin against God.  They then must seek spiritual guidance and accountability and move out of the limelight altogether.  Once the person’s restored, he/she’s most often encouraged to serve the Lord behind the scenes.  Sadly, this hasn’t been the case with Todd Bentley.  And the reason for this is that the self-appointed Super Apostles Bill and Rick found it in their hearts—not in the Bible—to reinstate the man to public ministry.

I’ll close part 1 with a plea from a genuine apostle:

I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive. ()

Part 2 coming up!

Resources:

—Phil Johnson interviews John MacArthur

–By John Lanagan

1. –Around 54:00 into the session, Wagner responds to a question during the Q&A. He tells the audience that when the Holy Spirit stopped revealing things through the written Word, He kept on revealing new things to us through the “Rhema Word.” He claims that the Holy Spirit still speaks to us today by giving us information that you cannot find in the 66 books of the Bible, info that the Bible doesn’t address, but it’s not contradictory.

—Tony Miano, host of Cross Encounters radio, discusses, among other things, the music of BC’s music team Jesus Culture (more below). Listen to Tony tell of his Twitter chat with Beni Johnson, Bill’s pastorette wife.

…scroll down—Apologetics Index

–On Solid Rock Resources

Bethel Church’s Music & Entertainment:

—Ken Silva

—Amy Spreeman

Watch And Weep:

—My Word Like Fire

The Prosperity Priestess And The Pied Pieper of IHOP

Well lookie here.  Joyce Meyer, popular women’s conference speaker; health and wealth author; radio & TV teacher (whew!) has been invited to speak at the that will be held this December.  The 4 day weekend supposedly draws 25,000 young adults.  Visit Onething and you will find that the conference is “a gathering of believers who are setting their hearts to live with passion for Jesus.”  Sounds like a conference most Christians would love to attend.  What sincere believer wouldn’t want to share his/her passion for Jesus?

Not so fast.  The group behind the event is none other than the (IHOP) an evangelical mission organization that has its home base in Kansas City. IHOP-KC’s founder, Mike Bickle, has ties to the aka ; Kingdom Now; Latter Rain; ; Manifest Sons of God – the name has been changed to protect the guilty.  Their aim is to transform society into the kingdom of God on earth.  How?  By controlling various aspects of society.

Before I fill you in on Meyer, you’ll need a bit of background on Bickle.  A couple of decades ago he was in a heretical group known as the ,

who brought grandiose claims that a “new breed” of super prophets were beginning to arrive on planet earth who would change the world forever. These so-called prophets were a group of men that coalesced around a church known as the Kansas City Fellowship, pastored by Mike Bickle, that attracted a following of other likeminded churches in that region. (H/T )

So it’s not surprising that this self-professed “prophet” has been under scrutiny for his false teaching.  Google his name and you’ll discover that he believes God speaks to him in an audible voice and claims that he’s been to heaven twice.

It’s important to note that last year Reformed pastor; author; conference speaker Francis Chan spoke at Onething where he declared “I love Mike Bickle.”  Chan took a lot of heat for agreeing to speak at the conference.  When friends and fans urged him to decline the invite, he admitted that he didn’t know much about Mike Bickle and IHOP so,

I kinda went on the Internet and started looking things up. 

Whatever he found caused him to fall in love:

I go, man, there’s a lot of great things going on [at IHOP]. And today was the first time I ever met Mike Bickle. And, I love that guy. I do. And Mike knows—we talked about this—you know, there’s people who told me not to hang out with him.

Like, you know, words like “creepy” came up. And yet, I get to know this guy and I’m going, “Man, I love his heart. And I just want to publicly say I love Mike Bickle. ()

As you can see, Chan professed his love for the sort of person Jesus referred to as a ravenous wolf. ()

What Francis Chan failed to turn up in his investigation is that Mike Bickle has led countless young people astray.  He’s a sort of a Pied Piper to those who journey to Kansas City from all over the globe to be a part of something “significant.” Once there, they stay for days, months…even years.  You’ll find them in the prayer room praying.  Prayer “led from a stage full of musicians and readers chanting repetitive phrasings of faith” goes on ‘round the clock.

The false prophet has filled the young sojourners’ heads with untruths such as “an elite end-time church defeats God’s enemies, and Jesus is ‘held in the heavens’ until it happens.” So they most “go forth and make ready.”

Apologist Matt Slick tells us that the major draw of IHOP is experience:

People often come to me citing their experience and go back again and again to experience “God” and the “Spirit” – [which is] no different than an emotional high.  This is analogous to mysticism, which is defined as “the pursuit of deeper or higher subjective religious experience,” and “that spiritual reality is perceived apart from the human intellect and natural senses.”

Slick goes on to say:

One of the highest criticisms would be IHOP’s insidious Gnosticism.  Gnosticism is derived from the Greek word gnosis, meaning “knowledge.”  The hallmark of Gnosticism is the idea of having “hidden knowledge” of the spiritual realm that is unavailable to others.  This knowledge comes via prophecies, visions, and dreams that God specifically gives to a certain privileged group of people  – in this case IHOP.  In fact, IHOP has their own “prophecy rooms” where one can receive “prophecies,” and they used to have a practice of mailing out recorded tapes, of which I was asked by my friend’s mother to translate! ()

One last comment about Francis Chan.  The name may not be familiar but he’s without question a popular speaker and author whose books sell like hot cakes.  Sadly, when it comes to the questionable goings on at IHOP, Chan has shown an astonishing lack of discernment. It goes without saying that: (1) He must change direction and move away from those who involve themselves with the .  (2)  He must spend more time researching the people he associates with.

More On Meyer

For decades Joyce Meyer has been called a false teacher.  Why?  Because she holds to /prosperity/health and wealth heresy.  She mixes error with good practical information for women, which is why she’s so popular.  There’s plenty of proof for those who wish to know the truth (see the links at the end), and still many women choose to believe that those who say she’s a false teacher are wrong.

Some of her fans know what’s going on at IHOP-KC, so she’s bound to get blow back both before and after her appearance at Onething.  People will wonder: If I know about Mike Bickle and IHOP, how could Joyce not know?  They may even conclude that it’s a sign that her ministry is about to align with the modern day “apostles and prophets” movement.

So why in heaven’s name is she hitching herself to a wagon loaded with theological garbage.  As I pointed out earlier, “prophet” Mike Bickle is heavily into the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).  That group’s theology is a load of garbage that should be hauled to the trash dump and burned.

But before I address the reasons Meyer has chosen to put her name on the marquee with Bickle’s, let’s follow the example set by the Bereans and compare her teaching to what Scripture says.

Truth Or Error, That Is The Question

One of the reasons Joyce Meyer is considered a false teacher is because she has taught that Jesus Christ atoned for our sins in hell:

The following quote is from her 1991 booklet, The Most Important Decision You Will Ever Make, she teaches a hallmark doctrine of Faith theology, namely, that Christ had to suffer in hell to atone for our sins and be born again:

“During that time He entered hell, where you and I deserved to go (legally) because of our sin…He paid the price there.…no plan was too extreme…Jesus paid on the cross and in hell….God rose up from His throne and said to demon powers tormenting the sinless Son of God, “Let Him go.” Then the resurrection power of Almighty God went through hell and filled Jesus…He was resurrected from the dead ¾ the first born-again man.” ()

What she said here is not the view traditional orthodox Christianity holds to.   The Bible says that Jesus atoned for our sins on the cross.  Listen to :

When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, ‘It is finished,’ and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Orthodox Christianity teaches that Jesus’ shed blood was sufficient for the atonement of our sins. The moment Jesus uttered the words “It is finished” our sin debt was paid in full.

As to her teaching on prosperity and success, listen to :

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

So, does being prosperous mean Christians will be influential and financially secure?  According to one commentary:

Many people think that prosperity and success come from having power, influential personal contacts, and a relentless desire to get ahead.  But the strategy for gaining prosperity that God taught Joshua goes against such criteria.  He said that to succeed Joshua must (1) be strong and courageous because the task ahead would not be easy, (2) obey God’s law, and (3) constantly read and study the Book of the Law – God’s Word.  To be successful, follow God’s words to Joshua.  You may not succeed by the world’s standards, but you will be a success in God’s eyes – and his opinion lasts forever.

For all you scoffers – it’s an undeniable fact that Joyce Meyer is a prosperity preacher, thus she’s a false teacher, a ravenous wolf.

Lifestyle Of The Rich And Famous

It’s no secret that she has been criticized for many things but first and foremost for her “conspicuously prosperous lifestyle.”  The money her ministry rakes in doesn’t bother her fans in the least which is obvious as scores of them purchase her books, tune into her TV/radio shows, and flock to her conferences.  They say her message is “uplifting.”  For them doctrine isn’t important –hearing a positive message is what counts.  And Joyce is all about making her fans feel good.  She knows that they prefer a feel-good message over hearing the gospel.  I mean, isn’t Christianity all about feeling good?  Doesn’t becoming a believer mean we’ll be happy, healthy and wealthy?  God loves us, yes He does.  And because of His great love for His kids, He’s going to provide us with several homes—Joyce has several homes– and perhaps our own private jet so that we can fly all over the globe like she does.

Joyce Meyer’s prosperity preaching is right out of the (WoF) play book.  That a person can create his/her own reality is the fairy tale Christianity she teaches and with no apology.  So, it’s not helpful when a prominent Christian leader joins her on her TV show and instead of pointing out errors in her teaching he tells her (and the audience) that she’s a “.”

Well, nothing could be further from the truth, and Ravi Zacharias, who gave her the compliment, should have known better.  He of all people should know that she holds to WoF heresy.  The compliment he gave her made it clear that he was oblivious to the fact that he was sitting next to a heretic.  So, Ravi did for her what she’s doing for Mike Bickle, lending creditability when none is deserved.

Like Chan, if he would have done his homework before agreeing to the interview, it would have been patently obvious that he was going to be the guest of the Prosperity Priestess. It’s shocking that high-profile celebs such as Francis Chan and Ravi Zacharias don’t know who the wolves in the hen house are.  Moreover, how could men of their stature not be aware that the NAR and WoF movements are at best aberrant and at worst cults?

Cults? you say with steam coming out of your ears.  Let there be no doubt.  These movements are viewed by some as cults for the reason that they’re “false, unorthodox, extremist” sects of Christianity (). In a word:  counterfeit.

Now getting back the primary purpose for this article, why would Joyce Meyer agree to speak at a hugely controversial event with a notorious false teacher?  Perhaps it’s because the Prosperity Priestess and the Pied Piper hold the same unbiblical theology, thus they’re birds of a feather.  So it’s no big deal when they sit on a wire together.

Or perhaps it’s all about prosperity – hers!  After hearing Joyce’s “uplifting” message people will flock to the book table to purchase her merchandise.

But that’s speculation.  The point I want to drive home is this.  More and more professing Christians are uniting with wolves in sheep’s clothing.  Likewise, wolves and wolverines are joining forces with wolves from different wolf packs.  The pack is growing.  It’s getting stronger — and they’re cunning!  False teachers now play a major role in the Christian community.  As I mentioned above, in order to transform society into the kingdom of God on earth, wolves and wolverines must , such as entertainment; government; education; business/economy; media; and family — they’re heavily involved in pro-family organizations.

I’ll close with the words of a wise man, Pastor Ray Stedman:

So in this day of confusion, of uncertainty, which voice will you listen to?  The voices of the occult world around us? The false prophets who are telling visions which they claim to be coming from the voice of God? The secular voices which tell us that things are not the way the Bible says they are? Which voice will you listen to? Whom will you follow? What will be the guideline for your actions?

Research Mike Bickle:

–By John Park

Stand Up For The Truth wrote a piece entitled and shared the story of Arial, a young woman who was an IHOP intern.

—My Word Like Fire

–Apostasy Watch

—On Solid Rock Resources

Research Joyce Meyer:

…listen to Meyer preach the prosperity gospel.  Hank Hanegraaff plays the clip and responds.

—Let Us Reason Ministries

—By Anton Bosch

 

—On Solid Rock Resources

Francis Chan:

—By Ken Silva

The Low-Information Evangelical – Part 2

Appearing in part 1 is the phrase “low-information voter” (LIV) which is oft used by a popular radio talk show host.  The host suggests that those who make up this population set are individuals who vote for a candidate or important issue having little or in most cases zero knowledge about either.  LIVs are highly opinionated even when they have no idea what they’re talking about.

Also included in part 1 was the following quote from D. Edmund Wright.  I appreciate the way he expands on the LIV concept:

But forget low-information voters for just a minute; the malignancy that is really destroying this country is low-information people with high-profile power and/or influence.  You know, people who would lobby for, comment on, advocate for, or vote on laws like ObamaCare without any understanding of its real-world impact.  Such felonies are then carried out by low-information bureaucratic microbes with the power to destroy lives and businesses with impunity, and a political and talking-head class with the access and sway to codify these common malfeasances. Destruction of private property and liberty – and these two concepts are not divisible – takes place in government cubicles every minute of every day across the country.  And why not?  ( – emphasis in original)

His thoughts fit nicely with what I’ve come to believe about many leaders in the evangelical community.  Specifically, a large number of them are uninformed people with high-profile power and/or influence.  The LIVs Wright’s pointing a finger at are liberals.  Likewise many of the evangelicals that came to mind for me are liberals but because liberal has a negative connotation they prefer “progressive Christian” or “.” Take your pick.  But whichever one you go with has its roots in communism.

So to Christianize the LIV phrase I simply changed “voter” to “evangelical,” thus it became “low-information evangelical” (LIE).   I defined the LIE in this way:

Reminiscent of the LIV, the high-profile LIE does not understand the impact that his unorthodox view has on the visible church.  When it comes to the Bible, the LIE has opinions on a variety of challenging topics.  Even when his opinion is decidedly unbiblical, he presents it as the gospel truth.  The LIE’s arguments are often based, not on what God’s Word clearly teaches but instead on esoteric experiences he’s had or what he’s picked up from LIE celebrities.  

More on esoteric experiences in a moment.

There’s also a group of evangelicals that fall into the category of undistinguished LIE (ordinary folk).  The term I bestowed on them is u-LIE.  This group is also uninformed on many things (both Christian and otherwise).  They are often biblically illiterate.  In part 1 I made this observation:

Sadly, some undistinguished low information evangelicals (u-LIEs) assume that popular pastors, teachers and best-selling authors would never steer them wrong.  But nothing could be further from the truth!

Last but not least, I coined the phrase LIE-celebs.  These individuals are prominent Christian leaders who are uninformed people with high-profile power and/or influence.  Many of them are false teachers who do not speak for God.

LIE-celebs And Their Vain Hopes

God tells us how we are to handle false teachers:

Thus says the LORD of hosts: “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD.” ().

We are to pay these folks no mind.

One example of a LIE-celeb is popular women’s Bible teacher .  In part 1 I reported on Moore’s claim that she receives personal direct revelation from Almighty God.  In other words, God tells her things.  According to her, He calls her “baby” and “honey.”  I’ll have more to share on this modern day prophetess in a moment.

LIE-celeb  also claims that she receives extra biblical revelation or “revelation knowledge” from the Almighty.  Both Moore and Meyer’s respective claims clearlydeny the sufficiency of Scripture.   Equally troubling is that Joyce holds to heretical  (WoF) theology.  So naturally her students are swallowing the poisonous prosperity health and wealth gospel that does not save anyone.  Following is an erroneous assertion made by her:

The Bible can’t even find any way to explain this. Not really.  That is why you have got to get it by revelation. There are no words to explain what I am telling you. I have got to just trust God that he is putting it into your spirit like he put it into mine. ()

Why do I say this is erroneous?  Because it’s not taught in the Bible.  She made it up.  How do I know this?  I searched the scriptures.  ()   Nowhere does Scripture teach that God’s people are given special “revelation knowledge.”

“The fact that contemporary evangelicals seek ‘fresh’ revelations from God,” says Larry DeBruyn, “indicates that they no longer consider Holy Scripture to be sufficient and authoritative in matters of faith (). This seeking is Gnostic and mystic.  Harvie Conn …a former missionary in Korea, noted that the ‘central feature of mystical religion is its ‘belief in special revelation outside the Bible.’ Yet if the Bible is no longer considered sufficient, the coming of “new revelations” raises the following conundrum. I repeat it.

“If added revelations repeat what’s in the Bible, they are unnecessary. If new revelations contradict the Word of God, they are heresy. And if they supplement God’s Word, then the new revelations imply Scripture’s insufficiency, and about this Proverbs warns: ‘Add thou not unto his [God’s] words, lest he [God] reprove thee, and thou be found a liar’ ().” ( – emphasis added.)

 is esoteric mysticism – a desire to “know the unknowable.”  One of the obstacles the early church faced was Gnosticism.  The Gnostics believed that the masses are not in possession of spiritual knowledge, and only the truly “enlightened” can experience God.  The Apostles condemned Gnosticism as a heresy.

But Gnosticism is not the issue; the issue at hand is this: how can one know for certain if Meyer’s so-called revelation came from God?  “Is she on par with the apostles who received revelation knowledge from God himself?” asks apologist Matt Slick.  He continues:

Or how about the Old Testament prophets?  Does she, like them, also receive revelation knowledge from God?  If so, how would we know if it were true or not? The answer is simple:  we test what she says against Scripture, and it is obvious that she is getting a lot of things from somewhere else that contradict the word of God. ()

More On Moore

In part I brought the reader up to speed on Beth Moore’s slide into mysticism and also gave a heads up on her unbiblical teaching and had planned to leave it at that.  But then the news came that she made an appearance on Joyce Meyer’s TV show.  This is the sort of news Beth fans should be made aware of, so I decided to include a bit about it here.  Just before her appearance Beth tweeted:

I have the great privilege of sitting down w/@ Joyce Meyer in her studio today to talk about unity. Pray for Jesus to be so present & pleased.

The unity Meyer and Moore espouse is man centered, not Christ centered.

Scoffers And Bullies And Meanies, Oh My!

So – Beth Moore sitting down for a chat with a WoF heretic is a problem in and of itself.  But the reason she gave for appearing on the show was to talk about unity.  The obvious question is why would a “solid Bible teacher,” as she is called, choose to unite with a woman who preaches a false gospel?   Although their tête-à-tête is troubling it’s not the only concern people have with her.  As I pointed out in part 1, she’s been under fire for, among other things, engaging in , likewise for her acceptance of “” which is odd for someone who’s an .  Another problem arose when she appeared on Life Today with “” and big time promoter of   and proceeded to advise the audience to tune out the “scoffers”:

We’re going to have people that are honestly going to want to debate and argue with us about awakening and downpours … But there will be scoffers and they will be the far bigger threat, the one within our own brothers and sisters, our own family of God — far, far more demoralizing. And yes, it will come from bullies, and yes, it will come from the mean-spirited. ()

Beth’s attempt to shut people up who question her teaching should be concerning to Christian women who read her books and participate in Bible studies she has written.

Be Watchful! 

For those of you who are Joyce Meyer fans, it’s imperative that you wake up to the fact that some of this woman’s teaching is outright heresy.  Anyone who continues learning from her is choosing to remain under the teaching of what Jesus referred to in  as a ravenous wolf.  Listen to John’s warning:

Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works. ()

Sadly, a growing number of LIE-celebs, likewise u-LIEs, are taking part in the wicked works John spoke of.

We are living in perilous times, brethren.  It’s now common place for professing Christians to dabble in mysticism.  The result?  Many believers boast of having subjective magical mystical experiences such as visions; dreams; impressions; hearing inner voices; experiencing private illumination; and .  Warning! Christians who engage in esoteric mysticism deny  – the sufficiency of Scripture.

God’s people must come to grips with the fact that historic orthodox Christianity holds to the belief that everything we need to know about our Triune God is contained within the pages of the Bible.  ()

Stranded In Spiritual Infancy

Following is an observation by apologist and author Bill Muehlenberg from a post entitled :

We have millions of believers who may have been saved decades ago, but are still acting like spiritual infants. They have not grown much, they have not progressed much in their walk with Christ, and their spiritual condition is rather anaemic [sic] and shallow.

They have not become genuine disciples in other words, and they are still stranded in a spiritual infancy. They can’t even handle the deep truths of God as revealed in Scripture. Indeed, many of them hardly even read their Bibles, barely pray, or engage in in-depth fellowship.

No wonder they are still floundering around as babies. They have not moved beyond the nursery. They are all stuck in day care. They are permanent residents of Christian kindergarten. Sadly this is so very widespread today in our churches.

This brings me back to the low information evangelical.  As Muehlenberg pointed out, many Christians prefer milk to solid food.  ()  Consequently they’re biblically illiterate…which is the reason for the colossal lack of discernment among Christians.  So it should come as no surprise that the worst sort of unbiblical teaching has reared its ugly head in the visible church, thanks largely to diaper-wearing milk-fed u-LIEs who rarely, if ever, go to the Bible to scrutinize someone’s teaching.  ( These same u-LIEs are the ones who put on a pedestal/promote/pay tribute to and finance the lavish lifestyles of LIE-celebs, some of whom are prosperity preaching/health and wealth televangelists. What will it take to get professing Christians to understand that they’re propping up heretics?

Before I close I must also mention that the liberal media seems to think that all Protestants are evangelicals – and that includes WoF heretics such as Joyce Meyer, , and Oprah’s pal /New Thought/ guru .  Nowadays evangelical is such a broad term that it has lost its meaning.  Even Tony Campolo and , who have abandoned the biblical gospel for the “social gospel,” call themselves evangelicals.

Campolo, Wallis, Osteen, Bell, et al can say they are monarchs and wear a crown if they so desire.  But as I’ve said many times, a mouse in the cookie jar is not a cookie.

Resources:

—Apprising Ministries

—Apprising Ministries

–On Solid Rock Resources

—On Solid Rock Resources

—On Solid Rock Resources

—On Solid Rock Resources

—On Solid Rock Resources

—On Solid Rock Resources

The Low-Information Evangelical – Part 1

We are told throughout the New Testament to judge, to test, to discern, to assess, to rebuke, to hold one another to account, to make moral distinctions, and to pronounce judgment when and where it is due. ~ Bill Muehlenberg

The phrase low-information voter (LIV) was made popular in the mid-1990s.  Although the LIV is uninformed on the issues, he casts his vote.  The LIV is often highly opinionated even when he has no idea what he’s talking about.  A popular conservative talk show host has labeled a segment of those who vote for liberals LIVs.

D. Edmund Wright expresses his disdain for the LIV in a rather harsh way:

But forget low-information voters for just a minute; the malignancy that is really destroying this country is low-information people with high-profile power and/or influence.  You know, people who would lobby for, comment on, advocate for, or vote on laws like ObamaCare without any understanding of its real-world impact.  Such felonies are then carried out by low-information bureaucratic microbes with the power to destroy lives and businesses with impunity, and a political and talking-head class with the access and sway to codify these common malfeasances. Destruction of private property and liberty – and these two concepts are not divisible – takes place in government cubicles every minute of every day across the country.  And why not?  ( – emphasis in original)

While reading Wright’s rant against the organized left (and rightly so) it occurred to me that evangelicalism is dealing with the same sort of crisis – low-information people with high-profile power and/or influence.  So for the purpose of this piece I’ll refer to them as low-information evangelicals (LIE).

Reminiscent of the LIV, the high-profile LIE does not understand the impact that his unorthodox view has on the visible church.  When it comes to the Bible, the LIE has opinions on a variety of challenging topics.  Even when his opinion is decidedly unbiblical, he presents it as the gospel truth.  The LIE’s arguments are often based, not on what God’s Word clearly teaches but instead on esoteric experiences he’s had or what he’s picked up from LIE celebrities.  As a side note, whenever I write a column for the express purpose of exposing a LIE-celeb’s unbiblical teaching and even though I included an abundance of evidence to support the biblical view, the LIE rarely uses logical argumentation to contest the facts and win me over to their way of thinking.   Instead he resorts to personal attacks.  For example I’m often scolded for being unloving…ungracious…mean spirited…hateful…homophobic……and far worse.

Facts are stubborn things.  And the fact of the matter is that it’s biblical to report on a high-profile Christian leader whose teaching is unbiblical.  Much of the problem lies in the fact that oodles of LIE-celebs are unapologetically  in their worldview and their teaching reflects that.  (For the record, “progressive Christian” is an oxymoron.)

Several influential Bible teachers started out as good Bible expositors but got off track when they became enamored with Eastern mysticism.  Today the beliefs some Christians hold contain a good deal of New Age/New Thought ideas borrowed from Eastern mysticism.  Bible teacher, conference speaker and founder of Living Word Ministries  is one of those teachers.

Over the years Moore has gained substantial popularity with women, so much so that her resources line the shelves of churches and Christian book sellers everywhere.  Because she’s affiliated with the  her overt acceptance of “” surprised a lot of people.  For instance, at one of her conferences she shared a vision she supposedly received of “the church as Jesus sees it.”  Listen to this bombshell:

You know what He [God] told me not too long ago? I told you when I first began this whole concept, He first started teaching it to me about five years ago, and He said these words to me: “Baby, you have not even begun to believe Me. You haven’t even begun!”

You know what He said just a few days ago? “Honey, I just want you to know we’re just beginning.” Oh, glory! That meant I had begun. Hallelujah!

But He was telling me, “When this ends, we ain’t done with this. Honey, this is what we do for the rest of your life.” And He says those words to me over and over again: “Believe Me. Believe Me. And I hope it’s starting to ring in your ears, over and over again, Believe Me.” ()

Does that not make your hair stand on end?   “He said these words to me…” is the same as saying “Thus saith the Lord!”   Any discerning Christian will no doubt find Moore’s alleged chats with God troubling.

Contrary to what Beth Moore believes, when the Lord allegedly speaks to her it couldn’t be His voice she’s hearing.  How do I know that?  Because the way in which she claims the Almighty communicates with her is unbiblical.  How does God speak to us today?  We are told in  that He speaks to us by His Son through His Spirit in His Word.

In  Paul commands us to “test everything; hold fast what is good.”  With this in mind, I challenge Beth’s fans to test her teaching by the Word of God.  Those who are open to the truth will discover that this Bible teacher is feeding her followers rotten fruit!

Erin Benziger has been warning of Beth Moore’s shift into mysticism for quite some time.  Erin points out that:

Beth Moore has demonstrated time and again that she cannot properly handle the biblical text. And yet, she is a mentor and teacher to many women who look to her leadership and knowledge as a foundation for their own spiritual walk.

In recent months, Moore participated as a speaker at the Unwrap the Bible conference, which was held at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church. The event was hosted by ministries, and also featured such dangerous teachers as Priscilla Shirer, Christine Caine, Lisa Harper, Sheila Walsh and of course, Victoria Osteen. Nearly 11,000 women were in attendance at this event. 11,000. That is a tremendous number of women who were exposed to deceptive and erroneous Bible teaching. These are women in your Bible study and in your church. These are women who will now take the principles they learned and will begin to influence other women and girls within their church. This ought to be of no small concern to those who love and revere the Word of God. ()

Before I move on, I should mention that I don’t enjoy tearing down the powerful magnetic personalities professing Christians revere.   My purpose for taking aim at Beth Moore is to get undistinguished LIEs (ordinary folk) up to speed on her unbiblical teaching.  Sadly, some undistinguished low information evangelicals (u-LIEs) assume that popular pastors, teachers and best-selling authors would never steer them wrong.  But nothing could be further from the truth!

The Undistinguished LIE

The u-LIE learns Scripture in a variety of ways:  (1) Best-selling “Christian” books; (2) Blog posts; (3) Religious TV programs; (4) “Christian” radio/podcasts; (5) Trendy market-driven/seeker sensitive churches; (6) Family and friends (some of whom are nominal Christians at best and Bible illiterates at worst.)

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying that the u-LIE who utilizes the above resources won’t learn anything worthwhile. He will!  In fact it’s a good idea to gain knowledge from mainstream Bible scholars/theologians/apologists/bloggers and ministers of the gospel; likewise from TV, radio/podcasts of solid Bible expositors.  But we must see to it that those from whom we learn, including LIE-celebs, continually guard against error.  As I said above, when someone’s theology lands outside of the pale of orthodoxy it’s appropriate to challenge what’s being taught and to (gasp!) “name names.”  How else will we know who to be wary of?

Christians must never lose sight of the fact that false teachers are deceptive and evil.  And by the way, anyone who’s exposed as a wolf or wolverine must swallow their pride and repent of their sin against God.  The objective is restoration.

What has resulted from all the abysmal teaching in the Church?  U-LIEs have accepted liberal/progressive theology.  Likewise, they’re up to their eyeballs in aberrant/heretical movements such as liberal/progressive/social justice; emergent/emerging; /health & wealth/name-it-claim-it; New Apostolic Reformation/Dominionism/Latter Rain. Moreover they’ve become easy prey for the .  How does one avoid becoming ensnared by the wiles of the devil?  By becoming a Berean!  ()

Christian Mysticism

Thanks largely to Christian mystics such as recently deceased ordained Baptist Minister Dallas Willard and Quaker Richard Foster, many u-LIEs have been introduced to spiritual formation.  Sounds biblical, but I assure you it’s not.  In a nut shell, spiritual formation,

encourage[s] believers to incorporate a wide variety of extrabiblical spiritual practices, such as contemplative prayer, silence, meditation, creative expression, and yoga.  In fact, some of the most popular methods of spiritual formation have been lifted from Catholicism, new age mysticism, or other religions and rebranded with biblical-sounding terminology. ()

Ken Silva cautions that involving oneself in mysticism can lead to a “denial of the Reformation and the acceptance of apostate  as a viable form of Christianity.”

Both Willard and Foster, as well as Rick Warren, John Ortberg, Ruth Haley Barton and Tony Campolo have encouraged believers to read the writings of Roman Catholic Trappist Monks such as Thomas Merton, Basil Pennington, William Menninger and Thomas Keating to name a few.  From individuals like these, Eastern pagan practices have been introduced into mainline Protestant churches, likewise independent, nondenominational, charismatic and Pentecostal churches.

Because of books penned by Catholic monks, an increasing number of u-LIEs embrace the idea that  in much the same way that He spoke to the patriarchs and apostles.  And this is the primary reason Christians boast that they hear directly from God.

LIE-celebs and u-Lies who are exposed to mysticism will say things such as: “I had a word from the Lord” or “God said (this or that)…”  Or “God told me to do (this or that)…” And “I have received revelation knowledge.”  Anyone who makes these claims is saying that God speaks directly to them!  The danger in thinking this way is that when God doesn’t “speak” to a professed Christian, she worries that He’s silent because she doesn’t have enough faith, or she has a “hidden sin” in her life because if she didn’t, God would speak to her; or perhaps the Lord’s silent because He’s angry over an act of disobedience…and the list goes on.

The Silence Is Not Golden

The aforementioned monks, or , allege that by engaging in a prayer method called The Silence they’ve been able to achieve a profound experience with God.  “We enter the silence to consciously experience our oneness within the one Mind, God.”  The idea of experiencing oneness within the mind of God comes, not from the Bible, but from Eastern mysticism.  It makes no sense for God’s people to borrow from a corrupt religious system that God despises.  Listen to :

For you [God] have rejected your people, the house of Jacob, because they are full of things from the east and of fortune-tellers like the Philistines, and they strike hands with foreigners.

The Desert Fathers have so little discernment that they not only participate in recycled paganism, they encourage others to go that route!  Willard and Foster and other LIE-celebs know full well that they’re “striking hands with foreigners” and they do it anyway!

Being that the Lord condemns paganism, His people are to have nothing to do with it.  No dabbling!  Steer clear of anything to do with .  Methods such as…centering prayer…breath prayer…are forbidden!   Even though this will ruffle some feathers, my advice is to steer clear of “.  “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” ()

Part 2, coming up!

Recommended:

 (Posting this with a warning)

The following is a concise presentation of the contemplative practice known as “Entering the Silence” taught by the  [a cult] founded by

—By Mike Ratliff

Research links:

–On Solid Rock Resources

—On Solid Rock Resources

—On Solid Rock Resources

My Syria Report #2: How To Outsource A War

While staying here in Damascus, I have heard the same thing said again and again from a whole array of sources, including foreign journalists, Syrian citizens and even Christian nuns.  “This war on Syria is being fought by Al Qaeda operatives, fanatic Islamist jihadis, foreign fighters, terrorists and mercenaries for hire.  And they are being financed by American money and given American weapons.”  Yikes!

    What this means to me personally is that my very own head (which I have actually become quite attached to) could possibly be blown off at any minute by fanatics and/or weapons bought and paid for by my very own tax dollars.  Now that is a really confusing thought.

“War by proxy” is becoming a more and more frequently-used phrase here in Syria.  The American military-industrial complex is now out-sourcing their war.

   But, hey, that’s better than having American soldiers over here fighting and dying for Wall Street and War Street like they did in Iraq.  Our soldiers’ jobs are being shipped overseas?  That’s one example of outsourcing that is just fine by me.

Except, in the words of one local college professor I interviewed the other day, “We Syrians are fighting dirty enemies.  This is a dirty war.  The jihadists attack hospitals, power plants and schools.  But the Syrian people are fighting back.”  The professor also mentioned the discovery of vast new oil fields off the Syrian coast.  And he found it ironic that the very first place that the jihadis, inquisionists, Taliban wannabes and Al Qaeda death squads attacked was in this oil-rich region.  The original peaceful protests by Syrians themselves — before the Taliban wannabes arrived in force from overseas and turned Syria into a slaughterhouse — took place in Daraa, not in the oil fields.  Hmmm.

  “I also find it ironic that Americans are citing democracy as their primary reason for attacking Syria — while their biggest ally in this region is Saudi Arabia, a known dictatorship.”  Not to mention the doubts that everyone has about American elections.  Take Diebold for instance.  And Florida and Ohio and that weird Supreme Court ruling that forced GWB down our throats.  And voter ID cards and 92-year-old women turned away from the polls.  But, hey, America is famous for exporting hypocrisy.  Get over it, prof.

  In Sweida, I talked with a young woman who spoke English and she said, “Living in Syria is like living in one of those Hollywood horror movies.”  Slasher flicks.  “These terrorists come here and they bomb our hospitals and schools, kill and rape women and children and even eat our flesh like cannibals.  We Syrians just want this horror movie to stop.”  And she was proud of Bashar Assad for standing up to these wannabe Freddy Kruegers.  And most of the Syrians I have talked with feel the same way.  “And you would too — if it happened to you.”

And it did happen to me too — sort of.  I can hear the shelling outside Damascus going on night and day.  Nerve-racking.   I almost felt like a heroic citizen of London during the Blitz.

Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, has been playing the Great Game of political chess in this region like he is a grand master — and perhaps that’s why the American military-industrial complex hates him so much.  But Syrians love him.  They just do.  It’s a Syrian thing.  Remember what Maya Angelou said in “I know Why the Caged Bird Sings”?  How she was being raped as a child and prayed for the Green Lantern to save her?  Well President Assad, like it or not, is Syria’s Green Lantern.

Assad might have been a bit to enthusiastic in the past about suppressing dissidence.  But please be aware that the inquisionist crazies and Al Qaeda freaks that have tried to invade Syria are so very much worse.  Syrians weren’t totally behind Assad before the invasion — but they certainly are now, thanks to America’s military-industrial complex.  Eisenhower warned us about the complex.  He shoulda warned the Syrians too.

The only thing that I can truly fault Assad on presently are all those all-pervasive giant posters of him that you see everywhere — on buildings, in shops, on cars and buses, on T-shirts and even in elevators.  Everywhere.  He should stop doing that.  He’s not just some Ken doll or even the next Brad Pitt.  He’s a political genius who is trying save Syria from the bad guys.  He should have understood by now that he has found a place in the hearts of the Syrians and just leave it at that.

PS:  Observing the elections was fun.  It was like attending a country-wide block party.  Or, as Mother Agnes-Mariam said to me in an interview at the Dama Rose Hotel, “It would be impossible to coerce that many Syrians to vote out of fear. People actually went out from rebel-held territory to vote.  Even the rebels voted.”  So. Who are you going to believe about the authenticity of the Syrian elections?   Mother Agnes-Mariam who said that they were valid — or Wall Street and War Street, who claim they were a fraud?

Are you going to believe the same people who lied to us about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction – or a mother-superior Christian nun?

PPS:  In Homs, those nasty American-sponsored jihadists blew up a historic old Christian church — only to find an even older church lay buried under the newer church’s foundations.  Built in 59 AD, this older church might actually been visited by the Apostles and Saint Paul himself.  And these Taliban wannabes were happily trying to blow this older church up too.  But apparently they got distracted by trying to break up the bones of some nearby Christian saints’ relics — and the old church was saved!

PPPS:  I never did get to meet President Assad.  “Apparently he has to keep his eye out for being assassinated by drones,” one journalist explained to me as to why Assad hadn’t come to the Dama Rose hotel.  But still…I could have worn my cool “Berkeley High Water Polo Team” T-shirt that I had swiped from my daughter Ashley.  I’m sure Assad would have been quite impressed.

Does The Bible Really Say We’re Not To Judge?

Some professing Christians become infuriated when a “watchblogger” has the chutzpah to report on a false teacher by name, as if naming names is unbiblical.  High-profile leaders and bloggers who mention heretics by name are often accused of demonizing or judging them.

For example, when I expose  latest effort to unite with , , , , and when I examine his  and his penchant for (he often uses it as a tool to cover his own ideas with a pretense of divine authority), complaints come pouring in by the truck load.  Many of his defenders write to set me straight on what Scripture says about “judging him.”  Others scold me for not giving him credit for all the good he has done, as if doing good deeds, meeting felt needs and ignoring doctrine and creeds is biblical.

Invariably someone will cite  :

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

And then they’ll ask if I’ve gone privately to Rick Warren to correct him.  My response is “Of course not!”  Why?  For the reason that Christian celebrities like Rick Warren are generally not accessible.  Many are, in fact, akin to Hollywood celebs.  No doubt some of them rationalize that their popularity affords them certain privileges, one of which is to choose not to have a dialogue with those of us who write anything negative about them.

Yet the Bible says that those who are in sin (false teaching is sin) must be admonished.  In  the Apostle John calls out Diotrephes and promises to publicly correct him upon his return. In  Paul stands up to the highly esteemed Apostle Peter!   He even got in Peter’s face for fearing false teachers. What resulted from Peter’s “fear of man”?:

And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.  But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, ‘If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?’ (bold added)

In context the Matthew 18 passages (above) addresses the ways in which the leadership must go about disciplining a brother or sister in their church who has fallen into sin.  It also provides the proper steps to take before excommunicating someone who refuses to repent.  First, we are to go to him in private and if he refuses to repent we are to go a second time taking with us two or more witnesses.  If he still refuses to repent, the pastor must go before the church and proclaim his sin.  Ouch!

It’s essential that elders are involved in the process.

Likewise, the passages in Matthew 18 don’t apply to doctrinal issues nor do they apply to Christians who have put their work before the world.  A person’s willingness to do so makes them fair game for anyone who wishes to scrutinize and even criticize his or her work.   Consequently, Christians who can’t stand the heat should get out of the kitchen.

But I’m drifting from my point.

When believers make a judgment, we’re not to judge self-righteously.  Moreover, we’re not to judge a person’s heart or motives.  Those who do are sinning.

Because I name names I’m often accused of being judgmental.  All I can do is respond with Scripture:

The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. ‘For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’  But we have the mind of Christ.()

What?  You mean the true believer has the mind of Christ?  Yes!  This is a difficult concept to grasp to be sure, so I’ll point you to Matthew Henry’s commentary:

The apostles were not guided by worldly principles. They had the revelation of these things from the Spirit of God, and the saving impression of them from the same Spirit. These things they declared in plain, simple language, taught by the Holy Spirit, totally different from the affected oratory or enticing words of man’s wisdom. The natural man, the wise man of the world, receives not the things of the Spirit of God. The pride of carnal reasoning is really as much opposed to spirituality, as the basest sensuality. The sanctified mind discerns the real beauties of holiness, but the power of discerning and judging about common and natural things is not lost. But the carnal man is a stranger to the principles, and pleasures, and actings of the Divine life. The spiritual man only, is the person to whom God gives the knowledge of his will. … And the apostles were enabled by his Spirit to make known his mind. In the Holy Scriptures, the mind of Christ, and the mind of God in Christ, are fully made known to us. It is the great privilege of Christians, that they have the mind of Christ revealed to them by his Spirit. They experience his sanctifying power in their hearts, and bring forth good fruits in their lives. (bold added — )

In short, it is the spiritual man () who possesses the mind of Christ and has received the knowledge of His will which is laid out for us in Scripture.  Therefore, the believer who is truly walking with the Lord— –has the authority to judge words and actions — especially when the teaching is unbiblical.

How do we know when someone’s teaching is unbiblical?  That’s easy!  Test his teaching against the Word of God and if it doesn’t line up with what’s in the Bible, then what’s being taught is not from God! And if what’s being taught is not from God it’s from another source – the !

Bible teacher and expositor John MacArthur cautions:

It should be noted that [Matthew 7:1-5] has erroneously been used to suggest that believers should never evaluate or criticize anyone for anything. Our day hates absolutes, especially theological and moral absolutes, and such simplistic interpretation provides a convenient escape from confrontation. Members of modern society, including many professing Christians, tend to resist dogmatism and strong convictions about right and wrong. Many people prefer to speak of all-inclusive love, compromise, ecumenism, and unity. To the modern religious person those are the only “doctrines” worth defending, and they are the doctrines to which every conflicting doctrine must be sacrificed.  ()

In my experience, many professing Christians stubbornly stick to their position that those who expose the unbiblical teaching of Christian celebs are unfairly judging them so they play the card: “Judge not, that you be not judged” followed by a resounding rebuke from verse 5: “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye?”

Christians who fail to grasp the notion that those who are Spirit-filled have the mind of Christ is mind boggling.  Only believers can make this claim — no one else can.  And that includes Miss Spirituality herself, !  Why?  Since Oprah is unregenerate she cannot possible understand spiritual truth because her !

God’s ways and His Word make little sense to the unsaved.  Listen to what Paul says:

The natural person [unregenerate] does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” ()

There is no other place we can learn about the things of the Spirit of God except in the Bible.  Moreover, the Bible’s the final authority in all matters of faith.  In  we’re told that “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.”  And   says “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”  Although every page of Scripture is , a growing number of Christians choose to reject hard to understand Bible stories and doctrines.  Two examples that come to mind are the  in Genesis chapters 1 & 2 and our Lord’s teaching that  is a place of fire, demons and everlasting torment.  Some readers will be surprised to learn that Christ preached more on hell than all the other persons in the Bible put together!

It’s unbelievable how many professing Christians don’t study their bibles.  They may attend church regularly but because they’re biblically illiterate they have no clue if the pastor’s teaching God’s truth or outright heresy.  In many cases they wouldn’t know biblical truth if it walked up and bit them on the nose!

I regularly hear from Christians whose heart’s desire is to attend a healthy well-balanced church where they can be confident that they’re receiving good solid biblical teaching.  They’ve searched high and low to find a gospel teaching church near their home but there are none.  And they’re discouraged.  The sad fact is that only a handful of ministers still preach the true .  My advice is always the same: “Don’t give up searching!”  But this is a subject for a whole other article so I’ll move on.

As if we didn’t have enough to deal with in the visible Church, a large number of ministers and so-called Bible teachers in churches and on the airwaves are selling a false gospel to consumers. Front and center is the /name-it-and-claim-it/prosperity charlatans such as , , , , ,  and , to name a few.

Be on the alert for the  (NAR) a heretical movement that holds to the view that God is restoring the lost offices of church governance such as the prophets and apostles.  “Super Apostle”  is the head of the NAR and there’s a swarm of so-called apostles and prophets worldwide.  The wolves and wolverines in this movement believe they possess the same gifts as the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles.  (Learn more about the NAR by visiting my .)

Other celebs to be wary of are , , , , , .

Again, we’re not to judge a person’s heart or motives, but we can certainly judge the fruit they produce!  Jesus himself said:

Every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. ()

Believers who read and study their bibles are far less likely to blindly follow false teachers.  But it’s not out of the realm of possibility for mature believers who cease being  to have the wool pulled over their eyes.  For this very reason John warned:

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. ().

Occult Evolution: Antediluvian, Babylonian, & Modern Expressions

In “The attack on biblical creation in UK schools continues,” Phil Robinson reports that in the dechristianized U.K. unrelenting attacks against special creation (Genesis account) display a level of aggressive intolerance that is hard to stomach, coming as they do from self-proclaimed scientifically-enlightened ‘voices of reason.’  Some schools have already banned the teaching of special creation in favor of evolutionary science.   (, Mar. 9, 2014)

Other shrill ‘voices of reason’ go so far as to connect special creation to mental illness and child abuse. During a radio interview in Australia famous physicist and atheist propagandist Lawrence Krauss said that while in the United States recently, he stated that “teaching creationism is child abuse and I think it is.” (Prayer News, a publication of Creation Ministries, Apr. 2014)

Throughout the West and here in America a slash-and-burn operation conducted against the Genesis account, particularly its’ literal and historical elements, is justified by the false idea that evolution is science, thus intolerance of special creation is often presented as a ‘science versus religion’ or ‘faith versus reason’ issue.   So successful has this war of attrition been that younger generations of Westerners and Americans have been disconnected from both Western history and its’ founding Christian-based worldview, thus like seedlings recently popped up from the soil are unconcerned that special creation, where the ultimate source of life, being and unalienable rights are found, has nearly been displaced by anti-human pagan conceptions positing billions of years of evolutionary transformism from lower kinds of things to higher and higher kinds of things— even non-human kinds of things:

“For us, the best way to create new (‘artificial’) life forms and intelligence is to allow them to emerge through evolution, as nature does, only in much shorter timeframes and with much greater efficiency and variety.”

“For conscious evolution to be successful, we need to observe and understand the actual workings of nature, in all its dynamism, to the point of profound reverence, or ‘worship.’ This is what I call extreme nature-worshipping… From the perspective of extreme nature-worshipping, the real significance of Darwin’s evolutionary theory is not that humans descended from lower species, but that we can continue to evolve.”(Cosmic Beings: Transhumanist Deism in Ted Chu’s Cosmic View, Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technology, Giulio Prisco)

The vicious name-calling, seething resentment toward and censorship of the six day creation account and of all who profess and teach it should raise the eyebrows of any rational thinking person.  If evolution really is a fact of science then why the irrational name-calling, ridicule, scorn, shunning, resentment, intolerance and demonization?

The answer is that the zealous worshipper of evolution is the Spirit of our age that emerged out of the Renaissance whose answer to the Lord Jesus Christ is the Cross (crucify Him) and whose fulfillment will be the Wicked One. (2 Thess. 2:1-8)

From the Renaissance to our own time the Spirit has been transgressing, blaspheming, and departing that it need not obey His voice.   Like a dog returning to its own vomit, the Spirit has returned to its first love: the cult of demons in the Godless universe of matter, psychic energy, and animated forces where time is changed, past history rendered meaningless, and the liberated Spirit imbibes the cup of wrath, an intoxicating mixture of Babylonian Mysteries, incantations, spiritism, Gnosticism, sorcery, witchcraft, Hermetic magic, Kabbalah, reincarnation, astrology, and other devilish occult traditions.

The Book of Revelation pinpoints Babylon as the post-flood center of an occult pagan Mystery religion based on advaitic monism, science of magic transformism, exalted priesthood, gnosis, secret initiations, psychic-powers, familiar spirits, androgyny, sexual perversions, and other evils.

Babylon embraced the Great Lie. Its inhabitants claimed the title, “I AM.” The root source of this evil religion and its occult power was the Great Dragon himself….Lucifer:

“…. the Great Lie (is) the foundation stone of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufism, Jainism, Sikhism, Taoism, the Kabala, the Greek Hermetic, Eleusinian and Gnostic beliefs, Neo-Platonism, all the occult creeds from Theosophy and the Masonic orders to the Rosicrucian’s (and) the New Age movement. The Great Lie is…the belief that man is God, that his true identity is the immortal self…that as God, he will never die (and) Sin and depravity are…illusions since this inner divinity is at man’s core.” (The Great Lie, Tal Brooke, SCP Journal, Vol. 29:2-29:3, 2005)

Though the Spirit of our age claims the title “I AM” it nevertheless follows after and falls down before other fascinating men: theoreticians of evolutionary science, nature philosophy and evolutionary pagan theology. These charismatic Pied Pipers are possessed of surpassing powers of persuasion and inflexible determination of will to which the Spirit assigns more honor than to anything else.

The Spirit has usurped the throne of the Word Incarnate (John 1:1) because He is not good, not just or benevolent but a devil, an evil Tyrant Who, with His infliction of suffering in this life and eternal punishment in the next must be deposed. (Psalm 2:2-3)

Blaming our Lord for their own sins the proud, self-righteous Spirit of rebellion, hypocrisy and negation says to Him, “…you are not my father.”  My father is the god of forces, therefore:

“I am I, I come out of myself, and in choice and action I make myself.” (Daniel Bell, quoted by Herbert Schlossberg in “Idols for Destruction,” p. 43)

In the final analysis, the Spirit of our age is the “striving human will” seeking desperately to launch itself,

“…into minor godhood in an evolving cosmos through the mechanisms of directed spiritual evolution, spiritualized science and spirit contact.” The ‘new’ spirituality now presents itself as the “rightful replacement for the Revealed Word (and) proclaims its spiritual liberation from the worldview that informs Christianity and its freedom from (the) personal and wholly other God.  But this new way of self-salvation (is) little more than the refurbishing of an ancient spiritual mistake.”  (The Making of the New Spirituality: the Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition, James A. Herrick, p. 279)

“As it was in the days of Noah…” 

The ominous signs of this age are obvious, said the English theologian G.H. Pember (1837-1910) in his book, “The Antichrist Babylon and the Coming Kingdom.”  Just as it was during the pre-flood generations, open intercourse with demons (spiritism) is now common throughout Christendom and even in Russia.   In France it is the national pastime.   The apostles of the powers of darkness are everywhere proclaiming their scientific and evolutionary theories demonstrating that the world created itself and had no need of a Creator (p. 60) while the miseries which have resulted from sin,

“….are blasphemously charged upon the Almighty, Who so loved the world as to give His son for it (but is now) impiously forbidden to curb and discipline the rebels who owe their existence to the breath of His mouth.  And when we see such men as John Stuart Mill (and) John Morley, the late Chief Secretary for Ireland…guiding their fellows to defiant insubordination, we can scarcely wonder that Bradlaugh…said, ‘This world might have been happy, had not the shadow of God fallen upon it.” (pp. 35-36, 1888)

Rise of Occult Evolutionary Science 

In the impeccably researched, “The Making of the New Spirituality,” James Herrick observes that the scientific tradition in Renaissance Europe developed around three basic approaches: the organic, the mechanical and the magical.   It was magical and/or occult science that provided the greatest impetus for scientific exploration. (p. 45)

C.S. Lewis underscores this point in “The Abolition of Man:”

“You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medieval survival and Science the new thing that came in to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole we can discern the impulse of which I speak.”

In “God and the Knowledge of Reality,” the Catholic philosopher and historian, Thomas Molnar (1921–2010), reveals the ‘temper of that age’ as a spirit of rebellion against the Christian God, and this is why occult science and evolutionary thinking provided the greatest impetus. During the Renaissance, certain Christian theologians, mystics and scholars such as Emanuel Swedenborg had discovered Hermetic magic and occult Jewish Kabbalah texts which they studied and translated resulting in Hermetic Kabbalah. Then like Pico della Mirandola, they argued that occult hermetic science – the divine technology or Magic Way of reaching divine status and powers through ritual procedures (spiritual evolution) is the best proof of the divinity of Christ. In other words said Molnar,

“…..by the time of the Renaissance the esoteric texts of the first centuries A.D. had acquired in scholarly and humanist circles an unparalleled prestige, confronting as equals the texts held sacred by the church. In Pico’s estimation, ‘nulla est scientia que nos magis certificet de divinitate Christ quam magia et Cabala’ (there is no science that would prove for us Christ’s divinity better than magic and the Cabala.)” (pp. 78-79)

Hermetic magic and Jewish Kabbalah are ancient Mystery Religion traditions, as affirmed by G. H. Pember in his classic work, “Earth’s Earliest Ages.”   Pember thoroughly examines the role of fallen angels in connection with the magic (occult transformism) they taught to pre-flood generations and compares them to the explosion of spiritism (open intercourse with evil spirits), astrology, the Mysteries and other occult traditions sweeping over Christendom.

Pember writes that the Mysteries are no longer veiled in mystery but boldly presented by the powerful occult brotherhood that emerged out of the Renaissance as the fruit of modern science, especially evolutionary philosophy, which the brotherhood assert was included in the instructions given,

“…to the initiates of the Hermetic, Orphic, Eleusinian, and Cabbalistic mysteries, and were familiar to Chaldean Magi, Egyptian Priests, Hindu Occultists, Essenes, Therapeutae Gnostics, and Theurgic Neo-Platonists.” (Pember, pp.243-244)

Hermetic Magic

Hermeticism is an ancient Egyptian secret magic tradition based on a set of fourteen books known

collectively as the Corpus Hermeticum attributed to a mysterious figure known as Hermes Trismegistus. Implied in Hermeticism is an evolutionary process of magical transformism (spiritual evolution) moving from one kind of lower thing to another kind of higher thing:

“Human beings are themselves the product of a long spiritual evolutionary process that moves from ‘creeping things’ to fish, mammals, birds and then people.  Humans can—through occult knowledge and extraordinary ability—continue this evolutionary process and become daemons, then gods, and finally planets or stars.” (The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition, James A. Herrick, p. 40)

With respect to Hermes identity, researchers of antiquity are divided.  Some believe Hermes was a mythical figure.  Others argue he was Ham or his son Cush.  The historian Samuel Shuckford argues that Hermes was Pathrusim, king of Thebais, the son of Mizraim, the son of Ham.   His Egyptian name was Tyoth or Thoth.  (The Sacred and Profane History of the World Connected, 1808)

In any case, it was Thoth-Hermes who instructed his brothers in the arts and science magic of alchemy or transmutation of a lower kind of thing into a higher kind of thing. For example, after a lengthy transformative process out of the eternally existing divine abyss (primordial matter), the self-created Sun-God Ra boasted that he “came into being from primordial matter.”  He made all the forms under which he “appeared by means of the god-soul” which he raised up out of Nu, primordial matter. (The Long War Against God, Dr. Henry Morris, p. 243)

Occult Kabalah

“The Kabalah is the key to the occult sciences; and the Gnostics were born of the Kabalists.” (Occult Mason Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma, p. 626)

Like its’ Hermetic counterpart, Kabala implies a process of evolutionary transformism:

“…the older Enoch book (gives) a fuller insight into the “Merkabah” and “Bereshit” lore of the ancients than the “Hekalot,” which present but fragments, while the central figure of the Cabala, Meṭaṭron-Enoch, is seen in ch. lxx.-lxxi. in a process of transformation.” (Cabala, Jewish Encyclopedia)

According to Helena Blavatsky, one of the key architects of Luciferian New Age pantheism, Kabalah derived,

“…. from the older secret doctrines concerning divine things and cosmogony, which were combined into a theology after the time of the captivity of the Jews in Babylon. All the works that fall under the esoteric category are termed Kabalistic.” (Blavatsky, Theosophical Glossary, p. 168)

The godless cosmogony of Kabala teaches the gradual condensation or evolutionary progression of a primal substance into visible matter.  This is a fundamental,

“… doctrine of the Cabala (and) is the ancient Semitic conception of the ‘primal ocean,’ known to the Babylonians as ‘Apsu’ and called by the Gnostics βύθος =  (Anz, ‘Die Frage nach dem Ursprung des Gnostizismus,’ p. 98).

The Chaldean occult science and pagan Mystery Religion was embraced by apostate Jews during their captivity in Babylon and delivered to subsequent generations of initiates by word of mouth. According to Blavatsky, these initiates of the Chaldean tradition in the centuries before Christ were known as Tanaim:
“The kabalist is a student of ‘secret science’, one who interprets the hidden meaning of the

Scriptures with the help of the symbolical Kabala… The Tanaim were the first kabalists among the Jews; they appeared at Jerusalem about the beginning of the third century before the Christian era… This secret doctrine is identical with the Persian wisdom, or ‘magic’.” (Ibid. p.167)

The Essenes were also associated with the Kabala. The Jewish Encyclopedia describes the cabalistic practices of the Essenes, which were Judaized elements of Eastern mystical traditions:

“So, too, were the Essenes familiar with the idea of the journey to heaven…and they were also masters of angelology. The practice of magic and incantation, the angelology and demonology, were borrowed from Babylonia, Persia, and Egypt; but these foreign elements were Judaized in the process, and took the form of the mystical adoration of the name of God and of speculations regarding the mysterious power of the Hebrew alphabet …, ‘the name of God creates and destroys worlds’, to become, finally, foundations of the philosophy of the ‘Sefer Yetzirah.”  (Cabala, Jewish Encyclopedia)

According to Blavatsky the Essenes were pagan priests of the Greek goddess, Diana of Ephesus, where the Tanaim had established a college for instruction in the Chaldean mystery religion:

“Essenes… had many Buddhistic ideas and practices; and it is noteworthy that the priests of the Great Mother at Ephesus, Diana-Bhavani with many breasts, were also denominated… It was at Ephesus where was the great College of the Essenes and all the lore the Tanaim had brought from the Chaldees… Essenes, believed in reincarnation.” (Theosophical Glossary, pp. 113-14; The Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, p. 111n)

Eventually Alexandria, Egypt became the epicenter of cosmological and pagan religious ideas as well as the intellectual meeting point between Greek Mystery Religion/Hermetic magic initiates and nature sages and guardians of Kabala.  After the fall of Jerusalem, Alexandria was the center from which occult pagan Jews would disguise their mystery tradition in Christian terminology and attempt to penetrate the fledgling Church with heresy.

One of the primary tactics employed by Cabbalist pagan Jews for this purpose is the same one employed by their modern evolutionary Gnostic pagan counterparts.   It involves the reduction of the Genesis account, particularly the first three books, to allegory and myth, a ploy that eliminates the physical Adam from which all people descended and the sin that he transferred to the rest of the human race. This strikes directly at the heart of the Gospel: the need for the ‘last Adam’ to provide for us an escape from the wrath of God against sin incurred by the first Adam.  In this way, not only is the work of Christ on the cross rendered superfluous, meaning the heart of the faith is ripped out, but God is made responsible for sin and evil. (1 Peter 3:18-22; 1 John 2:22)

Long ago, the teachings of some of the early Church Fathers regarding the apostasy toward the end of the church age predicted the reappearance of this evil tactic. The fathers categorized it a Gnostic pagan heresy.

In “Heresies 6.10″ Hippolytus writes that the Gnostic pagan Simon Magus feigned faith and allegorized much of Scripture, especially Genesis, to support his evolutionary Hermetic and Gnostic occult pantheist teachings.   Church Fathers Ireneaus, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria reveal that Gnostic cult leader Marcion rejected the Old Testament, taught that the God of the Old Testament and his prophets are evil, made God the author of sin and removed all references that Christ was Creator (John 1:1)   (Ireneaus, “Against Heresies 1.26, 5.1,” Tertullian “Against Marcion 2.17,” Clement of Alexandria, “Against Heresies 4.29)

In conclusion, the Babylonian Mystery Religion is the mother of evolutionary Cabala, Gnosticism and all other occult pagan traditions:

“….especially does Gnosticism testify to the antiquity of the Cabala. Of Chaldean origin… Gnosticism was Jewish in character long before it became Christian… Gnosticism—that is, the cabalistic ‘Hokmah’ (wisdom)—seems to have been the first attempt on the part of the Jewish sages to give the empirical mystic lore, with the help of Platonic and Pythagorean or Stoic ideas, a speculative turn; hence the danger of heresy…of which the systems of Philo, an adept in Cabala…show many pitfalls…Jewish gnosticism unquestionably antedates Christianity, for Biblical exegesis had already reached an age of five hundred years by the first century C.E.  Judaism had been in close contact with Babylonian-Persian ideas for at least that length of time, and for nearly as long a period with Hellenistic ideas. Magic, also, which,…was a not unimportant part of the doctrines and manifestations of gnosticism, largely occupied Jewish thinkers. There is, in general, no circle of ideas to which elements of gnosticism have been traced, and with which the Jews were not acquainted.”  (Cabala, Jewish Encyclopedia)

Building  the New Tower of Babylon

In the essay, “The Paganization of Biblical Studies,” Dr. Peter Jones, director of truthxchange and adjunct professor of Westminster Seminary CA., writes that the books of the evolutionary Gnostic pagan Presbyterian heretic Lloyd Geering, Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at Victoria University, are promoted by the most powerful element of the Spirit of our age—the international occult New Age Luciferian elite-pagans—as programmatic templates for the future utopian pagan community from the point of view of Christian apostasy and socialism undergirded by evolutionary pantheist orthodoxy.

According to Geering, the world’s future culture will be post-Christian, global, religiously pagan and evolutionary.  This agenda is remarkably similar to that of Teilhard de Chardins’ disciple, the ex-Roman Catholic Thomas Berry in his book, “The Great Work” which is also being implemented through texts of the UN’s global programs.

The rising New World Order will be post-Christian because evolution proves that human beings, as they evolved out of primordial matter, created language, then symbols, then religious explanations and God Himself.  Therefore tomorrow’s culture will be pluralistic, syncretistic, relativistic and poly-gendered because evolution integrates all scientific, cultural, religious, economic and human gender into one worldwide anthill thus when the global society emerges from the evolutionary process,

“…it will require humanity to develop a new consciousness and a new form of spirituality” because “the new story which has become basic to the global world begins with a new word or idea…evolution.” (ibid, Jones)

Like its’ mother, Mystery Babylon, the scientifically-enlightened ‘new’ global religion of evolutionary transformism is occult pantheist advaita monism, which means that as an ancient impersonal god-force is within the cosmos, earth, human beings, rats, weeds, tumble bugs, cancer and everything else then all things are essentially ‘one.’  Since the god-force is within all things it is within the demonically ‘illumined’ consciousness of every spiritually evolved initiate and adept.

This being the case, by means of trance states, brain-altering drugs, transcendental meditation, visualization, channeling, Zen Buddhism, Kundalini yoga, tantra, and other occult ways, the initiate can channel the god-force within thereby becoming a little god who controls matter because he controls mind. The physical world then, is an illusion because reality is inside the divine mind of the god-man.

This way of thinking is captured by Orwell in his book, “Nineteen Eighty-Four” in which negation of the physical world is an integral part of the social and political philosophy of Big Brother and his despotic Party. At one stage in the book, Winston stumbles upon the shocking realization that in the end the Party would announce that two plus two made five because the logic of Big Brothers’ position required it since the existence of external reality was denied by his philosophy.  Thus when the Thought Police agent O’Brien tortures Winston for politically incorrect “wrong thought” he states,

“We control matter because we control the mind.  Reality is inside the skull.  You will learn by degrees, Winston.  There is nothing that we could not do.  Invisibility, levitation—anything.  I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to….You must get rid of these nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of Nature.  We make the laws of Nature.” (Orwell, “The New Spirituality and its Hallmarks, Alan Morrison, SCP Journal, Vol. 30:4-31:1, 2007, p. 19)

Evolving Toward Catastrophe

In “The Aquarian Conspiracy,” a book that has been called ‘the New Age Bible,’ Marilyn Ferguson (1938-2008) admits that the ‘new age’ evolutionary pantheism and occult technologies being employed throughout America were at one time the private domain of ancient initiates.   In fact, as Constance Cumbey reveals in her thoroughly researched book, “The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow,” many New Age historians claim their occult religion and techniques originated in Atlantis and afterward were preserved in the ancient land of Babylon,

“…and surrounding Plains of Shinar and from there disseminated throughout the earth, including Taoist doctrines of China, Mayan-Aztec teachings of Mexico and Central/South America; Great Spirit teachings of the American Indians, Hindu/Buddhist teachings of Asia, etc.” (pp. 250-251)

After the Flood, said Shuckford, while the faithful Noah remained in the East and established the worship of the true God, eighty years after the Flood his rebellious son Ham and his sons together with other family members departed and eventually settled in the plains of Shinar where they resolved to build a tower, a monument to their own pride, vanity, ambition and rebellion against God. (ibid, p.94)

It was Noah’s son Ham, according to ancient Church Father Clement, who  ‘preserved’ and revived the Mystery Religion of ‘Atlantis’ and its attendant evils:

“Fallen angels taught men the use of magical incantations that would force demons to obey man. After the flood Ham the son of Noah…discovered this and taught it to his sons.  This became ingrained into the Egyptians, Persians, and Babylonians.  Ham died shortly after the fall of the Tower of Babel.  Nimrod, called Ninus by the Greeks, was handed this knowledge and by it caused men to go away from the worship of God and go into diverse and erratic superstitions and they began to be governed by the signs in the stars and motions of the planets.” (Recognitions of Clement 4.26-29)

In his well-researched book, “Ancient Post-Flood History,” Ken Johnson, Th.D., reports that the sons of Ham persuaded the people to accept that the true God was merely an impersonal creative force within all of nature, making man the highest form of life/god.  Through the power of persuasion, Ham and his sons revived magical evolutionary transformism, pantheism and idolatry. (pp. 47-48)

Eventually Ham was deified and worshipped by later pagans as the gods Cronus and Jupiter:

“Ham is represented by many writers as a very wicked, immodest, and profligate creature: Berosus (i) makes him a magician, and to be the same with Zoroast or Zoroastres, and speaks of him as the public corrupter of mankind; and says that he taught men to live as before the flood, to lie with mothers, sisters, daughters, males and brutes, and creatures of all sorts; and that he actually did so himself, and therefore was cast out by his father Janus, or Noah, and got the name of “Chem”, the infamous and immodest…” Upon seeing his father’s nakedness Ham,  “told his two brethren without; he went out of the tent after he had pleased himself with the sight… and in a wanton, ludicrous, and scoffing manner, related what he had seen: some of the Jewish Rabbins (k), as Jarchi relates, say that Canaan first saw it, and told his father of it; and some say (l), that he or Ham committed an unnatural crime with him; and others (m), that he castrated him; and hence, it is supposed, came the stories of Jupiter castrating his father Saturn, and Chronus his father Uranus.”    Genesis 9:22 Gill’s Exposition

History did not begin after billions of years of evolution when primitive hominids swung down from the trees and discovered how to scratch crude symbols onto rocks.    Nor did it begin after the Flood.  At least 2,000 years of human existence preceded the Flood, meaning that when Noah and his family entered the ark they carried at least one hundred years of pre-flood memories, traditions, technology, and superior knowledge. Their world view was shaped by the historical Adam and Eve and the generations of their offspring.   Thus Noah and his family brought with them not only the knowledge of the personal God, Special Creation, fall of man, the Deluge, sacrifice to God for the propitiation of sin, the arts of weapon-making and warfare, knowledge of letters, symbols, math, architecture, science, cosmetics, and agriculture  but knowledge of  first-hand encounters with Watchers, their occult teachings, the Nephilim, and primeval pantheism tied to magic, spiritism, herbal abortifacients, human and animal sacrifice, drinking of blood, males marrying males and even beasts, and many other evils.

In affirmation, the eminent researcher of antiquity James Bailey said:

“…human history can now be hesitantly traced back as an unbroken narrative to 4000 B.C….the picture emerging…is one of the Fall of Man in historic terms as well as his rise; it is a picture…more of degradation than of success; it is a picture of monotheism breaking down into polytheism and of the struggle to return to monotheism.  The establishment view of the history of religion gradually progressing from animism to polytheism (then) to monotheism is the reverse of facts.” (“The God-Kings and the Titans: The New World Ascendancy in Ancient Times 1973, p. 296)

Four thousand years before Christ were the antediluvian generations and the Watchers in the post-flood world, making the billions of years of evolutionary transformism a fabulous fable.  It is neither ‘new’ (Ecclesiastes 1: 9-11) nor scientific except in the sense of pre-flood and post-flood occult science and attendant traditions revised and revamped for our own time, as Geering unhappily discovered.

Dr. Jones writes that Geering was surprised when he found out that the ‘New Spirituality’ has “links with pre-monotheistic…nature religions,” leading Jones to wryly comment that in an odd turn of events,

“….contemporary spiritual’ evolution goes backwards!  Biblical theism disturbed evolutionary progress.  The clocks have to be put back (for we are in the presence of) a powerful pagan/Gnostic theological agenda, claiming to be spanking new, objective and scientific, but as old as the hills.”

Clocks have to be turned back, all the way back to the days of Noah in the pre-flood world where evolution is closely connected to the devil’s lie that man is a being who though presently limited in time and space is nevertheless capable of achieving a great leap of being and magically evolving into a much more powerful god-like being in the future.

As the scientifically endarkened Gnostic pagan Spirit of our age simultaneously worships on the altar of ‘self’ as it self-righteously peers down its’ long, pointy nose and contemptuously sniffs and sneers at the remnant of backwards, unscientific, anti-evolution  faithful, in reality it is the entirely deluded pagan Spirit that is on a collision course with a modern version of the pre-flood world catastrophe—-and we know how badly that ended.

Institutionalized Tyranny

What happens when an institution becomes more important than the cause for which the institution was formed? How long should people who believe in the cause remain loyal to such an institution? And at what point does loyalty to such an institution comprise an abandonment of the cause itself?

I’m afraid the majority of Americans have been institutionalized in a manner not unlike the way prisoners are institutionalized after a long period of confinement. After a point, a prisoner is so conditioned to accepting the circumstances of his confinement that, should he be released from confinement, he truly would be unable to cope. Such seems to be the mentality of a majority of us today.

Christians have been institutionalized. The reason and purpose of the church or Christian organization is no longer relevant. Generations have grown up reciting the same liturgies, regurgitating the same prayers, and rehearsing the same programs until the reason for it all doesn’t even matter. But take the institution away from them, and they would not be able to cope.

The Pharisees despised the Lord Jesus because He challenged the religious institutions that had come to govern people’s lives. I am convinced if Jesus came to America today, He would be just as despised by the vast majority of our religious leaders as He was by the Pharisees.

The Church that Jesus built in the Book of Acts owned no buildings, was indebted to no lenders, took no tax benefits from the civil government, had no denominational hierarchy, and identified itself with no ecclesiastical brand. And the Church was just as persecuted by the religious establishment as Christ was.

One of the reasons one may know that the modern church is so unlike Christ and the apostles is by the persecution that it never experiences. Just as the Pharisees were bosom buddies with the Roman Empire’s governing elite, so are our religious leaders today. Caesar was very generous in sharing the fruit of his tyrannically-extracted bounty with his allies in the Jewish Sanhedrin. And they were happy to return the favor by insisting that the Hebrew people submit to Caesar’s harsh rule over their lives.

The Pharisees also enjoyed a cozy relationship with the moneychangers. The moneychangers were descended from a long line of corrupt banking interests that dated all the way back to the Edomites. We are not talking about your friendly local banker here. These were highly organized, well-positioned money-manipulators. Jesus was so incensed with their manipulation and theft within in the Temple that he used physical violence to remove them from the property. He is recorded as doing this twice in the Gospel narratives. Note that after the second time in which it is recorded that He drove out the moneychangers (with a whip, no less), the Pharisees soon had Jesus crucified. There is no question that one of the reasons Pilate ordered Jesus to be scourged with a whip was in direct retaliation for the manner in which Jesus whipped the moneychangers. Remember, the moneychangers were from a very well-ensconced, elitist national (and even international) organization.

And lest you think all of this is irrelevant to today, the moneychangers are still very much with us. The Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and other members of the international banking elite, are the direct descendants of the moneychangers of Jesus’ day. And if you ever have an opportunity to ask one of them about it, they will proudly admit it.

Yes, the Pharisees institutionalized religion. This accomplished two things: 1) it helped enslave the people, 2) it helped make them rich. The institutionalized church is accomplishing much the same things today.

The establishment church is doing as much to enslave people as any other institution in the world. Our political institutions and educational institutions have nothing on the church for making good little subjects and serfs to the all-powerful state. And if you don’t think that a host of church leaders are not reaping the spoils from assisting our taskmasters, you’re not paying attention.

Many, if not most, of these big-name TV evangelists have as many houses and yachts and Swiss bank accounts as any big-name Hollywood actor or politician. In some cases, more. Most of these big-church pastors are bathing in luxury. Many of them take the kinds of vacations that only CEOs of the biggest corporations or presidents could afford. Do you really think that the IRS rules and regulations governing these non-profit corporations, called churches, really bother these church leaders? Get real!

No wonder all of these “successful” preachers are constantly teaching their congregations to always submit to the government. No wonder they have no interest in abandoning their 501c3 tax-exempt status. They are in the exact same position as were the Pharisees of old. And they are just as effective in helping to enslave people today as were the Pharisees.

The institution of the church–along with its programs, formalities, buildings, rituals, etc.,–has become more important than the purpose for which the church was created. Instead of preaching the liberating message of the Cross, which frees men from the fetters of sin–and that includes sinful political and financial fetters–the church is preaching a message of subjugation and enslavement. It is teaching people to submit to all kinds of oppression, including religious oppression.

Some of the most oppressed and subjugated people in the world are religious people. There are churches and Christian colleges that are every bit as tyrannical as anything coming out of East-bloc or Muslim countries. About the only thing missing is physical torture and execution. Spiritually, however, the oppression is the same.

How could real men who love the liberty they have in Christ allow themselves–and especially their wives–to be told how to dress, how to wear their hair, what kind of music to listen to, what kind of vacations to take, what restaurants they may or may not eat at, what forms of entertainment they may or may not participate in, etc., etc., ad infinitum?

I tell you the truth: many Christians in America are already slaves. To talk to them about freedom is a complete waste of time. The chains of tyranny are already clamped around their hearts. Why should it matter to them if chains are clamped around their necks? When they talk about “defending the faith,” they are talking about defending the institution. They are slaves to the institution. And the same is true for many unchurched Americans.

What is more important: liberty, or the government that is supposed to secure liberty? To a sizeable number of Americans today, it is more important to preserve the institution than the freedoms that the institution was created to protect.

Our Declaration of Independence states, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [the God-given rights of life, liberty, etc.], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Did you see that: “any form of government”? ANY FORM. The form of government is only as good as its ability to secure liberty.

I hear a lot of politicians and media personalities talking about “American exceptionalism.” This is a potentially dangerous mindset. If one means that America is exceptional in our history and the manner in which our Constitution and Bill of Rights were established to protect liberty, well and good. But if it means that America has carte-blanche to do anything it wants–no matter how unconstitutional or tyrannical–because it is “exceptional,” it is a bunch of hooey.

What difference does it make if we have a 50-State Union or not? There is a bill in the California legislature that would divide that State into six states. Five counties in Western Maryland are trying to secede from Baltimore. Ten northern counties in Colorado are trying to secede from Denver. If a State refuses to secure the liberties of the people of that State, they have every right under God to separate. The State is not nearly as important as the liberties of the people within the State.

The spirit of secession is actually growing like wildfire all over the world. In recent history, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Kosovo all separated from Yugoslavia. Transnistria broke free from Moldova. Abkhazia and South Ossetia fought free from Georgia. The Slovaks seceded from Czechoslovakia. And now Crimea is separating from Ukraine.

To be sure, not every country that secedes from another country is motivated purely by the love of liberty. But for those of us in America, the issue that has propelled the desire to separate from one country or one State has always been liberty. It was the love of liberty that created the United States and that created the free and independent states of Maine, Vermont, Kentucky, and West Virginia–all of which seceded from existing U.S. states.

Furthermore, what difference does it make if Washington, D.C., is our federal capital, or, if say, Helena, Montana, would become the federal capital of a mountain state confederation of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Northern Colorado, eastern Washington and Oregon, the Dakotas, Alberta and British Columbia, Canada, and Alaska? Or if Austin was the federal capital of an independent Republic of Texas? Preserving some sort of political union (especially if it is a forced and coerced union) is not nearly as important as preserving liberty.

Again, it is not the political institution that is important. What is important is the liberty that the political institution is supposed to secure.

Many great minds in this country are already philosophizing over the possibility that secession is an idea whose time has come–again. A few years ago, Walter Williams wrote, “Like a marriage that has gone bad, I believe there are enough irreconcilable differences between those who want to control and those want to be left alone that divorce is the only peaceable alternative. Just as in a marriage, where vows are broken, our human rights protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution have been grossly violated by a government instituted to protect them. Americans who are responsible for and support constitutional abrogation have no intention of mending their ways.

“Americans who wish to live free have two options: We can resist, fight and risk bloodshed to force America’s tyrants to respect our liberties and human rights, or we can seek a peaceful resolution of our irreconcilable differences by separating. That can be done by peopling several states, say Texas and Louisiana, control their legislatures and then issue a unilateral declaration of independence just as the Founders did in 1776. You say, ‘Williams, nobody has to go that far, just get involved in the political process and vote for the right person.’ That’s nonsense. Liberty shouldn’t require a vote. It’s a God-given or natural right.

“Some independence or secessionists movements, such as our 1776 war with England and our 1861 War Between the States, have been violent, but they need not be. In 1905, Norway seceded from Sweden, Panama seceded from Columbia (1903), and West Virginia from Virginia (1863). Nonetheless, violent secession can lead to great friendships. England is probably our greatest ally and we have fought three major wars together. There is no reason why Texiana (Texas and Louisiana) couldn’t peaceably secede, be an ally, and have strong economic ties with United States.

“The bottom line question for all of us is should we part company or continue trying to forcibly impose our wills on one another?”

See William’s column here:

Hear! Hear!

In the eyes of God, marriage is the most sacred of all unions. It is far more sacred than any political union. If our Creator has authorized the separation of a husband and wife under certain circumstances in which one party violated the sacred terms of the holy contract (and He has), who among us has the audacity to say that political unions may not be abandoned when government commits political adultery by forsaking its oath to the people?

Again, are we more interested in preserving an institution or the liberty that the institution is supposed to secure?

As an institution, the Church at large is apostate. Yet, millions of Christians continue to prop up an institution that has abandoned the purpose for which it was created. They are more interested in preserving the forms and liturgies and tapestries and buildings of the institution. And, all the while, they are being spiritually enslaved by the very institution they are helping to prop up.

And as an institution, the U.S. federal government is apostate. Yet, millions of citizens continue to make excuses for it, justify it, and condone it. They are more interested in preserving the agencies and entities and power of the institution. Yet, all the while, they are being enslaved by the very institution they are helping to prop up.

What happens when an institution becomes more important than the cause for which the institution was formed? When the institution is civil government and the cause is liberty, tyranny is what happens.

Big Oil’s “Sore Losers” Lead The Drive To War

“We are witnessing a huge geopolitical game in which the aim is the destruction of Russia as a geopolitical opponent of the US or of the global financial oligarchy…..The realization of this project is in line with the concept of global domination that is being carried out by the US.”

– Vladimir Yakunin, former Russian senior diplomat

“History shows that wherever the U.S. meddles; chaos and misery are soon to follow.”

– Kalithea, comments line, Moon of Alabama

Following a 13 year rampage that has reduced large swathes of Central Asia and the Middle East to anarchy and ruin, the US military juggernaut has finally met its match on a small peninsula in southeastern Ukraine that serves as the primary operating base for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Crimea is the door through which Washington must pass if it intends to extend its forward-operating bases throughout Eurasia, seize control of vital pipeline corridors and resources, and establish itself as the dominant military/economic power-player in the new century. Unfortunately, for Washington, Moscow has no intention of withdrawing from the Crimea or relinquishing control of its critical military outpost in Sevastopol. That means that the Crimea–which has been invaded by the Cimmerians, Bulgars, Greeks, Scythians, Goths, Huns, Khazars, Ottomans, Turks, Mongols, and Germans–could see another conflagration in the months ahead, perhaps, triggering a Third World War, the collapse of the existing global security structure, and a new world order, albeit quite different from the one imagined by the fantasists at the Council on Foreign Relations and the other far-right think tanks that guide US foreign policy and who are responsible for the present crisis.

How Washington conducts itself in this new conflict will tell us whether the authors of the War on Terror–that public relations hoax that concealed the goals of eviscerated civil liberties and one world government–were really serious about actualizing their NWO vision or if it was merely the collective pipedream of corporate CEOs and bored bankers with too much time on their hands. In the Crimea, the empire faces a real adversary, not a disparate group of Kalashinov-waving jihadis in flip-flops. This is the Russian Army; they know how to defend themselves and they are prepared to do so. That puts the ball in Obama’s court. It’s up to him and his crackpot “Grand Chessboard” advisors to decide how far they want to push this. Do they want to intensify the rhetoric and ratchet up the sanctions until blows are exchanged, or pick up their chips and walk away before things get out of hand? Do they want to risk it all on one daredevil roll of the dice or move on to Plan B? That’s the question. Whatever US policymakers decide, one thing is certain, Moscow is not going to budge. Their back is already against the wall. Besides, they know that a lunatic with a knife is on the loose, and they’re ready to do whatever is required to protect their people. If Washington decides to cross that line and provoke a fight, then there’s going to trouble. It’s as simple as that.

Perma-hawk, John McCain thinks that Obama should take off the gloves and show Putin who’s boss. In an interview with TIME magazine McCain said “This is a chess match reminiscent of the Cold War and we need to realize that and act accordingly…We need to take certain measures that would convince Putin that there is a very high cost to actions that he is taking now.”

“High cost” says McCain, but high cost for who?

What McCain fails to realize is that this is not Afghanistan and Obama is not in a spitting match with puppet Karzai. Leveling sanctions against Moscow will have significant consequences, the likes of which could cause real harm to US interests. Did we mention that “ExxonMobil’s biggest non-US oil project is a collaboration with Russia’s Rosneft in the Arctic, where it has billions of dollars of investments at stake.” What if Putin decides that it’s no longer in Moscow’s interest to honor contracts that were made with US corporations? What do you think the reaction of shareholders will be to that news? And that’s just one example. There are many more.

Any confrontation with Russia will result in asymmetrical attacks on the dollar, the bond market, and oil supplies. Maybe the US could defeat Russian forces in the Crimea. Maybe they could sink the fleet and rout the troops, but there’ll be a heavy price to pay and no one will be happy with the outcome. Here’s a clip from an article at Testosterone Pit that sums it up nicely:

“Sergei Glazyev, the most hardline of Putin’s advisors, sketched the retaliation strategy: Drop the dollar, sell US Treasuries, encourage Russian companies to default on their dollar-denominated debts, and create an alternative currency system with the BRICS and hydrocarbon producers like Venezuela and Iran…

Putin’s ally and trusted friend, Rosneft president Igor Sechin…suggested that it was “advisable to create an international stock-exchange for the participating countries, where transactions could be registered with the use of regional currencies.” (From Now On, No Compromises Are Possible For Russia, Testosterone Pit)

As the US continues to abuse its power, these changes become more and more necessary. Foreign governments must form new alliances in order to abandon the present system–the “dollar system”–and establish greater parity between nation-states, the very nation-states that Washington is destroying one-by-one to establish its ghoulish vision of global corporate utopia. The only way to derail that project is by exposing the glaring weakness in the system itself, which is the use of an international currency that is backed by $15 trillion in government debt, $4 trillion in Federal Reserve debt, and trillions more in unpaid and unpayable federal obligations. Whatever steps Moscow takes to abort the current system and replace the world’s reserve currency with money that represents a fair store of value, should be applauded. Washington’s reckless and homicidal behavior around the world make it particularly unsuitable as the de facto steward of the global financial system or to enjoy seigniorage, which allows the US to play banker to the rest of the world. The dollar is the foundation upon which rests the three pillars of imperial strength; political, economic and military. Remove that foundation and the entire edifice comes crashing to earth. Having abused that power, by killing and maiming millions of people across the planet; the world needs to transition to another, more benign way of consummating its business transactions, preferably a currency that is not backed by the blood and misery of innocent victims. Paul Volcker summed up the feelings of many dollar-critics in 2010 when he had this to say:

“The growing sense around much of the world is that we have lost both relative economic strength and more important, we have lost a coherent successful governing model to be emulated by the rest of the world. Instead, we’re faced with broken financial markets, underperformance of our economy and a fractious political climate.”

America is irreparably broken and Washington is a moral swamp. The world needs regime change; new leaders, new direction and a different system.

In our last article, we tried to draw attention to the role of big oil in the present crisis. Author Nafeez Ahmed expands on that theme in a “must read” article in Monday’s Guardian. Check out this brief excerpt from Ahmed’s piece titled “Ukraine crisis is about Great Power oil, gas pipeline rivalry”:

“Ukraine is increasingly perceived to be critically situated in the emerging battle to dominate energy transport corridors linking the oil and natural gas reserves of the Caspian basin to European markets… Considerable competition has already emerged over the construction of pipelines. Whether Ukraine will provide alternative routes helping to diversify access, as the West would prefer, or ‘find itself forced to play the role of a Russian subsidiary,’ remains to be seen.” (Guardian)

The western oil giants have been playing “catch up” for more than a decade with Putin checkmating them at every turn. As it happens, the wily KGB alum has turned out to be a better businessman than any of his competitors, essentially whooping them at their own game, using the free market to extend his network of pipelines across Central Asia and into Europe. That’s what the current crisis is all about. Big Oil came up “losers” in the resource war so now they want Uncle Sam to apply some muscle to put them back in the game. It’s called “sour grapes”, which refers to the whining that people do when they got beat fair and square. Here’s more from Ahmed:

“To be sure, the violent rioting was triggered by frustration with (Ukrainian President) Yanukovych’s rejection of the EU deal, (in favor of Putin’s sudden offer of a 30% cheaper gas bill and a $15 billion aid package) along with rocketing energy, food and other consumer bills, linked to Ukraine’s domestic gas woes ….. Police brutality to suppress what began as peaceful demonstrations was the last straw…” (Ukraine crisis is about Great Power oil, gas pipeline rivalry, Guardian)

In other words, Yanukovych rejected an offer from Chevron that the EU and Washington were pushing, and went with the sweeter deal from Russia. According to Ahmed, that pissed off the bigwigs who decided to incite the rioting. (“Putin’s sudden offer of a 30% cheaper gas bill and a $15 billion aid package provoked the protests…”)

Like we said before; it’s just a case of sour grapes.

So, tell me, dear reader: Is this the first time you’ve heard a respected analyst say that oil was behind the rioting, the coup, and the confrontation with Moscow?

I’ll bet it is. Whatever tentacles Wall Street may have wrapped around the White House, Capital Hill, and the US judiciary; Big Oil still rules the roost. The Apostles of the Fossil are the oldest and most powerful club in Washington, and “What they say, goes”. As Ahmed so articulately points out:

“Resource scarcity, competition to dominate Eurasian energy corridors, are behind Russian militarism and US interference…Ukraine is caught hapless in the midst of this accelerating struggle to dominate Eurasia’s energy corridors in the last decades of the age of fossil fuels.” (“Ukraine crisis is about Great Power oil, gas pipeline rivalry”, Guardian)

Did I hear someone say “Resource War”?

As we noted in an earlier article, NWO mastermind Zbigniew Brzezinski characterized the conflict with Russia in terms of cutting off “Western access to the Caspian Sea and Central Asia”. For some unknown reason, America’s behemoth oil corporations think the resources that lie beneath Russian soil belong to them. The question is whether their agents will push Obama to put American troops at risk to assert that claim. If they do, there’s going to be a war.

Addressing Concerns Over “Son of God” Film

Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. ~ Eph 5:11

Not surprisingly the movie “Son of God” has created quite a stir in the Christian community.  Before I gave the theater my money I read several reviews, blog posts, Facebook comments and viewed TV interviews of husband and wife team Mark Burnett and Roma Downey promoting their film.  Roma is a familiar face to many and is best-known for her role on the successful TV show “Touched by An Angel.”  Mark Burnett is the executive producer of a string of hit TV shows such as “Survivor,” “The Voice, “Celebrity Apprentice,” “Shark Tank,” and he has won several Emmys.

When I first heard that another full-length feature film about the life of Christ was coming to the silver screen, I was skeptical for several reasons.  First, Mark and Roma are  and I was concerned that the movie would be produced from this perspective; a perspective that in many cases I disagree with.

Second, I learned that Roma earned a degree in “spiritual psychology” from the University of Santa Monica, a private graduate school founded by New Age spiritual and self-help quack John-Roger.   P.J. Miller is not being flippant when he asks:

What do you call someone who is a student of new age psychology and spiritualism? Do you call them new agers? Do you call them seekers? Would you dare call them Christian? Well, if you’re Roma Downey, then yes, you would call yourself all the above. ()

Third, a  shows Jesus asking Peter to follow Him. Peter looks skeptical and asks Jesus what they’re going to do.  Jesus grins and replies “Change the world.”  Well, no.  Jesus never said those words to Peter!  Here’s what Jesus actually said:

While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. (Mat 4:18-20)

Jesus commanded  — Peter and Andrew dropped what they were doing to follow Him.  (More on this in a moment.)  Another clip shows a woman sitting in a boat on the Sea of Galilee with Jesus and the apostles during the storm where Jesus walks on water.  But according to Scripture there was no woman in the boat:

Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds.  () 

In the movie Mary was the woman in the boat.  But why would they have a woman in the boat when Matthew informs us that the  got into the boat.  Mary wasn’t one of the twelve disciples/apostles – no woman was!

Finally, S. Michael Houdmann revealed in his review of the movie that, “the reason for Jesus’ death and the meaning of His resurrection are completely missing. The fact that Jesus’ death is the atoning sacrifice for sin is not mentioned at all ().”

As I said, “Son of God” has elicited a great deal of controversy as did Mark and Roma’s “” miniseries produced by LightWorkers Media, a company owned by them. This “” program aired on the History Channel last year. “We knew when we were shooting,” said Downey, “that the Jesus portion of our ‘Bible’ series was special and we shot much more footage and we’ve re-edited many more scenes into a stand-alone feature film called ‘Son of God.'”   I don’t have the space to tackle the “The Bible” brouhaha.  I will say, though, that several highly controversial pastors sat on the . They include , , ,  and.  (For more on “The Bible” go to Resources below)

The Son of God?

“Son of God” opened on February 28, so by now a lot of folks have had the opportunity to view it in theatres and many more will have it streaming into their living rooms in a few months.  Naturally, reviews were quickly written, some good, some not so good.  (You’ll find links to the reviews at the end of this piece.) Suffice to say that in a short amount of time a lot has been said about the film.

Many of you won’t be surprised to learn that Mark and Roma asked Saddleback Church founder Rick Warren to help spread their version of the “good news.”   He happily agreed.  “I’ve seen most of the films produced about Jesus in the past 50 years,” said the pastor, “and ‘Son of God’ is the best.  We’re excited Jesus is back on the big screen, and we’re going to fill the theaters. I want every other faith leader in America to do the same.”

So – why would the man who is affectionately called “America’s Pastor” agree to promote a film that its critics describe as outright unbiblical?

Not only did Warren endorse the film, according to the Baptist Standard staff report :

Pastor and author Rick Warren partnered with LifeWay Christian Resources to release a Bible study related to the Son of God movie from 20th Century Fox, which hits theaters Feb. 28.

The small-group curriculum resource by Warren, , is a companion piece to the movie produced by husband-and-wife team Mark Burnett and Roma Downey.

The six-session study features video clips from the movie and videos from Warren explaining Jesus’ teachings and their impact on people’s lives. Topics include baptism, temptation, suffering, death, resurrection and ministry. ()

As a Southern Baptist preacher, Rick Warren knows perfectly well that the Roman Catholic Church holds to the view that it is the one true Church.  Thus, any church outside the RCC is anathematized (excommunicated, cursed or damned). The Protestant Reformers held the view that the RCC’s gospel is not a gospel that saves; therefore the RCC is apostate.  Anyone who rejects the true gospel – we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone – is an unbeliever.  Period.  Warren also knows what the Bible teaches regarding believers going into :

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness. ()

Here’s the thing.  Not everyone who professes the name of Christ has a true saving faith.  What about Mark Burnett and Roma Downey?  Do they have a true saving faith?  Let’s examine the fruit.

Endorsements

Popular pastor and author Mark Driscoll’s church bought out 3,500 seats.  In 2013 he and his wife shared a stage with Mark and Roma at Resurgence 13.  Driscoll later remarked:

We watched the world premier trailer for  at the conference, and the footage choked me up as I thought of the millions of people who will hear about Jesus through this project. I am so encouraged by God’s work through this couple. ()

God’s work?

The connection between the Passover sacrifice (Exodus 12) and Jesus as the Lamb of God () is not made. The fact that Jesus’ resurrection proves His victory over death and sin and guarantees a resurrected eternal life for all who believe in Him (1 Corinthians 15) is nowhere to be found.  — S. Michael Houdmann

Another endorser of the film was “Social Justice Christian” Rev. Jim Wallis.  In my column  I wrote:

This man wears many hats.  He is the founder of Sojourner’s Magazine, speaker, author and activist.  He’s also President Obama’s “spiritual advisor.”  This alone speaks volumes.  Rev. Wallis insists that he’s an evangelical Christian even though he has abandoned the biblical gospel for the “social gospel.”  He believes he’s on a mission from God to assist the poor and oppressed to bring forth the Kingdom of God on earth. 

When this purveyor of the false social justice gospel was asked for advice by the couple, he gladly gave it to them:

What won me over to the whole series was the clip about Jesus meeting Peter, the fisherman. In a Washington, D.C., premiere of “The Bible” series a few weeks ago, I had wonderful conversations with Mark and Roma. Mark asked me if they were right to have Jesus say that he wanted to change the world. Those words are not literally in the scriptures, but it seemed to him and Roma that’s exactly what Jesus was talking about. Absolutely correct, I told them both. And we went through the first few chapters of Mathew which demonstrate that truth. I love the clarity and courage of the statement from Jesus in “The Bible.”

Sunny Shell disagrees:

Christ came into the world to save sinners from the righteous wrath of God, which is the just penalty for our sins. He never said He came to change the world. He said He came to transform people by giving them new hearts and new minds through repentance and faith in Christ alone. ()

The Examiner listed the names of churches and organizations that distributed tickets for a so-called “Theater Take-Over”:

Joel Osteen, pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Tex., who is distributing 8,000 tickets donated by an anonymous donor; Jerry Falwell, Jr., of Liberty University which has more than 12,000 students; Craig Groeschel of LifeChurch which has 18 campuses in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma; Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles with over four million members and Miles McPherson of the Rock Church with weekly attendance of more than 10,000 in San Diego, Calif. (Emphasis in original – )

In an article that appeared on Fox News, Mark and Roma wrote:

In all our combined years in the entertainment industry, we’ve never seen anything like this kind of grass-roots support for a project. It is truly miraculous.

So, too, is the unprecedented depth and breadth of those who have endorsed the film. Pastors like Rick, as well as scholars and faith organizations, have graciously supported our effort to share this story of our Savior – though they belong to different denominations, adhere to varying theological doctrine, worship God in their own unique ways. 

Bishop T.D. Jakes of The Potter’s House in Dallas said “the audience will be enthralled, encouraged and inspired.” 

S. Michael Houdmann was not enthralled by the movie.  In his review he writes:

The Son of God presents a Jewish Messiah who is crucified, dies, comes back to life, and commissions His followers to spread the word. But why did He have to die? What is the meaning of the resurrection? What is the message the apostles were supposed to proclaim, and why was it worth dying for? 

More from the Fox News article…

Joel Osteen of Lakewood Church in Houston called it “an epic work that touches the heart.”

The Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles Jose Gomez says it’s “a very important movie because it gives us the opportunity to realize God’s presence in our own lives.”()

Certainly there are by now “Church leaders” that are sincerely shocked to find out that they endorsed a movie produced by New Age Catholics.  Here’s more proof from a 2010 article  that shows she’s an advocate of New Age/New Thought spirituality:

Says Roma, who lives in Malibu, ‘My kids go to school about a 40-minute drive away. I’m open to the group’s opinion about what we listen to on the way there. On the way back, I get my own selections — books on tape by Eckhart Tolle, Tony Robbins…My husband says I’m so self-realized I’m practically levitating.’

For those who are unfamiliar with Eckhart Tolle, he’s a New Ager.  A few years ago Tolle paired up with  to do 10 online classes on XM Satellite radio on his blockbuster book “A New Earth: Are You Ready to Be Awakened.”  Oprah and Tolle took participants through his book chapter by chapter.  Regrettably, a large number of professing Christians took the class!

 guru and “coach for success” Anthony Robbins once said: “My definition of success is to live your life in a way that causes you to feel tons of pleasure and very little pain.”  Evidently no pain is experienced after completing a barefoot firewalk, a self-empower technique Robbins’ teaches to get an otherwise sane person to walk on a bed of burning hot coals during his “Unleash The Power Within” seminar.  On this  you’ll hear the sound of drums beating and the crowd chanting “YES! YES! YES!” as Robbinswhips them into a frenzy in preparation for the firewalk.

More…

Roma appeared on “psychic medium”  TV show and allegedly spoke to her deceased mother.  What does the Bible have to say about consulting a medium?

And he burned his son as an offering and used fortune-telling and omens and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. ()

Well, it’s apparent that Roma, who says she loves the Bible, is unaware—or doesn’t care–that God says consulting a medium is evil.

Later she collaborated with Edwards by providing a CD to accompany a book he wrote:

Roma prays the entire rosary on the beautiful CD that comes along with this book. It’s quite lovely and gives you the special opportunity and a unique spiritual closeness to Roma to be able to pray right along with her as if she was right there at your side.” ()

So now you know a bit about two New Age gurus Roma Downey looks forward to listening to each day and an occultist she collaborated with.  The worldview of these men is as far from Christianity as the Earth is from Pluto.

P.J. Miller sat listening to Jim Bakker introduce Mark and Roma on Bakker’s TV show and recalled “their previous work on the History Channel’s The Bible and how they managed to literally re-write the Bible itself, and presented another gospel message altogether. I was captured by their … aggressive but subtle attempt to portray themselves as ‘believers’.  The sappy spiritual love fest that permeated on set showed me that something was indeed changing within Christianity, and that something was another Jesus being introduced to the masses.”

Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. ()

After several weeks of due diligence I’ve decided that “Son of God” is not a film I wish to see.  In addition to the concerns I have included in this article, my research has turned up many more — way too many to incorporate here.  Most troubling is the astonishing lack of discernment shown by some of our so-called Christian leaders.  The Son of God I serve is best described in the Bible which is the inerrant, infallible, inspired Word of God.  Inspired means that God moved through the writers to convey to those who read it the words He wanted us to hear.  So to change the words that Christ spoke is prideful and wicked.

It’s unfortunate that those who are unfamiliar with the biblical Jesus and see this film will not come away with a clear understanding of His mission here on Earth.

He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. ()

Resources:

“Son of God” Reviews

 by Sunny Shell

 by S. Michael Houdmann

 by Ben Kayser

“The Bible” Review

 by Sunny Shell

 by Stand Up For The Truth

Endorsements

 by Stand Up For The Truth

New Age/New Thought Movement

 by Marsha West

 by Marsha West

Rick Warren

 by Stand Up For The Truth

 by Marsha West

 by Ken Silva

Miscellaneous

 by Michael Horton

Rome anathematized itself at the Council of Trent

 by Marsha West

 – 

A Culture of Counterfeit Christians

Have you ever run over a dead skunk in the road?  I have, during a heat wave.  The smell got into my tires and permeated our garage for days!  I’ll go out on a limb and say that no one takes pleasure in the highly offensive smell of skunk spray, dead or alive. My point in telling you this is that to God the stench of sin is much worse than skunk.  For an example of just how much the Lord hates sin, grab a cup of coffee and read  and  Kings.  Given our penchant for getting things fast, here’s an illustration of the way in which God dealt with Baasha, one of Israel’s most ruthless kings:

Since I exalted you out of the dust and made you leader over my people Israel, and you have walked in the way of Jeroboam and have made my people Israel to sin, provoking me to anger with their sins, behold, I will utterly sweep away Baasha and his house, and I will make your house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat.Anyone belonging to Baasha who dies in the city the dogs shall eat, and anyone of his who dies in the field the birds of the heavens shall eat.  ()

God had already destroyed Jeroboam for his flagrant sins, yet Baasha repeated the same mistakes.  God rebuked the Israelites for their sinful ways and vowed to punish them.

Fast forward to 2014.  Somewhere around 75% of Americans say they’re Christians.  If that’s true, how is it that an increasing number of so-called Christians act no differently than the pagans did when Baasha was king?  Clearly, Scripture teaches that Christians are to have a biblical foundation and that their behavior should be Christlike.  Yet many who call themselves believers think nothing of sinning their brains out!

Admittedly, when someone is new to the faith the fruit on the vine doesn’t bloom immediately.  In other words, sanctification is a process. It doesn’t happen overnight.  There comes a time, though, when the vine brings forth fruit.  But when the fruit tree is barren year after year, one can’t help but wonder if the tree was ever pollinated!

One of my favorite pastimes is discussing (debating, dissecting) the Bible with other Christians.  So I find it concerning when I strike up a conversation with a long time believer that knows practically nothing about the Bible.  Most Christians have heard the verse, “Sanctify [set apart for a holy use] them in the truth; your word is truth.   By reading God’s Word believers learn about Christ, with the goal being to be more like Him.  Likewise, we’ll grow in our faith and receive divine guidance on how we’re to live our lives.

To have a close relationship with someone we must get to know the person.  The obvious course of action is to ask probing questions.  So we’ve got to dig below the surface to uncover the intimate details of a person’s life.  When we’re not interested in having a meaningful relationship with someone, we don’t bother to probe!

Because our Father in heaven loves His children, His desire is to be in relationship with each one of us.  His desire is to pull His beloved into a bear hug!  Those who sincerely wish to be in relationship with the Father must dig deep into the scriptures, because that’s the one and only place to learn about God and His ways. “What we believe about God,” said A. W. Tozier, “is the most important thing about us.”

Getting To Know YOU, Getting To Know All About YOU

Nothing should stand in the way of spending a few minutes each day with the King of kings and Lord of lords.  While we sit at His feet we can thank Him for our many blessings; we can pour out our hearts to Him and even make requests, trusting that the answers to our prayers will come.  Sitting at His feet, our hurts will be healed and our joy restored.    says, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

Countless Christians admit to not reading their bibles regularly, they hardly ever pray, rarely attend church, they’re not in a Bible study nor do they study on their own.  Moreover, meeting with other believers isn’t a priority.  If this statement defines you, consider the following:

Would it be honest for someone to claim to be an avid skier that never hit the slopes?

Could a person that pumps iron three or four times a year ever develop into a body-building champion?

In the same vein, is it honest for someone to claim to be a Christian that never spends time pumping spiritual iron?

Getting back to my point—sin.  The Bible says Christians should not tolerate blatant sin.  Furthermore, it says we must stop sinning!  Take for example sexual sin.  In this day and age, many professing Christians ignore the fact that one of the gravest sins we commit is sexual sin.  Having sexual relations outside of marriage (the biblical understanding of marriage is the union of a man and woman) goes against the clear teaching of Scripture.

In dealing with sexual taboos, C. S. Lewis pulls no punches:

Our warped natures, the devils who tempt us, and all the contemporary propaganda for lust, combine to make us feel that the desires we are resisting are so ‘natural,’ so ‘healthy,’ and so reasonable, that it is almost perverse and abnormal to resist them. Poster after poster, film after film, novel after novel, associate the idea of sexual indulgence with the ideas of health, normality, youth, frankness, and good humour. Now this association is a lie. Like all powerful lies, it is based on a truth …that sex in itself (apart from the excesses and obsessions that have grown round it) is ‘normal’ and ‘healthy,’ and all the rest of it. The lie consists in the suggestion that any sexual act to which you are tempted at the moment is also healthy and normal.  Now this, on any conceivable view, and quite apart from Christianity, leads to impotence, disease, jealousies, lies, concealment, and everything that is the reverse of health, good humour, and frankness. For any happiness, even in this world, quite a lot of restraint is going to be necessary; so the claim made by every desire, when it is strong, to be healthy and reasonable, counts for nothing. Every sane and civilized man must have some set of principles by which he chooses to reject some of his desires and to permit others. One man does this on Christian principles, another on hygienic principles, another on sociological principles. The real conflict is not between Christianity and ‘nature,’ but between Christian principles and other principles in the control of ‘nature,’ for ‘nature’ (in the sense of natural desire) will have to be controlled anyway, unless you are going to ruin your whole life. (Excerpt from Book III, Chapter 5, of Mere Christianity)

There’s no getting around it.  Sex without holy matrimony is a sin, so “quite a lot of restraint is going to be necessary” if one wishes to be God-honoring and obedient.

Just Follow Jesus

Our Lord spoke plainly when He said, “If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.”    And, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”   Jesus wasn’t just addressing the Apostles; what He stated was meant for all who have faith in Him!

Jesus also gave this warning:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit ().

For clarification, Jesus Christ is the vine and the fruitful branches are Christians who, through a personal relationship with Him, will bear much fruit.  The unfruitful branches are the people who make a superficial commitment and bear little or no fruit.  The Father will prune the vine and discard the fruitless branches.

Those who professes Christ and behave like heathens may find themselves lopped off the vine – and not because God is mean and intolerant.  On the contrary.   God is long suffering, not willing that any should perish.

Holy Smokes!

Authentic Christians understand that God loves us…that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins…that His crucifixion was the ultimate act of love.  What many believers fail to understand, though, is that the Creator is holy.  Christians, of all people, should understand that we serve a holy God.  So let’s go to  for a glimpse of the prophet’s vision of God:

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:  “Holy, holy, holy is theLord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”

And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”

Here’s how Matthew Henry describes Isaiah’s vision:

The prophet, standing outside the temple, sees the Divine Presence seated on the mercy-seat, raised over the ark of the covenant, between the cherubim and seraphim, and the Divine glory filled the whole temple. See God upon his throne. This vision is explained, John 12:41, that Isaiah now saw Christ’s glory, and spake of Him, which is a full proof that our Saviour is God. In Christ Jesus, God is seated on a throne of grace; and through him the way into the holiest is laid open. See God’s temple, his church on earth, filled with his glory. His train, the skirts of his robes, filled the temple, the whole world, for it is all God’s temple. And yet he dwells in every contrite heart. See the blessed attendants by whom his government is served. Above the throne stood the holy angels, called seraphim, which means burners; they burn in love to God, and zeal for his glory against sin. The seraphim showing their faces veiled, declares that they are ready to yield obedience to all God’s commands, though they do not understand the secret reasons of his counsels, government, or promises. All vain-glory, ambition, ignorance, and pride, would be done away by one view of Christ in his glory. This awful vision of the Divine Majesty overwhelmed the prophet with a sense of his own vileness. We are undone if there is not a Mediator between us and this holy God. A glimpse of heavenly glory is enough to convince us that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. Nor is there a man that would dare to speak to the Lord, if he saw the justice, holiness, and majesty of God, without discerning his glorious mercy and grace in Jesus Christ. The live coal may denote the assurance given to the prophet, of pardon, and acceptance in his work, through the atonement of Christ. ()

As R.C. Sproul so aptly put it in The Holiness of God, every single sin a person commits is a capital offense.  “Sin is cosmic treason.  Sin is treason against a pure Sovereign. It is an act of supreme ingratitude toward the One to whom we owe everything, to the One who has given us life itself.”

I’ll close with this reminder.  Avoiding the sinful temptations we’re exposed to daily requires a close, intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.  Therefore:

Submit yourselves, then, to God…Come near to God and he will come near to you.  Wash your hands you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.  Grieve, mourn and wail…humble yourself before the Lord and he will lift you up ().

Kundalini (Serpent Power) & Satan’s Servants of Deception In America

“We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us.  Hereby know the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.” (1 John 4:6)

In this verse the emphasis is on the believer’s ability to discern between a spirit of truth and a spirit of error, heresy, apostasy, lies and cleverly disguised deceptions such as modern evolutionary thinking and methodological naturalism.

The spirit of truth is relatively easy to discern as such people come willingly to the light of truth (John 3:21).  Having a heart for truth, they really and truly want to know and embrace Truth.  On the other hand, the spirit of error is more difficult to discern because the taproot and energy of this spirit is in Satan, the father of lies, of false gods, cleverness, sophistry, false science and evolution, heresy, apostasy, rebellion, murder, and envy.

Satan is the great deceiver (Rev. 12:9).  He uses his servants of deception to manipulate, confuse, and mislead (Ephesians 4:14).   Today his most powerfully influential servants are the world’s occult ‘elites’ but are also found throughout the secular, Christian, cult and occult New Age arenas. (2 Cor. 11:14-15)

One of Satan’s important servants, the evangelical apostate Alice Bailey (1880-1949), is a major architect of today’s rapidly spreading serpent-powered occult New Age movement, a spiritual juggernaut effecting a counter-conversion of consciousness that closes the soul to Jesus Christ while opening it to powers of darkness.

According to Bailey’s contemporary apostles, the ‘Plan’ telepathically revealed to Bailey for the coming New Age can be traced back to the fall of Lucifer and his angels from heaven. Bailey’s demon-master, the Tibetan, described the revolt of the angels against the Holy God as part of the“divine plan of evolution,” by which angels “descended from their sinless and free state of existence in order to develop full divine awareness on earth.”  (Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 224)

In this total reversal and inversion of the Revealed Word of God, the Fall of man was really an evolutionary ascent to liberating knowledge by which man’s eyes were opened to good (Satan) and evil (the Holy God).  Thus Helena Blavatsky, another important servant of Satan and architect of New Age spirituality concluded that it is but natural,

“…to view Satan, the Serpent of Genesis, as the real creator and benefactor, the Father of Spiritual mankind.  For it was he who was the ‘Harbinger of Light,’ bright radiant Lucifer, who opened the eyes of the automaton created by Jehovah…Indeed, (mankind) was taught wisdom and the hidden knowledge by the ‘Fallen Angel.”   As man’s benefactor, Lucifer continues to assist man’s evolution.   In the words of the apostate evangelical, now New Age theologian David Spangler, a disciple of both Blavatsky and Bailey, Lucifer is ‘the angel of man’s evolution.”  (ibid, pp. 224-225)

From the time of the Apostles of Jesus Christ to our own day, an unbroken chain of Satan’s servants have disguised themselves as super apostles and ministers of righteousness who as always are,

“…the inventors of impure heresies (the) profaners and apostates (who open) their mouths wide against the divine glory”. ...Church Father Cyril of Alexandria

These spirits hate Truth and most generally elevate themselves among God’s family so as to lead believers into compromise and conformity with the pagan world system.

On behalf of what Satan’s contemporary ministers term ‘rational’ and ‘scientific’ they sweep away the essentials of the faith necessary both for salvation and the recognition of evil. (2 Peter 2:18) And without the grace and spiritual discernment that is born of true faith, Satan ceases to exist in the eyes of the spiritually blind, whether secular or Christian.

Commenting on the incredible blindness of our scientifically enlightened, theologically compromised and apostate modern society, the cultural theorist Denis de Rougemont (1906-1985), author of “The Devil’s Share, An Essay on the Diabolic in Modern Society” observed:

“What appears to me incredible is not the Devil, not the Angels, but rather the candor and the credulity of the skeptic, and the unpardonable sophism of which they show themselves to be the victims (they say) ‘The Devil is a gent with red horns and a long tail; now I cannot believe in a gent with red horns and a long tail; therefore I don’t believe in the Devil.’  And so the Devil has them precisely where he wants them.” (The Coming Darkness, John Ankerberg and John Weldon, p. 61)

When believers find spiritual Truth trivialized and diminished, marginalized and ridiculed in the church, some will go in search of a faithful church, some will fall away entirely, and others will turn to cults and the occult.

Tragically, since Satan’s ministers ridicule and reject the authority of God’s Word, the second and third groups have no guidelines for evaluating and testing the occult/Eastern spiritual experiences and devices they encounter such as the Enneagram, Jungian psychology, the MBTI, kundalini yoga, and meditation techniques already popular in our culture, apostatizing churches and steadily creeping into compromised churches.  Thus they can easily stumble into the spirit world and if not already fallen away, then onto the broad smooth way of apostasy:

“…..acceptance of the enneagram, if not already a sign of apostasy, must lead to a loss of faith since it distorts the Gospel and contradicts Catholic doctrine, depriving the individual of a genuine Catholic language and setting in its place what has been most aptly termed as psychobabbling. What is most puzzling, however, is the continued silence of the Church’s official teachers who know that this absurdity is being promoted and spread among our Catholic school teachers and priests.”  (NCCB Preparing Cautionary Note on Use of Enneagram, Paul Likoudis, Catholic Culture.org)

For an eye-opening look at the demon-oppressed Carl Jung and a penetrating analysis of his occult, alchemical, Gnostic, and demon-informed psychology and connections to the wildly popular Enneagram and MBTI, read “Carl Jung, Neo-Gnosticism, & the MBTI,” by Rev. Ed Hird, past National Chair of Anglican Renewal Ministries of Canada:  

“Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” 1 John 4:1

In his best-selling book “Strange Fire,” Pastor John MacArthur masterfully chronicles the unsavory history underpinning the modern Charismatic/Apostolic Movement (NAR) and its false prophets.  The New Apostolic Reformation is both a breeding ground for scandal, bad doctrine, and spiritual chicanery and the fastest growing “Christian” movement in the world.  MacArthur lays out a chilling case for rejecting its false prophets and for exposing their errors to the cleansing light of Truth.

In his own penetrating analysis of the Charismatic/Apostolic movement, Fr. Seraphim Rose notes that the spiritist manifestations (i.e., impartation, holy laughter, drunk in the spirit, roaring, barking, hissing, slain in the spirit) experienced in Charismatic churches are found in the occult New Age movement.   The spirit that invaded the Charismatic movement during the ‘Toronto Blessing’ is not the Holy Spirit, said Rose, but the kundalini spirit (serpent power), the same spirit that ancient Egyptians, Hindus, yoga practitioners, and New Agers are familiar with.

From the time of the ancients serpent power has been important to religious and mythological symbolism all around the world. Within the Egyptian mysteries, serpent power was associated with,

…“the elemental forces that were in play before the creation of the world.” (Carl Teichrib, Gods of Ancient Egypt, p. 182)

In his book, “The Sign of the Serpent,” Mark Balfour relates how pervasive serpent symbols are within India and the Hindu religion:

“Any observant traveler who moves from the snow-tipped Himalayas in the North to the sun-soaked sands of Cape Comorin at India’s southern tip, will encounter – particularly in the rural areas and at sacred centres of pilgrimage wherever Siva, God of both Divine Wisdom and regeneration, is the presiding Deity – the serpent motif sculptured within shrines, impressed on myriads of stone implants in the ground and depicted in art.” (A Short Guide to Occult Symbols: Serpent Power, Carl Teichrib, 2005, Kjos Ministries)

Balfour elaborates on this belief:

“In Hinduism, the Cosmic Serpent – Ananta Sesha – symbolic of timeless eternity, carries the world on his 1000-fold [Cobra] hood…As the creative impulse stirs within the great Serpent in the Sky – when passive idea becomes active thought – the forces of attraction and repulsion come into play as ‘spirit’ begins its involution into “matter.” (ibid, Teichrib)

Moreover, Kundalini yoga, a discipline within Hinduism, teaches that latent serpent power lies at the base of the etheric human spine,

“…like a coiled serpent, ready to spring.” (Harper’s Dictionary of Hinduism, p. 156, ibid, Teichrib)

Through strenuous yoga techniques, serpent power uncoils and rises through seven “chakras” or power centers within the human body. Serpent power is considered,

“(to be a) concentrated field of intelligent cosmic, invisible energy absolutely vital to life beginning in the base of the spine as a man or a woman begins to evolve in their first incarnation.” (The Donning International Encyclopedic Psychic Dictionary, p. 343, ibid, Teichrib)

“Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field…” – Genesis 3:1

Serpent power is imparted by laying on of hands, or Shakti-pat.  The demon-possessed Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajineesh was called the “divine drunkard” by his disciples, and according to Tal Brook, author of “Riders of the Cosmic Circuit,” by his millions of worshippers in India, America, and Europe and throughout the world.  Rajineesh encouraged his devotees to come and drink from him, meaning, receive his touch:

“His spiritual ‘wine’ was often passed on with a single touch to the head (Shakti-pat), at which his followers would collapse in ecstatic laughter. Another famous guru, Swami Muktananda, would hold meetings at which thousands of his followers from around the world came to receive his touch.  They experienced uncontrollable laughing, roaring, barking, hissing, crying, shaking, as well as falling unconscious.”(Rose, p. 217)

These demon-possessed gurus were imparting to their adoring worshippers experiences they had undergone during initiation rituals and which they attributed to spirit-possession.

Veteran researcher Brooks Alexander observes of Rajineesh, Muktananda and other gurus:

“All of these gurus espouse a similar philosophy, and they all turn it into practice in a similar way.  It is a pattern that we find not only in tantra (Indo-Tibetan occultism), but in European Satanism, antinomian Gnosticism, and ancient pagan sorcery as well.” (Book Review: Riders of the Cosmic Circuit,” in SCP Journal, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1987, p. 39)

According to Alexander, Satan’s servants have successfully assimilated occult Eastern teachings and techniques into our church and our culture.  With remarkable speed and ease, Eastern and occult ideas and spiritist techniques for contacting spirits such as trance music, brain-altering drugs, meditation and yoga are being propagated to undiscerning Westerners and Americans, within and without the church, on a mass scale:

“…they are filtered through the pervasive secularism of our culture.  In this way they are demystified without changing their essential content.  The basic components of an Eastern/occult world view are recast in forms of expression that are naturalistic, scientific, and humanistic…Occult philosophy is being secularized and psychologized with increasing refinement….Their underlying themes run through contemporary science, economics, politics, art, psychology, and religion.”  (The Coming Darkness, p. 55)

“Be sober, be vigilant: because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” 1  Peter 5:8

Satan’s servants are out in the open today.  They have successfully initiated a devastating assault upon the whole body of the Christian church and by extension, upon Western and American society in ways that to previous generations would have seemed unthinkable.

Therefore,

“Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil.”  Ephesians 6:11

And though all may seem dark, hopeless and lost, fear not, for the faithful believer, the one who seeks and perseveres in Truth, is of God:

“Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.” (1 John 4:4)

A Modern Exodus

God’s deliverance of the children of Israel from Egyptian bondage is the great recurring theme of the Old Testament. Time and again, God’s prophets would remind the Hebrews of this great deliverance. Moses, himself, recounted The Exodus with the children of Israel over and over again. Hear Moses:

“I am the LORD your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that ye should not be their bondmen; and I have broken the bands of your yoke, and made you go upright.” (Lev. 26:13 KJV)

Make no mistake about it: it was a real deliverance. It was real bondage; real slavery; real tyranny; real whips; real chains; real beatings; and real death. And while there is certainly a spiritual correlation between the deliverance Christ extends to the soul and the deliverance of the children of Israel under Moses, let’s not forget that The Exodus recorded in the Old Testament book named after the event was a literal, physical, and, yes, political reality. Real men and women were taken out of real slavery and given real freedom. It was not merely spiritual freedom; it was physical and political freedom. Men and women didn’t just march out of Egypt in their hearts; they marched out of Egypt on their feet.

Is there any professing Christian today who would disparage what the children of Israel did when they walked out of Egypt? Who is the pastor or church leader who would dare question the legitimacy and rightness of what Moses did in bringing the Hebrews out of bondage?

For that matter, all of the Old Testament events that are lauded and extolled by New Testament writers as being “ensamples” for us, were literal events. There is certainly nothing wrong with making spiritual correlations to these events but not at the expense of denying or denigrating the literalness of the events. David used a real sling and killed a real giant and took a real sword and cut off his real head. Gideon, Barak, Jephthah, and Samson led real revolts against real oppressors. Queen Esther violated a real law and risked her real life to intercede for real people. After Esther’s real bravery, the Hebrews were given real swords and real spears and successfully defended themselves against real enemies really intent on killing them. The list is endless.

I say all of this, because it seems that the vast majority of pastors and Christians today do not equate the real-life stories of Biblical history with practical reality in modern life. Everything is spiritualized away. But Bible history is the story of one exodus after another, one separation after another.

Noah was separated from the antediluvian world; Abram was separated from his country and kin; Joseph was separated from his family and country; Israel and his children were separated from their homeland; Moses was separated from the throne he was set to inherit; David was separated from his place and position–and even his own throne; the Apostle Paul was separated from his profession, his home, and his friends; and none of us really knows the amount of separation that the rest of the apostles endured. From the Book of Genesis where God told Abram, “Get thee out of thy country,” to the Book of The Revelation where God declared, “Come out of her, my people,” the divine call of separation was not merely mystical; it was literal.

Until people of faith are willing to walk with their feet, nothing will happen. We can spiritualize all we want, but nothing will happen until we literally WALK.

Martin Luther walked up to the Castle Church in Wittenberg and used a real hammer and nails to post a real 95 Theses on a real church door. Zwingli took a real sword into a real battle and died a real death in defense of real liberty. The pilgrims walked out of one European country after another until they climbed into real boats that sailed over a real ocean and landed in a new land in search of real freedom. Our patriot forebears wrote a real Declaration of Independence and fought a real revolutionary war in order to bequeath to their posterity real liberty. Dietrich Bonhoeffer separated from the German Church and formed a real protest movement known as the Confessing Church and collaborated with a real conspiracy to rid a real tyrant from his country. Again, the list is endless.

To, again, quote Bonhoeffer, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

Yet, all over America, Christians refuse to walk away from those churches that are, through their silence, facilitating the enslavement of their very own children and grandchildren. Worse yet, they refuse to walk away from churches that actively promote the political policies that would enslave their posterity.

Many Christians have written me in an attempt to justify them remaining in churches that refuse to take a stand for liberty. For some, it is a matter of tradition. For the life of them, they cannot imagine themselves separated from their liturgies or denominations–as if somehow their acceptance before God depends on them. It doesn’t! For others, it is an unwillingness to separate from friends. To them, church is mostly a social institution. Still others are addicted to programs. They have been deluded into thinking that somehow religious programs equals spirituality. They don’t! Then there are those who think that the spiritual message somehow trumps everything else. As long as their pastor preaches “the Gospel,” nothing else matters. Of course, many of these same people have jumped from church to church over any number of issues: music, children’s programs, youth programs, building programs, the pastor didn’t visit them when they were sick, etc., etc., etc. Yet, when it becomes obvious that their pastor will not take a stand for liberty, they continue to support the pastor because “he is preaching the Gospel.”

And I have had sincere believers approach me saying that they are willing to overlook their pastor’s silence, because they believe the pastor is simply ignorant and just doesn’t understand the issues. I will admit that this is a valid point. All of us were enlightened at different rates of speed. None of our eyes were opened to these things overnight. But the real question is how open is your pastor to the truth? Is he open at all? Or, does he dismiss out-of-hand any attempt to make him aware of reality? The sad truth is the vast majority of pastors seem to be “willingly ignorant.” Not only are they not aware of what’s going on; they don’t want to be aware of what’s going on.

How long are you going to wait for your pastor to wake up? How many links must be added to the chains of oppression before you decide you might need to find a pastor and church that are engaged in the liberty fight? How long are you going to support your pastor’s indifference and ignorance? Let me be blunt: as long as your pastor is preaching to a packed church, as long as the offering plates are full, as long as his ministry is “successful,” you are going to be waiting for a long, long time for him to awaken. As far as he is concerned, God is blessing his efforts. The church is full; the offering plate is full; new buildings are planned; he is popular. You can give him all of Chuck Baldwin’s video sermons you want; you can urge him to listen to Alex Jones all you want; you can give him all of the DVDs and articles you want. He won’t read or watch them, and if he does, he won’t act on them. Why? He is content to be ignorant. Life is too good.

Folks, I know I have said this before, but I say it again: until Christians by the droves remove themselves from these establishment churches that refuse to join the liberty fight, there is little hope for freedom. Without the patriot-pastors in Colonial America, there would have been no Lexington Green, Concord Bridge, Bunker Hill, Declaration of Independence, US Constitution, or United States of America. It was the combined efforts of pastors such as Jonas Clark, John Witherspoon, Ebenezer Baldwin, and James Caldwell as much as it was the efforts of political figures such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Sam Adams, and Patrick Henry that brought the American colonies out of British bondage.

It is not the presence of political parasites that are destroying our country; it is the absence of patriot-pastors.

Moses and the children of Israel literally walked out of bondage. So must God’s people today. If your pastor and church are content to let you and your family live in bondage, walk out. If he is unwilling to engage the liberty fight, walk out. God’s command to Abram to “Get thee out of thy country” was no less painful than the Holy Spirit’s command to us to “Get thee out of thy church.” And one of the final appeals of Heaven to believers is, “Come out of her, my people.” The “her” here is the Babylonian world system, of course. But need I remind readers that the Babylonian world system is a system that enslaves people? It always has; it always will. So, why would a believer stay in a supposed church that refuses to resist the Babylonian world system that seeks to enslave them? Why?

Besides, the true Gospel message always leads to action. Always! The Gospel requires action. Natural Law is little more than the practical application of the Gospel. The call to preach the Gospel is a call to action. For a pastor to say he is called to preach the Gospel then do nothing to teach and train his people how to apply the Gospel in Natural Law and practical life (including our political life) is to not understand (or to deny) the Gospel he is called to preach.

The Gospel is more than the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. The Gospel is “the whole counsel of God.” We would have a very thin Bible if the only verses in it were those which specifically deal with Christ’s death and resurrection. If that’s all the Gospel God wanted us to know, why did He give us the rest of Holy Writ?  And why do we have the law of God “written in our hearts”?

The children of Israel walked out of a country that had put them in bondage; the spiritual children of Abraham today (all who believe on Christ) need to walk out of a church that would put them in bondage. The good news is the exodus has already begun.

A Line In The Sand Is Being Drawn Again

In March of 1836, a young man of twenty-three years of age took his sword out of its scabbard and drew a line in the sand in front of an old mission outside of San Antonio, Texas, and called on the men defending that mission who were willing to stay on the ramparts and face an opposing army more than ten times their number to signify their commitment by stepping across the line. Of course, the young man was William Barrett Travis and the old mission was the Alamo. He could not have known it then, but Travis’ line in the sand would forever become the benchmark by which all future acts of commitment would be measured. In a mystical way, but, then again, in very real way, Travis’ line in the sand is being drawn again. Oh, it may not be a line in dirt drawn by the point of a sword; it is a line in the hearts of men being drawn by the Spirit of God.

My last three columns (not including the column promoting THE FREEDOM DOCUMENTS) generated more responses than any three columns I have ever written, and I have been writing this column for some fifteen years. At first, the responses were mostly negative and often vitriolic. But this past week, responses have been over 90% positive and very enthusiastic. I am confident that the manner in which these columns have brought out intense emotion and determination on both sides is a microcosm of what is happening nationally. A line in the sand for freedom is being drawn once again.

This line in the sand for freedom is separating people in a major way. And this is not necessarily a bad thing. In the same way that God commanded Abram to separate from his home and kin, so, too, the Spirit of God is separating people many times from their friends, their neighbors, their kinfolk, and, yes, their church families. I seem to recall that during the period of the early church, the conflict of principle forever separated the apostles Paul and Silas. And during America’s War for Independence, the conflict of principle separated Benjamin Franklin and his son William–as it did tens of thousands of others.

Perhaps not since the days of Patrick Henry, Sam Adams, et al., have Americans been forced to deal–intellectually, reasonably, emotionally, volitionally, and spiritually–with the fundamental issues of liberty as we are being forced to do today. For way too long, Americans have taken freedom for granted. For way too long, our educational and religious institutions (not to mention our homes) have not taught the fundamental principles of liberty. This negligence has brought our country to the brink of oppression and despotism. And, just as was the case in Colonial America, a line in the sand for freedom is being drawn in the hearts of men.

This internal line in the sand is being drawn irrespective of a person’s education, temperament, upbringing, intelligence, or faith. While some men seem to be content to live under the heel of governmental oppression, many others have an innate thirst for freedom that all of the armies in the world cannot quench.

In truth, the thirst for freedom is part of Natural Law. A horse is not broken without a fight; a tiger or lion will pace its cage as long as it can walk looking for an avenue of escape; a bird will fly around its cage ten thousand times looking for an opening to return to the sky. Yes, animals can be broken–and so can be some men, unfortunately. But the innate desire for freedom is born in the soul of every man.

However, the desire for comfort, ease, and material pleasure is a handsome tempter that many people find more attractive than the harsh and weather-torn face of liberty. Plus, the further liberty slips out of view, the more vague the memory of it becomes. And before we realize it, the face of liberty is only seen in the irrelevant relics of the songs and statues of history. But it is exactly at this point that the Spirit of God begins to renew in the hearts of men the Natural thirst for liberty. And that is precisely what is happening now.

All over America, and, yes, all over the world, people’s hearts are beating fast for freedom. I am receiving thousands of letters and emails from people all over the globe. Unfortunately for many of these people, they do not live in a country in which the governmental and political foundation and structure is conducive to the reclamation of liberty. But in the United States, it is not a matter of government; it is a matter of will. Do the American people yet have the will to reclaim liberty?

While it would appear that the majority of today’s Americans have allowed ignorance, materialism, and false Bible teaching regarding the principles of liberty to suppress their love of liberty, I am absolutely convinced that the spirit of liberty is swelling in the hearts of teeming millions of people. Highly educated and high school dropouts, affluent and average, Christians and unchurched, men and women, young and old: their hearts are ablaze with the love of liberty. And they are no longer content to surround themselves with those who would allow the chains of servitude to be clamped around their necks.

Are we patriots or loyalists? That question had to be answered by every man and woman in Colonial America. The same question must be answered by every American today. Are we going to bravely fight for the principles of liberty as did our patriot forebears, or are we going to be loyal to a corrupt and tyrannical system that is literally choking the life out of our freedoms? And how each of us answers that question will determine the direction and destination of our lives and futures.

The freedom to separate is a Natural right. Forced union is not a union at all; it is enslavement. The current world and U.S. maps are testimonies to the right of Natural separation. Pat Buchanan recently wrote:

“In the last decade of the 20th century, as the Soviet Empire disintegrated, so, too, did that prison house of nations, the USSR.

“Out of the decomposing carcass came Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Moldova, all in Europe; Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus; and Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia.

“Transnistria then broke free of Moldova, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia fought free of Georgia.

“Yugoslavia dissolved far more violently into the nations of Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo.

“The Slovaks seceded from Czechoslovakia.”

Buchanan also notes that in the U.S., “Four of our 50 states–Maine, Vermont, Kentucky, West Virginia–were born out of other states.”

See Pat’s column at:

Think of this, too: the most fundamental and sacred union of all is the union of a man and woman in marriage. Had Adam and Eve not fallen into sin, there would, no doubt, be no right or reason for separation. (Matthew 19:8) But with the fall of man into sin came all kinds of abuse. As a result, the Scriptures grant divorce (separation) on the grounds of both adultery (Matthew 19) and abandonment (I Corinthians 7). While never preferred, few among us would deny the right of a husband or wife to separate under certain circumstances. Because not every man is willing to be governed by the Natural and revealed laws of God, men are granted the right to separate themselves from those who would violate the fundamental principles upon which the union is based. This is true maritally, ecclesiastically, spiritually, socially, and politically.

In 1836, Will Travis drew a line in the sand to separate those who were willing to defend the liberty of Texas on the ramparts of the Alamo from those who were not. And I am convinced that God is drawing a line in the hearts of men today for the same reason: to separate those who are willing to give their lives in the defense of liberty from those who are not. And, ironically, the freedom of everyone–including the ones who are not willing to defend it–depends on the willingness of the ones who are. I guess it’s always been that way.

I know which side of the line I am on; and after the deluge of correspondence I have received over the past couple of weeks, I know I am not alone.

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